From: "Jean-Claude Guédon" <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Mon, 13 Jul 2015 09:41:26 -0400
Hear, hear, David! The notion that publishers/libraries/scholarly are
close relatives is completely fanciful. Anyone who has attended a
negotiation session with a commercial publisher knows how tough and
hard-nosed it is.
The device of "high impact journal" which transfers the evaluation of
quality from content to journal title is the key element allowing the
publishers to keep a vise on the academic world. So long as university
administrators subscribe (in more ways than one) to the notion that
they can evaluate their researchers in this fashion, they should not
complain about high prices, because that is what the device was meant
to achieve.
As for librarians, they should carefully consider whether maintaining
"good relations with the vendors" (as the former CRKN director used to
advocate) is the right path to follow. How about "good relations with
the faculty"? At the Université de Montréal, when our library broke
the Big Deal with Wiley, several of us worked hard to ensure faculty
support: that entailed educating faculty about the realities of
scientific publishing, and our argument was: the library is not the
enemy; the big, multinational, publishers are the enemy.
It worked! Our head librarian has retained his position and a new
collaboration is emerging between the libraries and the faculty,
including the Faculty union.
Finally, publishers are an extraordinarily heterogeneous lot. Beyond
the multinational "baddies", you encounter a motley crew of
association publishers, some behaving correctly, others less so, and
beyond that, you have the long tail of small publishers who may end up
being a small coterie of academics with some local help. Let us
concentrate our fire on the few, multinational, baddies and the rogue
scientific associations, and let us see how we can repatriate
publishing capacity within academe. That would save 40% from the cost
(40% is roughly the profit rate of the "baddies"), and we might even
find ways to help the small publishers (e.g. many of the non-APC OA
journals found in DOAJ).
The points to remember are:
1. Publishing is an integral part of the research life cycle.
2. Research is subsidized. Research, for the last four centuries has
been systematically unsustainable, but that is normal for an
intellectual infrastructure.
3. Publishing research costs a small fraction (1-2%) of research.
4. Ergo, scientific publishing costs (not profits) should be covered
by research money.
5. The issue then is to ensure editorial freedom and quality in this
subsidized system. A good way to move in the right direction is to
systematically internationalize the editorial functions, and the means
of financial support.
Jean-Claude Guédon
--
Jean-Claude Guédon
Professeur titulaire
Littérature comparée
Université de Montréal
Le dimanche 12 juillet 2015 à 22:19 -0400, LIBLICENSE a écrit :
From: David Prosser <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Fri, 10 Jul 2015 10:03:46 +0000
Gosh, I wish this was true. I wish that we were all just one big
happy family striving to promote scholarship. But I don’t think we
are. We all have different priorities and drivers and sometimes those
drivers and priorities clash. That’s not necessarily anybody’s
‘fault' - it is just the way the system works. But the notion that an
academic wanting to publish in a high impact journal, a librarian
worried about the cost of that journal, and the shareholder of a
commercial publisher wanting to see the profits of that journal
maximised all share a common ethos is, to me at least, wishful
thinking.
David
On 10 Jul 2015, at 01:57, LIBLICENSE <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> From: Robert Glushko <[log in to unmask]>
> Date: Thu, 9 Jul 2015 14:44:35 +0000
>
> I totally take your 'take a swing comment' in the humorous spirit in
> which I believe it was intended, but it does on some level make me a
> bit sad.
>
> I'd like to think that nearly all of us are doing what we do because
> we love the academy, we love scholarship, and on some level we want to
> make the world a better place. I hope that when we deal with one
> another we can keep in mind that publishers/libraries/scholarly
> societies are close relatives. And while like all families we can
> duke it out over the dinner table, we are at the end of the day
> family. There are PLENTY of constituencies out there with whom we
> have deeper disagreements than with each other. I'm reminded of the
> adage that we often judge ourselves by our intentions and others by
> their actions; perhaps we should bring empathy to the discussion.
>
> I'm hopeful that we can work to find common areas of interest, and
> that we can all work together to promote those areas. At our best, we
> do so much good. At our worst, our disagreements seem almost
> sectarian. If there are any fellow travelers on the list who share
> this viewpoint, I'd love to talk.
>
> Best,
>
> Bobby Glushko
> Head, Scholarly Communications and Copyright
> University of Toronto Libraries
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