One point that seems to be missing is the necessity of one researcher to read about what others have done.. It is time saving, goal directing, and a basic part of the reason to publish and the reason to read what has been published. (90% of nearly all published work, is reading, organizing and digesting the prior literature). To deny access to one single researcher for any reason including a fee is to deny the world a benefit of science. sterling sterling stoudenmire <sstouden@THELINKS.COM> At 01:05 PM 5/16/00 +0100, Stevan Harnad wrote: >On Mon, 15 May 2000, Albert Henderson wrote: > >>ah> on Fri, 12 May 2000 Stevan Harnad <harnad@COGLIT.ECS.SOTON.AC.UK> wrote: > >> sh> It is important for sophisticates of this Forum to note that there is no >> sh> irony whatsoever in the fact that The Economist does not give away its >> sh> contents for free on the Web. >> sh> >> sh> Why should it? Its journalists write the articles for a fee; their >> sh> entirely valid objective is to sell, not to give away, their work. >> sh> >> sh> The WHOLE POINT of the initiative of freeing the refereed journal >> sh> literature is that this (trade) model does not fit that anomalous >> sh> literature, so fundamentally unlike everything else. >> sh> >> sh> Researchers are not journalists selling their words, they are scientists >> sh> and scholars reporting their findings. Their rewards do not come from >> sh> tolls charged for access to their texts; they come from accessing >> sh> and making an impact on the minds and the research of other researchers. >> >>ah> Not so. Researchers make an economic exchange valued >>ah> more than cash, for recognition and dissemination >>ah> services that will reach their intended audiences, >>ah> present and future. > >This often-repeated positive correlation has NOTHING to do with >causation, indeed, if anything, the real causal relationship is >NEGATIVE: > >Researchers report their research findings in refereed journals in >order to make an "impact" (let us call it) on research and researchers, >not (like all other authors) to sell their texts. It is that impact (if >any) that then brings them promotion, grants, prizes, renown. > >It follows that anything that increases that impact is positive for >researchers, and anything that decreases that impact hinders is >negative. > >Access-barriers (Subscription/Site-License/Pay-Per-View, S/L/P] decrease >impact; let us not debate that. It is incontestable that you can't have >an impact on anyone who can't get to your work. > >That is the real causal picture. The reason there is nevertheless a >positive correlation between (1) appearing in a refereed journal and >(2) impact is also quite obvious: > >In the Gutenberg (paper) Era, the only way (and hence, a fortiori, the >best way) to make an impact on research and researchers apart from >what a researcher could convey by word-of-mouth and writ-of-hand (1-on-1 >letters) was through print-on-paper. And producing and disseminating >print-on-paper was expensive. > >Hence if those inescapable expenses were to be met (so that the >research could be disseminated at all), researchers had to reluctantly >acquiesce to S/L/P access-barriers to meet them -- because (in the >Gutenberg Era) the negative effects of S/L/P access-barriers on impact >were out-weighed by the positive effects of paper dissemination itself >(compared to word-of-mouth or writ-of-hand). > >Albert Henderson writes as if nothing had changed since those days. But >we are now in the PostGutenberg Era of Scholarly Skywriting. Research >reports can now be publicly disseminated much more widely than by >print-on-paper, and at virtually no cost at all, via online >open-archiving: http://www.openarchives.org/ > >In this new Era, anything that attempts to constrain this new form of >open access is in headlong conflict with impact, and hence with the >interests of research and researchers. > >There is still an essential function that journal publishers perform for >researchers, and that is quality-control/certification QC/C (implementing >peer review). For it is not the dissemination of their raw findings that >researchers seek, and need for impact, but the dissemination of findings >that have been certified by the pertinent experts. > >The dissemination can now be handled by the researchers, but the QC/C >cannot; individual researchers cannot police themselves. Hence the real >costs of implementing QC/C (implementing only, because referees referee >for free) still need to be covered. But the good news is that these >QC/C costs are only a fraction of S/L/P costs, so they can easily be >covered out of a portion of each institution's annual S/L/P savings. > >The crucial difference, then, is that S/L/P costs are >reader-institution-end costs for a reader-institution-end PRODUCT (the >text), hence recovering them depends on erecting reader-access-barriers >(= impact-barriers), whereas QC/C costs are author-institution-end >costs for an author-institution-end SERVICE (QC/C), hence recovering >them does not depend on reader-access-barriers, but rather on >dismantling them. > >The funds will be there to cover QC/C costs many times over once S/L/P >barriers are gone. Institutions will be happy to redirect this small >portion of their annual windfall savings from S/L/P cancellation to >cover all QC/C service charges for their publishing researchers, >because their researchers' impact is also their institutions' impact >(as reflected in citations, grant-income, prizes, renown: that's why >institutions reward them through salaries and promotion). > >>ah> Publishers bring order out of >>ah> chaos, setting standards for quality and objectivity. > >That is QC/C. No longer any need to hold the paper product hostage to >this service via S/L/P access barriers. > >>ah> They channel information to the readers who may use it. > >That is the second "C" in QC/C. Again, no necessary connection between >it an access barriers in the PostGutenberg Era. > >>ah> Research papers are not ads. Nothing is "given