President-Elect of the Association of American University Presses (AAUP) on Open Access: An Exchange

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SUMMARY: Sandy Thatcher, President-Elect of AAUP is preparing a white paper on OA and asked about PRC's study "Self-Archiving and Journal Subscriptions: Co-existence or Competition? An International Survey of Librarians' Preferences." The PRC study tried to provide evidence, via simulation and modeling, on whether author self-archiving will cause librarians to cancel journals (because there is no evidence of this yet, and APS and IOPP have both reported that they can detect no correlation).
      A methodological flaw in the PRC study made it impossible to make any relevent predictions because OA self-archiving (green) had been treated as if it were an OA journal (gold), suitable for cancellation. In reality, author self-archiving of individual articles is distributed and anarchic, with no sure way of knowing how much of a journal's contents have become OA, and when; moreover, self-archiving mandates affect all journals at once, roughly equally. So the journal versus journal acquisition/cancellation options presented in the PRC simulations have no bearing on the question of self-archiving and cancellation.
      It is nevertheless likely that self-archiving will eventually induce cancellations, though no one can predict when, and how strong the pressure will be. What is certain is that journals can and will adapt; trying to deny research the demonstrated advantages of OA is no longer an option. Nor is there any need for authors' institutions or funders to pay for OA publication until and unless cancellation pressure makes subscriptions unsustainable; then, journals will cut costs, downsize, and convert to the OA publishing cost-recovery model. Till then, researchers need to provide immediate OA through self-archiving, and their institutions and funders need to mandate it. Journals too, will benefit from the enhanced impact. Ahead of us is a period of peaceful co-existence between mandated OA self-archiving (growing anarchically) and non-OA journal publishing, till we approach 100% OA; after that, the market itself will decide how long non-OA publishing and the subscription/licensing model remain sustainable, and whether and when there will need to be a transition to OA publishing. But meanwhile research will already be enjoying 100% OA, at long last.

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On Tue, 12 Dec 2006, Sandy Thatcher wrote on liblicense:

ST: "Coming new to this list... as President-Elect of the AAUP (Association of American University Presses) charged with preparing a white paper on OA for the Association... [and] [n]ot knowing what may have been discussed previously, I begin by asking whether this list has focused any attention on the relatively new study from the Publishing Research Consortium titled "Self-Archiving and Journal Subscriptions: Co-existence or Competition? An International Survey of Librarians' Preferences. "

Dear Sandy,

Welcome to the list and to your new post!

Everything you wrote in your opening message has been enlightened and constructive, and I think we may be on the verge of a new era of fruitful cooperation and collaboration between the research and publishing community.

Let me reply to the questions you addressed to me. There has indeed been previous discussion of the PRC study on this list.

There was Chris Beckett's response to my critique of the PRC study and my reply to Chris's response:

The point of disagreement, in essence, was that one of the main objectives of the PRC study had been to gather evidence on whether or not librarians will cancel journals as a consequence of author self-archiving (because there exists as yet no evidence at all that self-archiving causes cancellations, and, as you note, two publishers in the fields with the longest and most extensive self-archiving, APS and IOPP, have both reported that they can detect no correlation).

The PRC study tried to predict, via simulation and modeling, whether librarians would cancel if authors self-archived.

(1) The lesser point of my critique was that even asking librarians directly -- "Please predict how much of a journal's content would have to be available free via self-archiving to induce you to cancel it?" -- would have generated speculative guesses rather than evidence, because:

(1a) There is no way to know how much of any particular journal's content is being self-archived, since author self-archiving is gradual, distributed and anarchic;

(1b) self-archiving mandates (by research institutions and funders) would not affect one journal's contents more than another's, so their effects would be global, not focussed on any individual journal, and

(1c) no librarian can really know today what their research faculty would advise, hence what they would do, under gradual, uncertain, anarchic growth of self-archiving, and when.

(2) My more critical point was a methodological one, concerning the indirect hypothetical choices and modeling used: To avoid bias (by mentioning either self-archiving or open access), the survey asked librarians for their preferences among various hypothetical competing journals with various hypothetical properties (among them: being free), and then used a model to extrapolate this to predict cancellations. This method actually made it impossible even to infer what librarians speculated they might do under the distributed anarchic conditions described above, because, as noted, no such journal-vs-journal information or options would ever be available to librarians: self-archiving does not grow on an individual journal-vs-journal basis, but on a global, distributed, anarchic, individual-article basis. The librarian's choice is hence never between cancelling a free journal in favour of another journal. (This sort of reasoning does fit "gold" OA journals, but it does not fit "green" OA self-archiving of individual articles by individual authors.)

Journals are acquired or cancelled on a comparative/competitive basis. Individual articles -- self-archived globally and anarchically by their individual authors across all journals -- are not the comparative/competitive journal acquisition/cancellation options that are familiar to acquisitions librarians, and that the PRC study was trying to simulate, and from which the model was trying to make predictions about the conditions that would cause cancellations. The model works for simulating actual comparative journal choices, but it fails for the special case of anarchic article self-archiving.

Hence the survey did not provide the evidence that still does not exist today: that self-archiving will cause cancellations.

