tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7961882.post7426642185305576011..comments2024-03-17T08:30:21.129+00:00Comments on Open and Shut?: The Open Access Big Deal: Back to the FutureRichard Poynderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05433823131339077354noreply@blogger.comBlogger37125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7961882.post-60803030786561297092018-04-06T11:03:57.566+00:002018-04-06T11:03:57.566+00:00Demands for greater transparency in Big Deals with...Demands for greater transparency in Big Deals with scholarly publishers <a href="http://tiedonhinta.fi/en/2018/04/04/finnish-researchers-are-calling-for-improved-transparency-in-academic-journal-pricing/" rel="nofollow">continue to grow</a>: Finnish researchers have made a Freedom of Information (FOI) request to FinELib, in accordance with the Finnish Freedom of Information Act (“Julkisuuslaki”). <br /><br /><i>"In particular, we request the full contract texts and the total cost information per subscribing institution and per year, as specified in the contracts for all recent deals whose terms are starting from the beginning of 2018. These include, at least, the deals with Emerald (journal package) and IEEE (IEL database) and with Wiley-Blackwell (the 2014 Full Collection), American Chemical Society (journal package), OVID (LWW journal package) and Springer (SpringerCompact journal package)."</i>Richard Poynderhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05433823131339077354noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7961882.post-74152921440686301202018-04-06T09:46:26.199+00:002018-04-06T09:46:26.199+00:00You raise a good point Björn, and as I recall it w...You raise a good point Björn, and as I recall it was a point made at the Couperin meeting earlier this year. <br /><br />One of the questions I put to VSNU that I have received no answer to was this:<br /><br /><i>What happens if an organisation like VSNU agrees one of these OA Big Deals with a large legacy publisher and then when it comes up for renewal cannot agree on pricing for the new one. Much has been made of the fact that researchers can get access to journal articles if a subscription Big Deal is not renewed, but what happens if an OA Big Deal fails? Researchers will presumably struggle to pay to publish their papers and so are more vulnerable?</i>Richard Poynderhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05433823131339077354noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7961882.post-16852901723019000792018-04-06T08:22:14.821+00:002018-04-06T08:22:14.821+00:00One of the big Elephants in the room has not been ...One of the big Elephants in the room has not been mentioned so far (or I missed it, sorry in that case): already now, when they only concern reading, dropping subscriptions has been very difficult. With walking away not being an option, publishers have essentially been able to charge what they want. That's when the only issue with a lack of subscriptions is a few additional keystrokes, or an email to the author.<br /><br />With Big Deals for *publishing* the issues ensuing with no contract become not being able to publish, i.e., no funding, no promotion, no tenure, no job. In other words, libraries will be in an even worse negotiation position than now. Faculty really would litterally set the library on fire if they canceled a *publishing* deal.<br /><br />Why would libraries willingly do this to themselves?Björn Brembshttp://brembs.netnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7961882.post-17331875282206590602018-04-05T08:42:26.674+00:002018-04-05T08:42:26.674+00:00What I find odd here is that the Program Manager O...What I find odd here is that the Program Manager Open Access at VSNU responded to this post by saying that she <a href="https://tulibrarian.weblog.tudelft.nl/2018/04/03/trying-to-make-the-best-out-of-it/" rel="nofollow">couldn't agree with me more</a> about the need for transparency in OA Big Deals. <br /><br />Yet VSNU has not responded to my last email and appears to have made no attempt answer the questions I sent to them.<br /><br />I find it very hard, therefore, to believe that there is any real commitment to transparency at VSNU.Richard Poynderhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05433823131339077354noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7961882.post-87094592161409094352018-04-03T15:54:27.412+00:002018-04-03T15:54:27.412+00:00Negotiating national deals with journal publishers...Negotiating national deals with journal publishers is tough! The negotiations are not like a haggle in the market place. There is no alternative vendor for unique journal content and no alternative (ideal) vendor for the publication of an OA Gold Article. Library consortia have responded to a growth in Gold OA, by negotiating offset deals. While by no means perfect, without the deals, the cost would be significantly more.<br />In my experience, library consortia always resist NDAs. However, publicly discussing the details of a negotiation is not professional and would not necessarily work in the best interest of a consortiums members.<br />Please also not that library consortia via ICOLC http://icolc.net/ do share information and support each other.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15004379543220910083noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7961882.post-21062851351267675852018-04-02T13:20:46.637+00:002018-04-02T13:20:46.637+00:00Thanks for these thoughtful comments.
