Ludicrously closed access; or how to alienate readers and look foolish

Posted on 23 September 2008
Filed under Libraries, Open access, Publishing
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It started with a post the liblicense mailing list, announcing a new journal entitled the Journal of Electronic Resources Librarianship. The journal, the post said, was published by the Haworth Press (a subsidiary of Taylor & Francis since its acquisition last year). The inaugural issue had been released, according to the announcement, and it appeared to include an article on open access (Ross Singer, “Opening Up Access to Open Access”), so I wanted to check out the article to see if it was something worth posting at OAN.

Oddly, the post pointed to a Web site for the journal which is run on the Open Journal Systems platform — software designed for open access journals. This was odd for two reasons:

I didn’t know Haworth published OA journals (and the announcement didn’t refer to the journal as OA)
The Web site actually contained no OA content (although the inaugural issue had been released)

My confusion was resolved upon determining that the journal is not, in fact, OA. (I’m still not clear what the point of the OJS site is.)

So I searched for the article, to see if it was available from the Haworth site or if it had been self-archived by the author. Google did find a link on the Haworth site (I’d link to the DOI handle, but it doesn’t resolve), but the article isn’t available OA; in fact, not even an abstract is available. Google didn’t find a self-archived version of the article. It did seem to find a Web site for the author, although the site doesn’t point to a copy of the article or even mention it. Nor could I find a copy in the apparent author’s institutional repository (nor any other papers by the author). Since the article’s from a library-related journal, I tried E-LIS, but again, nothing by the author.

So apparently there are no OA versions of the article available, or even an abstract. But the announcement noted that a complimentary copy of the inaugural issue was available. I emailed to request a copy, and eventually received a reply:

Can you please send me your mailing address?

Having little interest in waiting several more days (at least) to get my hands on the article, I replied:

Can you send me an electronic copy?

And, can you believe it — here’s the response from T&F:

We do not have electronic copies available. You can only view the journal online if you already have a subscription. Sorry for any inconvenience.

In summary: neither gold nor green OA; no abstract; and the sample issue is available in print form only. For an article about open access!

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Author’s rights: let’s be clear on the problem

Posted on 2 August 2008
Filed under Academia, Copyright, Creative Commons, Licenses, Open access, Publishing
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There are a number of available remedies (e.g. 1, 2, 3) to the problems posed by authors signing away their copyright to academic journals. But the thicket of solutions and the surrounding rhetoric can sometimes muddy up what the real problem is. So let’s be clear:

Researchers want to publish their research in academic journals.
As author, the researcher owns the copyright inherent in her article. (This doesn’t apply to works produces by government employees, such as intramural NIH researchers, which are not subject to copyright and are in the public domain. Different considerations apply when the author is an employee or contractor and agrees contractually that the employer or client will own the copyright in the work. But this is the situation for most academic researchers.)
These journals often ask researchers to transfer exclusive copyright to the journal as a condition of publication. This “request” is usually in the form of a boilerplate template license (which is not presented as negotiable).
If the author signs away her copyright, then (absent any other agreement, such as a journal policy or an accepted addendum to the copyright transfer agreement) the author will not have sufficient rights to self-archive a copy of her article in an open access repository (aside from any rights which may exist under fair use or other copyright exceptions) or to make it available under an open license (such as a Creative Commons license compatible with the BBB definition of open access).

The existing journal policies and author addenda vary in their specifics: not all of them offer as much flexibility for the author as is desirable for open access. (For instance, they may specify that only certain versions of the article manuscript may be self-archived, or only in certain locations — e.g., on the author’s personal Web site but not in a disciplinary repository — or may not allow the author to apply a CC license to the article.) It’s also important to note that not all journals ask for exclusive copyright: some ask only for the rights necessary to publish the article; others (particularly open access journals) require the author to agree to a CC license.

But for journals that do ask for exclusive copyright, the problem isn’t that the author is giving the journal too many rights (as is sometimes portrayed in the rhetoric around this subject). Rather, the problem is that the author isn’t keeping enough rights. If we were discussing a tangible object, then the preceding two sentences would be semantically identical, but copyright is an intangible: the author can give away rights and keep them at the same time. This point isn’t always made clear.

