University of California Press differs from AAP on Research Works Act

Alison Mudditt, the director of the University of California Press, has just emailed me the following statement outlining the Press’ position on the controversial Research Works Act (RWA).  

We should note that the University of California Press is a member of the Association of American Publishers (AAP), which has backed the RWA.

“As part of the world’s leading public research university, University of California Press is committed to the wide dissemination of knowledge to researchers, educators, leaders, and public audiences worldwide. The issues raised by Research Works Act are complex and we welcome continued informed debate on this topic. Our perspective on these issues differs from that of AAP, and we are committed to engaging closely with scholars from all disciplines in exploring new models that retain critical features such as quality control, long-term preservation, and measures of impact and use. However, UC Press does not believe withdrawing our membership in AAP is beneficial to the resolution of this issue or to our long-term interests. Scholarly communication faces unprecedented and undeniable challenges, and we believe that rich and diverse debate is the best path to sustainable solutions.”

Statements on the RWA are also available from MIT Press, ITHAKA, and Pennsylvania State University Press here, here, and here.

Readers may also be interested in an article I wrote earlier today on the topic of the RWA, which provides some background on this controversial topic.

I invite other members of AAP to email me their views on the RWA, which I am happy to publish here. 


*** UPDATE: THE ROCKEFELLER UNIVERSITY PRESS ***

Executive director of The Rockefeller University Press Mike Rossner has today sent a letter to Rep. Carolyn Maloney who, with Rep. Darrell Issa, introduced the RWA (AKA H.R. 3699) into the US House of Representatives at the end of last year.

The Rockefeller University Press is located in Maloney's constituency, and Rossner is a resident and voter in her constituency.

The letter can be viewed here. Below is an extract:

“I want to state emphatically that I support the NIH Public Access Policy and think it should be expanded to other federal funding agencies … Enacting a law that prohibits federal funding agencies from mandating public access to the results of the research they fund will deprive the public of important information that is rightly theirs. Although this Act has been supported by the Association of American Publishers (AAP), it is vital that members of Congress know that not all members of this Association agree with their position. The Rockefeller University Press is a member of the AAP, but we strongly oppose H.R. 3699.”

 *** FURTHER UPDATE: AN ONLINE PETITION TO TRY AND STOP THE RESEARCH WORKS ACT HAS BEEN SET UP HERE ***

Can AAP Members stay neutral in the row over the Research Works Act?

In the past couple of days I have reported on the decisions by MIT Press, ITHAKA and Pennsylvania State University Press to distance themselves from the Research Works Act (RWA), otherwise known as HR 3699.

All three organisations are members of the Association of American Publishers (AAP), which backs the RWA, and has described the bill as “significant legislation that will help reinforce America’s leadership in scholarly and scientific publishing in the public interest and in the critical peer-review system that safeguards the quality of such research.”

If passed, however, the RWA would be a major setback for the Open Access movement, since it would reverse the Public Access Policy introduced by the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) requiring that all NIH-funded research is made freely accessible online, and it would prevent other federal agencies from imposing similar requirements on researchers.

Unsurprisingly, therefore, the AAP has become the target for a lot  of criticism, with the research community calling on members of the association to disavow both the bill and AAP’s support for it. There have also been calls for AAP members to resign in protest.

However, it is not currently clear how representative the views of MIT Press, ITHAKA and Pennsylvania State University Press are. In an attempt to find out I have over the past week or so contacted around 35 members of the AAP, primarily scholarly publishers. The majority of these organisations have yet to reply to my enquiry.

In contacting these organisations I asked the following three questions:

1.    Do you support the National Institutes of Health Public Access Policy? If not, why not?

2.    Do you support the Research Works Act (RWA)? If not, why not

3.    If you do not support the RWA is it your intention to try to change AAP/PSP's public support of the Act (as outlined in its statement of 23rd December), or are you more likely to publicly disassociate yourself from AAP’s position, or even perhaps leave the AAP?