I think in...Thanks for these thoughtful comments. <br /><br />I think in Canada the hope is that the government will be able to fund non-profit gold open access publishers through government grants to publishers and journals. The idea is government grants to journals and publishers, plus research funds, plus the work that is done on a voluntary basis anyways (like reviewing, writing), plus potentially redirection of funds from libraries to researchers (though this is not explicitly on the table), plus a 12 month embargo periods would be enough to make OA feasible (see e.g. https://www.calj-acrs.ca/news/reminder-important-and-urgent-update-future-sshrc-funding-journals)<br /><br />What makes it particularly interesting in Canada, however, is that we're a small research community highly integrated into a very large one. If our journal, the CJE, was to move to gold-standard open access, the gainers could be all of the libraries who don't have to pay for a CJE subscription any more (I said "could" rather than "will" because given the non-transparency in journal pricing, it's not obvious that would happen). Most of those libraries are outside Canada. There's no mechanism for them to compensate the CJE. Likewise, since most of the journals Canadian libraries subscribe to are based outside the country, a unilateral move towards open access by Canadian journals isn't going to free up a lot of library funds, so there's no funds there to compensate Canadian researchers. The Big Deal might seem like the solution here - your post explains very convincingly why it isn't.<br /><br />Economics is also a unique discipline. It's strongly hierarchical, so much so that publications in low-ranked journals have *negative* reputational effects. Status is everything, and a journal's publisher signals its status. If CJE was to move to a non-profit Canadian open access publisher, would we still be taken as seriously? Perhaps the answer to that question is yes, but it's a big risk to take.<br /><br />Economics content also has science-level publication costs (lots of tables, figures, equations, to typeset, authors who need a lot of copy editing) without science-level research funding. This makes the government grants+voluntary scholarly contributions model more challenging.<br /><br />I get that there are huge problems with the status quo. But sometimes I wonder if the best solution isn't something far more radical - like getting rid of journals entirely, and use some other mechanism to assess the quality of content e.g. blog comments, author's reputation, conference presentations, grant funding, external rating systems by, e.g., the academic equivalent of Roger Ebert or Rotten Tomatoes, etc.Frances Woolleyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04289318268301647625noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7961882.post-34133447398982351002018-04-02T12:28:55.382+00:002018-04-02T12:28:55.382+00:002/2
But while I acknowledge there are sustainabil...2/2<br /><br />But while I acknowledge there are sustainability issues, I think there are solutions. Here is one thought: No one I think disagrees that a lot of money is spent on scholarly communication each year. As such, the money is already in the system. It is increasingly inadequate, but since publishers are overpricing for their services, and the source of much of this money is the taxpayer, the responsible thing to do is to seek to lower costs. <br /><br />The problem is that in order to achieve a fast transition to OA the money is increasingly being redirected not to new, low-cost, innovative OA journals like <i>Discrete Analysis</i>, but to legacy publishers. The latter are not only far too expensive, but they lack any incentive to lower their prices, not least because the dominant ones have voracious shareholders (or venture capitalists) to feed. <br /><br />Thus, the issue becomes one of how one shifts the money already in the system away from expensive legacy publishers to new low-cost, innovative OA solutions.<br /><br />That governments and funders are now willing to do this is evidenced by the current trend for funders to create their own publishing platforms, as we have seen with Wellcome Open Research, Gates Open Research and HRB Open Research. Most recently, the European Commission has published a call for tenders to develop Open Research Europe. <br /><br />However, the latter is being done at the same time as the research community is funnelling more and more money to legacy publishers via traditional Big Deals and new non-transparent, clearly overly expensive, OA Big Deals. <br /><br />The outcome must surely be that costs will increase rather than reduce. Moreover, the money needed to develop better, cheaper, more innovative scholarly publishing solutions could dry up in order to feed the legacy publishers. <br /><br />And since this is allowing legacy publishers to embed themselves, and their excessive prices, into the new OA environment it is hard to see how the <i>affordability </i> problem the research community faces can be resolved.<br /><br />Moreover, once the legacy publishers are embedded in the new system it will be far more difficult to recover the situation and resolve the <i>affordability </i> problem. Better by far to seize the nettle today, and stop signing OA Big Deals.Richard Poynderhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05433823131339077354noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7961882.post-22783462248962318772018-04-02T12:22:09.352+00:002018-04-02T12:22:09.352+00:001/2
Hi Frances,
Thanks for your comment.
