From: Brian Simboli <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Sat, 9 Nov 2019 12:12:30 -0500

[usual boilerplate--apologies for cross-posting]

If this week's Charleston conference was any indication, Plan S is
definitely advancing in the U.S.

In its wake, here are some Socratic questions that hopefully extend the
philosophical and economic points I've already made about
transformative/plan S schemes.

These questions concern long-run consequences, but are nonetheless very
timely. Near term decisions have long run effects.

--Depending on how much APC funding eventually shifts from libraries to the
federal government, will the price mechanism for APCs adjust to accommodate
the readiness of grant funding agencies to bankroll APCs?  If so, can we
assume the government will have a more price-elastic posture than
universities historically have had, given the latter's tenure and promotion
demand-side incentives to publish in high tier journals regardless the
cost? If federal agencies are not elastically responsive to prices (i.e.,
if they reward publication in high priced journals without regard to
prices), don't we just perpetuate the high pricing that librarians have so
long lamented, therefore shifting this malaise's remedy to the public's
dime? Is this fair to the citizenry? How does this affect public funding
for other federally funded initiatives?

--Concerns about "existential threats" now appears in discussions about
scholarly publishing. Scholarly societies have them. Can societies be
assured of stable revenue streams, erstwhile from library journal
subscriptions, if some complex admixture of federal government grant funds
and university funds fund APCs?

--There seems to be no discussion among librarians about an "existential
threat" to their own profession. If funding of journals shifts from
universities to federal funding agencies, doesn't this cut out librarian
involvement in selecting and funding journals? Correlatively, wouldn't this
reduce their budgets? Also, would this reduce their collection development
role  to APC bean-counting, much of which will become the purview of
offices of research whose involvement will merely be one of marking APCs as
a line item in grant funding disbursement accounting? Would this be a good
or a bad thing?

--Where is discussion about the opportunity cost of diverting a portion of
hard-to-get state-funded research dollars to funding APCs? What research,
e.g. for renewal energy, or cancer or agricultural research for developing
countries, now goes by the wayside?

--Will societies and university publishers just gradually assimilate the
newly emerging APC regime for their economic survival in funding membership
activities, without discussions about possible threats to financial
stability or discussions about the larger philosophical premises of doing
so?

--On the philosophical issues, shouldn't society publishers worry about
governmental ideological manipulation of who within their memberships gets
grant-funded APCs?  Sure, one could make that argument about federal grant
funding per se. But doesn't the latter arguably addresses an externality
that (in an ideal world) concerns the common good, while APC funding is an
externality that does *not* necessitate federal subsidizing--given that
scholarly publishing mechanisms can and should be developed that don't
require federal subsidy?  These are points everyone should ask regardless
of political affiliation.

--From what one speaker at Charleston said, the complexities of negotiating
with publishers has a new overlay: tortuous internecine discussions among
consortial members. If  this is true of all consortia, one has the sense
that consortial leaders now have to have to engage game theoretic scenarios
not only with respect to publishers, but also their individual members.
Just imagine how much more complicated all this will now become with the
pressures on libraries to pay for APCs. Isn't it undesirable to introduce
this added complexity, at least at this juncture? Why not just work on
contracting the number of journals published, about which . . .

--I've been arguing for contracting the number of journals, a la something
like Bradford's Law. A refinement on that: we need to distinguish two
rationales for contracting the journal space. These are:

Rationale (1.) An argument on the principled basis that it is desirable to
contract the number of journals, given that the ever-growing glut of
journal articles undermines the common good of discoverability and
assimilation of research findings.

Rationale (2.) An argument from economic reality: library budgets are
relatively flat so we need to deconstruct Big Deals or even the number of
subscribed journals regardless the journal sales model.

Shouldn't big consortia use their negotiating power to argue that the
ever-rising prices of journals (not to mention pressures for APCs merely to
replicate the price dynamics of toll-access publishing) necessitates
contracting the number of journals?  This point extends not just to
toll-access publishing, but also gold ones? If so, pursuing rationale (1)
for contracting the journal space aligns neatly with rationale (2) for
doing so. I.e., rationale (2) becomes the vehicle for accomplishing
rationale (1).

--I've also argued that consortia with journal negotiating power should
educate their faculty about the need to contract the journal space. A
refinement to that, too: the discussions should focus on rationale (1)
above, rather than (2), which concerns business matters that are not
understanbly the concern of faculty or researchers. Perhaps this will
incentivize faculty activism to create shifts in tenure and promotion
assessment. That will take much, much longer than the roughly 20 year
period in which OA took root. In the shorter run, perhaps working to reduce
funding for so many journals will exert downward pressure on the t and p
assessment process, thereby changing it incrementally in the direction
toward contracting the journal space, which is absolutely critical to
changing the demand side that drives prices. I'm sure many people who look
at the publishing system have concluded that t and p--and also grant
application assessment criteria (e.g., a record of publishing in high-tier
journals or just in a *whole lot* of journals)--is *the* driver of demand
for so much peer-reviewed publishing (including stuff with 0 citing
articles) and therefore high prices. But efforts to change t and p should
move slowly and after considering an array of counterarguments to avoid
unintended consequences.

--A constant refrain among librarians is that budgets have been relatively
flat for a very long time. How many more resources will we not be able to
buy if these "transformative" schemes takes hold? Transformative, toward
what end goal and with what consequences? Is the assumption that there will
be a gradual transition from library funding of APCs, to 100 percent state
funding via grants? What again of ideological concerns, this time having to
do with the impermeability that universities properly have from the state
to retain their properly critical role in society? A non-partisan political
statement; everyone in academia should agree on this, in my opinion.

--What of APC charges imposed on individuals in developing countries? Is
the idea that they will get discounted pricing? But then doesn't that
impose a variety of neo-colonialism, namely developed countries deciding
what research merits an APC discount? Of course, there have been discounts
to developing countries for toll-access journal subscriptions, but what
happens when developed country publishers now can waive APCs for individual
researchers--thereby (potentially) making managing editors the brokers of
what specific research agendas get the APC discount? The counterargument is
that there are ways to isolate the APC discounting from peer review. But
are managing editors really immune to bias, however subtle?

Thanks for the various discussions at Charleston about some of these
points. It has inspired me to continue working on my ongoing project about
preprint publishing and its symbiosis with journal publishing. It has
become clear that it's hard to address just one piece of the scholarly
publishing system without all sorts of ripple effects for one's views on
other parts of the system.

[Views are solely my own, as usual]

Brian Simboli
-- 

Brian Simboli
Science, Mathematics, and Psychology Librarian
Library and Technology Services
E.W. Fairchild Martindale
Lehigh University
8A East Packer Avenue
Bethlehem, PA 18015-3170
(610) 758-5003; [log in to unmask]
Profile & Research guides
<http://libraryguides.lehigh.edu/prf.php?account_id=13461>