I'm glad this conversation was steered back
to the original concern that Richard Jensen raised, because I too
don't think it has been adequately addressed.
That said, it seems that his objection is based on a fundamental
misunderstanding of the nature of open access mandates. It seems
that he is reacting as if the mandate is for scholarly journals to
provide their articles for free (or force them out of business as
researchers switch to free access journals), but I think this is a
gross mischaracterization. I don't claim to be know the details of
every mandate that has been made, but here's what I understand a
grant agency open access mandate to usually entail:
*Instead of readers of scholarly articles paying for the privilege
to read the articles, the cost of dissemination should be shifted to
the grant funding agency.* Thus, whenever a grant funding agency
mandates open access publication, it always (to my knowledge)
provides funds to cover such publication.
In the petition that Dario posted, there is a claim that "the highly
successful Public Access Policy of the National Institutes of Health
proves that this can be done without disrupting the research
process" [1]. In the referenced policy, NIH explicitly affirms that
they pay publication costs as part of their mandate policy [2].
Thus, I understand the petition to request a mandate that all
US-government funded research do the same: mandate open access
publication plus provide the funds to pay journals for such
publication.
A common response to such policies is that an increasing number of
publishers (including our beloved Elsevier [3]) are adopting a
"hybrid" open access policy. Very simply, this means that they still
charge regular journal access fees, but if anyone insists on open
access, then the publisher is more than happy to oblige to make an
individual author's article open access as long as the author
(usually funded by their grant agency) forks over $2,000 to $3,000
to release their article from paywall bondage.
In short, Richard Jensen, this proposed mandate does not attempt to
undermine the funding structure of scholarly journals. The only
significant change it would push on journals is to adopt a hybrid
open access policy, in which they would ask authors to show them the
money if their grant funder requires open access publication. While
the high cost of open access publication might be debatable, I see
no financial threat to scholarly journals, as long as they are
willing to make basic changes in their funding structure to keep up
with the times.
On a related note, referring to the related thread "real scholarship
is expensive", I have to question the description of the costs
involved in producing /The Journal of American History/. On looking
it up, I find that it is the flagship journal of The Organization of
American Historians [4]. According to my general observation, a
journal like that, in addition to its function as a leading
scholarly publication, also serves as a cash cow for funding a
non-profit scholarly society. I am not questioning a scholarly
society's need for funding, but I question that the journal alone
needs such a large full-time paid staff, beyond the volunteer
"staff" of reviewers and editors that is typical of scholarly
journals. I might be mistaken, but the staff described sounds to me
like the (necessary) staff of a scholarly society office, not that
of a standalone scholarly journal.
Regards,
Chitu Okoli
Associate Professor in Management Information Systems
John Molson School of Business
Concordia University, Montréal
http://chitu.okoli.org/pro
[1] http://access2research.org/Petition
[2] http://publicaccess.nih.gov/FAQ.htm#810
[3] http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/intro.cws_home/open_access
[4] http://www.oah.org/publications/
i'm sorry but this is a *complete* red herring with
regard to the discussion Richard has raised.
i know of *no* for-profit publishing in humanities journals, and a
very few and marginal ones (SAGE, John Benjamins) in social
sciences. that goes for books, too, which I am half-expecting to
come under attack here next.
what we are talking about here is non-profit publishing.
that is what I and presumably Richard see as under attack on this
list, for reasons that are both clear and very disturbing to me.
not only not making "billions": making no profit at all.
JSTOR, previously attacked here, is a complete non-profit, and
nobody has yet cogently argued that JSTOR wasted the funds it was
paid to archive over 100 years of academic journals. I do not know
why it is somehow morally wrong for them to have been paid a
reasonable, non-profit figure to do good work, or why that work is
only morally OK if it is done for free.
your arguments against Elsevier are probably sound, and I support
the boycott of Elsevier you cite below, but the original petition
that started this all did not name Elsevier, and on its face calls
for the US Government to intervene in the business of charging for
not-for-profit academic publications. it could be taken to
be asking the US government to outlaw the charging of subscription
fees for non-profit journals. these things are not even in the
same ballpark.
Richard Jensen's carefully considered post named the *costs*
involved with running an academic journal; i did not read any
defense there of the idea that the journal should earn a profit. I
am 99% sure that journal is a non-profit. I am at a loss to
understand why the fact that people are paid a reasonable wage to
recompense their non-profit labor should be a target of attack on
this list. Is any wage labor OK? Do all of you somehow
magically pay your rent, clothes, and food costs while earning no
money whatsoever? If so, please show me where that gravy train is,
as I would dearly love to get on it.
On a side note, in the US, few if any colleges and universities
are funded much if at all through tax dollars. Many institutions
(Harvard, Yale) are almost entirely private; many public
institutions (Michigan, Chicago, Berkeley, U-Virginia) derive 10%
or less of their funding from taxes. Calling the work we
professors do "taxpayer-funded" gives a very inaccurate picture of
where the money comes from. The NIH policy cited earlier refers to
research projects performed almost entirely with NIH funding--an
entirely different kettle of fish from ordinary research done by
professors on salary, the great majority of which does not come
from taxpayer funds.
there are crowd-sourced and self-organized journals; there are
also not-for-profit ones. why is that a crime?