Wednesday, February 23. 2011The Hungarian Philosopher Affair: On Hornok on 1919HORNOK (full posting): Quote/commentary on Hornok posting: HARNAD: Professor Hornok’s posting gives what sounds like a very sanguine public statement about the health of Hungary’s current grant funding system (although he neglects to mention how Mr. Budai picks his targets!). But reading Professor Hornok’s account, one would wonder why Professor Palinkas, the President of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (in a statement whose URL is helpfully provided by Professor Magyar in one of his postings) wrote: PALINKAS (Jan 31):HARNAD: It is especially reassuring to hear the following from Professor Hornok: HORNOK (Feb 4):HARNAD:One becomes, however, a trifle less reassured, when one hears the following words from the same Professor Hornok, spoken (in Hungarian) in a rather different context (the Batthyany Circle of Professors) only a few days earlier (translated here): HORNOK:HARNAD: Hungary needs reform, not revenge. What foreign researchers and funders and expatriate Hungarian researchers need if they are to be attracted to Hungary is a clear, efficient, transparent new system of rules and procedures for research funding, with ongoing auditing to ensure that current and future research funds are indeed being spent according to the new rules and procedures -- not an arbitrary, retroactive, selective show-trial for research funds allegedly misspent long ago, under the old system of rules and procedures, under another government. (The same constructive focus on reform rather than the vindictive focus on revenge might help solve other problems Hungary faces as well...) Stevan Harnad American Scientist Open Access Forum The Hungarian Philosopher Affair: On Vancsó on Smoke ScreensVANCSO (Full Posting): COMP/MOOT/CRIM & PRO/DEN HARNAD: I would like to suggest that we all use some abbreviations marking important distinctions that will make this discussion easier for observers to follow and understand: The allegations against the philosophers are of three fundamentally different kinds that need to be carefully distinguished. The first kind – “COMP” (for complaints) -- consists of the kinds of generic allegations that researchers everywhere often make about one another’s funding and about the funding system (the allotments were unfair, the system was unfair, etc.). The second kind – “CRIM” (for crimes) -- alleges that either rules or laws have been broken by the philosophers in question. The third kind – “MOOT” (for moot) – alleges that there were egregious practices by the philosophers in question – practices against which there should have been rules or laws, but those rules and laws do not yet exist, and did not exist at the time. If the reader does not keep clearly in mind the distinctions among generic and systemic complaints (COMP), allegations of practices that ought to be criminalized (MOOT) and allegations of criminality (CRIM), it will be impossible to follow the discussion or draw any coherent conclusion. At those polarized points in the discussion where the COMP/MOOT/CRIM distinction is particularly crucial, let us call the two contending sides “PRO” (for proponents of criminal allegations [CRIM] against the philosophers) and “DEN” (for deniers of CRIM allegations against the philosophers). It is the contention of PRO that the accused philosophers have committed crimes (CRIM) and that the deniers (DEN) are biased in favor of the accused, and trying to obstruct justice. It is the contention of DEN that no crimes (CRIM) have been committed by the accused philosophers, but, rather -- for undisclosed reasons, suspected to be a government policy of retribution against its predecessor government’s corruption and selective harassment of its current critics – COMP and MOOT have been systematically escalated by PRO into allegations of crime (CRIM) against the accused philosophers. In commenting and responding, it will be a great help if everyone identifies clearly when they are speaking of COMP, MOOT or CRIM (and, where relevant, whether their own position is PRO or DEN regarding CRIM in particular). Quote/Commentary on Vancso posting: VANCSO:HARNAD: It is important for everyone to note that all sides – both PRO and DEN – agree on this point. The inadequacy of the current funding system and the need for reform are not a point of disagreement. (1) Research funding requires a system of reliable, rigorous accountability, to make sure that funds are properly used, in accordance with explicit funding rules and procedures, as well as with the law of the land. (2) If the rules and procedures and/or the methods of auditing and accountability of the previous government’s funding system were inadequate (as everyone agrees they were) then that system of rules and procedures and its methods of auditing and accountability need to be reformed. And if the prior law of the land was not adequate, then that too must be changed. (3) But what is a first fundamental point of disagreement between PRO and DEN is that, if the prior system's rules and procedures and its methods of auditing and accountability were indeed inadequate and in need of reform (as everyone agrees they were) then what is needed is to reform the system, not to seek retroactive retribution against an arbitrarily targeted subset of scholars to avenge the fact that the prior system was inadequate. (4) The second fundamental point of disagreement between PRO and DEN is that if retrospective recriminations and retribution are to take priority over reform, then that retribution can only be done even-handedly: That means that either a systematic total audit must be done of all prior funding under the old system in the time-frame in question (the past ten years) -- or at least the systematic audit of a blind random sample -- to identify whether and which research projects have either violated the old rules or broken the existing laws (CRIM). (5) What is in no way acceptable or justifiable is to single out a handful of funded research projects a priori -- for whatever a priori reason, and certainly not COMP or MOOT reasons – for selective allegations of CRIM and selective investigations of CRIM -- without first having done a systematic and even-handed prior comparison with the rest of the research funded under the old system to see whether any egregious cases really emerge. (6) For if all or most or even many of the funded research projects during this period show the same symptoms of the inadequacy of the current funding system, then selectively singling out the accused – merely on COMP or MOOT grounds – is merely arbitrary scape-goating and