From: Linda Wagner <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Fri, 24 Feb 2017 01:35:22 +0000

Thank you for bubbling this up, David. I hadn't seen the post.

To your question 'shouldn't one get the service one pays for', I'd
argue that when the service provider isn't delivering a satisfactory
service, it's incumbent on those paying for a service to require
accountability from the service provider. Without demand for
accountability, there's little incentive for publishers to invest in
improving their systems. There may be philosophical reasons to reject
hybrids, but practical reasons such as subpar IT infrastructure and
broken workflows can actually be remedied if there's a will to do so.

Could the reason it's taking so long be that the calls for
accountability have thus far been fragmented and are only beginning to
be made? (This isn't a rhetorical question as my experience is
minimal.) You're in the thick of it and live this everyday (well, I
hope you get a break every so often!), so I'd love to hear what you
think it will take to get some movement. Action at the country level
seems to be moving the needle in some areas. Private funders have
formed an open research group. Wellcome's Publisher Requirements are
in full effect in April
(https://wellcome.ac.uk/funding/managing-grant/publisher-requirements).

Policing publisher's sites is indeed a mammoth task. The Gates
Foundation has off-loaded this task from staff to the Chronos service,
but someone's still doing the task. I'm appreciative of Wellcome's
focus on repositories (in their case Europe PMC) as the point of
access and compliance-checking versus the publisher's website. In some
domains, repositories serve as the reader's/researcher's first
discovery point. As a (somewhat naïve and idealistic) librarian
committed to the archival function fulfilled by most repositories,
repositories are a terrific place to direct some of our energy.


-L. Wagner, MLIS | Seattle, WA


________________________________

From: David Prosser <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Wed, 22 Feb 2017 09:00:34 +0000

I’m sure that many of you will have already see the analysis of Ross
Mounce showing that a number of papers in hybrid journals where fees
have been paid to make the papers open access are being placed behind
paywalls on the publishers site:

http://rossmounce.co.uk/2017/02/20/hybrid-open-access-is-unreliable/

That post focusses on Elsevier, but he has found other examples at
many other publishers (most recently OUP).

We know that library colleagues spend a lot of time checking to ensure
that where the institution has paid an APC for publication in a hybrid
journal the paper is actually open access.  Obviously, some cases slip
through and Ross has spotted them.  But is it really the
responsibility of librarians and independent researches such as Ross
to police these issues.  Surely if one has paid - royally, in many
cases - one should expect to get the service one pays for?  The
disturbing thing is that this comes up every year or so and the
response is usually ‘we’re working on it’ - but it should be fixed by
now.

There is also a wider issue.  We are often told that we can rely on
publisher-driven services such as CHORUS to fulfil funder OA mandates.
But if publishers don’t know the correct status of the papers they
publish (and for which they have received money) how can institutions
have any faith in these services?

David Prosser