Open Access Archivangelism

On Thu, 13 Oct 2005, Sally Morris (ALPSP) wrote in the SPARC Open Access Forum:

SM: "As far as the 'self-archiving' route to OA is concerned, I must have explained our concern a hundred times; let me spell it out yet again:

"Let us assume that self-archiving mandates become widespread, and that tools such as Google Scholar make self-archived articles as easy to discover as the published versions.

"Then if free substitute versions are available for all or most of the content of a given journal, and if these are used by library patrons in preference to the published version, the rational librarian will not purchase the published version."

But if, as all the studies to date show, library patrons use the licensed library published version for those articles that their libraries can afford, and use the author's self-archived OA version for those they cannot, what is Sally's and ALPSP's rationale for keeping them deprived of the articles their libraries cannot afford? and for keeping the authors of those articles deprived of that usage and impact? Is the rationale that the need to protect publishers' from any possibility of risk of a decline in subscription revenues (for which there does not yet exist even a single shred of evidence today) takes precedence over all these author and user needs -- i.e., over all of these research/researcher needs?

Nor do subscriptions and cancellations depend primarily on the "rational librarian": they depend on their user/author communities, who are not calling for cancellations, but for access to what their libraries cannot afford, and for the impact that their own articles lose, from users at other institutions whose libraries cannot afford the journal they were published in.

SM: "If subscriptions fall dramatically, journals will no longer be viable and will cease publication."

Repeating this "a hundred times" and a hundred times more does not make it one whit more a statement of actual fact, rather than just the counterfactual "if/then" conjecture that it is, and continues to be, with not a shred of evidence to support its "if"-premise

I advise Sally that before the Frankfurt Scientific Publishing Meeting she should attend the STM session at the Frankfurt Book Fair in which Michael Kurtz of astrophysics of Harvard will be presenting the data of Edwin Henneken on the usage of the ADS system by astrophysicists (article forthcoming in D-Lib), showing how they switch from using the preprint to using the publisher's published version as soon as it is available -- except those who cannot afford access, who continue to use the self-archived postprint.

SM: "If journals are no longer there to carry out their current functions (not just the management of peer review, but also selection/refinement/collection of content of particular relevance to a given community of interest) that will be a great loss to scholarship."

So would every other negative if/then counterfactual that I or Sally or Pascal or anyone else could dream up, but that doesn't make their if-premises any truer either, not even after being repeated thousands of times. And the more you keep raising the hypothetical ante, the more ominous it sounds -- without becoming one bit truer.

"Pascal's Wager and Open Access"

So let me say it straight out: All evidence is that what is in the best interests of the research community and what is in the best interests of the publisher community can co-exist peacefully with self-archiving. But if there ever were a conflict of interest, there is no doubt whatsoever about the direction in which it would have to be resolved: the dog (research production), not the tail (research publishing).

Why do not Sally Morris and the ALPSP embrace the many potential new ways to collaborate with and benefit from researcher self-archiving and institutional repositories, instead of fixating so single-mindedly on trying to fend off the optimal and inevitable for as long as possible?

SM: " I do not argue that society or indeed other publishers have any right to continue to perform their current function. I'm just pointing out that they may be unable to do so if self-archiving sweeps the board as some would like it to do. That is why we are urging caution to those who would mandate immediate self-archiving."

Self-archiving mandates are not for "sweeping the board," they are for providing access to those researchers who actually can't afford it today, and thereby providing their lost impact to the research and researchers that are actually losing it today. The sweepingly overboard statements about counterfactual disaster scenarios, in contrast, are coming from those who are trying to protect actual, unchanged publisher revenue streams from counterfactual, hypothetical risk, at the cost of certain and sizeable benefits to research, researchers, their institutions, their funders, and the public that funds their research -- i.e., the canid rather than its queue.

Stevan Harnad

Re: New ALPSP study on the effects of Open Access on scholarly publishing
"The facts about Open Access"

Prior Amsci Topic Thread:
"Drubbing Peter to Pox Paul" (started November 2004)
and Guardian Education December 2004

Without prejudice as to the reliability and validity of the ALPSP study, I must point out (wearily, yet again) that this was not a study of "the effects of OA on scholarly publishing" nor of "the facts about Open Access".

It was a study of OA publishing (i.e., of the journals that currently make their own contents freely available on the web, how they currently make ends meet, what their current quality levels are, and how they currently implement peer review). The main findings are that: (1) many current OA journals do not use the OA cost-recovery model, (2) some current OA journals are having trouble making ends meet, (3) some current OA journals may have lower quality standards.

These findings have nothing whatsoever to do with OA self-archiving, nor with the proposed RCUK OA self-archiving mandate. They are about current OA publishing only.

Touting them as being "The facts about Open Access" and as revealing "the effects of Open Access on scholarly publishing" is utter nonsense and very much in the spirit of ALPSP's rather strained efforts to give the impression that there is any objective evidence at all that OA self-archiving has a negative effect on journal publishing. There is and continues to be no such evidence, and this study provides no such evidence. The survey merely repeats the (well-known, well-aired) opinion of some publishers that "disastrous consequences" are imminent.

Using the data on the current status of OA publishing as if it had any bearing at all on OA self-archiving is drubbing Peter (self-archiving) to pox Paul (OA publishing). This strategy may be sufficient to dupe DTI for a bit but sooner or later sensible people are bound to twig on the fact that it is nothing but a smoke-screen.

I am quite confident that the RCUK consists of such sensible people.

Stevan Harnad