harassment. VANCSO:HARNAD: Yes indeed, but has fraud (CRIM) been demonstrated? Has criminality been proven? Are these not rather strong words to be used when nothing has been proven and the only thing that seems certain is that the rules and procedures and the auditing and answerability of the existing funding system were inadequate? Performing in accordance with the rules and procedures and the auditing and answerability of an inadequate system (whether COMP or MOOT) is not synonymous with CRIM. And if the presumption is that there have indeed been significant violations of the existing rules and procedures of the existing (inadequate) system during the time period in question (CRIM), then on what basis have the 5-6 accused philosophers in particular been singled out for this presumption? Violations (if any) of the existing rules and procedures (CRIM) of an inadequate system could have been frequent or rare or anything in between. The way to find out is through a systematic audit (total or blind/random), across all funded fields. VANCSO:HARNAD: This is indisputably true, PRO and DEN both agree on it, and if it had been decided to do an exhaustive retroactive audit of all research projects funded during the decade in question – or even a blind random sample across projects and fields – no one could or would have cried foul, either at the audit or the outcome (if the outcome was that some projects had either broken rules or the law [CRIM], whereas many or most had not). It is a pragmatic question whether -- after 10 years of implementing a funding system whose rules and procedures, and methods of accountability, were inadequate -- the best use of time and funds is to do a total retroactive audit in order to find and punish prior infractions, or rather to channel efforts into designing and implementing a reformed funding system, with clear rules and procedures, and rigorous methods of ongoing auditing and accountability. But whether the decision is for proactive reform or retroactive retribution, the methods have to be fair and unbiased. Singling out a handful of philosophers for selective scrutiny, with no population baseline for comparison, is at best an ad hoc fishing expedition and at worst ad hominem harassment. VANCSO:HARNAD: Undisputed. This is not the subject of disagreement. VANCSO:HARNAD: If the initiative in question here is the Open Letter -- by External and Honorary members of the Hungarian Academy of Science asking the President to support the accused philosophers and oppose those accusing them of unproven wrongdoing -- it is not at all clear why Professor Vancso describes this as interference in a legal inquiry. If public accusations (PRO) of criminality (CRIM) against the philosophers by the press and public officials (including the President of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences) are not interfering with any legal inquiry, then how are public statements in their defense (DEN) doing so? Is it not reasonable to ask why the inquiry was directed at this group of philosophers? what the basis for the selection and comparison was? and why the outcome is being pre-judged and the accused being vilified in the Government-supported press when there has been no factual or juridical outcome VANCSO:HARNAD: Charges (CRIM) are easy to make, but what is the evidence, and what is the verdict? Under Hungary's tax laws (I am told), it is currently legal (MOOT) and widely done (among laymen, professionals and researchers alike) for individuals to receive income in private corporations that are taxed at lower rates than personal income. That sounds like one of the laws worth reforming. But it is not at all clear why these philosophers been singled out to be charged with this, since it is so widespread, and ostensibly legal (MOOT). Was a systematic audit done, and these philosophers turned out to be the only practitioners, or among the few? Or is the practice common, and they were singled out to be accused of it for another reason? VANCSO:HARNAD: It is not at all clear why claiming that crimes (CRIM) have been committed and proven (as is already repeatedly being done in this Forum) is not "jumping to conclusions prior to unveiling justice" (PRO) whereas saying they have not (DEN), is. VANCSO:HARNAD: The Open Letter is an Open Letter, and of course Internal members are free to co-sign. They were not explicitly invited in order not to put them on the spot, one way or the other. Surely this point is not difficult to understand. VANCSO:HARNAD: The defenders against the accusations (DEN) certainly share Professor Vancso's belief that no one should rush into premature and unsubstantiated conclusions without facts. But it is unfortunately not at all clear that the promulgators of the accusations themselves (PRO) share that belief. I am not sure what Professor Vancso means by "an emotional discussion broke out also in this forum" (if by forum he means the exchange of emails among the signatories of the Open Letter. Professor Vancso wrote his own response to the Open Letter on the day it was sent (January 28), branching it to the first 3 signatories and the President of the Academy, and to my knowledge, the only other communication was my invitation to him (on February 5) to post his views to ScienceInsider (which he has now kindly done, for which many thanks!). But what was the “emotional discussion”? Is Professor Vancso referring to the present forum (ScienceInsider?) (Perhaps there was another series of email exchanges to which not everyone on Professor Vancso’s original CC list was privy?) Apart from this, I would add that it is indeed true, quite symmetrically, that both the PRO and DEN lack facts. However, there is also an asymmetry that is not being very conscientiously acknowledged: the presumption of innocence until/unless guilt is proven. Already several who have posted to ScienceInsider have illustrated how confidently one can pass from acknowledging that no one knows whether crimes have been committed at all, to speaking of the obviousness of the crimes (CRIM) -- indeed the long history of crimes -- of the accused. There is no smokescreen of "general academic principles" here (are principles smokescreens?): It is not known that anyone has committed any crime. Hence the only question is, why are so many people speaking about CRIM in connection with the philosophers in question? Why were they singled out? And why is there this polarization between PRO and DEN when everyone (including the Academy) should be taking the side of presumptive innocence until/unless facts prove otherwise VANCSO:HARNAD: Again, there is no disagreement at all that ugly and polarized accusations will