[Open-access] An anti-RWA bill

Wed Feb 1 15:50:47 UTC 2012

Bjorn's doomsday scenario is predicated on the notion that markets
tend to develop a high-priced luxury option (which is true), but then
goes on to assume that hiring committees and suchlike are going to be
stupid enough to evaluate applications on the basis of whether or not
the applicants paid the premium for the luxury good.  I am prepared
(in fact sometimes impolitely eager) to attribute a lot of stupidity
to academics; but not THAT much.

-- Mike.

On 1 February 2012 15:16, Tom Olijhoek <tom.olijhoek at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi everybody,
>
> There are many things that I would like to say, but I will keep it short for
> clarity.
> I would very much like to see a new initiative that offers an easy single
> access point to papers in repositories, links to OA papers, links to ORR's
>  and social networking:. all this build around interest groups starting with
> malaria,, Cancer, CJD.
> Bjourn states that
>>What needs to happen is an erosion of journal-rank. IMHO,
>>uOA can only happen without journal rank, or we make things
>>worse than now. I'd love it if someone could make a
>>convincing argument against that position!
> I would propose that we promote the usage of an OA index where publishers
> are ranked according to their OA
> efforts. When readers and authors use  "our" initiative's internet portal
> and find the ease of access and advantages of open access in one place, they
> will start paying attention to the Open Access Index for determining where
> they want to publish their work. At the same time new methods to measure the
> impact of research will become more important than the citation index,
> further eroding the status of big scientific publishers.
> looking forward to the discussion of tomorrow!   TOM
>
>
> On Wed, Feb 1, 2012 at 2:54 PM, Björn Brembs <b.brembs at googlemail.com>
> wrote:
>>
>> Dear all,
>>
>> below you find some detailed answers to some of the points
>> raised by Mike and Nick. For those of you who are not
>> interested in the details, here is my question:
>>
>> I'd love to see/hear examples of markets without luxury
>> brands and a clear understanding of what makes these markets
>> different from those markets with luxury brands and how
>> these differences can be implemented in scholarly
>> communication. In the absence of such evidence, why should
>> we hope that scholarly publishing would somehow magically
>> turn out different from all the other markets and push for
>> universal author-pays?
>>
>>
>> All the best,
>>
>> Bjoern
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> Mike Taylor wrote:
>>
>> > The fundamental problem you're describing here is the absurd level of
>> > prestige assigned to getting a paper (or, I should rather say, an
>> > extended abstract) into one of the tabloids.
>>
>> Now we're getting towards the point that seems to me to be
>> critical!
>>
>> IMHO, this level of prestige will allow these publishers to
>> charge between 10-20k per article if we go universal OA
>> (uOA). If comparisons to other markets are permissible (why
>> shouldn't they be?), higher prices are even necessary to
>> emphasize the distinction between the luxury brands from the
>> main/lower brands.
>>
>> > How are you going to change that?  If we make the move to
>> > self-publication online, or putting everything in arXiv or similar,
>> > how will that change the predilection of hiring committees to start by
>> > counting the number of S&N papers candidates have?
>>
>> IMHO that's exactly what we keep in mind when we need to
>> discuss when we plot a way on how to best achieve uOA!
>> I see now way how you can discuss one without the other.
>>
>> IMHO, author pays uOA will make the current situation worse
>> for the junior scientists and is thus not sustainable.
>> Status quo is at least not making things worse, but it's not
>> uOA, so it's also not sustainable. We need a third way.
>>
>> What needs to happen is an erosion of journal-rank. IMHO,
>> uOA can only happen without journal rank, or we make things
>> worse than now. I'd love it if someone could make a
>> convincing argument against that position!
>>
>> As with everything in this discussion, journal-rank has two
>> perspectives: readers and authors (I'm only referring to
>> scientists for now, as our goal is uOA anyway).
>>
>> As you point out, the author perspective is the most
>> difficult one, and I think can only be solved after the
>> reader perspective has all but lost any value in
>> journal-rank.
>>
>> In the reader perspective, journals (-ranks) allow you to
>> cut down on the number of titles you need to scan in order
>> to find the relevant literature.
>> If we move every single paper in the archives up until 12
>> months ago as well as all later gold OA articles into a
>> semantic library-based database that also includes as many
>> data-repositories as possible, we can provide a reader
>> experience that easily is better than PubMed, GS, T-R WoK
>> and Scopus combined. Nobody will use anything else anymore,
>> because they find things there more easily, more quickly and
>> most of  it with a single click. And that doesn't even
>> include the features that few people use now: annotation,
>> metrics, social tools, bookmarking, etc. Imagine total
>> connection of all tools and features having to do with
>> papers and data onto a single platform. Even the most
>> luddite of scientists will immediately see the value in this
>> and use it. Ideally I would like to see this happen with
>> PubMed/PMC, maybe as a way to relieve them from costs (US
>> would be happy, I'm sure).
>> Thus, it is not difficult and requires only the cancellation
>> of a few expensive journals by a set of cooperating
>> libraries to build something, every reader will love,
>> because it cuts down on a valuable resource: time. We use
>> the profits from corporate publishers to buy something that
>> is precious to every scientist: time. And then we give it to
>> them 'for free'!
>> Searching for literature, however, is something that (for
>> me) happens not too often. What would be a much better time
>> saver to me is an IT-assisted newspaper service where
>> every single paper of, say, the last week/24h has been
>> filtered and sorted by an intelligent algorithm that
>> learns and adapts to what I click on and do with each paper.
