From: Jean-Claude Guédon <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Sat, Nov 17, 2018 at 5:37 PM
In response to the criticisms aimed at Plan S (
https://sites.google.com/view/plansopenletter/open-letter), the Fair Open
Access Alliance has issued its own answer:
*The Open Letter: Reaction of Researchers to Plan S: too far, too risky.*
*A response of the Fair Open Access Alliance*
*We write to provide a counter view to the recent open letter (“Plan S: Too
Far, Too*
*Risky”), [https://sites.google.com/view/plansopenletter/open-letter
<https://sites.google.com/view/plansopenletter/open-letter>] partly based
on our FOAA recommendations for the implementation of Plan S. *
*[https://www.fairopenaccess.org/2018/10/21/foaa-recommendations-on-the-implementation-of-plan-s/
<https://www.fairopenaccess.org/2018/10/21/foaa-recommendations-on-the-implementation-of-plan-s/>]
*
*We are glad to note that the researchers who have signed the open letter
support open*
*access as their very first principle. However, the letter itself goes on
to make a number*
*of highly problematic and logically fallacious statements with which we
strongly disagree*
*and here contest.*
*More broadly, the letter fails to provide any solution to address the
problematic situation*
*academia has maneuvered itself into with regards to scholarly publishing.
As it stands,*
*the open letter is a set of demands on the funders, without any
responsibility assumed*
*by the researchers themselves for the ongoing serials crisis, nor for
providing solutions.*
*In this document we review the items in the open letter systematically.*
*1. Hybrid (society) journals*
*The Letter states: “The complete ban on hybrid (society) journals of high
quality is a big*
*problem, especially for chemistry.” This statement is not correct. First
of all, Plan S does*
*not ban hybrid journals, it simply aims at persuading funders to stop
paying APCs to*
*them as these titles have proved an ineffectual mechanism for a transition
to OA.*
*Beyond the fact that it is unclear why chemistry thinks itself exceptional
here, Robert-Jan*
*Smits has explained on several occasions that Plan S will allow
researchers to publish in*
*hybrid journals íf the article is published simultaneously in a repository
or archive*
*without an embargo and under a CC BY license. In the Wellcome Trust’s*
*implementation of Plan S, the version that must be available is the AAM
(author’s*
*accepted manuscript). Several publishers, such as Emerald and SAGE,
already offer*
*zero-embargo green OA. In addition, while coalition funders will not pay
APCs for hybrid*
*journals, they will not prevent authors from finding research funding from
other sources.*
*Contrary to the claims of the Letter, Plan S takes into account the full
landscape of open*
*access, as clearly acknowledged in Principle 3: “In case such high quality
Open Access*
*journals or platforms do not yet exist, the Funders will, in a coordinated
way, provide*
*incentives to establish and support them when appropriate; support will
also be provided*
*for Open Access infrastructures where necessary;” and Principle 8 “The
importance of*
*open archives and repositories for hosting research outputs is
acknowledged because of*
*their long-term archiving function and their potential for editorial
innovation;".*
*The open letter claims that researchers (at least in chemistry) “won’t
even be able to*
*legally read the most important (society) journals.” This is nonsense.
This claim implies*
*that researchers will cease to have legal access to these journals through
subscriptions.*
*If this were the case, it is very unclear how Plan S could be held
responsible. The intent*
*of Plan S is that journals flip to open access which would mean they were
legally*
*accessible to everyone. However, if as seems to be claimed in the letter,
libraries were*
*to cancel subscriptions, this would not be in response to Plan S but due
to the*
*unsustainability of ever increasing subscription costs. The letter goes on
in the second*
*point to acknowledge the issue with exploding costs to subscriptions
without offering any*
*solutions to the problem. Furthermore, the authors assume without argument
or*
*evidence that all journals (at least in chemistry) “with a valuable and
rigorous peer-*
*review system of high quality” will either fold or fail to adapt.*
*The open letter also assumes that Plan S will lead to the death of learned
societies.*
*Indeed, learned societies that publish academic journals sometimes derive
considerable*
*profits or surpluses from the subscription system, and have benefited
substantially in the*
*past decade from funder requirements to make research open access under
the hybrid*
*system. As an example, the American Chemical Society has a highly complex
fee structure *
*for article processing charges,
[https://pubs.acs.org/pb-assets/documents/4authors/ACS_SalesChart.pdf
<https://pubs.acs.org/pb-assets/documents/4authors/ACS_SalesChart.pdf> ] *
* taking full advantage of the situation, where a funded non-member from an
institution that does not subscribe *
*must pay $4000 for immediate access (a requirement of the funding paying
the APC) and a surcharge of*
*$1000 for CC BY (again a requirement of the funding paying the APC), a
total of $5,000*
*– when the average APC is approximately $2700. These profits or surpluses
are often*
*used to support research activities. As a result, learned societies have a
financial*
*interest in maintaining the subscription, and specifically the hybrid,
system. It is true that*
*there are large differences between research fields here, in that
chemistry derives more*
*money from the (hybrid) subscription system than other fields.*
*A more productive approach to the conversation would be to focus on
alternatives to*
*subscriptions that pay for society income rather than attacking Plan S.
For it is, indeed,*
*bizarre that library budgets should bear the brunt of funding disciplinary
activities. That*
*said, an alternative income for scientific societies is possible under a
publication-fee*
*model as well. For example, the publication fee is capped under Plan S,
which allows for*
*a difference between the real cost of publishing and the cap paid by the
funders which*
*could be reserved for the learned society. This solution does require that
the cost of*
*publishing is made completely transparent by publishers (societies in this
instance).*
*FOAA recommended cost transparency as a crucial factor for the
implementation of*
*Plan S. We believe publishers should be required to provide the actual
breakdown of*
*costs contained in the publication fee, and make this information publicly
available. An*
*example of how this works in practice is the 2016 release by eLife of
their costs to*
*publish.