away" >>ah> by either researcher or publisher. > >They are most definitely given away by their refereed-researcher/authors (no >fee, no royalty), unlike all other authors. > >They are indeed not given away by their publishers, but that is the >precise point under discussion here! There is a vast conflict of >interest in the PostGutenberg Era, for this (author)-give-away >literature. And the conflict all concerns access-barriers and potential >impact. > >(And I did not say research papers ARE ads, but that they are more >LIKE ads than they are like the non-giveway literature.) > >>ah> Thanks to libraries >>ah> and librarians, scientific discoveries and theories are >>ah> preserved and disseminated for the future, often long >>ah> after the authors and publishers have disappeared. > >In the PostGutenberg Era we are now in, Networked Open Archives will do >all of that, just as long, and much better -- and without the >access-barriers, thank you very much. > >> sh> The access-blocking tolls are hence working AGAINST these rewards, not >> sh> for them. (Charging for access to their research makes about as much >> sh> sense for researchers as charging for access to their ads would make >> sh> sense to the advertisers of commercial products.) >>ah> >>ah> Not so. Financial statistics indicate that access was >>ah> blocked by university managers. They manufactured the >>ah> "serials crisis" by cutting library spending and an >>ah> open season on publishers propaganda campaign to shift >>ah> the blame. Universities have been hoarding money at the >>ah> expense of knowledge assets for 30 years. The average net >>ah> profit of private research universities last year climbed >>ah> to about 25% of revenues. > >I will not reply (again) to this oft-repeated conspiracy theory of >Albert's. (It's the old refrain "Spend More On Libraries" and all will >be well.) > >I will just say that these PostGutenberg possibilities have nothing to >do with the reality or unreality of the "serials crisis." >Access-barriers are access-barriers, whether they are high or low. And >when there is no longer any need for them at all, there is no longer >any justification for them. > >I have described self-archiving as "subversive" precisely because it >is likely to force journal publishers to scale down to the bare >essentials (i.e., QC/C service-provision), because readers prefer >the free-access, self-archived version of refereed final drafts to the >S/L/P alternatives. But as long there still exists a market for the >S/L/P version, let it continue to be sold; researchers' needs are >served by freeing the refereed literature online. How long the two >incarnations of the same literature (for-free and for-fee) co-exist >is anyone's guess, and certainly no concern of mind. (But the redirected >funds for covering QC/C service costs are always latent in the S/L/P >savings, if and when that market collapses.) > >> sh> The access-blocking tolls are hence working AGAINST these rewards, not >> sh> for them. (Charging for access to their research makes about as much >> sh> sense for researchers as charging for access to their ads would make >> sh> sense to the advertisers of commercial products.) >>ah> >>ah> Not so. Starting with PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS, which >>ah> was founded as a for-profit venture by Henry Oldenburg, >>ah> journal publishing has been a win-win arrangement for over >>ah> 300 years. It is widely supported by researchers and >>ah> considered an important source of financial support for >>ah> other activities that might include policy positions and >>ah> accreditation. > >Ah me, back to Gutenberg! Those days are over, Albert. (And once the >inherent trade-off, and its needlessness in the PostGutenberg Era, is >made explicit to them, I am ready to bet that researchers are NOT >willing to have the potential impact of their curtailed in the service >of subsidizing other "good works" of their Learned Societies.) > >> sh> In the papyrocentric era, such give-away authors had no choice but >> sh> to make the Faustian bargain (with Gutenberg), that in order to defray >> sh> the substantial expense of typesetting, printing and distribution, they >> sh> would reluctantly acquiesce to the levying of access tolls to recover >> sh> those costs -- knowing that if they did not acquiesce then there would be >> sh> nothing at all for researchers to access (beyond what they reported >> sh> orally or by writing one-on-one learned letters). >>ah> >>ah> Not so. The Faustian bargain was made when academic >>ah> senates gave up control of policy to administrators so >>ah> that faculty could be free to pursue intellectual goals. >>ah> Unfortunately, the quest for knowledge has been undermined >>ah> by the financial priorities and petty ambitions of the >>ah> new bureaucracy... > >Ah me. Nolo contendere. I have deleted the rest of this irrelevant >conspiratorial speculation. > >Forget about bureaucrats' petty ambitions for a moment and focus on an >objective that has face-validity: Researchers do research and they want >to share their results with other researchers, present and future, >freely. There is a way for them to do this now. So let's just do it. > >-------------------------------------------------------------------- >Stevan Harnad harnad@cogsci.soton.ac.uk >Professor of Cognitive Science harnad@princeton.edu >Department of Electronics and phone: +44 23-80 592-582 > Computer Science fax: +44 23-80 592-865 >University of Southampton http://www.cogsci.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/ >Highfield, Southampton http://www.princeton.edu/~harnad/ >SO17 1BJ UNITED KINGDOM > >NOTE: A complete archive of this ongoing discussion of providing free >access to the refereed journal literature is available at the American >Scientist September Forum (98 & 99 & 00): > > http://amsci-forum.amsci.org/archives/september98-forum.html > >You may join the list at the site above. > >Discussion can be posted to: > > september98-forum@amsci-forum.amsci.org
