From: Jan Velterop <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Sun, 30 Jun 2013 15:54:44 +0100
Jean-Claude,
There is a problem, but I'm sure that the solution is not to be found
in a totalitarian approach. In a free world, you and I, and indeed,
publishers, are allowed to do as we, and they, please when staying
within the law. The problem, such as there is one, is often put at the
door of the publishers, but they can't be blamed for taking the
opportunities they are being given. Indeed, it is a fiduciary duty to
their stakeholders and shareholders (which may well include your
pension fund and charities such as the Wellcome Trust who spend the
investment gains on research) to do so.
It is the lack of a free market that causes the problem; not the
existence of free competition. Traditionally, neither authors nor
readers have paid — that is done vicariously by institutions — and
they have grown to believe in a free lunch with not the slightest
inkling, it seems, that money plays a role at all in the system.
What is not always clearly understood is that there is a need for the
publishers' services. If there weren't, everybody who pays publishers
for unneeded services ought to have their head examined. What's also
not always clearly understood is that it is academics themselves who
have created, and continue to create, the need for publishers'
services. What we see is the equivalent of "I want publishers to
provide a service and I blame them for expecting to be paid" now they
hear that lunch isn't free.
What creates confusion — and I do think publishers should take their
part of the blame for that — is the lack of clarity about what is
being paid for. Allowing unconditional (no embargo) 'green' open
access is adding to that confusion. Why would anybody pay for 'gold'
OA or for subscription access if immediate 'green' OA were allowed
('allowed' sometimes even mistaken for 'endorsed')? Publishers should
have the spine to say: "If you want my services, you will have to pay.
Either with cash (APCs) or by giving me the exclusive right for a
period of time — that I as publisher define — to exploit the content."
(Publishers are belatedly beginning to do that.) Authors would then
have a clear set of options: pay or stay away (and publish in arXiv or
in the apparently thousands of non-APC charging OA journals listed in
the DOAJ). And if you think a given publisher is too expensive or
requires too long a period of exclusive exploitation, go to another
one.
Talk of angels and paradise is too mediaeval to my taste. Moral high
horses, too. Clear and objective analysis of the motivations and
interests in the field of scholarly information is our only hope to
come to sensible and workable solutions.
Jan Velterop
On 30 Jun 2013, at 01:38, LIBLICENSE <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> From: Sally Morris <[log in to unmask]>
> Date: Fri, 28 Jun 2013 13:17:53 +0100
>
> I don't think it's fair to describe the aim of publishers as being to
> 'create as complicated and confusing a landscape as possible while avoiding
> any direct confrontation that would allow for the emergence of clear issues'
>
> IMHO, the publishers I know are all trying to accommodate authors' wishes as
> far as possible, while at the same time trying not to destroy their own
> business. There is no single clear and obvious way to do this, or you can
> be sure they would all be adopting it. They are all trying to find
> solutions to the same problem.
>
> Sally
>
>
> Sally Morris
> West Sussex, UK BN13 3UU
> Email: [log in to unmask]
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: "Guédon Jean-Claude" <[log in to unmask]>
> Date: Thu, 27 Jun 2013 03:20:11 -0400
>
> While some publishers may have been characterized as "being on the side of
> angels" because they allowed some form of self-archiving, the publishers'
> strategy has always been very clear: create as complicated and confusing a
> landscape as possible while avoiding any direct confrontation that would
> allow for the emergence of clear issues. The confusion to be created is easy
> to generate: in the name of free competition, let each publisher do as it
> pleases. Nowadays, this basic laissez-faire policy has been further enriched
> (or "improved" as the case may be), by generating policy drifts. The
> Springer example is but one example of all this.
>
> The point of it all is simple: defang the repository device as much as
> possible while taking ownership of the Gold road by assimilating it to the
> "author-pay" model.
>
> If that is still being on the side of angels, then our entry into paradise
> is pretty well assured: anything goes...
>
> PS The murky negotiating approach that avoids clear, black and white,
> choices is very visible in other arenas - for example that of rights that
> could be extended by publishers to people with impaired vision.
> This issue is presently debated in WIPO.
>
> Similar tactics have also been used in other economic areas, for example by
> pharmaceutical companies with regard to generic drugs and patenting. When
> the question of the common good comes dangerously close, these companies
> know they should appear to stay "on the side of angels" as long and as much
> as possible by using all the resources of ambiguity and obfuscation. It is
> all performed in the name of free enterprise and market "laws".
>
> Jean-Claude Guédon
> Professeur titulaire
> Littérature comparée
> Université de Montréal
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