[open-science] “After SSRN: Hallmarks of trust for subject repositories” - OpenAIRE blog post

Fri May 27 08:39:00 UTC 2016

PS: Also see: http://web.lib.sun.ac.za/digital-collection/
And: http://wiki.lib.sun.ac.za/images/6/68/Framework3.pdf


*Hilton Gibson*
Stellenbosch University Library
*http://orcid.org/0000-0002-2992-208X
<http://orcid.org/0000-0002-2992-208X>*


On 27 May 2016 at 09:34, Ross-Hellauer, Anthony <
ross-hellauer at sub.uni-goettingen.de> wrote:

> Hi Peter, all
>
>
>
> I agree with all of this. I think we must take this discussion further now
> – before heat over SSRN dies down again.
>
>
>
> This is a vital issue. I gave a Webinar yesterday on OpenAIRE RDM services
> and one of the first questions was “how long until Zenodo is sold to
> Elsevier?” Users confidence has been damaged in such services – even those
> that are community-led or publicly-funded! We need a clear way of
> explaining to researchers and others what kinds of services they are using
> and guaranteeing they will have a stake in deciding the future of those
> services.
>
>
>
> With this in mind, I am interested in getting together an informal task
> group to:
>
>
>
> 1.      Formalise/extend the list of the “hallmarks of trust” for
> repositories/community platforms. My idea is that if we come up with a more
> comprehensive list then we could publish it and ask users and others
> recommending such services (like librarians) to sign up. This would be a
> good way of furthering awareness of this issue.
>
> 2.      Audit key community scholarly infrastructures to see how they
> match up to these “hallmarks” (we might be surprised).
>
> 3.      Linked to this, but perhaps a separate task, would be to more
> closely discuss – perhaps with a view towards writing a paper? – open
> governance and sustainability models for repositories/community platforms
> (including legal locks, but also alternative models like the “platform
> cooperativism” Heather Morrison has pointed us to).
>
>
>
> If anyone is interested in working on these questions together, please
> respond either via the list or directly. It’d be great to hear from you!
>
>
>
> With best wishes, Tony
>
>
>
> *Von:* peter.murray.rust at googlemail.com [mailto:
> peter.murray.rust at googlemail.com] *Im Auftrag von *Peter Murray-Rust
> *Gesendet:* Wednesday, May 25, 2016 1:49 PM
> *An:* Ross-Hellauer, Anthony
> *Cc:* open-science
> *Betreff:* Re: [open-science] “After SSRN: Hallmarks of trust for subject
> repositories” - OpenAIRE blog post
>
>
>
> This is a very important post.
>
> I'm funded by the Shuttleworth Foundation as a Fellow (my project is
> contentmine.org) and as a community we frequently discuss how our
> projects should be protected to work for public good.
>
> One socio-legal device is to insert legally valid tools into our
> documents. We have set up as a UK company limited by Guarantee, and also
> inserted specific Open-lock clauses into our articles of association. These
> locks can apply to what business we do, how we do it, the
> labelling.licensing or outputs, the use of assets and particularly whether
> we can be sold and if so what the purchaser would have to commit to legally.
>
> The important aspect is legal. With the best intentions in the world no
> one lives for ever. Social-benefit companies often change orientation and
> outlook (I think "ten-years " is often a critical period).  With legal
> locks in the constitution monopolistic  purchasers will think twice or more
> before trying to buy. (Without giving details I have direct evidence of
> this in a similar project).
>
> Many (perhaps most) startups in this area see sustainability through the
> goal of being bought by a larger company. I have nothing against this in
> principle, but clearly SSRN and Mendeley have shown that there are social
> problems in many cases. The model of "do something radically new" is great,
> but "then sell to Holtzevier" comes close to Microsoft's "embrace, extend,
> exterminate". This was bad enough in technology, but where the startup has
> a social purpose it becomes unacceptable.
>
> It also raises the question of how a socially-oriented organization can
> achieve sustainability without selling to monopolists.
>
>
>
>
>
> On Wed, May 25, 2016 at 8:55 AM, Ross-Hellauer, Anthony <
> ross-hellauer at sub.uni-goettingen.de> wrote:
>
> Dear list subscribers,
>
>
>
> Just to alert you to a new post on the OpenAIRE blog that might be of
> interest to you, entitled *“After SSRN: Hallmarks of trust for subject
> repositories*”.
>
>
>
> In the aftermath of the recent sale of the social sciences pre-print and
> publishing community platform SSRN to Elsevier, I offer a personal view on
> the nature of trust in community platforms and the need to make clear the
> hallmarks of trust for subject repositories, namely open governance, open
> source, open data.
>
>
>
> Excerpt:
>
> *The issue here is not that the company has been sold, nor that it has
> been sold to Elsevier specifically (though the fact that the buyer is the
> bête noire of the open access narrative surely doesn’t help). There is of
> course a place for private companies in the scholarly communications
> ecosystem. Running a for-profit is undoubtedly very hard and for many small
> companies, acquisition is their long term exit strategy. The issue here is
> not public versus private but rather a wider one of trust. Services like
> Mendeley or SSRN are ”social” in nature – built to a large extent upon the
> contributions of their communities of users.  If communities of users bring
> much of the value that fuels services like SSRN, why should they be content
> to take at face value promises which might quickly disintegrate once they
> come into conflict with money-making? Surely these communities deserve a
> stake in deciding what happens to those services. Had users known that SSRN
> would eventually sell to Elsevier, many would not have joined in the first
> place. Now that they have, many would like to take their community
> elsewhere – with former users like  Paul Gowder
> <https://medium.com/@PaulGowder/ssrn-has-been-captured-by-the-enemy-of-open-knowledge-b3e5bca6751d#.2hzdw8azh> already
> discussing starting a new open repository for the social sciences, for
> example. These issues lead naturally to the questions: what does an “open
> repository” look like? How are users to identify one, and upon which
> criteria should librarians and others responsible for recommending such
> services decide whether a service is to be recommended?*
>
> See: https://blogs.openaire.eu/?p=933
>
>
>
> Apologies if not relevant to you!
>
>
>
> Best to all
>
>
>
> Tony
>
>
>
>
>
> Dr. Tony Ross-Hellauer
>
>
>
> OpenAIRE <https://www.openaire.eu/> Scientific Manager
>
> University of Göttingen
>
> Email: ross-hellauer at sub.uni-goettingen.de
>
> Tel: +49 551 39-31818
>
> Twitter: @tonyR_H <https://twitter.com/tonyR_H>
>
>
>
>
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>
>
> --
>
> 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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