Of those who responded to me, the only organisation to answer all three questions directly (rather than issue a general statement) was the New England Journal of Medicine. The NEJM answered in this way:

1.    Dr. Drazen [NEJM editor-in-chief] was on the NIH Public Access working group, and our policies actually surpass the guidelines of the NIH Public Access Policy: All of our research content, regardless of funding source, is freely available six months after publication.

2.    We have no position on the RWA as drafted.

3.    We will continue to support AAP/PSP.

But is NEJM’s neutrality more representative of what AAP members feel about the RWA than the position taken by, say, MIT Press? One cannot know for sure, but it does seem likely (for the moment at least). Below, for instance, is the response I received from CrossRef:

“As a not-for-profit trade association of publishers CrossRef does not take positions on political matters. We have 1,300 very diverse members who range from large commercial publishers to small not-for-profits and they also include society publishers, government organisations, and university publishers. Our members hold a variety of opinions about open access and mandatory deposits of government funded research. We are intentionally business-model neutral. It is not part of our mission to lobby.”

CrossRef is right to point out that it is more difficult for an organisation to arrive at a consensus when its membership is diverse. Nevertheless, at least two university presses seem equally keen to remain neutral about AAP’s backing of the RWA. In response to my three questions, for instance, Oxford University Press (OUP) simply replied, "We cannot comment as we aren't taking a public position on this issue.”

Cambridge University Press (CUP), meanwhile, responded, “We have submitted a formal response to the Office of Science and Technology (OSTP), but we want that response to have time to be processed by OSTP and it is too early for us to make any public statements.”

For its part, Getty Publications appeared to be unaware of the RWA. “Thanks for your inquiry,” I was told by the Getty media relations department. “We passed it by our colleagues at Getty Publications, but they are unaware of the issue you raise.”

But whatever their current position, what remains to be seen is whether AAP members will be able to stay neutral in light of the growing pressure they face from the research community to overturn the AAP's support for the RWA. Is it really possible, as the president of the ACM Alain Chesnais clearly believes, for AAP members to stay neutral on legislation like the RWA when its own members/customers/users begin to criticise it for doing so?

Time will tell, but some maintain that it is in any case disingenuous to pretend that neutrality is possible. As OA advocate Peter Suber points out, AAP members who choose to sit on their hands on this issue are not abstaining, as they may claim. Rather they are sending out a clear message. This message, he says, reads, “We're undecided about RWA, or our members disagree about RWA, or we don't take stands on political issues, but we agree to pay dues to an organisation using our money and our name to work energetically against the interests of researchers and research.”

Clearly, some AAP members do actively support the RWA, and are highly unlikely to change their minds. But exactly how many that is we do not know. What we can say with certainty is that Elsevier, the largest scholarly publisher in the world, does support the bill. Commenting on a blog post published by Public Library of Science co-founder Michael Eisen, Elsevier’s vice president and head of global corporate relations Tom Reller asserted, “Elsevier, along with other commercial and non-profit publishers do indeed support the Research Works Act and commend Congressman Issa and Congresswoman Maloney for co-sponsoring this important legislation.”

The problem is that many in the research community see things very differently. Some, like Peter Murray-Rust, a Reader in molecular informatics at the University of Cambridge, are not just critical of the AAP’s support for the RWA, but enraged by it. For that reason, Murray-Rust has written open letters to both OUP and CUP asking them to repudiate the bill.

He writes, “The AAP has proposed a bill which effectively legislates the restriction of access to scholarly publication with the sole intention of raising the income of publishers. I and many others feel this is unethical, immoral and unworthy of any organisation committed to the dissemination of knowledge. Some commentators have described it as an act of war by the publishing industry on the scholarly community.”

*** UPDATE: CUP EXPANDS ON ITS POSITION VIS-À-VIS THE RESEARCH WORKS ACT HERE ***

Pennsylvania State University Press says No to Research Works Act

Following the recent repudiations of the Research Works Act (RWA) by MIT Press and ITHAKA, I have now received an email from the director of Pennsylvania State University Press Patrick Alexander.

Like MIT Press and ITHAKA, Pennsylvania State University Press is a member of the Association of American Publishers (AAP), which backs the RWA.

