{"id":2362,"date":"2013-07-17T21:58:44","date_gmt":"2013-07-17T20:58:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/scurry\/?p=2362"},"modified":"2013-10-01T22:04:50","modified_gmt":"2013-10-01T21:04:50","slug":"richard-poynder-asks-where-are-we-with-open-access","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/scurry\/2013\/07\/17\/richard-poynder-asks-where-are-we-with-open-access\/","title":{"rendered":"Richard Poynder asks: where are we with open access?"},"content":{"rendered":"

This post has been written simply to point you to an interesting series of interviews that Richard Poynder has published on his blog<\/a> with a range of stakeholders in the open access arena. So far he has mostly interviewed advocates, but as anyone knows who has spent more than twenty minutes on this topic, open access is a broad church.<\/p>\n

As a taster to tempt you to read the interviews in full for yourself, I’ve listed the participants and pulled out a couple of key quotations for each. The contributors are presented in reverse chronological order and I’ll update this post as more are added (holiday breaks permitting).<\/p>\n

Update (31 July 2013):<\/span> <\/strong>Richard has been busy and has posted four more interviews so I have added tasters to the original set. I recommend that you follow the links to the original interviews, especially since they now include Peter Suber and significantly expand the geographical reach of this project by incorporating contributions from Portugal, Australia and Argentina. On the particular question of hybrid OA, there seems to be a theme emerging.<\/p>\n

Update (29 Aug 2013): <\/strong><\/span>And then there were two more (numbers 10 and 11). I can particularly recommend<\/em> No. 11, the interview with Alexander Grossmann, a former publisher who is now looking to push open access in new directions.<\/p>\n

Update (01 Oct 2013): <\/strong><\/span>I have run out of steam on maintaining this post (something to do with the start of another academic year\u2026) but Richard Poynder is still going strong! His latest interviews are with\u00a0Sven Fund<\/a> from the publisher De Gruyter and a very different take from OA ‘radical’ Bj\u00f6rn Brembs<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Keep up with the series at the OA story rumbles on via this\u00a0summary page on Poynder’s blog<\/a>.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

11. Alexander Grossmann \u2014\u00a0Professor of Publishing Management at the Leipzig University of Applied Sciences; founder of ScienceOpen<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

On publishers:\u00a0<\/strong>“One lesson I learned after more than a decade in scholarly publishing is that fewer and fewer scientists regard publishing houses as their partners.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

On OA: “<\/strong>One thing that would push authors to make the level of access to their paper a central consideration would be for funding bodies and universities to change their assessment standards to focus on article-level metrics rather than journal impact factors.”<\/p>\n

On hybrid OA:\u00a0<\/strong>“I cannot see why we should continue to formulate new models which attempt to combine the classical subscription model with OA publishing. For a certain period of time it was legitimate to use hybrid models in order to immediately react to the demand for OA.\u00a0Today the transition process has moved on and both publishers and funding organizations should by now have had enough time to develop a new concept.”<\/p>\n

10.\u00a0Anthony Durniak \u2014\u00a0Staff Executive for Publications at IEEE (The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers)<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

On OA:<\/strong>\u00a0“OA publishing will probably not be much less expensive as some hope. Right now some say OA \u201cis an order of magnitude less expensive\u201d than traditional publishing. But as the experience of the Public Library of Science has demonstrated, OA publishing is in the same range as traditional publishing.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

On hybrid OA:<\/strong> “IEEE\u2019s policy is that we will provide all options as long as the author community uses them.”<\/p>\n

9. Dominique Babini \u2014\u00a0Open Access Advocacy leader at the Latin American Council on Social Sciences<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

On OA:<\/strong>\u00a0“We owe ourselves a global discussion about the future of scholarly communication. Now that OA is here to stay we really need to sit down and think carefully about what kind of international system we want to create for communicating research, and what kind of evaluation systems we need, and we need to establish how we are going to share the costs of building these systems.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

On hybrid OA: <\/strong>“I worry about this alternative approach. It is based on the needs of commerce, not researchers, and makes very little sense in the context of developing regions \u2014 where the average research salary and the average research budget simply cannot afford APC rates that are fixed at international levels.”<\/p>\n

8. Peter Suber \u2014\u00a0Director of Harvard\u2019s Office of Scholarly Communication<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

On RCUK policy:<\/strong>\u00a0“I\u2019m disappointed with the RCUK policy. I\u2019m disappointed that the UK government put more publishers than researchers on the Finch Group. I\u2019m disappointed that the group gave a higher priority to insuring publishers against risk than assuring public access to publicly-funded research. I\u2019m disappointed that the government accepted this recommendation as fulfilling its responsibility to serve the public interest.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

On hybrid OA:\u00a0<\/strong>“Hybrid is a risk-free way for TA publishers to experiment with OA, and many conventional publishers are offering it. However, they aren\u2019t offering it because they support OA, but because it’s risk-free and a growing number of funders are willing to pay for it. The uptake from authors is very low, and because hybrid journals can always fall back on subscriptions, publishers have no incentive to increase author uptake.”<\/p>\n

7. Danny Kingsley \u2014\u00a0Executive Officer of the Australian Open Access Support Group (AOASG)<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

