This is the text of the letter that will appear in
Research Fortnight. That's half of what I submitted. The full text I submitted follows immediately afterward.
Letter to appear in Research Fortnight
In its editorial in the last issue,
Research Fortnight declares neutrality and in the same breath breaches it:
"Research Fortnight does not publish learned journals and has no reason to defend commercial publishers, but the publishers are right when they say that self-archiving as proposed by Research Councils UK will stop new journals being launched and cause existing journals to close."
There is a profound conflict of interest between - on the one hand - what is in the best interests of research, researchers, their institutions, their funding councils and the tax-paying public that funds the research and - on the other hand - what is in the best interests of the publishing community. Research Fortnight's position is virtually identical with that of the publishing community, as expressed most vocally by Sally Morris of the Association for Learned and Professional Society Publishers.
The concerns of the publishing community are with preventing any risk of subscription cancellations that might be induced by self-archiving. But self-archiving has now been going on for over 14 years, and in physics reached 100 per cent in some fields years ago. Yet both of the major physics publishers (the American Physical Society and the Institute of Physics) report that (1) they detect no diminished subscriptions due to self-archiving, (2) they do not consider self-archiving a threat, and (3) they cooperate with and even host a mirror site of the physics self-archives at their own websites.
Hence the hypothetical risk from which publishers seek protection does not even have any objective evidence in its support. The evidence is that self-archiving and journal-publishing co-exist peacefully. In contrast, the objective evidence for the actual benefits of self-archiving to research exists and is very strong: Articles that are self-archived are cited (hence used, applied and built upon) 50 per cent - 250 per cent more than articles that are not.
Full submitted text (including what will not appear):
Research Councils UK (RCUK) have proposed mandating that all RCUK fundees must deposit ("self-archive") the final drafts of their research on the web, free for all would-be users whose institutions cannot afford the published version, as a condition of receiving public funding, in order to maximise the usage and impact of their UK research output, and thereby the return on the UK public's investment in funding it. RF declares neutrality, and in the same breath breaches it:
"Research Fortnight does not publish learned journals and has no reason to defend commercial publishers, but the publishers are right when they say that self-archiving as proposed by Research Councils UK will stop new journals being launched and cause existing journals to close."
There is a profound conflict of interest between what is in the best interests of research, researchers, their institutions, their funding councils, and the tax-paying public that funds the research, on the one hand, and what is in the best interests of the publishing community on the other hand. RF's position is virtually identical with that of the publishing community, as expressed most vocally by Sally Morris of the Association for Learned and Professional Society Publishers (ALPSP).
The concerns of the publishing community are with preventing any risk of subscription cancellations that might be induced by self-archiving. But self-archiving has now been going on for over 14 years, and in physics reached 100% in some fields years ago, yet both of the major physics publishers (APS and IOP) report that (1) they detect no diminished subscriptions due to self-archiving, (2) they do not consider self-archiving a threat, and (3) they cooperate with and even host a mirror site of the Physics self-archives at their own websites.
Hence the hypothetical risk from which publishers seek protection does not even
have any objective evidence in its support, all evidence being that
self-archiving and journal-publishing co-exist peacefully. In contrast, the
objective evidence for the actual benefits of self-archiving to research exists
and is very strong: Articles that are self-archived are cited (hence used,
applied and built upon) 50%-250% more than articles that are not. I did a
matchbox calculation showing that since only 15% of UK articles are currently
being self-archived this amounts to a loss of at least 50% x 85% = £1.5 billion
worth of potential return on RCUK's annual £3.5 billion research investment,
reckoning that return in terms of lost potential research usage. RF
wrote:
"This argument... [not] peer-reviewed or published... is so
ludicrous it would be a waste of space bothering to knock it down."
A transparent match-box calculation whose outcome seems to be uncongenial to
some ears is discounted by RF for not having been "peer-reviewed." One wonders if, following the same logic, RF would have discounted the following unrefereed observation:
Prior (published) evidence has shown that placing unused batteries (cost, £1 apiece) in the refrigerator increases their hours of usage by 50%, but only 15% of users refrigerate them. We accordingly point out here the following match-box calculation: The 85% of battery-users who are not refrigerating their batteries are losing 50p's worth of potential usage, hence 50p's worth of value for their money.
Ludicrous? In need of peer review? A waste of space to bother refuting? Or dismissed only as a consequence of having listened only to the battery-makers who say that self-refrigerating "will stop new battery-makers being launched and cause existing battery-makers to close" rather than to the needs of the battery-using (and subsidising) public?
Stevan Harnad
