tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7961882.post7774701046602506197..comments2024-03-17T08:30:21.129+00:00Comments on Open and Shut?: North, South, and Open Access: The view from California with Jeff MacKie-MasonRichard Poynderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05433823131339077354noreply@blogger.comBlogger18125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7961882.post-79442081102022487592018-04-19T22:43:53.490+00:002018-04-19T22:43:53.490+00:00Sridhar, curious to note that those same journals ...Sridhar, curious to note that those same journals published by Springer Nature are also requesting copyright transfer upon submission, i.e., even before the paper has been accepted.Anonymousehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10990670875831248683noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7961882.post-32347195850044850012018-04-19T10:56:42.559+00:002018-04-19T10:56:42.559+00:00Its sad to learn that the journal which was OA sin...Its sad to learn that the journal which was OA since its first publication has become closed access. IISc is the epicenter of OA movement and its own journals are now closed access. What might be the reason? Our ICAR/NARS journals are also with springer and are closed access (Agricultural Research, Indian Journal of Plant Physiology). Its only due to IF madness?Sridhar Gutamhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00327395162787462311noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7961882.post-11017006706431245042018-04-19T09:13:20.599+00:002018-04-19T09:13:20.599+00:00The above comment was posted by Subbiah Arunachala...The above comment was posted by <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subbiah_Arunachalam" rel="nofollow">Subbiah Arunachalam</a>.Richard Poynderhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05433823131339077354noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7961882.post-48044890412547049212018-04-19T08:47:01.128+00:002018-04-19T08:47:01.128+00:00Roger Schonfeld wonders if it is indeed the case t...Roger Schonfeld wonders if it is indeed the case that most scholars affiliated with colleges and universities in poorer countries cannot read most science and if it is true then that would suggest that Research4Life is quite a disappointment. Yes, indeed. Leslie Chan, Barbara Kirsop and I have written a number of papers about why Research4Life was not the right solution to the information access problem faced by researchers in the South. Please see, for example, http://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.1001016 and http://www.who.int/bulletin/volumes/87/8/09-064659/en/<br /><br />We made it clear that (1) donor solutions are unsustainable, are governed by markets rather than user needs, and instill dependency, (2) HINARI and AGORA were not extending the full benefits to countries such as India (China, Egypt, Indonesia), even though their per capita GNP is less than half of the agreed US$1,000 threshold, since there is some existing uptake of their journals in these countries. As Yojana Sharma put it in her 2011 article in SciDevNet, when WHO notified Bangladeshi research institutions in January 2011 that several international scientific publishers had withdrawn free access to their medical journals, shock waves spread through academic communities in developing countries. Prof. Bruce Alberts, former Editor of Science Magazine and former President of the National Academy of Sciences, had told the Fellows of the Academy in one of his Presidential addresses that "most of the international organizations established by the United Nations with the great hope of using science and technology to improve the human condition are seriously hampered by bureaucracy and a lack of energy, innovation, and resources. <br /><br />Another approach followed by the big publishers is to usurp existing OA journals from small publishers and make them closed access. A case in point is that of Springer partnering Indian Institute of Science and imposing the condition that papers published from January 2018 will remain embargoed for six months. The journal has all along been OA since its first issue published in 1914. <br />Unknownhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02121665344023995646noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7961882.post-13950512486295833872018-04-17T15:50:22.988+00:002018-04-17T15:50:22.988+00:00Richard, thank you for inviting me to share feedba...Richard, thank you for inviting me to share feedback on this post. I am happy to share the perspective of the OA2020 Initiative here: https://oa2020.org/2018/04/17/some-short-answers-to-big-questions/. <br /> <br /><br />Colleen Campbellhttps://oa2020.org/be-informed/#oa2020noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7961882.post-78154871807223623952018-04-13T06:06:54.215+00:002018-04-13T06:06:54.215+00:00Roger, For a sense of how effective the Research4L...Roger, For a sense of how effective the Research4Life approach has been you might want to review <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1896213/" rel="nofollow">this 2007 paper</a> discussing the impact of HINARI in Peru. <br /><br />Amongst other things, it says "The collections of journals from the above-mentioned publishers together represent approximately 57% (2,118 of 3,741) of journals that were supposed to be accessible through HINARI, while the remaining 43% accessible were largely composed of open-access journals or journals that make online access free to low-income countries."