Open Access News

Jan Velterop, Challenge for open access, The Parachute, March 3, 2007.  A long post pulling together and updating several of his recent listserv messages.  Excerpt:

Stevan Harnad has posted his “Challenge to OA Publishers” in some form or other on a number of email lists....[M]y responses here will differ in some detail from the ones I have posted on the AMSCI and SOAF lists, as I now have the benefit of having received responses to my responses, as many off-line as on the lists themselves....

I identified at least seven issues in Stevan’s piece that I think are misconceptions and misunderstandings.

Misconception 1: The idea that publishers and the research establishment are each other’s natural adversaries....

Misconception 2: OA publishers opposing OA....

Misconception 3: Publishers think protecting their risks outweighs the benefits of OA....

Misconception 4: Articles are a 'product', presented as a 'gift' to publishers....

Misconception 5: Expecting non-OA journals to suffer from self-archiving mandates is hypothetical, but expecting subscriptions to continue to be paid for by institutions when the content is openly and freely available is evidence-based....

Misconception 6: If an author 'pays' for the services of a publisher by handing over rights, that payment is in addition to subscription charges....

Misconception 7: The notion that OA publishing takes away from scarce research funds....

Now, a challenge to Stevan Harnad cum suis. Would he be campaigning for a mandate imposed by funders, that institutions, when paying for published research literature out of any budgets that benefit from overheads taken from research grants, pay only for article charges for OA and not for subscriptions anymore?

Mandates are of course last-resort measures and my liberal inclinations would prefer persuasion over mandates any time. But should mandates really be the only possibility, the advantages of this mandate would be clear, and these are just some of them: structural open access, no 'double' payment, only a few tens of thousands of institutions to deal with instead of millions of researchers, no need for self-archiving mandates, no multiple-version publishing.

Comment.  Stevan can speak for himself on Jan's seven major points, and already has (on the same listservs where Jan originally posted his messages).  But because I defend OA mandates as well, I want to reply to Jan's final point about mandates as last resorts and the implied objection that they are too coercive for people with "liberal inclinations". 

1. The first half of my response is that we should assess the coercive impact of a mandate by looking at the actual practices implementing it, not at what might theoretically be covered by the word.  As I wrote in SOAN for January 2007:  "[S]uccessful mandates rely on expectations, education, assistance, and incentives, not coercion."
2. The second half of my response is spelled out in SOAN for July 2006:  "[T]he best rationale for an OA mandate is to get the attention of authors.  Authors control the rate of OA growth, but they're not paying attention to OA.  We can't appeal to them as a bloc because they don't act as a bloc.  It's not hard to persuade them, or even excite them, once we catch their attention, but it's very hard to catch their attention because they are so anarchical, overworked, and preoccupied.  So we have to work through the institutions that have the greatest influence on authors [namely, universities and funders]....One objection is that a mandate paternalistically coerces [authors] for their own good.  If true, this would be a serious problem for me, though perhaps not for everyone who defends mandates.  I cannot support paternalism over competent adults....Fortunately, the paternalism objection misses the target and is easily answered....First, I only support mandates that are conditions on voluntary contracts.  They might be funding contracts:  if you take our money, you'll have to provide OA to your research; if this bothers you, then don't take our money.  They might be employment contracts:  if you work here, you'll have to provide OA to your research; if this bothers you, then don't work here....Second, I only support mandates with reasonable exceptions....Third, an OA mandate [advances other interests beyond the author's].  The [author] interest is greater visibility and impact.  The university [or funder] interest is that an OA mandate will better fulfill the university [or funder] mission to share the knowledge it produces, and better assist researchers elsewhere who could benefit from this knowledge...."

Update. Stevan has responded on the AmSci OA Forum to this version of Jan's message.

Update. Jan has responded to my post above and I've replied to his response.