Definition of Open Access

Dear colleagues,

They just keep coming, almost daily, pre-emptively spamming all the people we had been hoping to win over to Open Access.

Not only is it regrettable that OA is so unthinkingly identified in most people's minds with gold OA publishing in general, but this growing spate of relentless fool's-gold junk-OA spamming in particular is now coalescing with that misconception -- and at the same time more and more universities and funders are reaching into their scarce funds to pay for this kind of thing, thinking this is the way to provide OA.

(Meanwhile, green OA mandates, the real solution, are still hovering at about 200 out of about 10,000 (2%!) -- and mostly needlessly watered-down mandates. I wish I could figure out a way to turn this liability -- fool's-gold spam and scam -- into an asset for spreading green mandates, but I'm afraid that even Richard Poynder's critical articles are being perceived mostly as critical of OA itself rather than just of fool's-gold OA.)

The real culprits are not the ones trying to make a buck out of this current spike in pay-to-publish-or-perish/gold-fever co-morbidity, but the researchers themselves, who can't put 2+2 together and provide green OA on their own, cost-free; and their institutions and funders, who can't put 2+2 together and mandate that they do it.

Instead of thinking, it's easier to shell out for fool's gold...

Richard's exposés are helpful, but I think they are not enough to open people's eyes.

So all we can do is hope that the spamming itself will become so blatant and intrusive that it will wake people up to the fact that this is not the way to provide OA...

Stevan

PS Not only do I not work on anything faintly resembling "proteomics/bioinformatics" but I have no "relationship with OMICS Group" (except possibly prior complaints about spam)! These spam disclaimers are a lark. They seem to be using professional spam services that try to appear respectable.

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From: "JPB"<editor.jpb@omicsgroup.co>
Date: October 28, 2011 4:29:28 AM EDT
To: "Stevan Harnad" 
Subject: Invitation for Special Issue: Journal of Proteomics & Bioinformatics
Reply-To: editor.jpb@omicsgroup.co

You are receiving this email because of your relationship with OMICS Group. Please reconfirm your interest in receiving email from us. If you do not wish to receive any more emails, you can unsubscribe here
 
Journal of Proteomics & Bioinformatics - Open Access

Dear Dr. Stevan Harnad, 

We are glad to announce the success of Journal of Proteomics & Bioinformatics  (JPB) an Open Access platform for proteomics, bioinformatics research and updates. 

To provide a rapid turn-around time regarding reviewing, publishing and to disseminate the articles freely for research, teaching and reference purposes we are releasing following special issues. 

Upcoming Special Issues Handling Editor(s)

Domain-Domain Interactions Dr. Chittibabu (Babu) Guda, University of Nebraska Medical Center, USA
Microarray Proteomics Dr. Qiangwei Xia, University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA
Canonical approach: Moleculomics Dr. Lifeng Peng, Victoria University, China
Shifts and deepens : Biomarkers Dr. Kazuyuki Nakamura, Yamaguchi University, Japan
Membrane Protein Transporters Dr. Mobeen Raja, University of Alberta, Canada
Structural and Functional Biology Dr. Viola Calabró, University of Naples "Federico II", ITALY
HLA-based vaccines Dr. Mario Hugo Genero, Universidad Austral, Republica Argentina
Insulin Signaling & Insulin Resistance Dr. Zhengping Yi, Arizona State University, USA
Proteomics for Cancer chemoprevention Dr. Imtiaz Siddiqui, University of Wisconsin, USA
Membrane Proteomics Dr. Yurong Lai, Groton Laboratory, Pfizer, Inc, UK
We would like to request a contribution from you for any of these special issues or regular issues of the Journal to improve the Open Access motto in this field. 

For more details PS : http://www.omicsonline.com/SpecialissueJPB.php 

Why to submit and benefits : http://www.omicsonline.org/special-features.php 

Submit your article online at : http://www.editorialmanager.com/proteomics/ 
                                                                                    (Or) 
As e-mail attachment to the Editorial Office :editor.jpb@omicsgroup.co 

We shall look forward to hear from you. 

