Open Access Archivangelism

ACS Press Release: "The American Chemical Society’s Publications Division now offers an important publishing option in support of the Society’s journal authors who wish or need to sponsor open access to their published research articles. The ACS AuthorChoice option, first launched in October 2006, provides a fee-based mechanism for individual authors or their research funding agencies to sponsor the open availability of their articles on the Web at the time of online publication. Under this policy, the ACS as copyright holder enables unrestricted Web access to a contributing author’s publication from the Society’s website, in exchange for a fixed payment from the sponsoring author. ACS AuthorChoice also enables such authors to post electronic copies of published articles on their own personal websites and institutional repositories for non-commercial scholarly purposes.
      The base fee for the ACS AuthorChoice option is set at $3,000 through 2007, with significant discounts applied for contributing authors who are members of the American Chemical Society and/or who are affiliated with an ACS subscribing institution..."

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Dear colleagues,

I urge you to beware of the American Chemical Society's cynical, self-serving "AuthorChoice" Option.

This is an "offer" to "allow" authors to pay, not just in order to provide Gold OA -- which is what hybrid Gold/Green publishers like Springer ("Open Choice") and Cambridge University Press ("Open Option") offer -- but in order to provide Green OA! (Virtually all other hybrid-Gold publishers are Green on author self-archiving, and do not presume to charge for it.)

In other words, ACS is proposing to charge authors for the right to deposit their own papers in their own Institutional Repositories. This ploy was bound to be tried, but I urge you not to fall for it!

You already have an unassailable right to deposit your peer-reviewed, accepted final drafts (postprints) of your ACS articles in your Institutional Repository. If you don't feel you can make them Open Access just yet, make them Closed Access for now, but deposit them, immediately upon acceptance for publication (the preprint even earlier). (The "Immediate-Deposit/Optional-Access (ID/OA) " policy.)

OA self-archiving mandates by research funders and universities, with time-limits on embargoes, are now being proposed and adopted to ensure that your deposits are not left in Closed Access for long. But on no account should you pay ACS a penny for the right to deposit.

If you feel your deposit needs to be placed under a provisional Closed Access Embargo, "almost-OA" is immediately available via the EMAIL EPRINT REQUEST Button that is being implemented by more and more Institutional Repositories. Direct individual user-to-author eprint requests and their fulfillment online are Fair Use, as they have always been, even when authors mailed paper reprints to individual requesters.

To pay for Gold OA today out of scarce research funds -- while all publication costs are still being fully paid for by subscriptions -- is already irrational.

But to pay for Green OA would border on the absurd.

Caveat Emptor!

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On Thu, 8 Mar 2007, Adam Chesler (American Chemical Society) wrote (to the American Scientist Open Access Forum):

"Recent posts to the listserv have contributed to a misunderstanding about the ACS AuthorChoice program to provide open article access... The ACS Author Choice option is for authors who wish or need to sponsor open access to their published research articles. It allows immediate open web access to the final published article as delivered from the ACS web site, in exchange for a fixed fee paid by the author or author's sponsor... ACS AuthorChoice also licenses authors to post electronic copies of published articles on their own personal websites... for scholarly purposes..."

Does ACS endorse the posting of authors' peer-reviewed final drafts on their own institutional website for scholarly purpose without fee? In other words, is ACS now "Green" on author self-archiving, as the following American Learned Societies are?

American Anthropological Association
American Association for the Advancement of Science
American Astronomical Society
American College of Sports Medicine
American Dairy Science Association
American Diabetes Association
American Economic Association
American Geophysical Union
American Institute of Biological Sciences
American Institute of Physics
American Library Association
American Mathematical Society
American Meteorological Society
American Physical Society
American Psychological Association
American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology
American Society for Cell Biology
American Society for Clinical Investigation
American Society for Microbiology
American Society of Hematology
American Society of Limnology and Oceanography
American Vacuum Society
Acoustical Society of America
Ecological Society of America
Optical Society of America

That is the only point at issue. The understanding is that ACS authors are instead asked to pay ACS to do this: Is this the case?

(If I have indeed misunderstood, a profound and sincere apology is in order.)

"ACS permits within the first 12 months of publication up to 50 complimentary article downloads to interested readers who are not already ACS subscribers; at 12 months and thereafter, reader access via these author-directed links is unlimited."