The ideal approach, then, gives the broadest rights to both the journal and the author. Most important here is the author: as I’ve mentioned, some of the existing addenda and journal policies are too narrow in their “grant” (return) of rights to the author. Ideally, the author should end up with a set of rights as broad as copyright itself: either copyright itself, or a non-exclusive, royalty-free, irrevocable license to do anything with the work (including to sub-license it).

But there’s also little harm in giving a broad grant of rights to the journal. In fact, we can imagine a harm in giving too narrow a grant of rights: for instance, a well-meaning journal that wishes to reproduce the article in a way that will improve access or usefulness, but which was only granted (say) a right of first publication and of reproduction in the original medium — combined with an unlocatable author (or her heirs), the article is effectively an orphan work.

We can imagine few objectionable uses of a scientific article — or at least, few objectionable uses to which we think the author should actually be able to object: this is one the premises of open access. So there’s not much harm in giving the publisher, as well as the author, wide leeway in permission to use and re-use the article.

(As always, I’m not a lawyer, this is not legal advice, etc. …)

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Scientometrics and OA

Posted on 21 June 2008
Filed under Academia, Open access, Publishing, Science
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Three mathematics societies have issued a report on scientometrics, cautioning against overreliance on the impact factor.

Scientometrics is a very relevant topic to open access: the potential impacts on tenure, funding, and the like seem never to be far from an author’s mind when considering publishing activities. As long as these factors are perceived to be in favor of traditional, closed journals and against OA, we’re at a disadvantage. I won’t go so far as to say that more accurate and reliable criteria would always benefit OA, but it would certainly help make the issues clearer in researchers’ minds (and, based on experience, there is a great deal of misinformation and confusion about these issues — not helped by the perceived opacity of review processes and the high stakes involved; this confusion tends to make authors less, not more, receptive to OA).

In particular, the decoupling of journal from author/article rankings should benefit OA, both gold and green:

Because most gold journals are young, and therefore have less-established reputations and impact factors, a groundbreaking paper published in a young OA journal may expect to be significantly more influential than the journal as a whole (whereas a groundbreaking paper published in an established, high-impact journal is unlikely to be significantly more influential than the journal as a whole, which has routinely published groundbreaking papers for decades). This characteristic is not unique to OA journals — the weakness of the impact factor as an average is highlighted in the report — but it is exacerbated by their relative youth, and assuaged by their relative accessibility.
Because green self-archiving may provide an additional boost of readers/citations beyond that attributable to the distribution of the journal, a self-archived paper published in a closed journal may also expect to be more influential than similar papers published in the same journal but not self-archived, although the same impact factor will be imputed to both. (In fact, self-archiving would help boost the journal’s impact factor, with a non-excludable benefit even to authors who don’t self-archive — although the higher the rate of self-archiving by a journal’s authors, relative to other journals in the same field, the greater the overall benefit to the journal.)

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Re-discovering Florida’s literary legacy — or not

Posted on 15 March 2008
Filed under Academia, Florida, Libraries, Open access, Publishing
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Out of curiosity, I went Googling for literary magazines published at my alma mater, the University of Florida. What I found:

Subtropics, published by the English department, in print since 2006. In current publication. A few items from the current issue are available online; no items from past issues are available online. The poems online are only available as an image, not as text.
Mangrove Review (no Web site; record in UF library catalog), published by the English department(?), in print since 1985(?) (since 1982 according to Worldcat). Soliciting submissions as recently as October 2007; described there as “UF’s official literary magazine.” Alternate titles: Mangrove, Mangrove Literary Review. Web site formerly at this address; see past versions in the Internet Archive. Not to be confused with the Mangrove Review published at Florida Gulf Coast University or Mangrove at the University of Miami (popular name, eh?).
Tea (no Web site; record in UF library catalog), published the English Society (student-run), in print since (when?). Soliciting submissions as recently as February 2008. Web site formerly at this address; see past versions in the Internet Archive.

