Re: A Note of Caution About "Reforming the System"

Commentary on: Richard Wellen, Taking on Commercial Scholarly Journals: Reflections on the 'Open Access' Movement, Journal of Academic Ethics, 2, 1 (2004) pp. 101-118. http://ipsapp007.kluweronline.com/IPS/content/ext/x/J/5960/I/6/A/8/abstract… This is a good article, although the author has perhaps over-complicated what is happening and why. It is understandable that he should do so, however, as developments are not always described or seen (or portray themselves) in the most straightforward way. What is really happening is extremely simple: For hundreds of years the way peer-reviewed research findings have been reported is that scholars first submit them to journals for peer review. These journals have known public track-records for their quality standards. Once an article has been accepted and certified as having met the peer-review standards of a given journal, it is published -- which used to mean just being printed and distributed on paper. Those users -- scholars/scientists and their institutions, for the most part -- who can afford access to the journal in which they are published can then use them; those who cannot, cannot. The only thing that has changed is that there is now a new form of access: online access. In principle, every scholar/scientist could access every one of the 2.5 million articles published yearly in the 24,000 peer-reviewed journals -- if he or his institution could afford the access-tolls. But no individual or institution can afford all the access-tolls; most can afford only a small fraction of them. The resulting losers are not just the would-be users who cannot afford the access, but the authors of the articles, who lose all those would-be users' potential impact (in the form of reading, usage, and citation). The other losers are the authors' employing institutitions and research-funders, who also lose all that research impact, which means lost research productivity and progress. And the remedy is super-simple, even though it has been obscured by speculative and ideological talk about "reforming the system," with reforms ranging from hypothetical changes to (or even abandonment of) peer review to experimental changes in the cost-recovery model of (or even the abandonment of) journals. Yet these are not the remedies at all, and are mostly just speculations or experiments with a tiny fraction of the literature. The remedy is for authors to simply supplement the toll-access version of their article -- which they continue to publish in the peer-reviewed journal, as before -- with a self-archived (online) version that is made accessible toll-free for all would-be users webwide. That's all! In discussing my approach, Richard Wrllen discusses the speculative factors that have nothing to do with the concrete proposal I am recommending -- which does not reform or replace either journals or peer review, but merely supplements toll-acccess with open-access. This is already being done for 10-20% of the yearly journal articles published. It remains to be done for the remaining 80-90%. The retardant is not the journals, over 90% of which have already given their green light to author self-archiving. http://romeo.eprints.org/stats.php The retardant is the research community itself, which has not yet realized how much potential research impact it is losing by not self-archiving: http://citebase.eprints.org/isi_study/ Harnad, S. & Brody, T. (2004) Comparing the Impact of Open Access (OA) vs. Non-OA Articles in the Same Journals, D-Lib Magazine 10 (6) June http://www.dlib.org/dlib/june04/harnad/06harnad.html And the remedy is also already at hand: Self-archiving needs to be mandated by their employing institutions and research-funders, in a natural online-age extension of their exsiting publish-or-perish mandate: http://www.eprints.org/signup/sign.php It is hard to see what this simple, fully within-reach remedy has to do with what Richard Wellen writes in his abstract: "certain proposals and models for reform are premised on over-optimistic views about disintermediation in scholarly communication as well as exaggerated assertions about the benefits of removing price barriers when larger issues about the system of 'open science' remain to be addressed." I don't know about other proposals, but my own is optimistic only about one thing: that researchers (or their institutions and funders) will realize that maximizing their impact by maximizing their access is within their own hands in the online age, and 100% of them will accordingly go ahead and do it, as 10-20% already have! No "disintermediation" is needed, price barriers need not be removed (access merely needs to be author-supplemented), and no larger "open science" issues are involved. Richard writes write that: "Hence [according to Harnad], although journals will still be necessary, they may have to "scale-down" to become mere peer review "services" (Harnad, 2003b). Yet Harnad cannot explain why journals would still survive in any meaningful way at all, since, in his system, they would only be able to sell "add on" services like printing which he says no one will need." My speculations about what journals may or may not have to do in response to 100% self-archiving are merely speculations, like everyone else's. (I rather regret having made them, as they are irrelevant and superfluous.) What is relevant is the concrete proposal that researchers can and should self-archive, immediately. But there is a contradiction in the very way my view is described in the above passage! For Richars writes I cannot explain why journals would survive if they scaled down to just peer-review service-provision (and certification), because they would have nothing to sell: But the peer-review service-provision/certification itself is what they could sell (at $200-$500 per article, to the author-institution)! http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Tp/resolution.htm#4.2 Richard goes on to add: "Neither can Harnad explain why academics in some (perhaps most) disciplines are still attached to journals as authoritative organizers of the literature, and not simply as review services. To put it simply, many academics still like to browse journals (on-line or in the library stacks) rather than simply search for articles through indexes and Google." But (if we refrain from speculating), what is there in the concrete proposal to supplement toll-access with open-access through author self-archiving that prevents those who are still attached to journals from continuing to pay the tolls to access them? or to browse them in any way they desire? http://www.eprints.org/self-faq/#21.Serendipity Stevan Harnad Pertinent Prior Topic Threads: A Note of Caution About "Reforming the System" http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/1169.html Peer Review Reform Hypothesis-Testing http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/0479.html Self-Selected Vetting vs. Peer Review: Supplement or Substitute? http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/2340.html "Copyright: Form, Content, and Prepublication Incarnations" http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/1583.html "Savings from Converting to On-Line-Only: 30%- or 70%+ ?" (Started Aug 27 1998) http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/0002.html "Online Self-Archiving: Distinguishing the Optimal from the Optional" (Started May 11 1999) http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/0248.html The True Cost of the Essentials (Implementing Peer Review)" (Started July 5 1999) http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/0303.html "Separating Quality-Control Service-Providing from Document-Providing" (Started November 30 1999) http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/0466.html "Distinguishing the Essentials from the Optional Add-Ons" (Started July 2001) http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/1437.html "Journal expenses and publication costs" (Started January 10 2003) http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/2589.html "The Green Road to Open Access: A Leveraged Transition" (Started January 7 2004) http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/3378.html