Re: ALPSP statement on BOAI -- Stevan Harnad Stephen Clark 22 Apr 2002 12:23 UTC
-------- Original Message -------- Subject: Re: ALPSP statement on BOAI Date: Sat, 20 Apr 2002 13:50:42 +0100 From: Stevan Harnad <harnad@COGPRINTS.SOTON.AC.UK> On Sat, 20 Apr 2002, Sally Morris Sally Morris, Secretary-General< Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers wrote: > Publishers acknowledge that authors want to make their work as widely > available as possible. However, we are also convinced (and the ALPSP > research bears this out) that publishing can add considerable value (rated > by authors and readers, not just by publishers!) over and above peer review. The latter may very well be true. The way to test it, and to see how much added-value there is over and above peer review, is to open access to the vanilla peer-reviewed version through author/institution self-archiving, and then see how much of a market remains for the toll-access added-value version. The alternative, which is to keep all access toll-based and wait for publishers to get around to finding an alternative model is simply unacceptable. Open access is already feasible, indeed it is long overdue; past research impact is alas unrecoverable, but present and future impact is not, and need not be. There are at least 20,000 peer-reviewed journals, publishing at least 2 million articles per year. How much longer does ALPSP think authors should continue waiting, for what, and why? > We are concerned that moves which undermine the current model for funding > that added value before having found a sustainable alternative model may > destroy the ability to add that value. No one knows for sure what the effect of open access will be on journal publishing. It will be an empirical test of the value of the added-value. Many outcomes are possible: There could be (1) no change, with those institutions that can afford the tolls continuing to pay them, and only those who cannot afford them using the open-access versions. It could be that the market for the toll-access versions will shrink; and if it shrinks it (2) could shrink quickly or (3) slowly. All signs so far are that everything in this area is happening very slowly. http://www.cogsci.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Tp/resolution.htm#4.2 But the prediction that open access may (4) "destroy" the ability to add value is rather extreme. Perhaps it is understandable that ALPSP are more focussed on the risks to their publishers than on the benefits to research and researchers but that does not make their predictions more credible or creditable than others. > Developments will, indeed, make it possible to access all the contents of a > journal without paying the publisher, if authors archive their final > versions in a sufficiently searchable/retrievable way. This is why we are > convinced that the most urgent need is to ascertain (a) what is sufficiently > valuable to authors/readers to be worth preserving and (b) how to pay for > that. It is quite reasonable and understandable that ALPSP should be devoting time and energy to ascertaining what added value is worth preserving and how to pay for it. But this must be done IN PARALLEL to the at least equally reasonable and understandable efforts of researchers and their institutions to access the value that they already know can and must be openly accessible, toll-free, and that is the vanilla peer-reviewed papers. As noted, progress toward open-access so far has been glacially slow, in every respect. It would be false and unfair to suggest that this has been exclusively, or even primarily, because of publishers' efforts to prevent or retard it. The primary obstacle, I am convinced, is the confusion of researchers and their institutions on the matter. Publishers' policies and declarations add to this confusion, but they are not the decisive factors. BOAI will work to remedy the decisive factors. Part of this work is to counter deterrents from publishers who, on the one hand, acknowledge the importance of open access, and even concede that it is now attainable through self-archiving, but nevertheless counsel authors and their institutions NOT to avail themselves of this possibility, because of hypothetical disaster scenarios, enjoining them to simply continue waiting instead. Stevan Harnad NOTE: A complete archive of the ongoing discussion of providing free access to the refereed journal literature online is available at the American Scientist September Forum (98 & 99 & 00 & 01): http://amsci-forum.amsci.org/archives/september98-forum.html or http://www.cogsci.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/index.html Discussion can be posted to: september98-forum@amsci-forum.amsci.org See also the Budapest Open Access Initiative: http://www.soros.org/openaccess and the Free Online Scholarship Movement: http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/timeline.htm