not help unveil the truth. But let us not forget that the only accused ones are the philosophers in question, and they are accused of having committed crimes (CRIM); those ugly and polarized accusations against them are coming from their accusers (PRO); and the other side is defending (DEN) from them. Unlike the accused philosophers, no one is being accused (let alone prosecuted) of a crime by the defenders. (Please let us not confuse the fact that (1) the two sides, PRO and DEN, do not always have the most flattering opinion of one another with (2) accusations of crime [CRIM].) My own guess (but Professor Vancso can correct me on this) is that the "emotional discussion" to which Professor Vancso refers was in fact the "torrent of messages both condemning and supporting" his having signed the Open Letter that eventually persuaded Dan Dennett – the kindest and fairest of men, someone I love and admire, and to whom I am greatly indebted personally -- to ask me to transmit to the President of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences the message that "I simply do not know enough about the specific issues to have a responsible opinion about how the principles enunciated in the letter, to which I do fully subscribe, should be applied in this situation... I must withdraw my signature in order not to be drawn into this polarized atmosphere." (The resultant emotion in the PRO press all the ensuing week was jubilation! The polarized atmosphere is now on display here.) My hope is that the ScienceInsider forum will show that when it comes to taking sides between accusing (PRO) of crime (CRIM) and defending against accusations of crime (DEN), the truth is not necessarily in the middle. But first we need a few more iterations of this discussion to get all the prima facie allegations (COMP, MOOT and CRIM) (and the motives for making them) out into the open. Stevan Harnad American Scientist Open Access Forum The Hungarian Philosopher Affair: On "Magyar" On White Collar Crime
"MAGYAR" (full posting): Quote/commentary on "MAGYAR" posting: "MAGYAR":HARNAD: Reminder to the reader in this litany of allegations: Is this a claim that the law has been broken (CRIM)? Or that there were practices that were permissible under the current funding system that ought to me made impermissible (MOOT)? Or is this just a generic complaint that researchers have received more funding than I think they deserved (COMP)? "MAGYAR":HARNAD: Surely whether or not there has been “an obvious violation of the law” (CRIM) is for the courts to decide. Apart from that, all we have here is a confident accusation of criminality (PRO). "MAGYAR":HARNAD: It is not clear whether under these circumstances either PRO or DEN are a reliable source of facts.But is it obvious that if a philosopher is “listed” in one of the projects this means he is biased, or “part of the plot” (what plot?). Is this fact obvious in the same way that there has been “an obvious violation of the law” (CRIM)? "MAGYAR":HARNAD: The government-side press has been public about the alleged evidence of the alleged crime (PRO). That is undisputed. There is some difficulty, however, in following the logic of what follows: Should the non-government-side press (DEN) have accepted those allegations as proven? Should it have published an admission of guilt (CRIM)? Perhaps a disclosure of the cost of the dinners? What is the point? "MAGYAR": “So, what Harnad and Bohannon say is just ignorance. They don't mention the money that was pocketed by these philosophers through contracts signed with themselves, with their very own businesses, etc. All these facts are public, including the amounts that landed in their hands. And at least Harnad should be able to read Hungarian...”HARNAD: It is not at all obvious to what extent these are either facts or public. But what is most non-obvious of all is whether they are crimes (CRIM), i.e., illegal. And if they are not illegal, whether they ought to be made illegal (MOOT) – or whether instead they were legitimate uses of the awarded funds to pay for salaries or the conduct of research, and simply became the object of complaints (COMP) from those who were not awarded funds. None of this is at all obvious, whether or not one reads Hungarian, and regardless of whom one listens to. One can nevertheless form one’s own provisional judgment, and that can indeed be based on something that is obvious: That there is no basis – obvious or subtle -- for concluding that any crime (CRIM) has been committed; and hence that those who argue that it is obvious that a crime has been committed (PRO) are obviously wrong. Their motive is unclear, but it is clear that the accused philosophers (and any others who become similar targets) need to be defended against such confident allegations of “obvious” criminality. "MAGYAR":HARNAD: It is not clear whether Mr. "Magyar" is alleging that the drafters and the signatories of the Open Letter are obstructing justice. (If so, I don’t plan to try to sue him for libel!) As stated in the Open Letter, erroneous, hyperbolic and tendentious public assertions are made all the time in the media, worldwide, and are and should be ignored (especially when they are about (and by) researchers!). In Hungary today, though, it seems that certain kinds of tendentious public assertions (PRO) are not only given heed, but even acted upon (perhaps even encouraged) by the authorities. I know no reason not to have confidence in the freedom of the courts in Hungary; the grounds for confidence in the freedom of the press are perhaps not quite as firm. But is Mr. "Magyar" suggesting that if things are alleged in Magyar Nemzet that makes them facts? Or is it things that are alleged without a subsequent libel suit that thereby become facts? "MAGYAR":HARNAD: We would have to watch out indeed, if this were to become the way that facts are now determined in Hungary. Our Open Letter was not written to obstruct justice, but to try to preserve it – from this. Stevan Harnad American Scientist Open Access Forum Quod Erat ad Demonstrandum (QED)
[Note: This is a response to an anonymous posting to the ScienceInsider discussion forum. In Hungary, left-liberal critics are being systematically harassed in a smear campaign abetted by the Hungarian right-wing government. The ScienceInsider forum was intended to bring these tactics out into the open. Here is an instance where an anonymous poster tried such a smear tactic against me, suggesting that the reason I launched the Open Letter and campaign in support of the accused philosophers was for self-promotion, citing data on self-edits on my Wikipedia entry by way of incriminating evidence.]
