SUMMARY: There is some difference of opinion as to what is delaying and disrupting OA: whether it is (1) promoting immediate OA self-archiving mandates (such as the FRPAA's, RCUK's, or EC's), or (2) opposing them. The following are excerpts from a series of exchanges in the American Scientist Open Access Forum. It is left to the reader (and history) to decide what, exactly, constitutes the delaying and disrupting.
The following are excerpts from a series of
exchanges between Jan
Velterop and me (Stevan
Harnad), in the
American Scientist Open Access Forum, on the notion that
if research funders are to mandate OA at all, it should not be (i) by mandating that authors self-archive, in their own institutional repositories, their own final drafts of articles that they publish (in any journal), but (ii) by mandating that authors publish in OA journals, and by also providing them with the funds to pay the publication charges. (Note that Jan is not actually recommending that OA publishing and its funding should be mandated: yet that is clearly the notion we are discussing, on the premise that research funders should mandate OA at all, as is currently being proposed in the US, UK and EC):
Re: Royal Society Offers Open Choice:
Velterop (Sat Jun 24 16:48)
Harnad (23:20)
Harnad (Sun Jun 25 04:35)
Velterop (09:32:00)
Harnad (12:55:51)
Velterop (19:59)
Harnad (21:39:58)
Jan Velterop (quoted below) has both priorities and event-order exactly backwards, and I suspect he may not even be aware of it.
The priority is Open Access, now. This is an
immediate and
direct research priority as well as a public-good priority, because it is the public that benefits from research impact and progress, and it is for that reason that the public funds research. Hence OA's first priority is OA, 100% OA -- not
OA publishing, nor
publishing reform: OA; 100% OA. Moreover, the order of events, leading to OA publishing through publishing reform, is, almost certainly: mandating OA self-archiving --> 100% OA --> possibly subscription cancellations --> possibly substantial subscription cancellations --> transition to OA publishing. The order of events is almost certainly not, instead: transition to OA Publishing --> 100% OA.
Let me repeat: the priority of OA is
immediate and
direct: In particular, there is
zero evidence at the present time that there is any
other problem (such as self-archiving causing subscription cancellations) that
first has to be solved
before we can have immediate 100% Open Access.
Still more particularly, it is simple
false to say that we cannot have immediate 100% OA until we first solve the problem of subscription revenue losses for publishers, for there is as yet
zero evidence of subscription revenue loss for publishers as a consequence of self-archiving, whereas there is already overwhelming evidence of the benefits of OA self-archiving to research, researchers, and the public that funds them.
There is also overwhelming evidence that merely inviting or recommending self-archiving does not generate rates of self-archiving above its spontaneous baseline level of 15%. The only way -- and the sure, demonstrated way -- to achieve 100% self-archiving is to mandate it.
And
that is the issue on the table: mandating self-archiving. Not protecting publishers from hypothetical risk, but mandating self-archiving, for its demonstrated benefits to research.
Now, in weighing Jan Velterop's remarks below, please do keep this logic in your mind, because alas those in Jan's position -- indeed anyone whose primary allegiance is to what is best for publishers' bottom lines rather than what is best for research, researchers and the public that funds the research -- is bound to have great difficulty in keeping this logic in mind, being preoccupied with their own, conflicting, interests:
(1) 100% OA has been repeatedly demonstrated to benefit research, researchers and the public that funds research.
(2) Immediate, 100% OA has been repeatedly demonstrated to be achievable in practise, rapidly and reliably, by mandating OA self-archiving.
(3) There exists no evidence whatsoever to date that OA self-archiving reduces subscriptions.
(4) Publishers are nevertheless lobbying against mandating OA self-archiving (with no supporting evidence) on the grounds that it might threaten their business.
(5) In place of mandating OA self-archiving, publishers are now lobbying for mandates to pay publishers their asking price for providing paid OA.
(6) The asking price is being set at a time when subscriptions are paying all publishing costs and there exists no evidence at all that self-archiving reduces subscription revenue.
(7) If research funders and researchers are able and willing, right now, to mandate and provide for paying publishers' asking price, all is well.
(8) But if research funders and researchers are not able or willing, right now, to mandate and provide for paying publishers' asking price, then publishers are delaying and deterring a demonstrated benefit for researcher, researchers and the public on the basis of no evidence of any actual cost (let alone substantial cost) to themselves.
(9) The rational and practical thing for research funders and institutions to do under these conditions would be to act on what has already been demonstrated to be true: Mandate OA self-archiving, generate its demonstrated benefits for research, researchers and the public, and thereby test, at the very same time, whether it ever induces any subscription decline -- and if so whether that decline is substantial enough to require restructuring publishers' cost-recovery system.
(10) With the objective evidence that cost-recovery needs to be restructured will come the funds for paying for it -- because institutional subscription cancellations mean corresponding institutional subscription savings, out of which institutions can then pay for their researchers' publishing costs using the very same money that is currently being spent on subscriptions -- instead of extra money taken from what is currently being spent on research.
