Gold Fever and Trojan Folly

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SUMMARY: Jan Velterop recommends, without any supporting argument, that at a time when publication costs are still being fully covered by subscriptions, research funders and institutions should not mandate Green OA self-archiving, because that would (according to Jan) be merely a "cheap palliative," not a "full cure".
    A full cure would be to double-pay for Gold OA (double, because publication costs are still being covered by subscriptions) until publishers voluntarily pass on their excess revenues by gradually discounting and eventually phasing out subscriptions.
    Our disease, it appears, is not our lack of OA (for mandating Green OA would provide 100% OA); our disease is our paying for publication in the wrong way (via subscriptions rather than publication charges). And the reason the "cheap palliative" of mandating Green OA is a bad idea (according to Jan) is that it might cause subscriptions to be cancelled.
    What Jan does not explain is why not-paying for publication in the right way is our disease, rather than not-having research access -- for it is access to research that the OA movement is all about, and 100% research access -- not something else -- that OA is meant to provide.
    Nor does Jan explain why 100% Green OA is not a cure for this lack of research access: Either the 100% OA generated by the Green OA mandates will eventually cause subscriptions to be cancelled so they no longer cover publication costs or it will not. If it does not, then Green OA mandates will merely have generated 100% OA. If it does, then Green OA mandates will also have generated a transition to Gold OA, along with releasing the money (the windfall subscription savings) out of which to pay the Gold OA publication charges without having to find the extra money to double-pay (for publication charges on top of subscriptions). It is not at all clear why Jan regards this as "cheap palliative care" rather than a "full cure," either way.
    If, that is, Jan is really for OA, rather than something else.

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On Sat, 10 Mar 2007, Jan Velterop, of Springer Open Choice, wrote in liblicense:

JV: "The Howard Hughes (HHMI-Elsevier) deal is not a setback for open access, even if it is not the greatest imaginable step forwards perhaps."

It is not a setback for the minuscule number of articles for which HHMI will finance paid (Gold) OA. It is a setback for all the other articles that could be made (Green) OA through mandated author self-archiving, for free, while subscriptions are still continuing to pay the publication costs.

It is not only a waste of money, but it plays into the hands of those who are trying to delay or derail Green self-archiving mandates at all costs.

JV: "To knock the HHMI for getting into this deal is short-sighted."

It is HHMI that is being short-sighted (and gullible). HHMI ought instead simply to mandate Green OA self-archiving, and to leave it at that.

JV: "And subject lines like 'Trojan Horse' with their insidious negativity raise the suspicion that the agenda of some list participants is not really 'open access', but a desire to get rid of publishers or of the notion that publishing, including open access publishing, actually costs money."

Nonsense. Open Choice is a Trojan Horse if it is taken as a pretext for paying for Gold OA instead of mandating Green OA. No one is trying to get rid of publishers. We are trying to get rid of access-barriers. Green OA does just that. And while subscriptions are still being (amply) paid for, no one is unaware of the fact that publishing costs money. What is urgently needed today is not money to pay for Gold OA, but mandates to provide Green OA.

JV: "It's a delusion that one can get open access by self-archiving mandates that imply having to rely on librarians to keep paying for subscriptions to keep journals alive."

Institutions are paying for subscriptions today. That is no delusion.

There is little OA today. That is no delusion.

Green self-archiving mandates will generate 100% OA. That is no delusion.

What happens to subscriptions after that is speculation, not delusion.

JV: "Or is the idea that librarians keep paying for journals of which the articles are available with open access part of the proposed mandates?"

Institutions are paying for librarians today. That is not proposed; that is already going on.

What is not already going on is OA self-archiving.

That is what the Green mandates are for.

Whether and when institutions will cancel subscriptions because of mandated Green OA is a purely speculative matter, today. What is not speculative is that if and when institutions ever do cancel subscriptions, that money will then be freed to pay for Gold OA costs; not before. Nor is it speculation that Green OA will already have provided 100% OA by then.

JV: "Authors can self-publish easily these days and provide open access to their articles to their hearts' content."

Why is Jan telling us this? OA is not -- and never has been -- about self-publishing; nor is it about unpublished articles. It is about providing Open Access to peer-reviewed, published articles.

JV: "Once they involve a publisher, though, they don't do that out of altruistic motives."

No. Nor does the publisher. But publishers are being paid in full, today, by subscriptions, whereas Open Access is not being provided, today. And consequently research impact is needlessly being lost today.