[https://elifesciences.org/inside-elife/a058ec77/what-it-costs-to-publish
<https://elifesciences.org/inside-elife/a058ec77/what-it-costs-to-publish>] *
*Without this transparency the cap will be established as a new price-point
that*
*will allow publishers to renegotiate it every few years, and allow those
with actual costs*
*below the cap to raise their costs to meet the cap. A subset of publishers
have already*
*agreed to the FOAA cost transparency proposal in the Transparent
Transition to Open*
*Access (TTOA consortium).*
*2. A transition from hybrid to full Open Access*
*We further recommend that a policy be defined to help publishers and
Editors-in-Chief of*
*hybrid journals to transition to full open access within a 3-4 year
period, reporting on*
*progress every year. The transition of hybrid journals to non-hybrid or
full Open Access*
*journals will need an infrastructure in line with Principle 3 of Plan S:
FOAA has taken an*
*initiative to help journals transition to open access in the aftermath of
Plan S with its*
*TTOA platform. *
*[https://www.fairopenaccess.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/Public-statement-TTOA-consortium-30may18-def.pdf
<https://www.fairopenaccess.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/Public-statement-TTOA-consortium-30may18-def.pdf>]*
*Nobody wishes to ‘ban’ society journals: the request here is to use
imaginative ways to*
*make the transition of those journals to an open access model, which would
do much*
*more for the societies’ disciplinary advocacy work. A number of journals
have already*
*gone that route, and have – in a very short time - been able to fully
maintain their*
*readership and reputation in their communities (see the highly successful
transition of*
*the editorial board of Elsevier subscription journal Lingua to Fair Open
Access Glossa,*
*and that of Springer’s Journal of Algebraic Combinatorics to Algebraic
Combinatorics).*
*These journals have shown that the scientific reputation of a journal lies
with its editorial*
*team, not with the name or with the publisher. If editors in linguistics
and mathematics*
*can flip their prestigious journals to open access, at no cost to their
reputation, editors in*
*other fields should be able to do so as well. A transition to full open
access is the best*
*thing editors of prestigious journals can do to help establish the
reputation of younger*
*scientists with access to cOALition S funds.*
*Further, the authors of the Letter claim that they “expect that a large
part of the world will*
*not (fully) tie in with Plan S”. In the meantime, important funders such
as the Wellcome*
*Trust and the Gates Foundation have already joined Plan S. For Plan S to
succeed, it is*
*essential that not only funders take a principled stand, but that editors
of hybrid journals*
*join forces to urge their publishers to flip the journals to full open
access.*
*3. The cost of publication*
*The signatories of the letter say they understand concerns about exploding
costs of*
*journal subscriptions. But they also state that “with its strong focus on
the Gold OA*
*publication model, in which researchers pay high APCs for each
publication, the total*
*costs of scholarly dissemination will likely rise instead of reduce under
Plan S”.*
*However, Plan S does not mention APCs nor Gold OA. It refers only to
Publication Fees:*
*this is a much broader term that encompasses multiple options. One example
is the*
*SCOAP3 consortium where libraries pay a ‘subscription’ to journals that
are openly*
*accessible. This approach opens the possibility that no-fee journals can
also be*
*compensated for their efforts. Thus, Plan S provides funding for all
publication venues*
*with the exception of hybrid journals. Furthermore, APCs need not make the
total costs*
*of dissemination rise further: the average cost to the international
community of a*
*research article under the current subscription system is currently about
$3800. *
*[https://pure.mpg.de/rest/items/item_2148961_7/component/file_2149096/content
<https://pure.mpg.de/rest/items/item_2148961_7/component/file_2149096/content>]
Even a*
*generous cap of $2000 per article will almost halve that cost. Plan S
clearly states that it*
*will cap open access publication fees, a fact that the signatories of the
Letter ignore.*
*There is no reason that researchers would be confronted with high APCs if
editors are*
*incentivized to transition their high-quality journals to open access with
a standardized*
*publication fee paid for every article.*
*4. Academic freedom*
*The Open Letter states that ‘Plan S is a serious violation of academic
freedom’. Yet the*
*claim that academic freedom is being violated is overstated. At its heart,
academic*
*freedom concerns the freedom of inquiry and the freedom to communicate
research*
*results and ideas without reprisal. In that sense, Plan S actually
guarantees a greater*
*academic freedom than that afforded by the authors of the Letter: open
access will mean*
*that the greatest number of readers will have access to published ideas,
rather than*
*debate being hampered by a paywall. It is highly debatable whether
academic freedom*
*should extend to the freedom of researchers to choose their publication
venue: an*
*author’s freedom to publish wherever they want ends where the reader’s
right to freely*
*access research starts. In actual fact, researchers never enjoy complete
freedom of*
*publication, as papers are often rejected, and subsequently published in a
journal that is*
*not the journal of original choice. Funders, by contrast, have the right
to determine how,*
*or at least under what access terms, the research they fund should be
published: he*
*who pays the piper calls the tune. Nobody is forcing researchers to accept
grants from*
*these Funders if they truly believe their choice of publication venue is
being restricted by*
*them.*
*In conclusion, the Letter offers plenty of unargued criticism, but no
viable alternative to*
*the currently unsustainable academic publishing landscape. Worse, it fails
to grasp the*
*opportunities offered by Plan S to do so.*
*Jos Baeten*
*Martin Paul Eve*
*Saskia de Vries*
*Danny Kingsley*
*Johan Rooryck*
|