<br /><br />It also says this: "Our findings suggest that we not only have access to a reduced number of biomedical journals on HINARI, but we also have no access to the biomedical journals that have the highest impact factors."<br /><br />However, much of the critique of the initiatives you ask about tends to centre around what each party gains from this apparently charitable arrangement. Here you might like to review <a href="https://ocsdnet.org/the-rise-of-big-publishers-in-development-and-what-is-at-stake/" rel="nofollow">a blog post</a> from last year.<br /><br />This is an extract: "By acting as funders, partners and service providers of Research4Life, academic publishers can gain access to institutions across the globe, learn where the demands are and deploy their products and services accordingly. While public institutions will undoubtedly benefit from their short-term access to international scientific journals, these gains are marginal compared to the much larger economic gains acquired by publishers - be it in the form of access to markets, increased profits and influence in policy-making. Not to mention the intellectual and social costs of restricting autonomous production and dissemination of knowledge in historically marginalized institutions."Richard Poynderhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05433823131339077354noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7961882.post-28566827098244390012018-04-12T12:43:41.342+00:002018-04-12T12:43:41.342+00:00After BOAI, I started following Max Plank's Be...After BOAI, I started following Max Plank's Berlin Declaration. Our Open Access India and the ARSSF (Agricultural Research Service Scientists Forum) had become signatories of the Berlin Declaration. And we (Open Access India) also signed OA2020 initiative. But following the discussions and debates about Open Access and Preprints, Now I am thinking of why there should be an commercial for profit publisher to publish our manuscript when the authors and the reviewers are not employed/paid by the publishers! The Scholarly Societies in India are looking at the international publishers to print/publish their journals? why? its for prestige and for the impact factors? still many of the authors thinks that they should not make their research free (they mean free of cost) and it should not be open access. Should we flip all the journals into GOLD OA? Shift from institutional subscription to institutional pay then what is the criteria? should we only pay to those international journals (publishers)? If we adopt institutional pay model? there would be increase in more questionable journals? And the Scholarly Societies based in India needs to be educated more on next generation scholarly communication process and for that more awareness is also needed among us for opening up of access to data and information. The policy makers should also need to look at alternate metrics and rewards for openness.Sridhar Gutamhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00327395162787462311noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7961882.post-63620455357726245862018-04-12T06:32:58.124+00:002018-04-12T06:32:58.124+00:00For Arab countries, most institutions do not have ...For Arab countries, most institutions do not have the capacity to subscribe in international databases. Yes, open access will certainly provide open and free access to knowledge for users (thank you for that!), but there will be a crisis of publishing funding for researchers... It is also true that many international organizations - in coordination with some commercial publishers - have initiated scientific publishing programs that support some developing countries by reducing/ eliminating publication costs to the author (Fee Waivers policies) , While keeping the issue of identifying the names of institutions and States entitled to benefit from such programs with these publishers; and they are subject to change at any time…in other word, it “solves” the crisis of publishing costs through the rich publisher model in the "North" countries "donor" to the poor researcher in the "South"… aren’t we reinforcing the the old publishing system instead of reform it? Aren’t we saying that the “old legacy” of publishers must and will continue, with the centrality of Western scientific publication, and that scientific research is not than a competitive commodity rather than a public property, as mentioned in Open Access Initiatives!Jamila Jaberhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09157462496799713245noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7961882.post-19314474182002007592018-04-12T02:57:05.214+00:002018-04-12T02:57:05.214+00:00It is said not to see mentioned the Community Owne...It is said not to see mentioned the Community Ownership, the key point in the Fair Open Access Principles https://www.fairopenaccess.org/,<br />https://gitlab.com/publishing-reform/discussion/blob/master/Fair%20Open%20Access/List%20of%20supporters%20of%20Fair%20Open%20Access.md<br /><br><br /><br />The Community Ownership is what guarantees healthy competition among publishers,<br />leading to better service at more reasonable prices. Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16314069627226884254noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7961882.post-33256415903610739802018-04-11T23:10:35.181+00:002018-04-11T23:10:35.181+00:00Thank you for all the contributions and dialogue h...Thank you for all the contributions and dialogue here. <br /><br />I want to focus in on these lines from Jeff: "The current system is *awful* for the global South: despite some deep discounts and some foreign aid, most colleges and universities and other research institutions in poor countries cannot afford to subscribe to – and thus read – most science. Heck, most smaller universities and colleges in the *US* can’t afford to subscribe to large fractions of published science."<br /><br />I have wondered the extent to which there remains an access challenge in the Global South as a result of the subscription model, in light of the Research4Life programs such as HINARI and AGORA, and similar initiatives. Is it in fact the case that most scholars affiliated with colleges and universities in poorer countries cannot read most science? If true, that would suggest that Research4Life is quite a disappointment. Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08380307171964654123noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7961882.post-17800283807631046182018-04-11T07:22:33.020+00:002018-04-11T07:22:33.020+00:00I quote from Heather Morrison
1-“Many of the jour...I quote from Heather Morrison <br />1-“Many of the journals that do not charge publishing fees are published in developing countries. Of the journals with very low APCs” <br />Well, I am not that fan of numbers; but according to DOAJ there are 681 periodicals from 14 Arab countries; 85% Charge APC, 9% free publishing policy, and 6% non-specific policy. Moreover, even if APC does not account for the largest proportion of policies adopted by the Gold Open Access Journals (29%), twelve publishers only in DOAJ share 83% of the publishing revenue, while 4,300 publishers share the remaining 17% …<br /><br />2-“ If developing countries publish their own work as open access, creating local leadership opportunities by supporting their own publishers, and the developed world makes their own work open access through such means as flipping traditional publishers, then all of the resulting work can be available to everyone, thus fulfilling the Budapest vision of the sharing of the knowledge of the rich with the poor and vice versa” <br />That is a nice scenario, but how this could be possible with the current situation of publishing? unless we look to the whole picture and every phase of the publishing cycle... Publishing science is not in anyhow neutral; it is subject to a range of economic and political factors that define its identity. It is those who have power who decide what is "science" and what is not! As the system of global economic and political globalization divided the world into Western-developed countries (the center), and developing countries (the periphery), globalized scientific publishing system also divided knowledge or science into "central science" and “periphery Science”. In which developed country researchers play the productive role of knowledge, and developing country researchers play the role of consumer. Western scientific production accounts for 90% of the world's published literature, while the scientific production of developing countries, including Arab countries, is only 2%. The resulting science in developing countries is consider it as local production, not visible on the global knowledge map unless it is published in scientific journals that are mostly produced by Western countries, specifically the Anglo-American.<br />Jamila Jaberhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09157462496799713245noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7961882.post-64822629972075729632018-04-11T02:27:08.453+00:002018-04-11T02:27:08.453+00:00Excellent points that tease out the business pract...Excellent points that tease out the business practicalities of moving to a pay-to-publish model. Also, aren't most journal subscriptions reoccurring revenue? If so, how would authors paying to publish, which is presumably not on an annual cycle, cover the revenue gaps? It would seem that simply moving money from one pot to another would still leave publishers searching for other forms of reoccuring revenue on that same content.L.Jameshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14699752541596697521noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7961882.post-58613456420403054772018-04-10T17:16:04.487+00:002018-04-10T17:16:04.487+00:00My APC longitudinal study is limited to fully open...My APC longitudinal study is limited to fully open access journals. Hybrids do tend to cost more. Many of the journals that do not charge publishing fees are published in developing countries. Of the journals with very low APCs as measured in USD, many are journals in developing countries designed primarily for local authors (there are APCs as low as $1 in USD, generally a reflection of a wide currency differential). <br /><br />If developing countries publish their own work as open access, creating local leadership opportunities by supporting their own publishers, and the developed world makes their own work open access through such means as flipping traditional publishers, then all of the resulting work can be available to everyone, thus fulfilling the Budapest vision of the sharing of the knowledge of the rich with the poor and vice versa.