Lord Martin Rees, President of the Royal Society, has written a
reply (7 Dec) to the
Open Letter by Fellows of the Royal Society (7 Dec) dissenting from the
Royal Society position statement on 'open access' (24 Nov)
Because Lord Rees's text is only available as a page image, I have not yet been able to quote/comment it directly.
However, the following text, distributed to the press last week by a spokesman for the Royal Society, contains some of the same verbatim text; I have commented on it for now. These comments should not, however, be construed as comments on Lord Rees's version (for which I hope someone will send me the digital text: I hope distributing it as a page-image was not designed to fend of quote/commenting!)
Royal Society: "We have today received a collective letter regarding the Society's policy on 'open access', signed by a small number of the 1274 Fellows of the Royal Society. The letter appears to reflect a misunderstanding of a re-statement of the Society's position which was published on 24 November 2005."
The number of dissenting fellows is
growing daily. More important, the substance of their questions and criticism will have to be dealt with openly now.
Royal Society: "The Council of the Royal Society considered the issue of 'open access' in February 2004 before publication of a submission to the inquiry into scientific publications by the House of Commons select committee on science and technology in March 2004. The latest position statement and the Society's submission to RCUK's consultation on access to research outputs, which was also published on 24 November, are both consistent with the Society's evidence to the select committee."
(1) What consultation was there with the 1274 Fellows about
that original Royal Society
position statement in February 2004?
(2) That was a submission to the House of Commons select committee deliberations a year and a half ago. That committee has since published an
outcome, followed by many further developments,
worldwide as well as in the UK, such as the
RCUK policy proposal, which acted upon the committee's principal
recommendation, which was even referred to approvingly by the government (even as it rejected the committee's other recommendations).
(3) Were all of these subsequent developments taken into consideration, and were the 1274 Fellows informed? Were their views sought? Was there consultation? Or are the dissenting 46 (now 59 and growing) the only ones who have even had a chance to make their views heard?
Royal Society: "The Royal Society certainly does not, as the collective letter implies, take a 'negative stance' on open access. We are simply concerned that open access is achieved without the risk of unintended damage to peer-review, quality control and long term accessibility of the scientific literature."
These are abstract principles. The RCUK is trying to put them into practice. The concrete question on the table is whether the RS is for or against the immediate implementation of the already long-delayed RCUK self-archiving policy. It is quite clear that the RS statement is against this immediate implementation, requesting still further delay (after over a year's worth of time to consult and inform, which seems to have been used instead largely to ignore and filibuster).
Indeed, warnings, embargoes and filibusters seem to be the only substantive contribution the RS has thus far made, by way of a stance of any kind.
Royal Society: "The Royal Society is absolutely supportive of the principle of open access and is committed to the widest possible dissemination of research outputs." [emphasis added]
This is more than just the repetition of an abstract principle: It seems to be a statement that is in direct contradiction with what the RS is actually doing, which is to try to defer and deter "
the widest possible dissemination of research outputs," as proposed by the RCUK (and many others).
Royal Society: "The Society is itself a delayed open access publisher, providing free access after 12 months, and provides immediate access to researchers in developing countries and also to scientific papers that are of major public interest - for example the results of the farm scale evaluation of genetically modified crops."
There is no such thing as "delayed open access publishing", otherwise all publishers are "delayed open access publishers", some merely having very long delay periods, corresponding to human mortality and the heat death of the universe. The Royal Society, like all non-OA publishers, is an embargoed-access publisher, and that is just fine:
The RCUK is not proposing to require publishers to become OA publishers. It is proposing to require RCUK fundees to provide "
the widest possible dissemination" for their own (funded) research articles -- by supplementing the publisher-based paid-access version with a free online version for those would-be users worldwide who cannot afford access to the former.
The RS is encouraged to continue its own admirable efforts to widen access to its publications, but it should refrain from trying to narrow the efforts of the RCUK to do likewise with its own funded research output.
Royal Society: "However, there is understandable concern that, if researchers can access large numbers of final versions of journal papers from repositories, then they will not be prepared to subscribe to these journals. The Society is not in favour of policies that might reduce scholarly communication by undermining the established subscription model of publishing before the alternatives (such as author-pays journals) have been fully explored and have been shown to be viable in the long term."
The author of this statement for the press (who, I am guessing, represents the publishing tail, not the research head, of that venerable institution) is here demonstrating that no attention has been paid to the
accumulated experimental evidence (which is that self-archiving has had no effect at all on subscriptions -- even in the fields where it has already been going on for over 14 years and reached 100% years ago: The The two physics Learned Societies, the American Physical Society and the Institute of Physics, have
reported that they support self-archiving, host an archive for self-archiving, and can detect no sign of its "undermining the established subscription model".
To repeat: the RCUK proposal is not to require the "author pays" or any other publishing model. It is to require self-archiving for the sake of "
the widest possible dissemination of [RCUK]
research outputs." This RS publications representative, in contrast, seems to be arguing for delaying this, as long as possible (after an already long and needless delay). This is not the open-access mentality, but the mentality of filibusters and embargoes -- the last thing that scientific research needs from its own Learned Society.
