Open Access Archivangelism

Once again, the reader would probably do better to read Peter Suber's incisive but gentle critique of the stunningly "confused and confusing" report of the Australian government's Productivity Commission on Public Support for Science and Innovation. My own uncharitable rant, from when I first laid eyes on it yesterday, follows below:

What a word salad is the Australian government Productivity Commission report on Public Support for Science and Innovation. All that jabber, a lot of it incoherent, but what it amounts to is a total confusion about Green and Gold, OA self-archiving and OA publishing, institutional repositories and central repositories, embargoes, and what needs to be mandated and how (and why). A perfect entry-way for the Trojan Horse of paying the asking price for pre-emptive Gold OA instead of just mandating Green OA. (Doesn't even seem to realize that combining payment with embargoes is adding insult to injury!)

A mess. They should take it back and try (seriously this time) to think it through, clearly, and reduce it to the few sentences it merits. And those sentences are already known:

Mandate Green OA self-archiving of all published articles in Institutional Repositories (deposit required immediately upon publication, even if provisionally in Closed Access). Fund Gold OA only if you really have the spare change; otherwise, wait until it's needed: If/when institutional subscriptions are unsustainably cancelled, use (part of) the institutional savings to pay for the Gold OA publication charges for institutional research output. Not before!

That's all that's needed. The rest is all confusion and folly.

Readers of this blog who do not regularly read Peter Suber's splendid Open Access News (OAN) should! OAN provides a wealth of immediate information about OA developments. It has been my first (and most frequent) daily port of call for years now.

Yesterday Peter did two characteristically fair and gentle -- but resolutely firm -- rejoinders to the increasingly shrill (but remarkably shallow) attempts by representatives and partisans of some -- certainly not all, possibly not even most -- sectors of the journal publishing industry to oppose the growing number of Green OA self-archiving mandates being adopted and proposed by research funders and universities worldwide.

The two articles Peter rebuts are by Brian Crawford, Chairman of the PSP Executive Council of AAP and an editorial by the CEO of ALPSP about a similar -- but somewhat more reasoned -- article by Nevada librarian Rick Anderson. As usual, the claim is that the Green OA self-archiving mandates that have been adopted and proposed will destroy journals and peer review by destroying subscription income. As usual, the reply is that (1) there is to date no evidence at all that Green OA self-archiving will not co-exist peacefully with subscription-based cost-recovery, but (2) if and when it no longer does, then there will be a conversion to Gold OA publishing-fee-based cost-recovery, paid for out of the very same money that institutions now spend on subscriptions, money they would have saved in having cancelled subscriptions (not money redirected from research). But the fact that 100% OA is both attainable via the Green OA mandates and highly beneficial -- to research, researchers, research institutions, research funders, the vast R&D industry, students, the developing world, and the tax-paying public that funds the research -- is beyond dispute. Research is not funded and conducted in order to guarantee the journal publishing industry's current revenue streams and current ways of doing business.

For Peter's much gentler rebuttals, please see: Crawford PSP/AAP Rebuttal and Anderson ALPSP Rebuttal

Stevan Harnad
American Scientist Open Access Forum