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