My question is about the 51st to the Nth would-be user request during the first 12 months from the date of acceptance for publication, not just about the first 50. However, the draft in question need not be the official ACS PDF: just the author's final accepted version:

Does ACS endorse the posting of authors' peer-reviewed final drafts on their own institutional websites for scholarly purposes without fee?

Reply from Adam Chesler (American Chemical Society), on American Scientist Open Access Forum:

"The answer is: No, such posting is not endorsed or allowed. By the ACS Articles on Request program, authors may post a link that directs the user to the final published article on the ACS web site. Many ACS authors have taken advantage of this free option, to good effect."

Adam Chesler
Assistant Director, Sales and Library Relations
American Chemical Society
1155 16th Street NW
Washington, DC 20036
Office Telephone: (202) 872-6183
Mobile Telephone: (617) 230-3201
Fax: (202) 872-6005
http://pubs.acs.org

I don't doubt that these free adverstisements serve ACS (and the first 50 would-be users) well during the 12-month embargo.

I would urge all ACS authors to also deposit their postprints in their own Institutional Repositories, provisionally setting access as "Closed Access", if they wish. (This makes only the metadata visible and accessible to all.) During the embargo, this makes "almost-OA" immediately available for all would-be users webwide via the EMAIL EPRINT REQUEST Button that is being implemented by more and more Institutional Repositories.

Stevan Harnad
American Scientist Open Access Forum

In Open Access News, Peter Suber comments on John Harnad's critique of the CERN plan for gold OA:

Harnad, John (2007) Clarifying Open Access: its implications for the research community (Letter). Physics World 29(3).

Here are my comments on Peter Suber's comments. (As will be seen, on some points I agree with John Harnad, and on others I agree with Peter Suber.)

JH 1: 'Green' OA can achieve [OA] quite adequately, without transferring the cost burden to researchers.

PS: True. But under the CERN plan, there would be no burden to researchers either. Journals in particle physics would convert from TA to OA, and the institutions that formerly paid subscriptions would thereafter pay author-side publication fees. Authors themselves would pay nothing.

This has neither been tested nor even thought-through. There are about 10,000 research universities in the world, perhaps 3000 "core" universities, and maybe 800-1200 mainstay institutional subscribers for each average journal.

There are very few one-discipline research institutions like CERN.

Subscriptions are collective annual packages and commitments.

Institutional BioMedCentral-style "memberships" are not: Journals cannot contract to accept N articles annually from a particular university and universities cannot contract to submit N articles annually to a particular journal.

Even if annual quotas can be estimated annually from prior-year averages, this does not scale to universities that did not previously subscribe to the journal, yet publish articles in it.

Nor does it scale to universities that have many journals in many disciplines, and cannot readily make special arrangements for just a few journals and institutional contributors to those journals.

I -- like Peter Suber and unlike my brother -- do believe, however, that this kind of redirection will be possible, but only if/when all journals in all disciplines at all universities are being cancelled because of 100% or near-100% Green OA.

Pre-emptively doing that redirection now, however, journal by journal -- especially with no necessary match between subscription input and publication output at the journal or field level at a given university -- may look like it makes sense to one-field institutions like CERN, but it looks very different to the overwhelming majority of the c. 10,000 universities that exist -- or even the 800-1200 subscribing universities that make up the mainstay for each individual journal.

CERN may be able to talk this "consortium" of 800-1200 instutions per journal into a BioMedCentral-style "membership" agreement, but the question then is whether it will last, or scale. There is a huge speculative element in the assumption that this can all be done as smoothly as CERN anticipates, in the short- and long term. And either way: what is the point of doing it now, when what is urgently needed is much more OA, not top-down business experiments in fields where OA is already well along its way?

(To put this into context: CERN has been absolutely superb -- a historic pioneer and world leader -- in OA provision and OA provision policy. CERN was one of the first institutions to adopt a Green OA mandate and CERN's OA Institutional Repository has accordingly been filled, with stunning success. CERN is almost 100% OA for current research output. This is the winning model that CERN should now be promoting across institutions and disciplines, not a premature, pre-emptive and unnecessary Gold Rush. The time for that is after the rest of the research world has caught up with CERN and nears 100% Green OA. Not before. Or instead.)

JH 2: Journals must generate revenue by one or more of the following mechanisms....