Alexander writes: “Echoing our colleagues at MIT Press who recently commented on the Association of American Publishers’ endorsement of H.R. 3699, AAP’s statement does not reflect the position of The Pennsylvania State University Press. Nonetheless, our relationship with the AAP remains a vital aspect of our responsibility to share a role in the academic publishing community worldwide. Accordingly, we have no plans to sever that relationship.”

Pennsylvania State University Press is the third member of the AAP to publicly repudiate the RWA, notwithstanding the fact that the AAP supports the bill. When it was introduced in December, the AAP described the RWA as “significant legislation that will help reinforce America’s leadership in scholarly and scientific publishing in the public interest and in the critical peer-review system that safeguards the quality of such research.”

If passed, the RWA would reverse the Public Access Policy introduced by the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) in 2005 requiring that all NIH-funded research is made freely accessible online. The bill would also prevent other federal agencies from imposing similar requirements on researchers. This would be a major blow to the Open Access movement.

What impact these public statements will have remains to be seen. All three of the above organisations have made it quite clear that they do not intend to resign from the AAP, which some researchers have been calling on members to do.

We should, however, note the comment posted earlier today on my blog by Gary Daught. Daught cites a statement that he says he received from the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR) today in which CLIR says, “We are opposed to the Research Works Act, the goals of which are, indeed, fundamentally in conflict with CLIR’s values, vision, and mission. Today we will draft a letter of withdrawal from AAP.”

I emailed CLIR myself on Wednesday asking for a comment on the RWA, but have yet to receive a reply.

I invite any member of AAP to send me their views on the RWA.

ITHAKA becomes the second AAP member to disavow the Research Works Act

Yesterday I reported that MIT Press has distanced itself from the Research Works Act (RWA). The RWA is a new bill introduced into the House of Representatives at the end of last year that would reverse the US National Institutes of Health Public Access Policy requiring taxpayer-funded research to be made freely accessible online. It would also prevent other federal agencies from imposing similar requirements on their funded researchers.

The RWA is backed by the Association of American Publishers (AAP) and its Professional and Scholarly Division (PSP), which last December published a press release describing the bill as, “significant legislation that will help reinforce America’s leadership in scholarly and scientific publishing in the public interest and in the critical peer-review system that safeguards the quality of such research.”

If passed, however, the bill would be a major setback for the Open Access movement. As I noted yesterday, AAP has therefore been widely criticised for its support of the RWA, and some in the research community have called on members of the association to disavow both the bill and AAP’s support for it. There have also been calls for AAP members to resign in protest.

Today I received an email from ITHAKA, the non-profit organisation dedicated to helping the academic community take full advantage of information and networking technologies, and which includes JSTOR, the online service providing access to archived academic journals, and Portico, the electronic-archiving Initiative.

The email was in response to an enquiry I made a few days ago asking ITHAKA to comment on the RWA, and AAP’s support for it. It contained the following statement:

“A core principle of our organisation is to provide the broadest possible access to scholarly works in ways that are sustainable and account for their long term preservation. We have no intention of endorsing RWA. We also have no intention of leaving the AAP. We do not agree with them on every issue, but we value our membership, as we do our participation in a number of library and scholarly associations.”

Commenting on the news, Open Access advocate Peter Suber said, “I applaud ITHAKA for distancing itself from the harmful Research Works Act. The AAP acts in the name of its members when it lobbies for the RWA, in effect recruiting all its members as allies in a cause that not all of them support. Through their public statements, MIT Press and ITHAKA have refused to lend their weight to a policy they do not endorse.”

MIT Press distances itself from Research Works Act

There has been a great deal of discussion online recently about the Research Works Act (RWA), a new bill introduced into the US House of Representatives on December 16th by Representatives Carolyn Maloney (D-NY) and Darrell Issa (R-CA).

Effectively, the bill would reverse the NIH's Public Access Policy requiring taxpayer-funded research to be made freely accessible online, and prevent any other federal agency from introducing a similar requirement. 

The RWA is backed by the Association of American Publishers (AAP) and its Professional and Scholarly Division (PSP). On 23^rd December the AAP published a press release welcoming the introduction of the bill, which it described as “significant legislation that will help reinforce America’s leadership in scholarly and scientific publishing in the public interest and in the critical peer-review system that safeguards the quality of such research.”