I first posted the following to ScienceInsider, explaining why my reply would appear here rather than there: For the reasons already stated in the Anonymity FAQ, I won't respond on Science Insider to Anonymous's enterprising attempt to put a sinister spin on trivial Wikipedia data. But for those for whom the nonsense (and mischief) is not already transparent, I have responded openly on Open Access Archivangelism.1. Most Wikipedia authors and editors are anonymous, or, rather, pseudonymous. My decision to use my real name as my Wikipedia login -- the one that permitted "Anonymous" to make his shocking discovery -- is, as far as I know, relatively rare on Wikipedia. I did it very deliberately from the outset in 2005, because (for many reasons) I am opposed to anonymous, unanswerable Wikipedia puttering. 2. As far as I know, most contemporary academics who have a Wikipedia page either manage their own page or have their students do it. But few use their own names as their Wikipedia logins. 3. Hence it would have been impossible for Anonymous to make any objective comparisons between the number of self-edits I make on my own entry and the number of self-edits other authors make on their own entries. His data are hence just empty numerology -- all the moreso since my Wikipedia entry is relatively tiny, and the 43 corrections and updates I've done since 2005 have been tinier still. (E.g., I today removed -- for the third time [right there that's already 3/43 of the total edits since 2005 that Anonymous has so helpfully counted for me!] -- a misattribution someone kept adding, wrongly crediting me with contributions to the work of my mentor.) 4. Anonymous's accusations about violating the Wikipedia rules on "Autobiographies" and "Conflict of Interest" are nonsense not only because (i) managing one's own Wikipedia entry is permissible and widely done, but because (ii) I reveal my identity openly, hence anyone in the (extremely officious!) ranks of Wikipedia's self-appointed editorial hierarchy could at any time have blocked me for "self-promotion" on my entry if I had ever done anything that looked like self-promotion across all those years: "In clear-cut cases, it is permissible to edit pages connected to yourself. So, you can revert vandalism; but of course it has to be simple, obvious vandalism and not a content dispute. Similarly, you should feel free to remove mistaken or unreferenced out-of-date facts about yourself…. and so on."5. In reality, my Wikipedia entry is extremely short, low-key and (if I may say so) modest, among entries of academics (i.e., those who bother to have a Wikipedia entry at all -- or bother with policing their entry if others have created one for them). 6. Not only is my number of self-edits on my Wikipedia entry actually quite low for a current item that has been up since almost the inception of Wikipedia, but I didn't even create my entry! I discovered it there one day in 2005 -- and as I recall it turned out to have been just a bowdlerized cut/paste of the bio from my university staff page, apparently up there since about 2003; so my first edit was to cut it down in size. I've mostly been cleaning up the rot that keeps accumulating across the years since I first discovered it; and I occasionally do a reference update, including updating the photo (the original one, if I recall -- perhaps Anonymous can go and check to correct me? -- had been placed there from an old gif found in Google images). Now, when you are conducting an ad hoc smear campaign against someone you don't like and would love to discredit, you do the kind of Digging That Anonymous did; then you try to put the most sinister possible spin on whatever you think you've come up with (while claiming to just be reporting the objective facts); and if that fails, you get back to digging for and announcing something else. No target is immune to such a litany of innuendos; the charges are endless, and never admitted to have been refuted (like Freudian symptom-transfer, as soon as one fizzles, another one is launched to take its place, without acknowledgment, let alone apology), and it is never conceded that the whole process has been a farce, from beginning to interminable end, all in the service of relentless, malign ends. And this is exactly the kind of thing the Hungarian government, its unidentified informants and sleuths, and the government-side press have been doing in their still-growing campaign selectively directed against the philosophers (and others) they don't like and are bent on punishing. (What I encourage Anonymous To Do next is to go and check my research grants!)
(1) First, please let me cheerily admit what I have never denied: I do indeed speak, read and write Hungarian! (It's just that I have a hunch that it might perhaps be more useful to keep this discourse in a language that all witnesses can understand…) What I had cheerily denied (multiple times) was that I had ever before known (or known of) any of the accused scholars, or that any of them had previously known or contacted me, seeking help. I thereby had disappointingly to disconfirm the hopeful hypothesis of "Anonymous" (who was then going by the patriotic name of "Istvan Magyar" and apparently at a loss to fathom why else anyone could possibly have taken up the victims' cause) as to the real reason I had done so. But now at last Anonymous has astutely discovered my real reason: It was to enhance my Wikipedia profile! (2) I would be no less cheery, though, if "Anonymous" were eventually to find a way to calm his impulse to further enhance my Wikipedia profile by posting my name quite so frequently in the ScienceInsider forum! After all, all those unearned bonus hits in which my name is lately luxuriating are really owing only to having to keep invoking the Anonymity FAQ in declining to respond on ScienceInsider to "Anonymous's" enterprising, persistent but somewhat distracting antics; after all, that's not the only thing Science Forum was created to bring out in the open… Now a light-hearted hypothesis of my own: Since the "signature" of their tactics is so remarkably similar, would it not be an ironic coincidence if this decidedly "Anonymous" doppelganger turned out to be one and the same as that shadowy whistle-blower who had launched the entire philosopher affair with an anonymous police denunciation? Or are they just stylistic and ideological soul-mates? What is the real head-shaker in all this is not that there exist mischievous malcontents like "Anonymous" in Hungary -- they alas flower aplenty, everywhere on the planet -- but that an entire government would stoop to making common cause with their likes. I solemnly promise that if Anonymous and "Istvan Magyar" reveal their true identity I will publicly apologize to them both for the insult of having suspected them to be one and the same scallywag. Alas, different IPs for anonymous posters won't quite do the disentangling trick. And with the abrupt termination of "Istvan Magyar"'s omnipresence on this forum mysteriously coinciding with Anonymous's debut, and only the charming style and somewhat inquisitorial slant perduring, one can hardly be blamed for thinking... (though my conscience is a little relieved upon hearing that "IM"/A is not a stranger to being ill-used in internet discussions). Otherwise, the Anonymity FAQ is all I can offer by way of trying to make amends for "Double Trouble"'s travails. Stevan Harnad American Scientist Open Access Forum Critique of McCabe & Snyder: Online not= OA, and OA not= OA journal
