From: Guédon Jean-Claude <[log in to unmask]> Date: Sun, Nov 25, 2018 at 2:21 PM What I am saying is that Plan S forces researchers to re-examine how they intend to prioritize their journal choices, and suddenly the dilemma is between the journal with the most desirable JIF, or the journal (or other compliant solution) that may help getting more grants from a number of funders. Interesting dilemma: instead of playing the game of publishers, you are invited to play the game of funders. Not publishing in the highest impact factor becomes a handicap only if evaluation blindly follows the JIF. So the "disadvantage" has to be examined carefully in each case. I do not understand the paragraph starting with: "The argument I’m hearing here ..." The "unilateral disarmament" argument - in passing what a terrible metphor - assumes that evaluation works absolutely the same way everywhere. With cOAlition funders, one may expect a revisiting of the ways in which evaluation is or should be conducted, or they will look totally incoherent. Regarding the big paragraph about metrics, what is a "market for ideas". The JIF does not address any "market for ideas", but rather a market for journals, which is entirely different. Regarding quality, the JIF does not refer to quality (of what, anyway? journals? Based on the average value of a counting exercise done across a highly skewed distribution of citations from article to article within the same journal), but rather to the ability of being cited, whatever the means used to achieve this goal. It vaguely refers to visibility, but Aileen Fyfe is spot on when she says that the IF refers to mere citability. The logic is that of Nielsen ratings for TV shows that had nothing ever to do with the quality of the TV broadcasts. If they did, television would not be as terrible as it has been for the last few decades. Furthermore, when your indicator allows rankings, you are no longer speaking about quality, but rather excellence: here is the game we are going to make you compete with and, through rankings, we are going to award the traditional Gold, Silver and Bronze medals. In short, lots of confusions there... Jean-Claude Guédon ________________________________________ De : Glenn Hampson [[log in to unmask]] Envoyé : vendredi 23 novembre 2018 11:50 Hi Everyone, This is an interesting conversation for sure. I wish we weren’t discussing this under duress---under what many see as an impending threat as opposed to still being in the deliberative stage of policy making. If anyone on this list needs a neutral primer on Plan S, Rob Johnson wrote a good piece here (http://osiglobal.org/2018/10/26/plan-s-explained-part-2/), including links to some of the less neutral pieces. It’s pretty easy to see from this that “academic freedom” is just one of a number of concerns being raised. With regard to impact factors, Jean-Claude, I’m not clear on how you see Plan S helping. Can you elaborate? The argument I’m hearing here (and this may be totally wrong) is that authors will still be “satisfied” that they’ve been published regardless of impact. Impact factors won’t be fixed, they’ll just be “ignored.” Is this correct? If so, what might happen then is that EU researchers won’t be able to publish in the highest impact journals but their colleagues in the US will, which will put EU researchers at a disadvantage, no? This is an oversimplification of course---impact will shift over time ceteris paribus---but the short-term impacts of “unilateral disarmament” might be real. And what happens to the academic freedom argument if/when researchers are unable to publish in journals that are most widely read by their colleagues? What kind of noncompliance issues arise then? Some work has already been produced on this topic (again by Rob Johnson: https://re.ukri.org/documents/2018/research-england-open-access-report-pdf/ ). We talk a lot about the distortions caused by impact factors. On the one hand, metrics are here to stay and have real value for authors and funders. On the other hand, they create an uneven marketplace for ideas, which is fine if you’re okay with an uneven marketplace, but horrible if you think knowledge should exist on its merits and not the merits of its container. The “open information” direction is where we’re heading in research and society, but we won’t get there by simply “banning” metrics, which is akin to “banning” quality, desire, pride and accomplishment---i.e., in some cases (maybe many), metrics may be signaling something real (some have argued that journal impact factors garbage too---statistical fallacies). In any case, these signals distort the choices authors would otherwise make in a marketplace we’re trying to flatten. So, I think we’re all agreed (except for the folks in the analytics business) that we need to come up with some way to rebalance incentives in the scholarly publishing system, which means figuring out how to deal with impact factors. If you think, Jean-Claude, that Plan S will do this, I’d be curious to hear how? Thanks everyone---happy Thanksgiving holidays for those celebrating. Take a break from email today, watch some football, and get your Christmas shopping started! Best regards, Glenn Glenn Hampson Executive Director Science Communication Institute (SCI) <sci.institute> Program Director Open Scholarship Initiative (OSI) <osiglobal.org>