[Open-access] Infrastructure reform [was: Crowdsourcing request + BMJ OA Policy]

[Peter Murray-Rust]

On Tue, Mar 25, 2014 at 12:41 PM, Bjoern Brembs <b.brembs at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Tuesday, March 25, 2014, 8:53:26 AM, you wrote:
>
> > Open Access looks backward - it is not part of the
> > Digital Enlightenment. It's authoritarian and debases the author.
>
> > Bjoern - I am happy to be in the vanguard.
>
> I'm thinking out loud here.
>
> As I see it, money solves our infrastructure crises: it pays for people to
> develop the infrastructure.
>
> The money is currently tied down in subscriptions at about US$10b annually.
>

Yes - most people agree this sum. The opportunity cost is far higher but we
cannot use that,


>
> There are two processes that need to be replaced either consecutively or
> simultaneously: reading/access and writing.
>
> That's if we take the current dead paper-based model. If so, arXiv has
already solved both technically. If we want to do something new - i.e.
create modern communication we have to tackle the middle point as well
(like github)


> For reading, we need to get as much of the current literature, i.e., from
> 1664 to about 12 months ago, into our control.


Agreed in principle, but the non-digital stuff will be very expensive. The
old digital is mainly bad pixel maps and that's a considerable cost. By
contrast if we take the daily current output it's hugely easier technically.


> Given international law, some clever way of picking the physical location
> of some servers, we should be able to make a huge fraction of the
> literature (probably approaching 100% for everything before 1985, less
> after that) available online free of charge, likely with liberal re-use
> rights.


Please explain. Are you suggesting a university on a pacific island?


> For the newer literature, we'd need to rely on mandates, green/gold OA and
> should get anywhere between 30-80% of the literature, with the fraction
> increasing the older the literature.
> Getting uptake here should be very easy, as it would be the best and
> easiest place to get your literature.
>

Discovery may be a significant  problem for Green.

>
> For writing, we need to implement or copy/improve systems like SciELO or
> AJOL as an alternative to journals.
> Uptake here is not so easy, because of journal rank, but we have the
> evidence against journal rank and will be able to provide much better,
> scientifically vetted metrics. Moreover, if we cancel subscriptions, fewer
> people will be able to access your paper, so which author wants that? This
> means, uptake hinges on replacing journal rank.
>

Yes - we need a universal system of authoring independent of publisher.
Should there even be publishers?

>
> If both cannot be accomplished simultaneously, reading needs to come
> first, as it will make massive subscription cuts less noticeable. Once
> subscriptions are cut, we will quickly have millions to develop all the
> other capabilities we have been talking about in this thread.
>

I'd agree with this order. It is very difficult to alter human authoring.
Machines can be trained to read.

>
> This is the sequence of events that I see no way around, if we want
> something that makes our lives easier and brings us into the 21st century.
> How to make this sequence happen is a different question. Here I think the
> money from a few libraries with large enough subscription budgets to cut
> should be sufficient to get us quite far initially, given how relatively
> easy the task is technically.
>

One attractive goal is to reformat the current literature into something
far more useful. take all current outputs and turn into a single XML which
can be made into EPUB, html, PDF or whatever people want. The format should
be dependent on the reader and not the publisher. Technically
straightforward (we are starting to do this).

But where are the brave libraries?

-- 
Peter Murray-Rust
Reader in Molecular Informatics
Unilever Centre, Dep. Of Chemistry
University of Cambridge
CB2 1EW, UK
+44-1223-763069
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