<br /><br />There are other challenges to overcome to fulfill the vision in this manner. In particular, authors in the developed world are pressured to publish in international journals; this needs to change. It seems to me that leadership to facilitate this change can happen within the developing world. In this sense, it makes sense to me for each region to deal with their own particular challenges. The developed world needs to deal with the big high-profit publishers that we have traditionally been supporting financially and our researchers have come to depend on. The developing world needs to fight the perception that these are the only publishers who matter. Different strategies, same goal.<br /><br />There are other problems with the idea of flipping the existing system to OA via APCs, but that’s a different topic. <br /><br />To reply to Richard’s reply to my last comment: the longitudinal APC study does focus exclusively on fully OA journals; hybrid pricing does tend to be higher. A large percentage of the journals that do not have publication fees, or that have very low publication fees (as low as $1 USD), are from the developing world. In other words, authors and publishers from the developing world can flourish in an OA pay-to-play environment by supporting their own publishers. <br />Heather Morrisonhttp://sustainingknowledgecommons.orgnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7961882.post-17461486995250437202018-04-10T17:03:22.082+00:002018-04-10T17:03:22.082+00:00One essential problem with the idea of flipping ex...One essential problem with the idea of flipping existing publishers business practices from subscriptions to open access is that this does not take into account the full scope of the publishers' business or the potential for major downstream systemic fail of such a flip. Consider Elsevier (I have written about this in The Charleston Advisor):<br />http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/charleston/chadv/2017/00000018/00000003/art00014<br /><br />In brief, even if 100% of articles going forward were open access paid for at the production end (with APC being one model for supply-side payment), this leaves Elsevier with an enormous legacy of copyright ownership to older works and related businesses such as selling the search services Science Direct and Scopus. The incentive for re-enclosure will be powerful; perpetual toll access (pay a bit to help create an article once, continue to charge for usage forever) is the ultimate temptation for this kind of work for a for-profit business. Elsevier is, in my opinion, well positioned for a reverse flip. Their approach to Creative Commons licensing with the author as copyright owner is basically a license to publish that makes it very clear that Elsevier is the Licensor (copyright owner) and the author a third party to their own work. See the Elsevier Copyright page here: https://www.elsevier.com/about/our-business/policies/copyright which states "For open access articles...Authors sign an exclusive license agreement, where authors have copyright but license exclusive rights in their article to the publisher**. In this case authors have the right to:... Share their article in the same ways permitted to third parties..." (kudos to Elsevier for transparency on this point). CC licenses allow copyright owners to waive some of their rights under copyright. The use of CC licenses places no obligation on the copyright owner to make works available for free, or to continue to make a work available, either at all or under the same license. <br /><br />This is a bit outside the main point of this conversation, but important for those who support flipping traditional publishers to understand. Heather Morrisonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13726928948544472886noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7961882.post-23339498034649092172018-04-10T08:45:36.184+00:002018-04-10T08:45:36.184+00:00As an early career researcher from the “South”, pr...As an early career researcher from the “South”, precisely from Arab countries, I see that the so called total “flip" will surely have many implications, since the complications and obstacles for the scholarly system, Open access included are numerous, one of them is the budget issue. By turning the international publishing model from subscription to APC, we are simply moving from “consumers who can barely publish in international journals (geopolitical hegemony, epistemological hegemony, English language hegemony, peer-reviewing hegemony…) that they mostly cannot read (many authors publish in journals and don’t have access to their work), to consumers who can access and read but cannot afford to publish! If Open Access solution turn out to be a “selfish pragmatic solution", So why bother to do international initiatives for Open Access, and all this discourse about equity, and sharing knowledge among humanity! Peter Suber inviting to free knowledge from all barriers, including considering it as a good! Jeff MacKie-Mason here is confirming that knowledge is a good within a global market and he invites scholars to be smart consumers! saying that “there is no reason that switching from providing money to publishers through subscriptions, to providing it through APCs, needs to make things worse than they currently are for the global South” is the same as saying that the current situation of information technology and the Internet didn’t make the “North-South” gap deeper!