Comments on:
The following quotes are from McCabe, MJ (2011) Online access versus open access. Inside Higher Ed. February 10, 2011.McCabe, MJ & Snyder, CM (2011) Did Online Access to Journals Change the Economics Literature? MCCABE: …I thought it would be appropriate to address the issue that is generating some heat here, namely whether our results can be extrapolated to the OA environment….If "selection bias" refers to authors' bias toward selectively making their better (hence more citeable) articles OA, then this was controlled for in the comparison of self-selected vs. mandated OA, by Gargouri et al (2010) (uncited in the McCabe & Snyder (2011) [M & S] preprint, but known to the authors -- indeed the first author requested, and received, the entire dataset for further analysis: we are all eager to hear the results). If "selection bias" refers to the selection of the journals for analysis, I cannot speak for studies that compare OA journals with non-OA journals, since we only compare OA articles with non-OA articles within the same journal. And it is only a few studies, like Evans and Reimer's, that compare citation rates for journals before and after they are made accessible online (or, in some cases, freely accessible online). Our principal interest is in the effects of immediate OA rather than delayed or embargoed OA (although the latter may be of interest to the publishing community). MCCABE: 2. There are at least 2 “flavors” found in this literature: 1. papers that use cross-section type data or a single observation for each article (see for example, Lawrence (2001), Harnad and Brody (2004), Gargouri, et. al. (2010)) and 2. papers that use panel data or multiple observations over time for each article (e.g. Evans (2008), Evans and Reimer (2009)).We cannot detect any mention or analysis of the Gargouri et al. paper in the M & S paper… MCCABE: 3. In our paper we reproduce the results for both of these approaches and then, using panel data and a robust econometric specification (that accounts for selection bias, important secular trends in the data, etc.), we show that these results vanish.We do not see our results cited or reproduced. Does "reproduced" mean "simulated according to an econometric model"? If so, that is regrettably too far from actual empirical findings to be anything but speculations about what would be found if one were actually to do the empirical studies. MCCABE: 4. Yes, we “only” test online versus print, and not OA versus online for example, but the empirical flaws in the online versus print and the OA versus online literatures are fundamentally the same: the failure to properly account for selection bias. So, using the same technique in both cases should produce similar results.Unfortunately this is not very convincing. Flaws there may well be in the methodology of studies comparing citation counts before and after the year in which a journal goes online. But these are not the flaws of studies comparing citation counts of articles that are and are not made OA within the same journal and year. Nor is the vague attribution of "failure to properly account for selection bias" very convincing, particularly when the most recent study controlling for selection bias (by comparing self-selected OA with mandated OA) has not even been taken into consideration. Conceptually, the reason the question of whether online access increases citations over offline access is entirely different from the question of whether OA increases citations over non-OA is that (as the authors note), the online/offline effect concerns ease of access: Institutional users have either offline access or online access, and, according to M & S's results, in economics, the increased ease of accessing articles online does not increase citations. This could be true (although the growth across those same years of the tendency in economics to make prepublication preprints OA [harvested by RepEc] through author self-archiving, much as the physicists had started doing a decade earlier in Arxiv, and computer scientists started doing even earlier [later harvested by Citeseerx] could be producing a huge background effect not taken into account at all in M & S's painstaking temporal analysis (which itself appears as an OA preprint in SSRN!). But any way one looks at it, there is an enormous difference between comparing easy vs. hard access (online vs. offline) and comparing access with no access. For when we compare OA vs non-OA, we are taking into account all those potential users that are at institutions that cannot afford subscriptions (whether offline or online) to the journal in which an article appears. The barrier, in other words (though one should hardly have to point this out to economists), is not an ease barrier but a price barrier: For users at nonsubscribing institutions, non-OA articles are not just harder to access: They are impossible to access -- unless a price is paid. (I certainly hope that M & S will not reply with "let them use interlibrary loan (ILL)"! A study analogous to M & S's online/offline study comparing citations for offline vs. online vs. ILL access in the click-through age would not only strain belief if it too found no difference, but it too would fail to address OA, since OA is about access when one has reached the limits of one's institution's subscription/license/pay-per-view budget. Hence it would again miss all the usage and citations that an article would have gained if it had been accessible to all its potential users and not just to those whose institutions could afford access, by whatever means.) It is ironic that M & S draw their conclusions about OA in economic terms (and, predictably, as their interest is in modelling publication economics) in terms of the cost/benefits, for an author, of paying to publish in an OA journal. concluding that since they have shown it will not generate more citations, it is not worth the money. But the most compelling findings on the OA citation advantage come from OA author self-archiving (of articles published in non-OA journals), not from OA journal publishing. Those are the studies that show the OA citation advantage, and the advantage does not cost the author a penny! (The benefits, moreover, accrue not only to authors and users, but to their institutions too, as the economic analysis of Houghton et al shows.) And the extra citations resulting from OA are almost certainly coming from users for whom access to the article would otherwise have been financially prohibitive. (Perhaps it's time for more econometric modeling from the user's point of view too…) I recommend that M & S look at the studies of Michael Kurtz in astrophysics. Those, too, included sophisticated long-term studies of the effect of the wholesale switch from