>> Upon my suggestion, F1000 is working on something like this
>> and has an early prototype in closed beta which I'm
>> currently testing for them. This service would easily save
>> me 5-8h per week in time, once it works.
>> Thus, for the reader, where the paper is published, becomes
>> irrelevant, because the relevancy of the research has been
>> determined by more objective criteria.
>> However, even in the best of cases, there will still remain
>> some who still adhere to journal rank as a useful tool. For
>> these, I'm currently preparing an article with so far one
>> co-author that presents the current empirical, peer-reviewed
>> evidence that journal rank is actually detrimental to
>> science, if one evaluates several measures of scientific
>> quality such as citations, retractions and estimates of
>> actual effect size.
>>
>> Once nobody pays attention to journal rank in their
>> selection of papers to read and knows the data on the
>> pernicious nature of journal rank, the author perspective
>> will more or less automatically change: not immediately and
>> probably not even quickly, but slowly and eventually. There
>> would be quite a long period where most lo-rank journals
>> keep dying off (there is some evidence that this might
>> already be starting due to P1) until eventually so few
>> papers will be published in the last few remaining ones,
>> that these also become irrelevant.
>>
>> > It seems to me that you're conflating two rather separate issues: the
>> > crazy influence of a few journals; and the lack of free access to
>> > research.
>>
>> I hope I've made clear how they're not separate and how the
>> impression that they are separate may lead to unintended
>> consequences.
>>
>> > You're criticising solutions to the latter because it
>> > doesn't (you believe) offer solutions to the former;
>>
>> No, I'm criticizing because there is evidence that author
>> pays uOA not only doesn't offer solutions, it will make the
>> effects of journal-rank worse, leading to an overall worse
>> situation than the status quo..
>>
>> > Or is your plan just to keep the current S&N system,
>> > but make readers pay for it instead of authors?
>>
>> I think I've always made it pretty clear that the status quo
>> is not an option other than as an intermediary step towards
>> a scholarly communication system that works for citizens and
>> scientists.
>>
>> Nick Barnes wrote:
>>
>> > On Wed, Feb 1, 2012 at 10:09, Björn Brembs
>> > <b.brembs at googlemail.com> wrote:
>> >> Only having one Science paper made me not make the shortlist
>> >> on a number of my applications, I've been told.
>> >> How would that change?
>>
>> > That would change instantly if - as you describe - publication in a
>> > top journal became an indicator simply of ability to pay, rather than
>> > of quality.  Hiring committees don't care about ability to pay.
>>
>> Both the publishers and Rolls Royce claim their products and
>> services to be superior. In contrast to Rolls Royce,
>> publishers have their citations which they say back their
>> claims up. If anything, CNS should be more successful and
>> lasting luxury brands than Rolls Royce or Dom Perignon which
>> go by taste alone.
>>
>> One could also say that graduating from Yale with a C, such
>> as GW Bush, reflects simply the ability to pay tuition. Do
>> you see anyone seriously dissing Harvard, Yale, etc. as
>> merely educating those "with the ability to pay"?
>>
>> Neither Rolls Royce, nor Dom Perginon nor CNS nor Ivy League
>> schools are losing their status due to charging ridiculous
>> prices any time soon - on the contrary, being able to raise
>> such prices means there has to be something there people are
>> willing to shell out such sums for. Why should these market
>> forces not apply to publishing?
>>
>> I'm sorry, but all this evidence seems to point towards CNS
>> actually raising prices in order to retain their status and
>> distinguishing themselves from the lesser journals,
>> especially if they have cheap, lesser journals themselves.
>> It's common practice by many manufacturers to have main and
>> luxury brands...
>>
>> > This is what I mean when I say that top journals are terrified of
>> > losing their status.  They won't do anything which deters a
>> > significant proportion of authors.
>>
>> lol! CNS only publish ~8% of all submissions. Which of those
>> 8%, many of whom will get tenure because of this
>> publication, will get alienated, and will it matter if you
>> have so many new authors who just need to publish there? Or
>> do you mean those 92% which desperately need this CNS paper
>> to get a job and would rather publish their research
>> anywhere else, if only they could?
>>
>> I'd like to see some evidence for a market that doesn't have
>> a luxury brand and why this would apply to scholarly
>> publishing.
>>
>> > In any case, this is a ridiculous hypothetical.  Has it happened with
>> > the NIH mandate?  I don't believe so (although nobody has answered my
>> > request for first-hand experience).  So why are we even discussing it?
>>
>> It's the same discussion we've always had: how to establish
>> uOA. I'm saying that uOA without simultaneously destroying
>> journal-rank will make things worse than they are now.
>> The NIH mandate hasn't touched the big publishers in the
>> least, because people need most papers within the first 12
>> months. An NIH mandate without embargo will lead people to
>> cut subscriptions and some on this list seem to believe that
>> the ensuing author-pays uOA is what we all want and should
>> push for. I disagree, author-pays uOA is most likely
>> pernicious, if the evidence from basically all other markets
>> in anything to go by.
>>
>> That being said, I'd love to be convinced by examples of
>> markets without luxury brands and a clear understanding of
>> what makes these markets different from those markets with
>> luxury brands and how these differences can be implemented
>> in scholarly communication.
>>
>> Does anybody have such evidence or does this discussion
>> have to go on using only wishful thinking and hope?
>>
>> Best wishes,
>>
>> Bjoern
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Björn Brembs
>> ---------------------------------------------
>> http://brembs.net
>> Neurobiology
>> Freie Universität Berlin
>> Germany
>>
>>
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