As far as I can tell, none of these are available in UF’s Digital Collections; although the library does have their back issues, it hasn’t digitized them (at least not yet; probably for permissions issues or lack of resources).

So, of at least 3 literary magazines published at UF (who knows how many others there have been over the years?), none of them are available online. It’s not just that they’re not open access: you couldn’t pay for access if you wanted to. Two of the three appear not to even have Web sites.

It must be said that this is a terrible strategy for sharing the magazines’ contents with the public.

If any readers have information about these or other literary magazines, or any plans to digitize them, please add them in the comments.

Rumors of other literary magazines from UF’s past:

The Florida Pennant, published by the Dixie Literary Society beginning in 1907
The Swamp Angel, published by the Quill Club beginning in 1923
The Silver Bow, published beginning in 1925
Florida Quarterly, published 1967-1976, “Official student-edited literary magazine of the University of Florida”
Departure: GNV, published from 1989 or earlier until 2002 or 2003. Web site formerly at this address; see past versions in the Internet Archive.

In the process, I turned up all sorts of other stuff… Read more

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Mr. Thatcher, tear down this (pay)wall

Posted on 21 February 2008
Filed under Open access, Publishing
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From the Chronicle, via Open Access News:

Sanford G. Thatcher, director of Penn State University Press and president of the Association of American University Presses, calls Harvard’s [open access] policy “shortsighted” because it might result in the loss of subscription and reprint income to humanities and social-science journals. His own press receives two-thirds of its journal income through royalties from Project Muse, an online collection of journals. “If that were to collapse,” he says, “so too would our journals disappear from the face of the earth.”

Mr. Thatcher: Tear down this (pay)wall.

Whose side are you on? You represent university presses. Remember, it was the university’s own faculty who voted to adopt this policy. Yet you are spreading fear, uncertainty, and doubt about the potential impact of green OA on subscriptions — when no causative link has ever been shown.

In fact, Johns Hopkins, the university which hosts Project Muse — whose revenue, you fear, could “collapse” under the weight of self-archiving by responsible authors — this week opened its own institutional repository.

University presses, and the authors and universities they serve, should tell Mr. Thatcher that his statements don’t represent them. Tell the AAUP to stop spreading FUD about open access.

Scholarly publishers need help adapting to the open access era — not fighting it. The AAUP can serve its constituents by helping them adopt sustainable open access models. Fighting the tide — and universities’ own faculty — isn’t serving anyone.

Update: I should add, for those readers who aren’t also mind-readers, that I am aware the AAUP has been involved in open access initiatives. That’s why I was so taken aback by this statement, which borders on willfully misleading and does little to move the discussion forward.

I also recognize that sometimes, journalists select a quote from a context other than one the speaker would prefer. (Been there…) So, for all I know, the quote was immediately followed by a comment that “…but there’s no evidence yet that self-archiving will damage this revenue stream, and I hope that libraries and faculty will join publishers in seeking responsible ways to preserve and enhance journals’ value proposition.” But I can only know what’s in the paper, and what’s in the paper ain’t pretty.

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Harvard faculty say yes to OA

Posted on 13 February 2008
Filed under Academia, Open content, Publishing
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Harvard University’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences yesterday adopted a mandate for open access to the college’s peer-reviewed research publications.

Already, there’s quibbling from others about whether the details of the policy are good or bad. But I want to focus on the fact that the faculty, through their own governance process, themselves approved this mandate. Despite earlier evidence of the willingness of faculty to comply with OA mandates, and the support of researchers for public access legislation, this is the strongest indication yet: Yes, Virginia, scientists do want open access.

So when Allan Adler of the AAP says

Publishers don’t oppose open-access plans per se, Adler said. It is mandates they take issue with … With Harvard’s opt-out provision, he said, there’s still “some degree of choice.”

– then he will be well-served to remember what dastardly external force imposed such an onerous requirement on the researchers. Oh, right: it was the researchers themselves.

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Public access is law at the NIH: What’s next?