Let me...1/2<br /><br />Hi Frances,<br /><br />Thanks for your comment.<br /><br />Let me respond to your question in this way: What I think everyone agrees on is that it costs money to publish research papers. They invariably disagree (often bitterly) about what this cost is, or should be, but I think no one argues that it is costless.<br /><br />You don’t state how much it costs to run your journal, but you say you cannot imagine how it could be sustainable without subscription revenues. From this, I assume you believe that the subscription model is the most suitable one for scholarly journals (although I think your journal does offer a $3,000 OA option). <br /><br />By contrast, most OA advocates believe that scholarly journals should abandon subscriptions and fund themselves by means of author fees or, increasingly, by means of institutions bulk buying APCs courtesy of OA Big Deals. <br /><br />Given the benefits that open access provides, I think it makes sense to redirect money from subscription-based publishing to OA publishing, with the aim of eventually moving to an all-OA environment. And this is what we see happening today. <br /><br />However, I believe that both the subscription and APC models cost the taxpayer more than is necessary, or warranted. To my mind, therefore, neither of these models is entirely satisfactory. <br /><br />I also believe it should be a serious concern that those without access to APC funding (an issue you highlight) – either as individuals or courtesy of an institutional OA Big Deal – will find it increasingly difficult to get published as scholarly communication moves closer and closer to an all-OA environment. <br /><br />It is for this reason (amongst others) that unhappiness with the APC model has grown, and led to a new interest in OA journals that charge neither authors nor readers but fund themselves by other means. These are normally referred to as platinum OA journals, and one example is <i>Discrete Analysis</i>.<br /><br />Possible sources of revenue for platinum OA journals include educational grants, sponsorship, government funding and charitable donations etc. The challenge such journals face, however, is that these kinds of revenue streams are less secure than subscriptions and APCs. Grants run out, and sponsorship and donations are also generally time-limited. As such, platinum journals inevitably have to confront sustainability issues. <br /><br />On the other hand, of course, these journals can be less costly to run. <i>Discrete Analysis</i>, for instance, is an overlay journal (and so piggybacks on arXiv) and costs just $10 per submission. This cost is currently covered by a grant from Cambridge University, so there is no charge to the author, no charge to the reader, and the running costs are very low.Richard Poynderhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05433823131339077354noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7961882.post-54967644068582980652018-04-01T00:13:59.779+00:002018-04-01T00:13:59.779+00:00Richard - great article - though I have a quibble ...Richard - great article - though I have a quibble with one of your comments.<br /><br />You wrote "The concern must be, however, that they [scholar led OA journals] will experience sustainability problems. But I am sure there are solutions to these problems."<br /><br />How can you be sure? I'm currently president of the Canadian Economics Association, which publishes the Canadian Journal of Economics. I can't imagine how the journal would be sustainable without subscription revenue - typesetting, copyediting, hosting, management etc all costs money, many of our authors have very little research funding, and people are just not that willing to give of their time.Frances Woolleyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04289318268301647625noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7961882.post-80966076046308315912018-03-31T21:00:42.975+00:002018-03-31T21:00:42.975+00:00To further confuse the situation, I received an em...To further confuse the situation, I received an email yesterday (30th March) from what I believe to be a reliable source saying that while a public announcement has been made about the deal between Springer Nature and VSNU the contract has yet to be signed. I have <a href="https://twitter.com/RickyPo/status/980120084046925824" rel="nofollow">asked</a> VSNU and Springer Nature for clarification.Richard Poynderhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05433823131339077354noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7961882.post-4283172322185260462018-03-31T14:07:14.031+00:002018-03-31T14:07:14.031+00:00If one were pursuing such a strategy, which a DEAL...If one were pursuing such a strategy, which a DEAL leader has denies and I have accepted his denial, one would simply allow access to end without ever "cancelling," believing that paid access is no longer needed.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08380307171964654123noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7961882.post-89881639432238240702018-03-30T15:07:43.969+00:002018-03-30T15:07:43.969+00:00Thank you for commenting Kai Geschuhn.