If passed, the bill would be a major setback for the Open Access movement.

AAP has been widely criticised for supporting the RWA, and some have called on members of the association to disavow both the bill and AAP’s support for it. There have also been calls for AAP members to resign in protest.

It appears that at least one publisher has been listening: MIT Press has just announced that it does not support the RWA, although it does not plan to leave the AAP.

A short while ago I received an email from Ellen Faran, the director of MIT Press. The email reads, “The AAP’s press release on the Research Works Act does not reflect the position of the MIT Press; nor, I imagine, the position of many other scholarly presses whose mission is centrally focused on broad dissemination. We will not, however, withdraw from the AAP on this issue as we value the Association’s work overall and the opportunity to participate as a member of the larger and diverse publishing community.”

After receiving the same email message, OA advocate Peter Suber commented on the Global Open Access List (GOAL), “I believe MIT Press is the first AAP-member press to disavow the AAP position on the Research Works Act. Kudos and profound thanks to Ellen Faran and MIT Press for their leadership on this issue.”

***More on the RWA here, here, here,and here***

The Open Access Interviews: OMICS Publishing Group’s Srinu Babu Gedela

***Update: On August 26th 2016, the US government (Federal Trade Commission) announced that it has charged OMICS with making false claims, and for failing to disclose steep publishing fees prior to accepting papers. The press release is here. The full version of the lawsuit is here.***

***OMICS Group CEO Srinubabu Gedela has denied all the allegations made by the Federal Trade Commission, and the company has published a detailed response to them here.***

***On November 22nd, 2017, a US federal court granted a preliminary injunction against OMICS temporarily halting the deceptive practices that the FTC claims it engages in by making false claims about its journals and academic conferences and hiding its publishing fees, which are up to several thousand dollars. The press release is here, the judgement is here***

***On March 29th, 2019, The US Federal Trade Commission won a judgement against OMICS, with US District of Nevada Judge Gloria M Navarro ordering the company to pay the US government $50,130,810. The judgement can be read here.***

In an article published in The Charleston Advisor in July 2010, Jeffrey Beall, a librarian at the University of Colorado, Denver, described OMICS Publishing Group as a predatory Open Access publisher. “Having a large number of titles, as does the OMICS Publishing Group, is typical of predatory Open-Access publishers,” he wrote. “Also typical is each journal's broad coverage. By offering 68 titles each with a broad coverage, this publisher is tacitly saying it will publish anything.” 

Srinu Babu Gedela

Is Beall’s characterisation of OMICS fair? Founder and managing director of OMICS Dr Srinu Babu Gedela insists it is not. “We believe the peer review process is very important … I am confident about the quality of the review process used in OMICS’ journals.”

Nevertheless, OMICS has published at least one article that even OMICS itself accepts should never have appeared in a peer-reviewed journal.

There have also been complaints that OMICS clones the names of other publishers’ journals, and on one occasion copied text verbatim from a competitor’s web site. This too Gedela denies. These incidents, he insists, were simply mistakes, and OMICS corrected the situation as soon as the problem was drawn to its attention.

A further complaint is that the publisher has been bombarding researchers with email invitations to join editorial boards, submit papers to its journals (of which there are now 200), and attend conferences. OMICS does not deny that it uses bulk email services. Nor does it plan to stop doing so. Indeed, Gedela implies, these activities are likely to increase in line with the growth of its business. “As we plan to organise 50 conferences in 2012, we will be mailing invitations to researchers frequently.”

OMICS is just one of a growing number of controversial OA publishers: Beall’s list of “predatory” publishers has now reached 28, and continues to grow. But while many researchers are quick to complain about the activities of these publishers, should not the research community accept some responsibility for the current excesses of the OA Gold Rush? 

