tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7961882.post885861668824956764..comments2024-03-17T08:30:21.129+00:00Comments on Open and Shut?: The OA Interviews: Michael Eisen, co-founder of the Public Library of ScienceRichard Poynderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05433823131339077354noreply@blogger.comBlogger10125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7961882.post-21029370783170338632012-02-22T09:56:06.112+00:002012-02-22T09:56:06.112+00:00Thanks for linking to my post on LSE's Impact ...Thanks for linking to my post on LSE's Impact of Social Sciences blog! Just a point for the sake of clarity: I was writing in a personal capacity and am unaffiliated with LSE, and the post was therefore not a position statement.Neil Stewarthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07975145522033053112noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7961882.post-5586151589156691592012-02-21T09:24:14.362+00:002012-02-21T09:24:14.362+00:00What the gold OA market needs to do is show the va...What the gold OA market needs to do is show the value of the liberated information. At present this counts for nothing. The fact that translators can translate papers without permission, that people can write books including pictures and tables and text, that I and other can use clever algorithms to mine information counts for nothing. There is a huge value in the liberated good.<br /><br />Governments are rushing to release open data because they have been convinced that it is in their interest to make it a public good. Scientists / scholars hide this. [Kent Anderson publishes only to clinicians, while the scholarly poor - the patients - cannot read the research.]<br /><br />Michael, is there not some way of quantifying the value released by PLoS/ONE. Governments cost lives ate hundreds of thousands - if a paper saves a life it's worth a lot.Peter Murray-Rusthttp://wwmm.ch.cam.ac.uknoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7961882.post-17704650454478496042012-02-21T07:29:31.702+00:002012-02-21T07:29:31.702+00:00Just a comment on one thing Mike said: on post-pub...Just a comment on one thing Mike said: on post-publication commenting and discussion in PLoS One, he remarks <br /><i>"People don’t navigate the literature that way, and the next generation of our system will have to give people the easy ability to record their thoughts on ANY paper that they are reading if it is to be successful."</i> <br />He is right, of course. <br /><br />But there IS an easy way to record – and share – your thoughts on any paper, that is completely publisher-independent (and repository-independent). It is one of the many functions offered in the free scientific PDF-reader Utopia Documents. So if you read the PDF-version of any article, do it with Utopia Documents, and comment to your heart's content. <br /><br />The free reader is available to be downloaded from http://getutopia.orgJan Velteropnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7961882.post-13131828059113922352012-02-21T04:22:52.158+00:002012-02-21T04:22:52.158+00:00It's really hard to see how gold OA wouldn'...It's really hard to see how gold OA wouldn't be better than the current system for all manner of reasons:<br /><br />1) The current system has elements of a monopoly, in that an individual publisher is the exclusive source for the articles they publish. Since papers aren't fungible, the publishers can - and most have - exploited this monopoly by increasing charges at a rate far greater than inflation at a time when costs are decreasing. This is obviously not the case with gold OA.<br /><br />2) There's a disconnect between the people making the decision about where to publish and the people who pay the subscription bills. This means that there is very little effect on author demand if prices go up. Another inefficiency absent from gold OA.<br /><br />3) The customer in gold OA is likely to be the funding agency - NIH, NSF, Wellcome, HHMI, etc... - who have much greater power to negotiate with potential customers than do individual universities.<br /><br />That's not say that gold OA is immune from wackiness. It's not clear how much of a difference price makes to many authors, and there are some non-trivial things to think about in deciding how to fund gold OA (research grant supplements? institutional pools? single payer?). You could argue that the research reagents market has similar features and it has a lot of inefficiencies. But put all this together, and I still don't see how it could be 1/10th as bad as the current system. <br /><br />, and I'm sure publishers will figure out a way to extract whatever they can from funding agenciesMichael Eisenhttp://www.michaeleisen.orgnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7961882.post-2659328087228081932012-02-20T16:47:57.661+00:002012-02-20T16:47:57.661+00:00As Mike knows, I fear a pure Gold OA 'market&#...As Mike knows, I fear a pure Gold OA 'market' would, in many ways, be worse than what we have now. Which is one of many reasons why I'm proposing to have libraries take over from publishers:<br />http://bjoern.brembs.net/comment-n835.htmlBjoern Brembshttp://brembs.netnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7961882.post-18098020583629696612012-02-20T14:52:16.312+00:002012-02-20T14:52:16.312+00:00"I do doubt that it would be a better market....<i>"I do doubt that it would be a better market."</i><br /><br />I have to say that this surprises me: it's honestly hard to imagine a much worse market than the one we have -- it feels as though almost <i>any</i> change would be for the better.<br /><br />In particular, anything that brings the consequences of authors' journal-selection choices closer to them seems like a step in the right direction. In the real world, choices has consequences. Whenever academics are shieded from the consequences of their choices, it can only reinforce the (often unfair) public impression of "ivory towers".