Royal Society: "The Royal Society is opposed to the proposal issued for consultation by RCUK, which is predicated on a number of unresolved issues, to require researchers in all disciplines to deposit papers in repositories after publication. We believe that any decisions that impact on something as important as the future of scholarly communication should be based on sound evidence. Our published statements on this subject, which have been discussed extensively by the Council of the Royal Society, outline a number of questions that have been raised with us as part of this debate." "One of the main issues is whether the various alternative models are appropriate to all disciplines. Many of signatories of the letter in circulation are from the life sciences and may not realise that concerns about RCUK's proposals have been raised with the Society by the mathematics, chemistry and physics communities."
(1) The RCUK is not proposing an "alternative model" for publishing or publishers: It is proposing that RCUK fundees self-archive their research articles for "
the widest possible dissemination of research outputs."
(2) There is zero evidence that self-archiving "undermin[es] the established subscription model of publishing".
(3) All the
experimental evidence to date in the field that actually has the empirical data, physics, is that 100% self-archiving can and does co-exist peacefully with "the established subscription model of publishing".
(4) The
empirical data on the research-impact enhancing benefits of OA self-archiving come from all fields (physical sciences, biological sciences, social sciences and humanities): No discipline fails to benefit from "
the widest possible dissemination of research outputs."
I hope this makes clear how little it means to profess to support high-minded principles in the abstract, while concretely opposing their practice on the ground (by trying to delay and deter them under the pretext that first still further "evidence needs to be collected". This is a good recipe for embargoing "
the widest possible dissemination of research outputs" till doomsday (on the strength of nothing but an empirically groundless doomsday prophecy) rather than promoting it.
Royal Society: "In view of the importance of this issue, and the very significant long-term consequences that changes in policy could have, we believe that more evidence needs to be collected. As contribution to this evidence base, we believe that a study should be commissioned to assess the relative merits of the various models that have been proposed under the rather broad banner of 'open access', including that outlined by RCUK in its consultation document."
Again, the non-sequitur that the RCUK is proposing a "model" rather than simply proposing to self-archive, on the basis of the cumulated experimental evidence of its positive effects on research and its absence of negative effects on publishing. (To call this a "model" is to conflate OA publishing with OA self-archiving in order to try to defer/deter OA self-archiving as if it were an alternative publishing model, rather than what it really is: an author practice of supplementing access to the publisher's version with access to the author's version for those would-be users who cannot afford access to the publisher's version -- for the sake of "
the widest possible dissemination of research outputs.")
Royal Society: "Such a study should assess what potential benefits and drawbacks could result from changing current practices to each of the proposed new models."
No new models are being proposed. Self-archiving is being proposed.
Royal Society: "It would need to examine how these benefits and drawbacks may vary from discipline to discipline and the impacts on researchers who may not be funded through traditional routes."
All disciplines have already been demonstrated to benefit from "
the widest possible dissemination of research outputs". (Why on earth would one even have expected otherwise?)
Funding has absolutely nothing to do with it (other than that RCUK is a research-funder, proposing to require "
the widest possible dissemination of [RCUK]
research outputs").
What the RS publishing representative is probably single-mindedly focusing on here, and what he means by "funding" is, of course, the funding of the "author-pays" model -- which is not what the RCUK is proposing to require at all!
(The RCUK has merely, along with
requiring self-archiving,
offered to help pay author OA publishing costs if/when needed: a rather innocent and generous proposal about which the RS should have nothing to say one way or the other; indeed, the RS itself helps pay OA publishing costs!)
Royal Society: "Reliable evidence would allow the research community as a whole, including RCUK, to make better informed decisions about whether changes in current practice are desirable. We have indicated to RCUK that we would be happy to discuss with them how such a study might be taken forward."
Again, the RS rep is talking about changes in publishing practice, which the RCUK is not (and cannot) require. The RCUK is proposing to require that its fundees provide "
the widest possible dissemination of [RCUK]
research outputs" -- by self-archiving them in their institutional repositories.
How and why would further study of hypothetical changes in a publishing model that the RCUK is
not proposing clarify whether RCUK should or should not go ahead with what they
are proposing, which is to require that its fundees provide "
the widest possible dissemination of [RCUK]
research outputs" -- by self-archiving them?
Royal Society: "We are also aware of a report that appeared in 'The Times Higher Education Supplement' a few weeks ago suggesting that RCUK was delaying publication of its proposals in light of pressure from commercial publishers of scientific journals. We feel that the scientific community should also be aware of the many issues that have been raised by the learned societies and professional associations. These not-for-profit organisations publish more than a third of all scientific journals and use their publishing surpluses to fund activities such as academic conferences and public lectures."
Repeating the same incoherent non-sequitur louder, and in unison with others who have voiced it, does not make it one bit more coherent or compelling.
Royal Society: "A letter from Lord Rees of Ludlow responding to the signatories of the collective letter is being published on the Royal Society's website."
I look forward to responding to a digital draft of
Lord Rees's reply as soon it is made openly accessible...
Stevan Harnad