Sincerely, 

Editors, Journal of Proteomics & Bioinformatics 

Dr. Chittibabu (Babu) Guda, University of Nebraska Medical Center, USA 
Dr. Qiangwei Xia, University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA 
Dr. Lifeng Peng, Victoria University, China 
Dr. Kazuyuki Nakamura, Yamaguchi University, Japan 
Dr. Mobeen Raja, University of Alberta, Canada 
Dr. Viola Calabró, University of Naples "Federico II", ITALY 
Dr. Mario Hugo Genero, Universidad Austral, Republica Argentina 
Dr. Zhengping Yi, Arizona State University, USA 
Dr. Imtiaz Siddiqui, University of Wisconsin, USA 
Dr. Yurong Lai, Groton Laboratory, Pfizer, Inc, UK 

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My friend Eric Van de Velde, who did so much for the growth of Open Access at Cal Tech across the years, has just (over)generously credited the birth of the Open Access (OA) Movement to the birth of the Open Archives Initiative (OAI).

I hate to have to throw a blanket on this 12th birthday parade, but the birth of the Open Archives Initiative (OAI)  (a protocol for making online bibliographic databases -- initially called "archives," later re-baptised "repositories"-- interoperable) in 1999 certainly was not the birth of the Open Access Movement.

Either the Open Access Movement began (as I prefer to think) in the '80s or perhaps even the '70s, when (some) researchers first began making their papers freely accessible online in anonymous FTP archives, or it began with the Budapest Open Access Initiative (BOAI) (2001), where the term "Open Access (OA)" was first coined (a few months after the first meeting, just as "Open Archives" had been coined a few months after the Santa Fe meeting).

Nothing here to compete in primacy for, however, since the progress of the OA movement has been dismayingly slow, ever since, and still is, to this very day.

But it's particularly ironic to see the origins of the OA movement (warts and all) attributed to OAI when in fact the idea of freeing the refereed research literature from access toll barriers was very explicitly (and exceedingly rudely) disavowed by the prime organizer of the three organizers of the Santa Fe meeting. The archival record for this seems to have disappeared, but I've saved the two postings from which the following is excerpted:

Tue, 30 Nov 1999 20:14:30 -0700

"…someone also forwarded me from the times higher ed supp 12 nov 1999:

"Harnad, who attended the Santa Fe meeting, said all conference participants agreed that scientific and scholarly publishing was being 'held hostage' and needed to be freed. 'They all felt ... . Most wanted...'"

"i don't remember anyone saying anything about hostages (though i did miss the end of the first day) -- isn't it demagoguery to impute words and sentiments?..."

The rest of the posting expands on these sentiments:

http://users.ecs.soton.ac.uk/harnad/Temp/oai1.htm
http://users.ecs.soton.ac.uk/harnad/Temp/oai2.htm

30 November will also be the 12th anniversary of the last time I ever exchanged words with the prime organizer in question.

Stevan Harnad
EnablingOpenScholarship

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Reply to:
Jennings, David (October, 2011) "What's Holding Open Access Publishing Back?"

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Yes, it is an indisputable fact that open access (OA) is not growing nearly as quickly as it can and should, despite (1) OA's equally indisputable benefits to research, researchers, research institutions, research funders, the R&D industry, and the tax-paying public that supports the research, and despite (2) the likewise indisputable fact that 100% OA has been fully and easily within the reach of the worldwide research community -- at no extra cost and only a extra few keystrokes' worth of effort -- for over two decades now.

But one of the big things holding back OA progress is calling it, thinking of it and treating it as "OA publishing." It is not. OA means providing free online access to research journal articles, but trying to reform publishing by converting the journals into OA journals ("Gold OA") is just one of the ways to provide OA, and certainly neither the simplest, the easiest, the surest, the fastest nor the most direct way.