<br />By the Global Gold Open Access solution, I think we are reducing the problems of the scholarly system to the “serials crisis” (for “the North” not only “South”) that emerged from raising prices. Despite this simplification of the problem of the scholarly system, I have a question here, what guaranty do we have that publishing prices will not rise up in a unreasonable way the same as the subscription prices before? Moreover, why scholars have to be “smart consumers” not producers and evaluators of Knowledge themselves. <br />I can understand this “pragmatic” solution only as it goes very well with the “knowledge society”, “Knowledge economy”, “the University Rankings”, the “prestige branding” system… and By Free and Open, it turns out somehow to be “free and Open market of knowledge”!Jamila Jaberhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09157462496799713245noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7961882.post-45536592540608069402018-04-10T06:22:18.648+00:002018-04-10T06:22:18.648+00:00Responding to this post, David Wojick has said, &q...Responding to this post, David Wojick <a href="https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/osi2016-25/_VNNMtkgzr8/tg-0W72iBwAJ" rel="nofollow">has said</a>, "Given that the US Government has opted for a 12 month delayed green OA model, I see little prospect for a global flip to gold OA, certainly not by 2020. California is going the same way.<br /><br />"In these discussions there seems to be no recognition that a flip is a very risky business move for many journals, one they are therefore unlikely to take voluntarily."Richard Poynderhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05433823131339077354noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7961882.post-19571736094286530582018-04-10T06:15:07.389+00:002018-04-10T06:15:07.389+00:00Thanks for commenting Heather. On the question of ...Thanks for commenting Heather. On the question of most OA journals not charging publication fees you might like to consider the <a href="http://blogs.plos.org/absolutely-maybe/2018/04/02/a-reality-check-on-author-access-to-open-access-publishing/" rel="nofollow">recent post</a> by Hilda Bastian. Her conclusion: “Framing the data about non-fee OA journals only from the point of view of number of journals is deceptive.”<br /><br />On the cost of APCs: as I understand it, the goal is to “flip” legacy journals from a subscription model to an OA model, which means converting both currently subscription-only and hybrid journals to open access. For its part, the University of California says it is looking to “drive the transition of hybrid journals to becoming fully open access.” <br /><br />I believe your study looked exclusively at fully OA journals, not hybrid OA, which is invariably more expensive. Or do I misunderstand?<br /><br />If one accepts that OA publishing is less costly than subscription publishing (publishers don't accept it), the challenge then becomes one of persuading legacy publishers to take a revenue hit as they transition from a subscription/hybrid model to a fully OA model. How does one manage that in an environment where traditional market forces do not operate?<br /><br />Finally, even if the average APC was $1,000 rather than $3,000, do you not think that this would still pose a significant barrier for those working the global South?Richard Poynderhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05433823131339077354noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7961882.post-91771694312072040392018-04-09T21:22:53.894+00:002018-04-09T21:22:53.894+00:00Some APC data that may be helpful: most fully open...Some APC data that may be helpful: most fully open access journals do not have publication fees. As of today (April 9, 2018), 8,150 of the 11,185 journals listed in the Directory of Open Access Journals indicate "no" for article processing charges. To confirm or update, go to DOAJ / Advanced Search / select "Journals" then "Article Processing Charges".<br /><br />Of the journals that do have APCs, some figures from the 2017 version of my longitudinal APC study (publication in progress): the global average APC is under $1,000 USD. There is considerable variation, and a skew towards the low end, i.e. there are many more journals with very low APCs and very few with high APCs. For example, 1,895 have APCs of $1,000 USD or less, while only 103 journals have APCs or $3,000 USD or higher. Heather Morrisonhttp://sustainingknowledgecommons.orgnoreply@blogger.com