offline to online, and Kurtz found that total citations were in fact slightly reduced, overall, when journals became accessible online! But astrophysics, too, is a field in which OA self-archiving is widespread. Hence whether and when journals go online is moot, insofar as citations are concerned. (The likely hypothesis for the reduced citations -- compatible also with our own findings in Gargouri et al -- is that OA levels the playing field for users: OA articles are accessible to all their potential usesr, not just to those whose institutions can afford toll access. As a result, users can self-selectively decide to cite only the best and most relevant articles of all, rather than having to make do with a selection among only the articles to which their institutions can afford toll access. One corollary of this [though probably also a spinoff of the Seglen/Pareto effect] is that the biggest beneficiaries of the OA citation advantage will be the best articles. This is a user-end -- rather than an author-end -- selection effect...) MCCABE: 5. At least in the case of economics and business titles, it is not even possible to properly test for an independent OA effect by specifically looking at OA journals in these fields since there are almost no titles that switched from print/online to OA (I can think of only one such title in our sample that actually permitted backfiles to be placed in an OA repository). Indeed, almost all of the OA titles in econ/business have always been OA and so no statistically meaningful before and after comparisons can be performed.The multiple conflation here is so flagrant that it is almost laughable. Online ≠ OA and OA ≠ OA journal. First, the method of comparing the effect on citations before vs. after the offline/online switch will have to make do with its limitations. (We don't think it's of much use for studying OA effects at all.) The method of comparing the effect on citations of OA vs. non-OA within the same (economics/business, toll-access) journals can certainly proceed apace in those disciplines, the studies have been done, and the results are much the same as in other disciplines. M & S have our latest dataset: Perhaps they would care to test whether the economics/business subset of it is an exception to our finding that (a) there is a significant OA advantage in all disciplines, and (b) it's just as big when the OA is mandated as when it is self-selected. MCCABE: 6. One alternative, in the case of cross-section type data, is to construct field experiments in which articles are randomly assigned OA status (e.g. Davis (2008) employs this approach and reports no OA benefit).And another one -- based on an incomparably larger N, across far more fields -- is the Gargouri et al study that M & S fail to mention in their article, in which articles are mandatorily assigned OA status, and for which they have the full dataset in hand, as requested. MCCABE: 7. Another option is to examine articles before and after they were placed in OA repositories, so that the likely selection bias effects, important secular trends, etc. can be accounted for (or in economics jargon, “differenced out”). Evans and Reimer’s attempt to do this in their 2009 paper but only meet part of the econometric challenge.M & S are rather too wedded to their before/after method and thinking! The sensible time for authors to self-archive their papers is immediately upon acceptance for publication. That's before the published version has even appeared. Otherwise one is not studying OA but OA embargo effects. (But let me agree on one point: Unlike journal publication dates, OA self-archiving dates are not always known or taken into account; so there may be some drift there, depending on when the author self-archives. The solution is not to study the before/after watershed, but to focus on the articles that are self-archived immediately rather than later.) Stevan Harnad Gargouri, Y., Hajjem, C., Lariviere, V., Gingras, Y., Brody, T., Carr, L. and Harnad, S. (2010) Self-Selected or Mandated, Open Access Increases Citation Impact for Higher Quality Research. PLOS ONE 5 (10). e13636 Harnad, S. (2010) The Immediate Practical Implication of the Houghton Report: Provide Green Open Access Now. Prometheus 28 (1): 55-59. Saturday, January 15. 2011The Long, Wrong Road to Open Access: Copyright NegotiationOn Fri, Jan 14, 2011, Andrew Stancliffe wrote on liblicense: "The UCLA Library is working with a faculty member here who has submitted an article to the journal Sleep. We advised the author to modify the author's agreement, using the SPARC author's addendum, to retain copyright. The author received a reply from Sleep, which rejected the change, stating "I have never heard of any journal doing this. Sleep would not publish any paper it does not hold copyright to."This is the royal road to decades and decades more of lost research access, progress and impact. It is the equivalent of trying to combat smoking by trying to persuade smokers to write individually to tobacco companies to ask them to manufacture fewer cigarettes. (1) The goal is to provide Open Access, not to modify author copyright agreements. (2) The SPARC author addendum is much too strong in any case: gratuitously and self-defeatingly strong: (3) No publisher permission is required by authors to deposit the full-text of their refereed, revised, accepted final drafts in their own institutional repositories, immediately upon acceptance for publication. (4) The bibliographic metadata (author, date, title, journal, etc.) are in any case immediately accessible to all would-be users. (5) The majority of journals (including just about all the top journals) have already formally endorsed setting access to the full text of the deposit as Open Access immediately upon deposit. (6) If, for the remaining minority of journals, the author wishes to observe a publisher embargo on Open Access, access to the deposit full-text can be set to "Closed Access" rather than "Open Access" during the embargo, and the author can email eprints to would-be users on request. (7) This provides immediate Open Access to the majority of deposits plus "Almost Open Access" to the remaining minority, thereby providing for all immediate research usage needs and ensuring -- once it is being done universally -- that embargoes will die their natural, well-deserved deaths soon thereafter, under the growing pressure from the universal deposits, the palpable benefits of the majority Open Access and the contrasting anomaly of the minority of embargoed access and the needless inconvenience and delay of individual email eprint requests. (8) But the best author strategy of all is to make all deposits immediately Open Access today, and to decide whether or not to Close Access to any one of them only if and when they ever receive a take-down notice from the publisher. Authors will not receive publisher take-down notices because publishers (unlike authors, and librarians) already know very well today that trying to do that would soon lose them their authorships, who would migrate to the majority of journals that endorse immediate Open Access deposit. This has already