On OA incentives:\u00a0<\/strong>“The real game changer will be altering the reward system. The publishers have been able to maintain the status quo because the reward system backs the outdated and inappropriate Journal Impact Factor as a measure of quality. Apart from measuring the vessel (journal) rather than the content (article), it is becoming clear that this type of measure is being \u2018gamed\u2019, rendering this kind of assessment even less useful.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

On hybrid OA: <\/strong>“I do not support Hybrid Open Access in any way. It is from my perspective indefensible. If the publisher of a subscription journal feels that it would be good to have certain research available Open Access then they should permit deposit of and immediate access to the Accepted Version in a repository. Despite the repetition of the claim by publishers about threats to their \u2018sustainability\u2019, there is no evidence that this affects subscriptions.”<\/p>\n

6. Eloy Rodrigues \u2014\u00a0Director of Documentation Services,\u00a0University of Minho, Portugal<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

On RCUK policy: <\/strong>“I have been particularly disappointed over the last year to see how a move (the new RCUK OA policy) that was intended to foster OA, has contributed to a more confused landscape, and could have some very dangerous consequences \u2014 e.g. the wasting of research resources by diverting even more money into a currently very well (if not over) financed publishing industry, the downgrading of green OA, the lengthening of embargoes etc., etc.).”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

On hybrid OA: <\/strong>“I understand that Hybrid OA could, theoretically, be a good way of transitioning to Open Access. But I fear that, in practice, Hybrid OA is not providing a valid and fair strategy for the transitional period. In fact, despite a few examples of genuine commitment from publishers, the truth is that for most of the \u201cbig players\u201d Hybrid OA seems to be essentially an opportunity to increase revenues by ‘double dipping'”<\/p>\n

5.\u00a0Joseph Esposito \u2014\u00a0Publishing Consultant<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/strong>On OA:<\/strong>“My view of OA [\u2026] is that it is a useful, marginal activity that opens up a new class of customers through the author-pays model and that it would be subject to the laws of market economics like any other thing. And that\u2019s what has happened. It is additive, not substitutive. And it\u2019s a great development. It\u2019s just not a revolution.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

On hybrid OA: <\/strong>“I don’t have any evangelical feelings about any aspect of publishing, not traditional publishing, not OA, not hybrid OA. If people find it useful (as evidenced by their willingness to pay for it), that’s fine. If they don’t find it useful, it goes away, at least in theory, though many services lacking in demand get supported indefinitely in some settings.” \u00a0<\/strong> \u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

4.\u00a0Heather Joseph –\u00a0Executive Director of SPARC<\/a>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

On incentives:<\/strong>“The second is to more aggressively align the incentive system for scholars to reward the adoption of OA practices. Funders, research evaluators, administrators need to be educated about the potential benefits that can accrue to individuals and institutions when OA is supported as the norm, and rewarded accordingly. “<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

On hybrid OA:<\/strong> “while some publishers who have implemented hybrid models have done a terrific job of clearly reporting the uptake of OA by authors, and lowering subscription fees, many have not \u2014 especially in the cases where publishers require bundled subscription purchases.” \u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

3.\u00a0Fred Friend –\u00a0Retired Librarian, Consultant\u00a0<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

On OA:\u00a0<\/strong>“The story of BOAI can be a source of encouragement to any who feel depressed by the power of vested interests to block changes needed to release the power of human endeavour.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

On hybrid OA:<\/strong> “In principle hybrid journals could have assisted in a transition to an individual-article publishing model, but the continuing publisher accounting model by journal title rather than by individual article has rendered hybrid journals ineffective as a mechanism for change.” \u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

2.\u00a0Stevan Harnad –\u00a0Professor of Cognitive Science\u00a0and\u00a0self-styled archivangelist\u00a0<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

On OA:\u00a0<\/strong>“I have to remind everyone that OA means Open Access. It is about refereed research access, not about journal affordability. The accessibility problem and the affordability problem, though not entirely unconnected, are not the same problem. So once we reach 100% Green OA, my OA work is done.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

On hybrid OA: <\/strong>“Hybrid Gold is double-paid, over-priced, unnecessary and potentially also double-dipped Fools-Gold. It delays reaching 100% OA by holding it hostage to publishers\u2019 current revenue streams.” \u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

1.\u00a0Mike Taylor –\u00a0Palaeontologist, computer programmer and indefatigable OA advocate.<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

On the future:<\/strong>\u00a0“The great barrier to universal open access is not opposition but inertia. It’s true that there is a whole industry doing its best to preserve ignorance of, and promote falsehood about, open access. But this deliberate damage is insignificant compared with the sheer weight of tradition.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

On hybrid OA:<\/strong> “There are two very fundamental problems with hybrid OA.\u00a0First, new born-digital publishers like Hindawi, PeerJ and Ubiquity have shown that open-access papers can be published at literally an order of magnitude less than the $3000 APCs that are typical of legacy publishers offering a hybrid option. [\u2026] The second problem is that, while most publishers offering hybrid promise a \u201cno double dipping\u201d policy, it’s plainly impossible for anyone to verify whether this is true \u2014 and probably impossible for the publishers themselves to know.” There’s plenty more where those quotations came from \u2014 please take the time to explore further<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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