<br /><br /><i>"I assume you do not see Green OA as an option?"</i><br /><br />I wouldn't go that far! I think Green OA is much better than nothing, and for that reason I strongly oppose the RWA and support the FRPAA. But it has serious problems. The most important one was nailed by Michael Eisen in the interview: "if self-archiving ever started to gain real traction, the green light publishers have given to do it will immediately be withdrawn."<br /><br />That is a manifestation of the broader problem that Green OA still leaves publishers, rather than scientists, in charge of science. It's done with the publishers' <i>permission</i>. In the end, that can't be healthy.<br /><br />Still, it's a good step.<br /><br />I <i>suspect</i> that in fifteen or twenty years we'll have a radically disrupted scholarly landscape dominated by arXiv-like unreviewed repositories in conjunction with many alternative, complementary and linked post-publication peer-review systems and overlays providing other added value, such as journal-like collections. But I need hardly say that I really don't know -- and although it's a bit unsettling, I actually find it tremendously invigorating to be watching (and in a small way involved) as the community thrashes out what the future of science is going to look like.Mike Taylorhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06039663158335543317noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7961882.post-65613485841380315672012-02-20T14:36:12.830+00:002012-02-20T14:36:12.830+00:00I do doubt that it would be a better market. Howev...I do doubt that it would be a better market. However, it would of course have one important advantage: the world's research would be freely available!<br /><br />I assume you do not see Green OA as an option?Richard Poynderhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05433823131339077354noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7961882.post-63947111844262554172012-02-20T14:26:58.565+00:002012-02-20T14:26:58.565+00:00Good questions. I won't pretend to have all t...Good questions. I won't pretend to have all the answers -- I don't think any of us can until we're further forward this this -- but do you disagree that the mostly-Gold OA system would be a <i>less</i> imperfect market than the current subscription-based one?Mike Taylorhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06039663158335543317noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7961882.post-57315070404118310772012-02-20T14:22:43.975+00:002012-02-20T14:22:43.975+00:00“In a market where that is the principal means of ...<i> “In a market where that is the principal means of publication, publishers will have to compete for authors' attention on a level playing field, based on price and features. In that world, if PLoS ONE's $1350 charge turns out to be too high, then authors will simply desert it for a journal that charges less (or offers more). Sad for PLoS if that happens, but not for the scholarly ecosystem as a whole. </i><br /><br />Does this still apply when author-side fees are paid by means of the membership schemes offered by OA publishers, or when they are paid out of institutional Gold OA funds? In such circumstances, does the situation differ so very much from what you describe below?<br /><br /><i> “By contrast, in the current system where barrier-based journals predominate, decision makers are insulated from the costs that their decisions impose. Authors' choice of where to publish their work is made independent of the cost of the journals under consideration, because those costs are paid out of a separate library budget. It's the very definition of an inefficient market.” </i><br /><br />And would the level playing field you describe apply if the bill was paid directly by research funders, as seems to be envisaged by Michael Eisen when he says, <i> “I can also see a future in which the costs of publishing are not paid on a per paper basis, but rather are borne by a coalition of research funders, as is done with eLife”? </i>Richard Poynderhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05433823131339077354noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7961882.post-24744363226092457282012-02-20T13:33:30.436+00:002012-02-20T13:33:30.436+00:00"All in all, the suspicion must be that publi...<i>"All in all, the suspicion must be that publishers will continue to ask the research community to pay more than it is able or willing to afford to publish its papers — unless a more drastic change takes place. Certainly wide scale take-up of Gold OA does not appear to offer a solution to the affordability problem."</i><br /><br />Here is where I am more optimistic than you are about Gold OA. In a market where that is the principal means of publication, publishers will have to compete for authors' attention on a level playing field, based on price and features. In that world, if PLoS ONE's $1350 charge turns out to be too high, then authors will simply desert it for a journal that charges less (or offers more). Sad for PLoS if that happens, but not for the scholarly ecosystem as a whole.<br /><br />By contrast, in the current system where barrier-based journals predominate, decision makers are insulated from the costs that their decisions impose. Authors' choice of where to publish their work is made independent of the cost of the journals under consideration, because those costs are paid out of a separate library budget. It's the very definition of an inefficient market.<br /><br />What Gold OA does is to tie together publication decisions and their consequences. I am pretty confident that if we are able to make the switch to a Gold OA-dominant system, then common-or-garden market forces will kick in and competition will reward the publishers that give the best service rather than the ones that libraries feel they can't do without.Mike Taylorhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06039663158335543317noreply@blogger.com