After all, OMICS says that it has now recruited 20,000 researchers to its editorial boards, and we can assume the other OA publishers are proving equally successful. This suggests that for every researcher decrying the activities of these publishers others are facilitating them. Are the latter not concerned that they are conspiring in the email bombardment of their colleagues? Do they not care that some of the journals on whose editorial boards they sit appear to be publishing papers that have had inadequate or no peer review? Are they not worried that some of these publishers may be engaging in dubious business practices?

So what is the background to the complaints levelled against OMICS Publishing Group, what are the details of those complaints, and how exactly does the company respond to them? Read the attached PDF file to find out ...

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If you wish to read the rest of this introduction, and the interview with Srinu Babu Gedela, please click on the relevant link below. 

I am publishing the interview under a Creative Commons licence, so you are free to copy and distribute it as you wish, so long as you credit me as the author, do not alter or transform the text, and do not use it for any commercial purpose. 

To read the interview (as a PDF file) click HERE.

PLEASE NOTE: Normally when I publish an interview I place the introduction before the interview. On the grounds that my introduction for this interview is longer than the interview itself, Srinu Babu Gedela requested that I publish the introduction after the interview, rather than before it. As a compromise solution, I have produced two versions of the text, one with the introduction at the end, and one with the introduction at the beginning. Readers can therefore choose which version they want to read. The link above goes to the version with the introduction before the interview. Those preferring the version with the introduction after the interview can access it here.

Interview with Nicola Rylett: InTech's response

Yesterday I posted an interview with Nicola Rylett, the marketing director of Open Access publisher InTech. I prefaced the interview with an introduction in order to give readers some background to the publisher. I now publish a statement and response from InTech to that introduction. 

Underneath that is my response to InTech’s statement. 

InTech Statement:

In the piece, “The OA Interviews: InTech's Nicola Rylett”, there were a number of valid issues discussed in great detail. However, despite a series of lengthy conversations which sought to not only address these historical issues but also to highlight the significant changes that InTech have implemented in recent months to eradicate said concerns, the author remains almost entirely focused on cases dating back as far as 2006. This, in our view, is an unfair representation of where the company currently stands, and this failure to shed light on more recent events with a balanced perspective may invariably lead the reader to a misinformed conclusion about InTech. We ask that readers persist with reading this comprehensive article which concludes with the full interview that Nicola Rylett, marketing director participated in with Mr Poynder – here is where the balance of the article is redressed, although it is questionable whether the reader will continue reading by the time they reach Page 17 of the piece.

The interview between Ms Rylett and Mr Poynder raised a number of important, pertinent and extremely interesting points that were not only relevant to InTech but also to the wider publishing- and- open access communities. The subject of peer review remains a hot potato among industry commentators, with advocates and critics seemingly at loggerheads over the extent to which it is enforced combined with its ability (or inability) to remain be the “quasi-sacred process that helps to make science our most objective truth teller” (Richard Horton, editor, The Lancet) and impartial, rather than err on the side of bias.

Finally, quality is another issue that needs to be addressed. While InTech has initiated a process of quality review within the organization in recent months, we believe the issue of quality per se is one that should be debated across the whole sector in the same manner that we need to openly deliberate how we can help increase the pace of transferrable knowledge in research globally, introduce innovative ways to meet and exceed customer requirements and expectations, and how we can maintain sustainability throughout the publishing community. 

Article response, comments addressed as follows:

The statement, “Meanwhile it appears that no researcher ever received any royalties from the publisher,” is an assumption made by the author and our non-response should not be taken as an indication of confirmation nor denial. This remains a confidential matter between author and publisher.

Value for money is mentioned throughout the piece and at this point, we would like to highlight the significant differences between the article processing charges (APC) among our contemporaries. PloS, for instance, levy a c.2,086EUR APC, Biomed charge a fee of c.1,610EUR, while InTech's APC is among the lowest in the industry, between 590EUR for Books and 870EUR for Journals. It is also important to stipulate, as readers of the full interview will note, that there are variations with regard to the overall service provided for authors under the APC.

The statement, “I asked Rylett to put me in touch with four or five authors who had been granted a waiver, which she agreed to do. At the time of writing this, however, I had still not been sent any names”, is accurate. However, due to data protection protocol we can only forward author contact details upon receipt of their confirmation that they are willing to allow us to do so. We have sought permission from authors and will duly forward their information to Mr Poynder, as requested.