Posted on 2 January 2008
Filed under Academia, Creative Commons, Licenses, Open access, Publishing
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On Dec. 26, President Bush signed HR 2764, the Consolidated Appropriations Act, bringing into law a requirement for a mandatory public access policy for National Institutes of Health grantees.

Peter Suber has (as usual!) been covering events at Open Access News, and today adds his comments in his newsletter. If you’re unfamiliar with the policy, start there. The newsletter also links to the coverage at OAN, including links to commentary around the Web.

As Peter points out, it’s important to remember that although the mandate is now on the books, it isn’t yet in effect. In other words, Congress has instructed the NIH to adopt a mandate; now it’s time for the NIH to implement it. The legislative language is relatively brief, so there are several details for the agency to work out. Peter mentions some of the open questions in his newsletter; here are my predictions and suggestions.

First, though, let me affirm the significance of the legislative victory. A mandatory self-archiving policy for the NIH will make a strong, positive contribution to the progress of science, to taxpayer access and public understanding, and to the momentum of open access. This is important and should be applauded. Peter says it as well as I could, so again I refer readers to his newsletter.

Before addressing Peter’s questions, I want to raise one of my own: the question of when. The legislative language doesn’t set a deadline or timeline for implementation. Hypothetically, an unwilling NIH could delay implementation indefinitely, until forced by a court order or later Congressional arm-twisting. On the other hand, the NIH might have been preparing for implementation prior to the language’s passage, and might adopt its revised public access policy next week. These examples are extremes and hypotheticals — I don’t think either is the case — but there’s definitely ample wiggle room.

I predict, then, that the opponents of public access (some scientific publishers) will ask the agency to delay implementation, probably under the guise of needing time to revise their own policies. This request will be private at first, and the NIH will probably agree for a time. Eventually, though, the agency will want to implement the policy; inevitably, the publishers will claim they’re not ready, and that premature implementation will do irreparable harm to their business, and that they’ll be forced to seek a court order blocking implementation if the NIH goes forward.

This delay strategy — first asking, then suing — could be powerful for the publisher opponents of public access. Eventually, they’ll lose; that much is clear. But the sabre-rattling — in public, private, and the courts — could deter other agencies from adopting strong public access policies, and Congress from legislating them. This is basically a FUD strategy — and don’t underestimate the impact of fear, uncertainty, and doubt, particularly on specialized technical issues of limited interest to the general public.

I suggest, then, that the advocates of public access keep a soft but steady stream of correspondence to the NIH, Congress, and other funding agencies. All three need political cover, especially to pursue policies not yet legislated (in the light of the above-predicted opposition FUD). Regarding the legislation already passed, the NIH will need to be reminded that taxpayers are watching, and want to see public access implemented sooner rather than later; the NIH also needs to know it has back-up in court. The Bush administration isn’t a great fan of the mandatory public access policy (though its opposition is the mildest possible, and much closer to ambivalence); the administration may end up in the position of having to defend in court a policy it doesn’t like. Finally, Congress will need to be reminded that voters like public access, so it will be proactive in oversight of the implementation (including if/when the lawsuits drop).

On to Peter’s questions:

How will the NIH deal with conflicts between its OA mandate and the policies of publishers where NIH grantees may submit work?

Prediction: Grantees have a contract with the NIH before entering into any contract with a publisher. Grantees will be required to meet the terms of their NIH grant, which includes self-archiving; grantees who don’t will be treated as non-compliant. If a publisher won’t agree to terms that allow the researcher to comply with his grant terms, the grantee will either have to find another publisher or violate their publishing contract, entering a game of chicken with the publisher (will publishers really sue, or otherwise retaliate against, researchers who self-archive their own work as required by law?).
Suggestion: As above. The legislation is clear: the NIH shall require that all investigators funded by the NIH submit […]. There’s no legislative authorization for exemption.

What sanctions, if any, will the agency use for non-compliance?

Prediction: The initial policy won’t detail any specific sanctions. If the policy mentions non-compliance in any way, sanctions will only be mentioned in an open-ended manner.
Suggestion: Grant disbursements should be frozen to grantees until manuscripts prepared under previous grants (under the mandatory policy) are deposited.

