tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7961882.post8862784470415000746..comments2024-03-17T08:30:21.129+00:00Comments on Open and Shut?: Open Access: A publisher's perspectiveRichard Poynderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05433823131339077354noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7961882.post-88194949284020337552009-03-18T10:29:00.000+00:002009-03-18T10:29:00.000+00:00Steven Hall has asked me to stress that the views ...Steven Hall has asked me to stress that the views expressed in his commentary above are his personal views alone, and not those of any publisher for which he has worked.Richard Poynderhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05433823131339077354noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7961882.post-67305447728901413162009-03-17T22:23:00.000+00:002009-03-17T22:23:00.000+00:00CROCODILE TEARSI'll leave it to those who enjoy pu...<B>CROCODILE TEARS</B><BR/><BR/>I'll leave it to those who enjoy publisher-baiting (I don't) to spar with Steven Hall on the subject of journal pricing and degree of accessibility across the years. <BR/><BR/>My own view is that publishers can try to charge whatever they like and can get for subscriptions, whether singly or in bundled deals, and that institutions should pay whatever they want and can afford for the subscriptions they want and can afford, singly or in bundled deals. (That's pretty much the way things are today.)<BR/><BR/>But all authors should self-archive all their refereed final drafts in their institutional repositories, immediately upon acceptance for publication, so that all would-be users can access them online, not just those whose institutions can afford to subscribe to the journal in which they are published. This is called <I>providing Green OA</I>.<BR/><BR/>And all institutions and all research funders should <A HREF="http://www.eprints.org/openaccess/policysignup/" REL="nofollow">mandate</A> that all their authors and fundees must provide Green OA.<BR/><BR/>Apart from a certain degree of vagueness, hedging and double-talk, most of the journals of the three Wileys -- John, Blackwell, and Berlin -- have all already given their <A HREF="http://romeo.eprints.org/stats.php" REL="nofollow">formal green light</A> to their authors to go ahead and provide immediate Green OA. (The exceptions are journals that ask for an embargo of 6 or 12 [and occasionally 24] months.) <BR/><BR/>So, apart from the few embargoing Wiley journals (for which there is a solution too, see below), Wiley cannot be faulted for its concrete actions regarding Green OA. What about the whinging about Green OA?<BR/><BR/>Should we feel sympathy for publishers who claim that Green OA is free-riding on their hard-earned investment? Hardly. The hard work is mostly the authors'; the investment is mostly that of their institutions and funders; even the peer reviewing is all done for free by the peer-reviewers. The publisher's investment is in providing the service of managing the peer review -- and of course in providing the print and online edition.<BR/><BR/>Today, as we speak, the publisher's investment is fully repaid by the fact that the authors, their institutions and their funders allow the publisher to be the sole vendor entitled to sell and earn profits on the sale of their writings. The author -- and the author's institution and funder -- charge nothing for giving the publisher the exclusive right to sell their writings, and ask for no royalties in return. <BR/><BR/>Hence it borders on the absurd for the publisher to complain if the authors also give away their writings for free online. As long as the publisher is making ends meet through subscriptions, there isn't even anything to talk about. If and when the availability of the Green OA version causes subscription cancellations, it is time to think of <A HREF="http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/15753/" REL="nofollow">phasing out</A> the print and online edition and their associated expenses, and <I>offloading access-provision on the network of institutional repositories containing the refereed final drafts</I>. Then all that will be left of journal publishing is to provide the peer review service (and certify its outcome with the journal's name and track-record), a service whose far lower costs the institutions can pay out of just a portion of their annual subscription cancellation savings. (Note that no Gold OA publisher, including PLoS, has yet done this, but that is because Green OA is not yet universal!) <BR/><BR/>But until and unless Green OA makes subscriptions unsustainable, it is sophistical to say that authors self-archiving their refereed drafts (and their institutions and funders mandating it) amounts to free-riding on publishers' hard-earned content, like using airplanes and computers without paying for them.<BR/><BR/>(Now I promised a solution for the case of the articles published in journals that embargo open-access provision for 6 months or more: All authors deposit (and their institutions and funders mandate deposit) anyway,<A HREF="http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/71-guid.html" REL="nofollow"> immediately upon acceptance for publication</A>; but <I>access</I> to the deposit may be set as Closed Access instead of Open Access. This provides almost-immediate, almost-OA, because whenever a would-be user reaches the metadata of a Closed Access deposit, the Institutional Repository has an automated <A HREF="http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/274-guid.html" REL="nofollow">request-a-copy Button</A>. One click sends an automatic email eprint request to the author, requesting a copy for research purposes; the email allows the author to authorize the automatic emailing of the copy with one click. Almost-OA will tide over research needs during embargo periods, until all embargoes die their inevitable and well-deserved deaths under mounting, unstoppable pressure for immediate OA and its increasingly apparent benefits.)Stevan Harnadhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14374474060972737847noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7961882.post-53978365512260674142009-03-17T18:34:00.000+00:002009-03-17T18:34:00.000+00:00Leaving aside concerns about signing up for multi-...Leaving aside concerns about signing up for multi-year Big Deals, the PLOS example appears to be a straw man. "PLOS now charges more than some commercial publishers for its APC, has no print costs, aims to make no profit and may still be unable to balance its books. It seems that it costs at least $2,850 to peer review, edit and host an online article in a high-quality journal."<BR/>This seems a little disengeneous in that a better example is the charges of the APS 'Free to Read' initiative under which "The current FREE TO READ fees will be $975 for articles in Physical Review A-E and $1300 for Letters in Physical Review Letters."Dana Rothhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04544574983677443457noreply@blogger.com