[open-science] Publishing and copyright licences: academics opt to keep control | News | Times Higher Education

Thu Apr 4 18:19:04 UTC 2013

Thanks for the pointer, Tom. This survey is interesting from a number of perspectives.

First, the fact that this for-profit multinational conglomerate, informa.plc, working under its scholar-friendly-sounding 'brand" name Taylor & Francis, is conducting social science research which appears to be designed to inform public policy, and has control over distribution of surveys to 83,000 scholars. 

It is completely appropriate for publishers to conduct research to improve their services. However, social science research should be conducted by social scientists. It is telling that we scholars have given so much power to this commercial company that they can now conduct research on us scholars in a study of a scale that few social scientists would be able to complete with. This is more than a little biased, this is fox researches hen research and scholars need to understand that we are the hens in this scenario.

I have begun a series critiquing this survey. Another interesting aspect is that the question bias reflects more of a pro than anti-open-access bias, a refreshing change.

My posts to date:

Taylor & Francis Open Access Survey: Critique
Overall comments and links to other commentary
http://poeticeconomics.blogspot.ca/2013/03/taylor-francis-open-access-survey.html

Attitudes and values regarding research communication
Note that I see here support for the access problem - 38% disagree or strongly disagree with the statement that "Researchers already have access to most of the articles they need".
http://poeticeconomics.blogspot.ca/2013/03/attitudes-and-values-regarding-research.html

Attitudes and values regarding the dissemination of your research
Shows that respondents strongly favour more restrictive CC licenses, with CC-BY-NC-ND being the most popular.
http://poeticeconomics.blogspot.ca/2013/04/attitudes-and-values-regarding.html

List members may also be interested in the March 31, 2013 Dramatic Growth of Open Access update:
http://poeticeconomics.blogspot.ca/2013/04/dramatic-growth-of-open-access-3013.html

Possibly of interest: since posting this about midnight yesterday I've received two substantive comments which have caused me to do some corrections and clarifications. Can this now be considered a peer-reviewed blogpost? Should I file it for the T&P committee?

best,

Dr. Heather Morrison
Freedom for Scholarship in the Internet Age
http://summit.sfu.ca/item/12537

On 2013-04-04, at 9:05 AM, Tom Morris wrote:

> That's an extraordinarily skimpy article. The full survey report (uncited by the article) is at http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/pdf/open-access-survey-march2013.pdf
> 
> It's worth reviewing because it includes almost 15,000 responses from the 83,000 authors who published in Taylor and Frances journals in 2011.  It's certainly biased (as are all surveys) because it only includes those who've already chosen that publisher, but still a good read.
> 
> There's much more detail in the the survey than just a laundry list of licenses, including questions about authors views on various types of reuse, importance of data vs text, etc.  It includes not only author preferences but also author answers about their institutions policies and those of their funders.
> 
> It's a 30 page report and includes an additional 16 pages containing the complete text of the survey.
> 
> Tom
> 
> 
> 
> On Thu, Apr 4, 2013 at 10:56 AM, Florence Piron <Florence.Piron at com.ulaval.ca> wrote:
> http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/news/publishing-and-copyright-licences-academics-opt-to-keep-control/2002934.article
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