Will the policy apply retroactively to previous NIH grants?

Prediction: No.
Suggestion: No, although previous grantees should be encouraged to deposit.

The US has already adopted a government-purpose license allowing federal agencies to disseminate the results of the research they fund. In 2005, the NIH knew about the license but decided to rely on publisher consent instead. Will it rely on the license this time?

Prediction: No. Grantees will be required to agree to a license as part of their grant contract. (This does not “rely on publisher consent” so much as preempt it: method #2 as described by Peter here.)
Suggestion: As above, although grantees also should be encouraged to use a Creative Commons license compliant with the BBB definitions of open access (either by retaining their rights or publishing with a journal that uses CC licenses).

Will the policy allow grantees to use grant funds to pay publication fees at fee-based OA journals? The NIH is already willing to pay these fees, but it may or may not integrate this policy with the new OA mandate.

Prediction: No. The agency’s policies on permissible expenditures (for grants already awarded) will remain separate from their policies on grant distribution.
Suggestion: As above. The legislation contains no requirement to do this. However, the agency’s policies on permissible expenditures should permit it (without linking it to the self-archiving mandate, other than in the capacity that OA journals might submit the author’s manuscript on her behalf).

Will the policy require OA for raw or refined data generated by NIH-funded research? The NIH already has a data-sharing policy, but it’s not a mandate.

Prediction: No, these policies will remain separate.
Suggestion: As above. The legislation contains no requirement to do this. However, the agency’s data-sharing policy should be made mandatory, subject to the provision of adequate cyberinfrastructure and to policies protecting human-subject confidentiality.

I’ll end with a final suggestion: that university administrators and librarians prepare to help their researchers comply with the policy. It’ll take some getting used to, and the publisher FUD won’t help things (the rampant inaccuracy in reporting on the policy won’t help, either). We’ll need university counsels, research administrators, and librarians to stand up and help their faculty understand the policy.

Forward-thinking librarians will designate a staff member (such as their scholarly publishing liaison, open access director, or subject specialist for medicine) as a point of contact for faculty who need help. That staff member will familiarize himself with the details of the policy and with the mechanics of deposit, and be available to walk faculty through the process.

The NIH policy can also be a great teaching moment for campus leaders to engage their peers in a conversation about open access — and help carry momentum beyond the faculty in medicine.

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Author-owned scholarly journal cooperatives: a win-win situation?

Posted on 1 December 2007
Filed under Academia, Open access, Publishing
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Abstract: Rewarding authors and referees with ownership stakes in the journal could provide attractive incentives for individuals and rein in abusive publisher practices.

Since becoming a freelancer, I’ve spent a fair amount of time looking for publications that might want to publish my writing. One criterion I look for is: Do they pay? I’ve been surprised by how many publications are sustained without paying their contributors — and not just academic journals.

Non-academic publications have a fierce competition for the best authors, and those who offer no payment may suffer challenges in obtaining their preferred supply of contributions, in terms of both quantity and quality. (I know they lost me!) Scholarly journals, of course, have a ready supply of free labor in otherwise-employed academics who are nonetheless required to publish, in a culture where payment is not expected.

In theory, the authors could publish anywhere — potentially earning author fees — but the academy rewards the prestige of a publication within a specific and relatively fixed hierarchy. Scholars want a promotion, that fat grant, and their peers’ attention, so they publish without honorarium — even though the journal turns a healthy profit from the publication. In some journals, the author even pays the publisher, on top of the free labor. Academics also serve as reviewers for no remuneration.

The free labor aspect of academic journal publishing is frequently noted in a variety of contexts, such as:

“If academics write and review for free, why are some subscription journals so expensive? I don’t understand where the money goes.” (To which I say: profit! — for commercial journals, at least.)
“Since academics write and review for free, journal subscriptions should be more affordable. We deserve a better quid pro quo.”
“Because academics write and review for free in the journal system, that makes it easier to convert the system to open access — authors will be less concerned with loss of royalties from the change in business model.”
“The problems in the peer-review system — the delays, the sometimes arbitrary decisions — stem from the fact that reviewers are busy people and don’t have much incentive to do a good job.”