proved true for the two decades'-worth of successful and unchallenged "don't-ask" deposits that we already have behind us -- at least two million of them, by computer scientists on their institutional websites and by physicists in Arxiv. With universal deposit (and especially with universal institutional and funder mandates to deposit) the incentive for publishers to request take-down is even lower. So, to repeat: giving authors the exceedingly bad advice that what they should do first, if they wish to provide Open Access to their articles, is to attempt to modify their copyright agreements (along the lines of the SPARC author addendum) one-by-one is not only advice that is doomed to fail in many instances (and not even to be tried in most), but it is diverting attention and efforts from the real solution. Making the attempt to modify the author's copyright agreement can be quasi-mandated (as it is by Harvard, MIT and a few other institutions following their example), by reserving copyright in a blanket default institutional contract predating and hence mooting all subsequent contracts with publishers, but only at the cost of allowing the author the option to opt out of the prior blanket institutional copyright reservation contract in the face of -- or in anticipation of -- non-acceptance by the publisher. It is for this reason that Harvard has (sensibly) adopted a simultaneous immediate-deposit mandate -- with no opt-out option -- alongside its copyright reservation policy. But a little reflection on this will make it apparent that the real work is being done by the immediate-deposit mandate, and the attempt to modify the copyright agreement with the author continues to be just a hit-or-miss affair, even if beefed up by the option of institutional contractual backing. University of California has only the blanket institutional copyright reservation policy, with the opt-out option, and no accompanying deposit mandate without opt-out; nor does UCLA have a deposit mandate of its own. Hence these one-by-one attempts, like UCLA's, to modify copyright are not only a hit-or-miss affair, but a colossal and quixotic strategic error, and a doomed and disheartening waste of precious time (and research uptake and impact). What OA advocates worldwide should be using all their energy to bring about is the adoption of an immediate-deposit mandate. That done, it no longer matters that one-by-one copyright modification efforts are a drop in the bucket, because the deposit mandate will be doing the real work, providing Open Access (to the majority of an institution's annual articles, and Almost-Open-Access to the rest) and setting the right example for other institutions. Once immediate deposit mandates scale up globally, publisher copyright contracts will adapt to the new reality as a matter of natural course. But if we instead keep pinning our hopes and efforts on one-by-one, hit-and-miss attempts by authors to modify copyright contracts, the ride is destined to be a long and possibly endless one. It is almost as amazing as it is appalling how long the academic community keeps heading off in all directions except the right one when it comes to Open Access: publishing reform ("gold OA"), copyright reform, peer review reform -- every road but the very one that the online era has opened up for us, the road that made Open Access itself conceivable, possible, and immediately reachable: universal author self-archiving and self-archiving mandates by their institutions and funders. No; encouraging 1000 flowers to bloom has not helped: Instead, it has distracted and diverted us from the swift and certain solution; let's hope it does not keep it up for another 1000 days, months, or years... For tried-and-tested policy guidance, please turn to EnablingOpenScholarship. The wait has been long enough already. Stevan Harnad American Scientist Open Access Forum Thursday, January 6. 2011Rights Reductio Ad Absurdum
The following query came up on the UKCORR mailing list:
"I was surprised to read the paragraph below under author's rights":You can't blame Elsevier's Perplexed Permissions Personnel for trying: After all, if researchers -- clueless and cowed about copyright -- have already lost nearly two decades of research access and impact for no reason at all, making it clear that only if/when they are required (mandated) by their institutions and funders will they dare to do what is manifestly in their own best interests and already fully within their reach, then it's only natural that those who perceive their own interests to be in conflict with those of research and researchers will attempt to see whether they cannot capitalize on researchers' guileless gullibility, yet again."[you retain] the right to post a revised personal version of the text of the final journal article (to reflect changes made in the peer review process) on your personal or institutional web site or server for scholarly purposes, incorporating the complete citation and with link to the Digital Object Identifier (DOI) of the article (but not in subject-oriented or centralized repositories or institutional repositories with mandates for systematic postings unless there is a specific agreement with the publisher - see [here] agreements for further information)" In three words, the above "restrictions" on the green light to make author's final drafts OA are (1) arbitrary, (2) incoherent, and (3) unenforceable. They are the rough equivalent of saying: You have "the right to post a revised personal version of the text of the final journal article (to reflect changes made in the peer review process) on your personal or institutional web site or server for scholarly purposes -- but not if you are required to do so by your institution or funder." They might as well have added "or if you have a blue-eyed uncle who prefers tea to toast on alternate Tuesdays." My own inclination is to say that if researchers prove to be stupid enough to fall for that, then they deserve everything that is coming to them (or rather, withheld from them). But even I, seasoned cynic that the last 20 years have made me, don't believe that researchers are quite that stupid -- though I wouldn't put it past SHERPA/Romeo to go ahead and solemnly enshrine this latest bit of double-talk in one of its slavish lists of "Restrictions" on a publisher's otherwise "green" self-archiving policy, thereby helpfully furnishing an effective pseudo-official megaphone for every such piece of optimistic gibberish a publisher ventures to float, no matter how absurd. My advice to authors (if, unlike what the sensible computer scientists and physicists have been doing all along -- namely, self-archiving for two decades without first seeking anyone's blessing -- they only durst self-archive if their publishers have first given them their green light to do so) is that they take their publishers at their word when they do give them their green light to do so, and ignore any SHERPA/Romeo tommy-rot their publishers may try to append to that green light to make it seem as if there is any rational line that can be drawn between "yes, you may make your refereed final draft OA" and "no, you may not make your refereed final draft OA." For those who are interested in knowing what is actually happening, worldwide, insofar as OA self-archiving is concerned, I recommend reading Peter Suber's stirring 2010 Summary of real progress rather than the sort of pseudo-legalistic smoke-screening periodically emitted by Permissions Department Pundits (whether or not not they are canonized by SHERPA-Romeo). Dixit, Your Weary and Wizened Archivangelist PS If you think my dismay is less with a publisher having a go at floating some self-serving obfuscation than with an OA service providing a channel for amplifying that obfuscation, then you've caught my drift! But don't forget that the lion's share of the dismay is reserved for the feckless research community, crouched in Zeno's Paralysis for two decades now... Saturday, January 1. 20112002-2010 Open Access Mandate Growth