The simplest, easiest, surest, fastest and most direct way of making journal articles OA is for their authors to make them freely accessible online by self-archiving them on the web, free for all, immediately upon acceptance for publication by whatever journal they publish them in ("Green OA").

Yes, it still remains a puzzle -- indeed a koan -- why authors have not been doing this spontaneously, ever since the advent of the web, of their own accord. (Only about 20% of them have been doing so.) The persistent misconception and misrepresentation of OA as being synonymous with just Gold OA publishing is one of the reasons ("gold fever").

And yes, providing more information, and more accurate information, rather than misinformation to the researcher-authors and the research community certainly helps. But neither information-gathering (through researcher surveys) nor information dissemination (through researcher alerting) will solve the problem of the glacially slow growth of OA. Nor will further brain-storming among "stake-holders" -- (1) researchers, (2) their institutional management, (3) their institutional libraries, (4) their research funders, (5) the tax-payers who support the research and, least of all, (6) publishers (who are not really stake-holders in OA and its benefits at all, but just service-providers trying to preserve their current, ample revenue streams while trying to avoid conflict with their authors' expressed and perceived interests).

The solution to the problem of authors' slowness in providing OA spontaneously is already known, and has already been tried, tested, and proven to work: institutions (2) and funders (4) need to mandate (i.e., require) Green OA self-archiving by their researchers (1) for their own good, as well as for the good of research impact and progress:

After 20 years of needless, cumulative loss in research impact and progress, there's no need for still more surveys and soul-searching. The hand-writing is on the wall (not in the anecdotal musings of an individual surveyed chemist or classicist):

Green OA self-archiving simply has to be made into official policy by the only two stake-holders in a position to do so: institutions (2) and funders (4). Librarians (3) already know this; researchers (1) are clearly waiting for an official policy from their institutions and funders, making Green OA self-archiving mandatory in the online era, otherwise they will not bother (or dare) to do it for yet another 20 years; tax-payers (5) can do nothing directly; and publishers (6) are just reluctantly along for the ride: Mandating Green OA is in the hands of the research community alone.

See:
No Need To Renounce High-Impact Non-OA Journals To Provide OA: OA Not = OA Journals (July 2011)

Stevan Harnad
EnablingOpenScholarship (EOS)
http://www.openscholarship.org

Well, either everyone was so inspired by my 14 points on "What is open access and how to provide it?" that they are busy implementing them right now, or else my 14 points did not even succeed in inspiring objections!

In any case, here are the replies to the 14 prima facie objections to my own 14 points that I myself raised:

1. What evidence is there that "research is losing potential usage and impact" because "articles are only accessible to users at institutions that can afford to subscribe to the journal in which they were published"?

The evidence (longstanding) that institutions can only afford to subscribe to a small and shrinking fraction of journals is here.

The evidence that making articles OA significantly increases both downloads and citations is here.

2. Who says "there are two ways to provide OA" [green OA self-archiving of non-OA journal articles or publishing in a gold OA journals]? Why can't researchers just post articles online instead of publishing them in a journal at all?

Because OA's target content is peer-reviewed research publications, not unrefereed self-publication

3. Why is only green OA "in the hands of the research community"? Can't the research community just stop publishing in and subscribing to journals that don't convert to gold OA?

34,000 biologists tried the latter, 10 years ago, and it failed (predictably, because there was no viable alternative -- and there still isn't one).

4. Why is it that only "green OA can be mandated by the research community"? Can't the research community just stop publishing in and subscribing to journals that don't convert to gold OA?

See 3, above.

5. Why are publication costs paid only by "institutions, through journal subscriptions." What about individual subscribers?

Individual subscriptions provide a only a small fraction of journal income; it is institutional subscriptions that sustain peer-reviewed journals.