I’m sure it would be interesting to learn about the development of the system where authors and referees are not paid, but it’s not necessarily relevant. That facet of academic publishing is rightly treated as a historical artifact — it may or may not be beneficial. It should be judged on its merits rather than taken for granted. But despite the upheaval in so many other aspects of scientific publishing, revisiting the topic of free labor doesn’t seem to be on anyone’s discussion agenda.

There’s a strong incentive for publishers to keep it that way. After all, why pay for what you can get for free? Particularly for non-profit and open access publishers, the feat of paying authors anything would be daunting on a tight budget. Moreover, any change risks blowback for rocking the boat — or the risk of offending your authors for paying too little.

For the most part, there seems to be an abundant supply of authors, effectively driving the price down. In fact, there’s such a supply that there is routinely a several-month delay from submission to publication, even in journals with frequent editions. In addition, authors often complain about the delay from submission through peer review. If anything, it’s prompt referees that are in demand.

Thus it is that, while publishers are mum on the subject of paying authors, there’s some discussion about better incentives for referees. For instance, a recent PLoS Biology letter proposing that late reviewers be punished by having their future submissions as authors held in limbo before consideration. On the side of rewards, BioMed Central offers timely reviewers a discount on publication charges for their future submissions as authors. There’s clearly a move for experimentation in this area.

What if journals — in lieu or in addition to other payments or incentives — offered authors and reviewers a stake in ownership? There are a number of forms this could take:

A workers’ cooperative, where a given number of articles authored or refereed qualifies the individual for membership
A consumers’ cooperative, run by subscribers/members, where authors or referees are rewarded with a free membership
A corporation where authors or referees are rewarded with equity shares of stock

The latter scenario, while not meeting the cooperative principle of “one member, one vote”, could still result in a coop-like situation, in that the journals could be controlled by the people whose labor is central to their production. Because of the dual nature of academics in the publishing system — as both producers and consumers — these ownership models could help (self-)regulate publishers on pricing and other business practices (which, as I have previously written, is notoriously difficult under the subscription model).

At the same time, as suggested by my lead-in, these ownership shares could prove helpful incentives to attract and retain authors and referees, and to encourage prompt reviewing. And unlike honoraria, these ownership stakes don’t require payment up front — the author only earns a dividend if the journal makes money.

In addition to the financial incentive of dividends, the publishing function of the organization could be combined with other activities, such as those typical of scholarly or professional societies or advocacy organizations. Membership might entitle the individual to discounts at conferences or access to members-only discussion forums, and membership itself could be a “badge of pride” affiliation for listing on one’s CV or bumper sticker.

I’ll close with some links to related reading, but first mention another (seemingly) unique aspect of my proposal. While there’s been a fair amount of previous discussion of cooperative academic publishing, most of it seems to posit the institution (university, scholarly society, etc.) rather than the individual as the actor-unit. Although we use the same word, the implementation and implications would be quite different due to the difference in the scale. Nevertheless, I’ll link them here.

Related reading

Kim Braun, “The German Academic Publishers Project — GAP,” From information to knowledge: Proceedings of the 7th ICCC/IFIP International Conference on Electronic Publishing (ELPUB 2003), ed. Costa et al., 2003.
Raym Crow, “Publishing cooperatives: An alternative for non–profit publishers,” First Monday 11(9), September 2006.
Heather Joseph, “BioOne: building a sustainable alternative publishing model for non-profit publishers,” Learned Publishing 16(2): 134-138, April 2003.
Robert Schroeder and Gretta E. Siegel, “A Cooperative Publishing Model for Sustainable Scholarship,” Journal of Scholarly Publishing 37(2): 86-98, January 2006.
“SciELO - a model for cooperative electronic publishing in developing countries”.
John Willinsky, “An Open Access Cooperative,” The Access Principle: The Case for Open Access to Research and Scholarship, pp. 227-232, 2006.