Jan does not see it this way because his first allegiance is to making sure publishers make ends meet, and because he is convinced that they will not be able to make ends meet if self-archiving is mandated, even though there exists to date absolutely no evidence in support of this conviction. The conviction, in turn, warrants -- not for Jan, who, I believe, supports the self-archiving mandate despite his reservations, but for many other publishers -- trying to prevent research funders from mandating OA until and unless they can agree to pay
in advance for the hypothetical subscription shortfall (of which there is as yet not the slightest sign).
The demonstrated and readily reachable immediate benefits of OA to research, researchers and the public are hence set aside, and hypothetical risks to the publisher's bottom line are instead given the priority, with the insistence that if OA is to be mandated at all, it is OA
publishing that needs to be mandated (along with the extra funds to pay for it), not OA self-archiving.
I add only one other point to reflect upon, before turning to Jan's specific points:
Institutional subscriptions today are not paying only for online access, but also for the print edition (among other perks). Is the publishers' "realistic" asking price for author-institution-funder-paid OA meant to be covering the costs of supplying the paper edition to all those institutions too? (I take up this theme again in replying to Ian Russell of the Royal Society in
another posting.)
Harnad: "... if mandated SA does generate substantial institutional subscription cancellations, then those very same substantial institutional subscriptions cancellations will generate the institutional windfall savings out of which PA costs (again determined by the market and not by a-priori fiat) could be paid without taking any money away from research funding."
Velterop: "I'm afraid Stevan fails to appreciate three things here:
1. Access to scientific literature and the formal publishing of articles are not optional, but essential parts of doing research, so the cost of access and publishing is an essential cost of doing research, and in that regard entirely comparable with the cost of laboratory equipment, reagents, et cetera;
I agree completely. I am advocating immediate OA, through immediate self-archiving mandates. What is your point?
Velterop: "2. If the cost of essentials is seen as 'taking money away from research funding, then money is already being 'taken away' from research funding because subscriptions are largely paid out of the overhead that institutions take out of research grants (often more than 50%);
I agree completely. I am advocating immediate OA, through immediate self-archiving mandates. What is your point?
Velterop: 3. Shifting payment patterns from subscriptions to open access via institutional self-archiving mandates (the 'windfall' argument) is unnecessarily disruptive and as such only delays open access [emphasis added] as it inevitably causes entirely predicatable and understandable doubt as to the real intentions and ulterior motives of the OA 'movement' (which often seems more about money than about access), and consequent defensive attitudes amongst publishers and scholarly societies, and even amongst researchers themselves.
Advocating immediate OA, through immediate self-archiving mandates is
unnecessarily disruptive and only delays open access? (Could you explain that please? because on the face of it it sure looks like the exact opposite.)
And whose real intention and ulterior motive is money rather than access? Those who support or those who oppose immediate OA, through immediate self-archiving mandates? (Who is hastening and who is delaying OA? Who is facilitating and who is disrupting OA? Are you perhaps, again, conflating OA with paid-OA publishing?)
Velterop:" Advocating open access should not be conflated with advocating cost-evasion (the ultimate free-ridership). Access and costs are two independent variables. Lower costs do not necessarily bring open access; and open access does not necessarily bring lower costs. But we would be able to make a great deal more progress on an equal-revenue basis, were that advocated more widely. The amount of money now being spent, Academia-wide, on subscriptions, could, almost by definition for the vast majority of journals, also fund full open access. That's what we should be focussing on. [emphasis added]
Isn't that precisely what I said in your opening quotation from me, with which you were disagreeing? viz:
Harnad: "... if mandated SA does generate substantial institutional subscription cancellations, then those very same substantial institutional subscriptions cancellations will generate the institutional windfall savings out of which PA costs (again determined by the market and not by a-priori fiat) could be paid without taking any money away from research funding."
I keep focussing on immediate OA, through immediate self-archiving mandates, and you keep focussing on money.
Can we agree to focus on money only if and when there is objective evidence that immediate OA, through immediate self-archiving mandates, is actually starting to make someone lose money? Until then, it would seem, focussing on money instead of access is "unnecessarily disruptive and only delays open access."
On Sun, 25 Jun 2006, Jan Velterop wrote:
Velterop: " I'm glad Stevan agrees with me on so many points. The only thing that seems to separate us is the judgement that an unfunded self-archiving mandate carries an appreciable risk of destroying the valuable system of formal peer-reviewed journals to communicate and preserve scientific findings. Stevan thinks there is no such risk. I think there is, and that it is a wholly unnecessary risk. My motive is to come to a solid, stable, economically sustainable, and reliable method to ensure open access to the formal research journal literature.