PS: This short list oversimplifies the situation. The majority of OA journals charge no author-side fees and we don't know much about what business models they use instead. But we do know that some receive direct or indirect institutional subsidies, and some generate revenue from a separate line of non-OA publications, auxiliary services, membership dues, endowments, reprints, or a print or premium edition. None of these revenue sources appears on JH 's short list.

Peter is right that JH's list of funding sources and business models is not exhaustive. But, as Peter says, we don't know much about the long-term viability of these other business models either -- nor whether they would scale to more journals or all journals.

Again, a needless push is being given toward an untested business model at a time when (1) what is urgently needed is more OA in other fields, not new business models (in a field that is already more advanced in OA than most); and (2) for the reason mentioned earlier, it is not clear whether the pre-emptive "redirection" plans scale even within the field in question, rather than creating hardships for multidiscipline universities that don't fit the CERN model.

JH 3: In most areas of physics...the choice boils down either to "subscriber pays" or "author pays".

PS: The DOAJ lists 199 peer-reviewed OA journals in physics (excluding astronomy), of which 13 charge no author-side publication fees. That's about 6.5%, even before the CERN plan takes effect.

Again, if that 6.5% is itself sustainable (rather than short-lived) that still leaves JH's point applicable to 93.5% of OA journals -- and much higher, once we consider the percentage of all physics journals (of which the OA ones are only about 10%). So it is probably quite realistic to state that it's a choice between subscriber-institution pays or author-institution pays; and that there are no known, viable options other than subsidy or volunteerism (which are highly unlikely to scale).

JH 4: Although some public funding agencies have expressed themselves in favour of OA, none have indicated willingness to increase their total funding to cover such extra expenses.

PS: The European Research Council is willing, although I believe its willingness was only made known this week. In any case, the point is moot for the CERN plan, since the publication fees will be covered by the members of the CERN-assembled consortium.

This is a straight "redirection" of each journal's core 800-1200 subscribers from subscription charges to consortial "memberships." It might or might not work, short- or long-term. What is sure is that it's not what's needed urgently today (OA is). And it is likely that this pre-emptive redirection will cause problems for at least some institutions and researchers.

And it will not advance the cause of Green OA or Green OA mandates.

(The ERC funding would mean a redirection of scarce research funds along the lines that researchers worry about; but fortunately it is just an optional way a fundee is permitted to spend alotted funds -- and, most important, it is coupled with a Green OA mandate: the difference between night and day.)

JH 5: There is also a mistaken notion that 'Gold' OA is more cost effective, because electronic papers are much cheaper to produce and distribute. But this has more to do with advances in technology than the OA model itself.

PS: Not true. Several kinds of savings can be traced to the OA model itself: OA dispenses with print (or prices the optional print edition at cost), eliminates subscription management, eliminates DRM, eliminates lawyer fees for licenses and enforcement, reduces or eliminates marketing, and reduces or eliminates profit margins. Also note that one of CERN's findings in June 2006 was that "sponsoring all journals ready for OA at the time of the enquiry would require an annual budget of 5-6 Million €, significantly less than the present global expenditure for particle physics journal subscriptions."

I agree completely with Peter that getting rid of the paper edition and offloading access and storage onto the distributed IR network would cut both costs and services in a way that merely going online would not.

But to realise those economies, the paper edition first has to be abandoned, and the offloading network needs to be in place, and filled. Cancellation pressure from universal Green OA might just give rise to that outcome. But the pre-emptive redirection that is instead being contemplated here sounds more like just re-baptising the current core subscriptions as "consortial memberships" at the current asking price. So no economies, just redirection.

JH 6: [T]he scientific quality of journals switching to the author-pays model may be adversely affected.

PS: For the case on the other side, see my October 2006 article, Open access and quality.

I agree with Peter that this is not a worry at all.

JH 7: The ideal of open access can largely be achieved, however, simply by encouraging deposit of all publications in freely accessible archives.

PS: Agreed!

But that is the point! What is the point of going in this needless, untested direction when what is urgently needed is to mandate (not just "encourage") Green self-archiving, in the rest of particle physics as well as the rest of the disciplines and institutions, so we can have 100% OA at long last? Why the Gold Rush instead?

Stevan Harnad
American Scientist Open Access Forum