The statement, “Would not one expect the paragraph breaks to either be indented or double-spaced?” We have introduced paragraph indenting along with a number of other changes to the overall layout of our books which have already taken immediate effect, which will be evident upon publication of titles published within the forthcoming twelve months.

The statement, “And here is a front page of a book published in 2006,” followed by the statement, “We might also want to ask why, given the undeniable difference in quality, an author would opt to pay to publish with InTech rather than publish without charge with a traditional publisher,” seeks to convey to the reader that the company has failed to address previous discrepancies since their airing of said example some five years ago. This argument, in our view, has little conviction and it would be remiss of anyone to judge a company as it is in 2011 based on a solitary example dating back to 2006.

The statement, “What I do know is that InTech's critics have long maintained that it has a tendency to promise more than it delivers...the publisher is prone to exaggerate its achievements [and] are now inclined to conclude that InTech has succumbed to the same temptation in publishing and citing the new TBI survey,” is the author's own opinion and not representative of the wider community. In our interview, both Rylett and TBI demonstrated the results of the survey in an open and transparent way and it should be noted that Mr Poynder has continued to refute its findings, which is his prerogative.

The statement, “In other words, researchers based in the developing world who know they will be rejected out of hand by the traditional scholarly communication system, either because of where they are based, the quality of their written English, or both”, is the authors own opinion and should not be taken or accepted as a statement of fact. China and others members of the so-called BRIC nations and other countries have been largely unrepresented in the scientific publishing community, and InTech has enabled prospective authors who would ordinarily be excluded from doing so to have their work published and freely accessible. Language should not and will never be a barrier to becoming published with InTech - providing the quality is of the standard that we deem as acceptable. Indeed, it should be noted that like most of our contemporaries within the wider publishing community, we reject a significant number of proposals that we are presented with due to their failure to meet the required standards.

The statement, “Clearly one error InTech could make is to assume that it is enough to unleash on the world a plethora of upbeat PR messages and self-serving surveys, but omit to undertake the hard work necessary to improve its products, and to make the way it markets its services to scientists more acceptable,” is 100 per cent true in so much that if this is the approach we were to take then yes, that will invariably be the consequences of the company's inaction. However, that is not the stance we are adopting. Moreover, as the interview below will testify, we have already made significant strides in recent months to review all areas of the way we do business (focus on quality, customer services, external communications, etc.) and reacted accordingly which will effectively dispel much of the criticism levied against InTech by critics once the seeds we have sown now come to fruition over the course of the next twelve months.

The statement, “...it is not clear that InTech plans to cease bombarding researchers with unwanted email invitations”, is a gross exaggeration. Anyone with a basic understanding of marketing could never accuse an organization which sends fewer than 5 emails over a given twelve month period of 'bombarding' the recipient.

The statement, “Today, [InTech] describes itself – unfairly – as “the world's largest open access book publisher”, is factual and not an attempt at self-aggrandizement. While there are a number of other open access players within our market, their focus is overwhelmingly focused on the publication of journals, with InTech operating predominately in books.

The concluding statement, “The problem may be that the particular niche InTech has created for itself, and the modus operandi it has built around that niche, may make it very hard to up its game without eroding its customer base”, is an unfair statement and we refute the implication from the author which suggests that the quality of both our authors and publications is sub-standard.

####

Comment from Richard Poynder:

I appreciate that InTech took the time to speak with me in the first place, and to subsequently respond to my introduction. Below I address those issues raised by InTech where I believe a response is called for.

WIDER ISSUES

I agree that some of the issues I raised in connection with InTech could usefully be viewed in the context of the wider problems associated with the quality of published research today, peer review, and author-pays open access publishing; and I agree that there ought to be an industry-wide debate about this. Perhaps that is something that OASPA could organise?