6. What ensures that the "funds to pay for gold OA" will be used for that purpose, if they are no longer "locked into institutional journal subscriptions"?

Necessity is the mother of invention. If and when mandated green OA makes subscriptions unsustainable, some of the annual windfall cancellation savings will be spent on books and other institutional necessities, but paying for publication will become an institutional necessity too. Its cost, however -- my guess is about $200 per round of refereeing, with "no-fault peer review" -- will be low enough so the solution will be a no-brainer.

7. Why is it "a waste of… funds to pay pre-emptively for gold OA today." OA is OA, isn't it?

OA is OA, but publication is already being paid for by institutional subscriptions. And green OA can be provided for free, by mandating it, whereas the money to pay for gold OA is still locked in subscriptions.

(But if an institution or funder has the extra cash to spare, there's no harm in paying pre-emptive gold OA fees for as much research output as they can afford today -- as long as they mandate green OA for all of it first.)

8. Why does "the research community… need to… mandate green OA"? If they need/want OA so much, can't they just provide it, unmandated?

This is a fair question -- indeed it amounts to a koan. The malady is known as " Xeno's Paralysis." There are at least 38 known causes, all easily curable. The problem is rampant symptom transfer, and pandemic recidivism... The virus seems to be a rapidly mutating one. Oa difficile.

9. How is it that "universal green OA" makes "journal affordability… far, far less important and urgent"? Journals still need to be paid for, don't they?

Institutional subscriptions are paying the cost of journal publication today. If and when mandated green OA makes subscriptions unsustainable, it will release those funds to pay for gold OA.

10. How do institutions know whether "users find universal green OA sufficient for their usage needs" so they can "cancel the subscriptions in which they were locked"?

When their users tell them they don't need the subscriptions any more, because they can access the free green OA versions online, and that is enough for their purposes. (This will not happen journal by journal, because green OA grows anarchically, across journals; it will only happen once green OA is at or near 100%, globally.)

11. How do we know that all "institutions will have the… subscription [cancelation] savings [to] pay the gold OA publishing costs for their individual outgoing articles"? Won't those that have more "individual outgoing articles" be paying more?

After green OA has becomes universal, the essential publication costs will shrink radically (no more need for paper edition, online edition, access-provision, or archiving). The sole remaining essential cost will be peer review. Once this is charged on a no-fault basis (per round of review) rather than per publication (charging all the rejected papers to the accepted authors, like a shop-lifting surcharge). Its annual cost -- my guess is about $200 per round of refereeing, with "no-fault peer review" -- will be far lower than the annual windfall subscription cancelation savings of even the most research-active universities.

12. If publishers "phas[e] out… print editions… and offload access provision and archiving (and their costs) onto… institutional repositories…[and] the green OA version… becom[es] the… version of record," don't institutions still bear the costs? And is the author's final draft fit for the record?

Institutions pay only the costs of peer review. The costs of producing the publisher's print and online editions are gone. And the costs of access-provision and archiving are distributed across the global network of institutional repositories, which are a part of essential institutional online infrastructure (serving many other purposes besides OA). The fraction of that infrastructure cost per paper will be negligible.

13. "If publishing costs… scale down to just… peer review," what keeps those costs from rising -- and keeps the peer review quality standards from falling?

Peers review for free. Charging for peer review on a no-fault basis (per round of review) rather than per publication (charging all the rejected papers to the accepted authors) eliminates the publisher's temptation to lower standards so as to publish more papers and make more money. The charge per round of no-fault peer review (about $200) will be kept fair by inter-journal competition. If anything, it will be the higher-standard peer review that will cost more, because meeting the standards of the higher quality journals will confer more value.

14. Why do "institutions and funders [need to] mandat[e] green OA first, rather than [just] paying… for gold OA? Can't the research community just stop publishing in and subscribing to journals that don't convert to gold OA?

See 3, above.

Stevan Harnad
EnablingOpenScholarship