I am not ...Thank you for commenting Kai Geschuhn. <br /><br />I am not sure why you say that I only focused on transparency. And it worries me that you seem inclined to dismiss transparency as unimportant (or not very important). It also worries me that you seem to be implying that “meeting all the challenges involved with the open access transition” is too complex to allow the wider research community and taxpayers to be properly informed about the details.<br /><br />I do hear what you say about transitions, pilots and taking back control etc. But for the life of me I cannot see how what is happening right now will do anything but lock in legacy publishers and their excessive pricing to the new OA environment, for all the reasons I state in my post. <br /><br />But let’s hope you get to prove me wrong!Richard Poynderhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05433823131339077354noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7961882.post-57291369746611808802018-03-30T15:03:40.564+00:002018-03-30T15:03:40.564+00:00I believe Roger is raising a very good point here....I believe Roger is raising a very good point here. If that is the case though, I wonder what the next step is with this strategy ... Lisa Janicke Hinchliffehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15537452039307586904noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7961882.post-48106201099817167192018-03-30T11:38:58.835+00:002018-03-30T11:38:58.835+00:00Something I have wondered is whether some of the m...Something I have wondered is whether some of the most recent set of negotiations, through DEAL and Couperin, have seen academia offer terms that can never be accepted by the publishers. Rather than cancelling, the universities are positioned as having tried to find a middle ground. This could ultimately be more about strategic communications to faculty members than a realistic effort to reach agreement.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08380307171964654123noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7961882.post-9486375677468699592018-03-30T09:59:14.779+00:002018-03-30T09:59:14.779+00:00Excellent analysis and discussion about a broken s...Excellent analysis and discussion about a broken system. The negotiators are using other people’s money (taxpayers) to prop up an oligopoly that is makings profits on a system that is no longer fit for purpose.<br /><br />Taxpayers money is being used to publish research funded by taxpayers, thus the agreements should be published as a matter of duty to the public. For OA, publish the cost of the APC in the metadata for the article. This would be transparent and can be harvested.<br /><br />For university libraries with subscriptions, display the cost of the subscription every time someone accesses the journal in question. Transparency!Martin Hicksnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7961882.post-83344451030672211582018-03-30T08:33:22.939+00:002018-03-30T08:33:22.939+00:00Lisa and Richard, I don't understand that as w...Lisa and Richard, I don't understand that as well.Bernhard Mittermaiernoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7961882.post-53417822988831520992018-03-30T08:31:21.205+00:002018-03-30T08:31:21.205+00:00Leonid, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to be rud...Leonid, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to be rude.<br />You said either the pulishers or the librarians don't want transparency. That is OK to say.<br />Then you assumed, that it's the librarians. That's OK as well, as an assumption. Personally, I would stop at that point and ask if someone has a clue.<br />But further to that, you speculated about the librarians' reasons and state that their reasons aren't good ones. That's weird, because you rely on assumptions. I would refrain from acting so because I felt that I would disgraces myself.<br /><br />Then you received two answers of people who actually know what's the case. Why do you attack me for telling you the facts? Bernhard Mittermaiernoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7961882.post-14549819826494369112018-03-30T05:55:02.456+00:002018-03-30T05:55:02.456+00:00Lisa you say:
My confusion is - when there is no...Lisa you say: <br /><br /><i>My confusion is - when there is no NDA - why the hesitancy (refusal) to disclose?</i><br /><br />Let me respond by quoting from the article:<br /><br />"When I asked FinELib why so few details had been made public even though no NDA had been signed I was told, 'The confidentiality of an agreement is not based on whether or not there is an NDA. At least in Finland the principle of loyalty between contracting parties needs also to be taken into account.'"<br /><br />And on its website, FinELib cites the Finnish Act on the Openness of Government Activities to support this argument.Richard Poynderhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05433823131339077354noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7961882.post-30396935536356015852018-03-29T20:34:48.637+00:002018-03-29T20:34:48.637+00:00Reply to Kai Geschuhn of Max Planck Society (MPG)...Reply to Kai Geschuhn of Max Planck Society (MPG)<br />Dear Kai,<br />not all research institutions are in the cushy position MPG is in, ie. not knowing where to put all that bombastic money MPG has. Those deals MPG does with publishers, both subscriptions and OA ones like Frontiers, is not something most other research institutions can match. They can't afford it, even if they do love OA very much.<br />See above Richard's point of affordability. <br />Speaking of hybrid OA: MPG as elite institution expects its directors to publish in hybrid journals like Nature and Cell, I believe...Leonid Schneiderhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12737541382560079721noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7961882.post-85992751084838398282018-03-29T20:19:39.922+00:002018-03-29T20:19:39.922+00:00Now that we determined that Leonid is wrong about ...Now that we determined that Leonid is wrong about everything and has no clue what he is talking about, now what?