Let me add, though, that I personally do believe that global self-archiving will eventually lead to cancellation pressure, but no one knows how much or when, as it will depend on how quickly global self-archiving and self-archiving mandates will grow. I must also add, though, that I do not believe that this likelihood of eventual cancellation pressure is any grounds for not self-archiving now, or for not mandating self-archiving now. Self-archiving brings substantial demonstrated benefits to research, researchers, their institutions, their funders, and the tax-paying public that funds the funders and institutions. OA is consequently optimal and inevitable for research (and already long overdue!). It is therefore publishing that will need to adapt to any eventual cancellation pressure that might arise from OA self-archiving; and publishing can, and will successfully adapt.

ST: "Another very interesting finding for me is that librarians care a lot that the material is peer-reviewed but care very little whether they have access to the final published version."

Yes. In fact that was the one substantive finding of the study. But the same considerations (about global anarchic growth) apply either way (whether the self-archived draft is the author's postprint or the publisher's PDF).

ST: "Librarians seem to place little or no value on the final processing of manuscripts after acceptance, which should be an eye-opener to publishers"

Yes! Hence this might be a region in which costs could already be cut, even before any cancellation pressure is felt.

ST: "Once we publishers think something is going to happen, we will act on those beliefs if they seem to be firmly supported, by such studies as the PRC's... behaviors will start to change based on beliefs, however erroneous they may be."

I am not sure what publishers are contemplating doing, but it seems to me that self-archiving and self-archiving mandates are in the hands of researchers, their institutions and their funders. So cooperating and adapting to this new PostGutenberg reality would, I think, be the optimal strategy.

Berners-Lee, T., De Roure, D., Harnad, S. and Shadbolt, N. (2005) Journal publishing and author self-archiving: Peaceful Co-Existence and Fruitful Collaboration.

ST: "(By the way, the PRC study directly confronts the "evidence" of the physics preprint archive not affecting cancellations of physics journals, by pointing out that the archive combines peer-reviewed and not peer-reviewed materials, thus making it less than fully reliable as a source of completely authenticated work in the field.)"

Indeed. And the same will be true of the global network of Institutional Repositories: They too will contain preprints as well as postprints.

ST: "I think the tipping phenomenon, which we know already to have shown itself operative in this arena when e-journals came to displace print journals as the main product in the marketplace (rather more quickly than many people anticipated), is extremely important to keep in mind here. This is what I see as a real possibility: enough of the major commercial journal publishers in an ever more consolidated market (after the purchase of Blackwell by Wiley) become convinced that their subscriptions will erode seriously (if, say, the FRPAA becomes law) and therefore decide to abandon the arena of STM journal publishing because they cannot sustain the expected profit margins under the new regime (as outlined by Dr. Harnad)."

As always, if a publisher decides to abandon a journal title, it can migrate to another publisher. There are now a growing number of new gold OA publishers, ready and willing to take over established titles (and to scale down to whatever there is still a market for, in the OA era).

But, to repeat, the growth of green OA via self-archiving is anarchic, not based on individual journals separately approaching 100% OA. Hence the "tipping point" is a global one, and still far away, and will approach gradually, so journals can adapt by phasing out goods and services for which there is no longer a market. There will always be a market for peer-review service provision. (And I wouldn't write off the market for the print edition, or even the publisher's enhanced PDF and copy-editing just yet!)

Sandy, I actually think you answer this question yourself, with:

ST: "I long ago predicted that university press journals would migrate to the electronic environment [and that it] was therefore much more possible, and more likely, that journals could spring up online without the support of publishers, if they went OA and did not have to bother about the complications of outsourcing printing and handling subscription fulfilment. (And a journal only has to be designed once, and the template followed thereafter, while marketing takes care of itself if the journal is aimed at a niche community anyway.)"

ST: "This could all happen very quickly, as "tipping" phenomena generally do. Where would that scenario leave the academy? With several thousand journals suddenly left to fend for themselves!"

Nothing sudden. And plenty of flexible ways to fend, in the portable online age!

ST: "the infrastructure of universities today is simply not prepared, in any shape or form, to deal with that "crisis" and find some way of sustaining those journals."

There is no evidence at all for such an impending crisis, just as there is as yet no evidence of self-archiving causing cancellations. (There is, however, plenty of evidence for the benefts of self-archiving.)

ST: "Self-publishing would then proliferate, and chaos would ensue for some time to come. Are librarians prepared to deal with the consequences?"

It's not up to librarians but to researchers. (And I'm afraid I have to say this sounds like hypothetical alarmism, rather than evidence-based reasoning and planning.) Titles will migrate, if need be. Peer review (done by and for researchers, for free, mediated and managed by the journal) will remaining intact. And the self-archiving of peer-reviewed articles is not self-publishing.

ST: "I do not depict this nightmare scenario in order to defend the existing system... But I do think university faculty, administrators, and librarians need to think through these issues and possible scenarios very carefully and "worst-case" planning would probably be appropriate here."

I agree that cooperative planning for a possible eventual downsizing to peer-review service-provision alone and a transition to the OA cost-recovery model under cancellation pressure (and corresponding institutional windfall savings) would be an excellent idea -- and much more constructive than trying to wish away the proposed self-archiving mandates such as the FRPAA.

Please see:

"The Urgent Need to Plan a Stable Transition" (began Sep 1998!)

Annex to UK Select Committee Evidence

Berners-Lee, T., De Roure, D., Harnad, S. and Shadbolt, N. (2005) Journal publishing and author self-archiving: Peaceful Co-Existence and Fruitful Collaboration

Best wishes,

Stevan Harnad
American Scientist Open Access Forum