It would not just be altruism but profligacy to double-pay for Gold OA today. And it would be (and is) not altruistic but foolhardy in the extreme to continue doing without OA, and with the attendant daily loss in research impact and progress, for failure to mandate Green OA.

(Foolhardy for the research community, and the public that funds it, I mean: Not necessarily foolhardy for the publishing community!)

JV: "They don't 'give' their articles to publishers. They come to ask for a 'label', a 'mark', an official journal reference that makes their article from a piece of text, perhaps interesting, but not recognised by the academic community, into a formally peer-reviewed and published article. It's not the publishers that compel them to do that."

I don't know why we are being regaled with all this rhetorical complexity: Researchers submit their papers to journals for two reasons:

(1) to get them peer-reviewed and

(2) to provide access to them.

That is what subscriptions are already paying for. OA is for those would-be users who cannot afford access to the subscription version.

It is not authors who seek or get the revenues from subscriptions, it is publishers. No altruism on either side. And the only thing missing, in the online age, is OA. And Green OA mandates will provide that.

JV: "And publishers cannot provide those services, on the scale they are needed, on a philanthropic basis."

No one is asking them to: Subscriptions are paying, amply. OA is about those users who cannot afford access to the subscription version.

JV: "This may be possible for a number of small journals, and where it is possible it deserves to be done that way and probably is already."

Jan (and the publishing community) keep talking about journals and journal cost-recovery models. Fine.

The research community is talking about OA, and impact-loss-recovery methods.

The only tried, tested, successful method of impact-loss-recovery within immediate reach is mandating OA self-archiving. That has nothing to do with journal cost-recovery models. Jan is talking at cross-purposes with OA, with his fixation on payment models (when there is no non-payment problem today, whereas there is a no-access problem today).

In thus talking at cross-purposes, Jan (and those of the same persuasion) are standing in the way of a tried, tested, successful, and immediately reachable means of solving the access problem. They are instead promoting a Trojan Horse.

JV: "But the worldwide scientific enterprise needs sustainable large-scale industrial-strength publishing to deal with the publication of more than a million new articles a year (and in terms of submissions a multiple of that, given that most papers are rejected at least once)."

Can we transfer the problem of the "sustainability of large-scale industrial-strength publishing" to another venue than discussions of OA?

OA is an immediate, pressing, and immediately solvable problem for research and researchers. Its solution is for research institutions and funders to mandate Green OA, as a few have already begun doing, others have proposed to do, and researchers and institutions have petitioned them to do.

The quest for a solution to the "the problem of the sustainability of large-scale industrial-strength publishing" can proceed in parallel with the quest for OA, but it should not be conflated with it, or get in the way of it.

To oppose Green OA mandates and urge "Open Choice" in their stead is precisely the Trojan Horse against which I am warning.

JV: "The HHMI deal is a very positive step towards sustainable open access and should be recognised for that. The 'cure' of OA publishing is to be preferred to the 'palliative' of self-archiving. The derision that funding agencies suffer who put open access first, and not cost reduction, is uncalled-for."

Who on earth is talking about cost-reduction?

The disease is needless, ongoing, online research access/impact loss. The cure is OA. Green OA is OA. It might be merely a "palliative" for "the problem of the sustainability of large-scale industrial-strength publishing" but it is a cure for the disease of research access/impact loss.

What deserves exposure and derision is the attempt to deter and devalue and deride a sure and reachable immediate cure for the disease of research/impact loss in the name of some other uncured "disease" that has next to nothing to do with the research community's immediate, pressing, and solvable access/impact needs today.

JV: "If a full, safe cure for a disease is possible, though not necessarily cheaper than lifelong symptom-management and the real possibility of a much shorter life, is it better to go for cheap palliative care than for this full cure?"

As usual, we are talking about two different "diseases." One -- "the sustainability of large-scale industrial-strength publishing" -- is a long-term, hypothetical money-matter with which the publishing community is concerned; the other -- research access/impact loss -- is an immediate, urgent, ongoing practical research-matter with which the research community is concerned -- and it has an immediate, practical solution: Mandated Green OA.

To deter, defer or derail the research community's solution to the research community's problem, by portraying the publishing community's industrial long-term sustainability problem as if it were the same problem as the research community's immediate access/impact problem is simply false and misleading.

To oppose the research community's immediately reachable solution to its access/impact problem (mandated Green OA) in favour of paying for Gold OA today is nothing more nor less than what I have called it: The promotion of a Trojan Horse.

Caveat Emptor.

Stevan Harnad
American Scientist Open Access Forum