Date: Sat, 1 Jan 2011 05:36:49 +0000
Sender: American Scientist Open Access Forum From: Alma Swan Subject: Open Access mandates growth The final picture for the adoption of mandatory OA policies for 2010 is now available. The graph showing the cumulative growth of mandates over the last 9 years can be found on the EOS (Enabling Open Scholarship) and OASIS sites. From early 2011 the graph will be generated automatically by EPrints' ROARMAP service: http://roarmap.eprints.org It will be announced shortly when that site replaces http://www.eprints.org/openaccess/policysignup/ as the place to register new mandates by institutions, funders and departments as well as the place to find the up-to-date version of the graph for advocacy work. Finally, the growth of policies during open Access Week 2010 was monitored and is recorded here: http://bit.ly/anUWms and here: http://bit.ly/a4dynw. Alma Swan Friday, December 31. 2010Interview: Green Road to Open AccessExcerpt from English version:Harnad, S. (2010) Open Access: The Green Road to Maximizing Research Impact [Interview in Danish]. Bibliotek og Medier, 2010 (4). pp. 4-7. "...How long will it be before green OA is an integrated and accepted part of the academic society?""OA will happen within about two years after the time that OA is universally mandated by institutions, and it will happen institution by institution. For the 180 or so institutions and funders that have already mandated Green OA (see ROARMAP), they already have open access for their own research output today. Now it’s time for the rest of the 3,000 top research institutions and the rest of the c. 12,000 worldwide to mandate Green OA, and then everyone will have OA to all 2.5 million articles published annually in the planet’s 25,000 peer-reviewed journals. I cannot second-guess how long it will take for administrators to have the good sense to do what’s best for their institutions, for their researchers, for research itself and for the public that funds the research; it’s already long overdue, but they will do it, sooner or later..." Monday, December 27. 2010Self-Perpetuating Misinformation About Open Access Self-ArchivingTheodorou, R (2010) OA Repositories: the Researchers' Point of View Journal of Electronic Publishing 13 (3) DOI: 10.3998/3336451.0013.304If we keep asking researchers the wrong question we will keep getting the wrong answer: (1) Publishing an article in an OA journal is one thing ("Gold OA"). Publishing an article in a subscription journal and making it OA by self-archiving it in an OA institutional repository is another ("Green OA"). Conflating the two is sowing confusion. Depositing a refereed, published paper in an institutional repository is not an alternative form of "publication"; it is a way of providing OA to refereed, published articles. (2) To talk about institutions and institutional repositories needing to "referee" already-refereed journal articles is therefore to build non-sequiturs upon non-sequiturs. (3) A journal is as good as its peer-review standards, no better, no worse, and this has nothing whatsoever to do with its cost-recovery model -- subscription or OA. It depends purely on its quality-control standards. (Since a track-record for quality-control standards must be established across time, older journals will -- rightly -- be trusted sooner than new ones; this too has nothing to do with OA.) Surveys should not simply chronicle ignorance and misinformation: they should try to dispel it, both in the way they ask their questions and in the way they report and interpret their responses. "This research examined how researchers view OA publications, and whether they want a more strict method of evaluation for scientific information published through OA repositories."The underlying logic here is alas comparable to solemnly inquiring whether respondents have or or have not stopped beating their spouses! If one plays into a false assumption one is inevitably fed back the same tune one has sung: When refereed journal articles are deposited in institutional repositories it is a way to maximize access to them, not an alternative way of publishing them. They have already been "evaluated" by the journal that accepted them for publication. Researchers need to be told that fact, rather that just rehearsing, broadcasting, and thereby reinforcing their ignorance of it. "This research is trying to determine why acceptance and growth of open access, particularly open access repositories, has been so slow."A worthy goal -- but not likely to be reached if the study simply echoes and compounds the very misinformation that has been slowing down OA growth, rather than debunking it. "The majority of the participants in this survey have, at some point, used OA publications as readers, although not all of them seem to trust them as much as they trust traditional subscription journals."A downright self-contradiction -- if the question was about refereed articles published in traditional subscription journals and made OA by depositing them in an institutional repository. And a non-sequitur if the question was about OA journals, interpreted as an answer about institutional repositories. Or completely irrelevant if it was a question about depositing unrefereed, unpublished papers in institutional repositories (which is definitely not what OA is about: OA is about freeing access to peer-reviewed research, not about freeing research from peer review). "The vast majority of the participants said they would welcome more strict acceptance procedures for institutional repositories. This would enhance their trust and they would feel much more inclined to submit their works for publication."Again, this is just compounding misunderstandings, since the target of the OA movement is refereed, published research, not unrefereed content. And what is missing today is not "strict acceptance procedures" for deposits to repositories (repositories don't "accept": journals accept; repositories simply provide access to refereed, accepted work); what is missing is the deposits themselves. And the remedy for that is already known too: deposit mandates (not re-refereeing of refereed content!). Stevan Harnad EnablingOpenScholarship
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