<br />Didn't the experts just admit that unqualified public should stays out of the complicated negotiation business which is best left to professionals? It is really like with Open Access, the policies are done behind the scientists' back because what do they know. <br /><br />My main point, that transparency should be a precondition for a negotiation with publishers from the beginning, must be so out there that the experts chose not to pay any attention to it. <br />Bernhard, as I said, being rude and putting me in my place might impress Elsevier(they describe me as "toxic individual")and your FZ Jülich director (let me just say: HBP), but how is this helpful to your DEAL at hand?<br />All you DEAL people keep saying is: shut up, leave this to us, we know what we are doing. I asked about the details of Elsevier editorial boycott (ie, do they still peer review?), was told to get lost, it's secret.<br />Well, reading Richard's post I am not so sure this secrecy is the best way. <br /> Leonid Schneiderhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12737541382560079721noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7961882.post-44044560300620977492018-03-29T20:13:46.506+00:002018-03-29T20:13:46.506+00:00While not discounting the issue of transparency, t...While not discounting the issue of transparency, there are a few clarifications I would like to make about these agreements. <br />First, we have to acknowledge that hybrid publishing is rampant and is now occurring outside of any central, institutional agreement; this means that there is an additional revenue stream, outside subscription revenues, flowing from research budgets via institutions to the large traditional publishers, unmonitored and unchecked. So, as a first step, these new transformational agreements allow institutions to take back control of the payment streams, which is a precondition for building a strong negotiating position for the next steps in the transition. Libraries and consortia have already begun to leverage that stronger position with the aim of achieving greater transparency (see below). <br /><br />Secondly, it should be stated that these agreements bring enormous potential for accelerating the transition to open access as they take the first, essential step of moving money away from the subscription system and initiate a new publication-based agreement type. They are based on the understanding that spending money on subscriptions is not a good use of taxpayers money, as it constitutes an investment in an atavistic business model that does not serve the needs of 21st century researchers.<br /><br />For further clarification, please let me refer you to two documents published by the ESAC initiative in which institutions articulated their concept of these agreements, e.g. that they are to be considered pilots which should lead to a solely publication driven model with no access based costs. And they pointed out that “Offsetting implies the opportunity to overcome dysfunctionalities as known from the current subscription system and to improve the business for scholarly publishing in terms of transparency and efficiency rather than to perpetuate it.”<br /><br />Please find the ESAC documents here:<br />http://esac-initiative.org/offsetting/<br />http://esac-initiative.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/esac_offsetting_joint_understanding_offsetting.pdf<br /><br />The first step towards transparency was to collect the article data from the agreements on the Open APC platform and, in the case of Springer Compact, relate them to the total numbers of hybrid and subscription articles in a given journals:<br />https://treemaps.intact-project.org/apcdata/offsetting-coverage/<br />The method and insights are described in this blog post:<br />https://intact-project.org/general/openapc/2018/03/22/offsetting-coverage/<br />It is right to have a closer look at the new agreements, but only focusing on transparency does not go far enough; meeting all the challenges involved with the open access transition is much more complex.Kai Geschuhnhttp://esac-initiative.org/noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7961882.post-72488673319637543962018-03-29T15:20:27.475+00:002018-03-29T15:20:27.475+00:00Bernhard -- yes, my apologies. I failed to notice ...Bernhard -- yes, my apologies. I failed to notice that you were referring to a situation in which the pricing part of the negotiation is completely separate from the license negotiation, and comes first. In my experience, the two negotiations have always been conducted at the same time, or at least as part of the same general negotiation process. But my experience is all at the level of a single institution; I've never negotiated a consortial or national license.Rick Anderson (editor)https://www.blogger.com/profile/15504658972355764697noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7961882.post-75585358623296904132018-03-29T14:34:42.846+00:002018-03-29T14:34:42.846+00:00Rick, I was referring to the procedures I know, wh...Rick, I was referring to the procedures I know, where a written license is something that comes up in the end. We first speak about the content etc. and the price. Maybe that's not a good idea (defintely in the light of the experience with the 2016/2017 contract), but it's common practice.Bernhard Mittermaiernoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7961882.post-68124056533560249942018-03-29T14:30:03.725+00:002018-03-29T14:30:03.725+00:00Where exactly did I admit that "the academic ...Where exactly did I admit that "the academic negotiators allow this and think this is perfectly appropriate"? I've described that I'm doing just the opposite. Bernhard Mittermaiernoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7961882.post-79089411537133103502018-03-29T14:09:38.791+00:002018-03-29T14:09:38.791+00:00My confusion is - when there is no NDA - why the h...My confusion is - when there is no NDA - why the hesitancy (refusal) to disclose? Lisa Janicke Hinchliffehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15537452039307586904noreply@blogger.com