I'm also glad that Stevan is a psychologist and not an engineer. The 'empirical' evidence on which he bases his no-risk hypothesis is comparable to the evidence that a layer of 10 centimeters of snow doesn't cause a roof to collapse and that there has been at least 10 years with no more than 10 centimeters of snow on any given day. He would construct a roof that can deal with 10 centimeters of snow, only to see it collapse when that one night comes when there is snowfall of 25 centimeters. He would say "no problem, we'll just rebuild the hall".
I'm also glad that he is not in charge of fire prevention. His empirical evidence from establishing that an unsupervised toddler who lit a whole box of matches and yet somehow didn't burn the house down would lead him to happily hand out matches to all toddlers, since lighting matches is a valuable learning experience for them and there is no proof whatsoever that any houses might be burnt down. And if they do he would simply say "no problem, we'll just rebuild them".
Stevan asks: "Can we agree to focus on money only if and when there is objective evidence that immediate OA, through immediate self- archiving mandates, is actually starting to make someone lose money?"
No. I'm afraid I cannot agree. First of all, I'm not focussing on money. I'm focussing on a solid, stable, economically sustainable, and reliable method to ensure open access to the formal research journal literature, which I do not accept that Stevan's desired mandates in their current formulation would bring. Secondly, would we allow the engineer to wait for objective evidence, i.e. the collapse of a roof, before using higher specifications with ample safety margins? Is it necessary to wait for such objective evidence? Would we wait for the objective evidence of a house burning down before making sure that matches cannot be reached by toddlers?
Reasoning By Escalating Doomsday Prophecies: Pascal's Wager
The gentle reader need not cringe at the prospect of yet another verbose Jan/Stevan exchange. The reply here is mercifully short:
With all his lurid analogies above, Jan is merely reasoning by escalating the shrillness of his prophecies of the doom and gloom that will befall us should the many research funders (US, UK, EC) who have proposed to mandate OA self-archiving actually go ahead and adopt their mandates (instead of paying publishers' asking price for paid OA).
The strategy is simple: To every point showing that one's own view is contrary to the evidence, improbable or illogical, one simply responds by escalating the direness of the consequences, should one's view (per impossibile) nevertheless prove right.
This reasoning is exactly the same as that of Pascal's Wager, which "proved" that it was more rational to believe and do as Scripture dictated,
whether or not it was true, because otherwise one risked burning forever, if, against all evidence, Scripture turned out to be true after all.
"Pascal's Wager and Open Access (OA)" (Dec 2004)
The trouble is that any belief and action
and its opposite can be defended in this way, simply by raising the agony ante in the other direction!
Should I now reply with lurid stories about how CURES for diseases will be lost, and millions will perish, because we failed to provide access to research findings for the scientists who could have used and built upon them, simply because we were afraid the sky might otherwise fall down, as per publishers' rival prophecies?
Enough said. Time to mandate OA self-archiving.
Jan, let's cut to the quick (because the rest is really just ideology, hypothesis and posturing, on both of our parts):
Are you and Springer part of the publisher lobby opposing the FRPAA, RCUK, and EC proposals to mandate author self-archiving, right now?
Springer is green on author self-archiving. If it is not, at the same time, a part of the publisher lobby against mandating author self-archiving, right now, then Springer is on the side of the Angels and the rest of our quibbling does not amount to a hill of beans.
Remember that the postings by me on which you intervened were aimed against the publisher lobby opposing the self-archiving mandates -- in particular, the latest attempt to replace the author self-archiving mandate with a publisher paid-OA mandate.
And my objection to this attempt is conditional. If the funders have the cash and the willingness to mandate paid-OA, and pay for it, right now, and they implement that mandate, right now, not a peep of objection from me. Years of delay, disruption and non-OA will be over.
But if this move just results in still more delay and disruption, and still no OA mandate, after it has been dragging on like this for years already, then of course there will be more dissension.
I won't comment on your
follow-up comments, except the very last one, which I think illustrates the yawning gap between the interests of publishers (whether OA or non-OA) and those of researchers (and it also limns who is delaying/disrupting what, and why). You wrote:
Velterop: "why wait and in the mean time set up costly institutional repositories... not just costly, but OA-wise sub-optimal...?
I think any disinterested 3rd party would see very clearly that the research community is not "waiting": Its funders are trying to mandate OA self-archiving, and it is
publishers who are delaying and disrupting that, and forcing the research community to keep waiting for OA.
And not only are the (
small) costs of setting up Institutional Repositories utterly irrelevant to
publishers (who are not being asked to pay for them) but IRs are being set up anyway, for a variety of reasons, OA being only one of them (and alas not always the primary one!).
And as to the "sub-optimality" of having access only to the author's refereed final draft, in an IR, instead of the publisher's proprietary PDF: Please tell that to the many, many would-be users all over the planet who have no access to
either of those, and whose access to the "sub-optimal" OA draft is being delayed and opposed by the publisher lobby.
Stevan Harnad
American Scientist Open Access Forum