I disagree that my introduction was “almost entirely focused on cases dating back as far as 2006”. For instance, I drew attention to quality issues connected with recently published books, including at least two published this month (e.g. this one, and this one). Likewise, I drew attention to peer review issues associated with a book published last year (this book), and I also cited InTech’s own survey (published in April) in which respondents repeated the same complaints made to me in 2010, and which have been made historically about InTech. E.g. complaints that journal articles and book chapters published with InTech appear sometimes either be reviewed too lightly, or not reviewed at all. As one of those cited in the TBI survey put it, “If there would be a review process, the writing process would be more natural and the chapter could be improved.”

ROYALTIES

 

I can think of no publisher that would refuse to say whether they have ever, or do now, pay royalties to their authors. And why would they refuse? I invite InTech/Sciyo once again to answer the question I posed in the interview: Has it ever paid royalties to any of its authors and, if so, how much has it paid out since 2010 (without naming any authors, or breaching any client confidentiality)?

VALUE FOR MONEY

I agree that some Open Access publishers charge a higher APC than InTech. In light of the issues raised, however, some might argue that there is a danger here of trying to compare apples with oranges. It also assumes that the other OA publishers cited themselves provide value for money, which again some might question. As such, citing what other publishers charge may be to miss the point. The issue is this: what do authors get for their APC when they publish with InTech, and does that represent value for money; it is not a case of making price comparisons with other publishers.  

THE TBI SURVEY

InTech says, “Rylett and TBI demonstrated the results of the survey in an open and transparent way and it should be noted that Mr Poynder has continued to refute its findings, which is his prerogative.”

I do not think it is accurate to say that I refuted the findings of the TBI survey. I aired the concerns of some OA advocates about the wider relevance of the survey, the way in which the results had been put into the public domain, and the selective way in which the data had been presented. Since I did not get answers to all my questions, I invite InTech again to address these ones:

·         Why did not the TBI survey state that only 5,000 of the 8,000 respondents to a survey that had polled 25,000 researchers answered the section on InTech?

·         Can the online survey that was used be made public?

RESEARCHERS FROM THE DEVELOPING WORLD

InTech says, “China and others members of the so-called BRIC nations and other countries have been largely unrepresented in the scientific publishing community, and InTech has enabled prospective authors who would ordinarily be excluded from doing so to have their work published and freely accessible.” That is exactly the point I made. As I put it, “[O]ne could argue that InTech is providing a valuable service for those who are currently excluded from mainstream science.”

REJECTION RATES

InTech says, “[W]e reject a significant number of proposals that we are presented with due to their failure to meet the required standards.” I invite InTech to publish the figures on its rejection rates — for book proposals, chapter proposals and journal articles.

SPAM

It seems to me that there are two important issues to consider with regard to email marketing. First, the number of messages sent out and the randomness or not of the targeting. Second, the purpose of the messages and whether or not the recipients have opted-in to receiving them.  As I understand it from InTech’s FAQ, the publisher continues to trawl public databases for details of researchers, and then despatches multiple marketing emails inviting them to buy a service from InTech. It is not clear to me that all the recipients of InTech’s messages have opted-in to receiving them. It also seems that many of them will not be existing customers of InTech. If that is not correct, perhaps InTech could clarify?

If it is correct, then I think it would be fair to say that InTech is sending out unsolicited commercial email, and in many legal jurisdictions this is subject to regulation. I don’t know what the current law on spam is in Croatia, but I believe the country is expected to join the European Union in 2013. It is my understanding that Article 13 of the EU Directive on Privacy and Electronic Communications regulates the use of email addresses for marketing purposes, and it established an opt-in regime. As such, I am told, unsolicited emails can only be sent with the prior agreement of the recipient.

But I am not a lawyer, and I am sure that InTech has taken legal advice on this. It might, however, be helpful if the publisher could confirm that its email marketing activities are conformant with Croatian law, and that they will be conformant with European law?

WORLD’S LARGEST OPEN ACCESS BOOK PUBLISHER

My comment regarding InTech “unfairly” calling itself the world's largest open access book publisher was in fact a typo! It should have read “Today, [InTech] describes itself — not unfairly — as the world's largest open access book publisher”. I will correct that in the PDF.

I assume that InTech’s main competitor in this field is Bentham eBooks?

The introduction and interview can be accessed here (PDF file).