I'd be tempted to forward this to Timothy Gowers
http://gowers.wordpress.com/
.. who's been very active in OA research, along with Terence Tao and others.
Their work goes beyond publication but into massive collaboration, "crowd
mathematics" so to speak.
http://polymathprojects.org/
They're quite approachable, generally responding to email and blog post
comments.
My concern with their success is that having establishing a successful
reputation, they no longer need the help of a "power publisher" so to
speak. A Fields medal certainly helps.
-- Owen
On Wed, Apr 16, 2014 at 6:20 PM, Eric Smith <[email protected]> wrote:
> Hi Russell,
>
> You know what would be a really useful datum, and which probably exists
> though I haven't tried to look for such:
>
> Some simple two-color plot or list of the impact factors of journals,
> grouped according to whether their copyright agreements do or do not permit
> open access. One could complement that by computing various correlation
> coefficients of impact factor with a dummy variable for open/not-open.
>
> My suspicion, which one could start to try to test with such data, is that
> this is not a question of what is the advantage in an overall sense to
> having research open access, but rather is about the mechanics of where
> entrenched power lies, and how that places constraints on choices across
> the system.
>
> There have already been several discussions on this list (with useful
> pointers to data) about why impact factors can be meaningless, or
> non-comparable, or can have meanings that are far removed from the naive
> advertisement, but none of that would be to my question here. My
> assumption is that, in the research institutional setting as I see it,
> everything is driven toward a boundary of as near pure thoughtlessness as
> the system can tolerate and still grind along, which means that what is
> rewarded is what accountants can accumulate at high volume, which means
> impact factors and things like them. If, even just for purely historical
> reasons, a high fraction of high-impact-factor journals are held by
> publishers who refuse OA, then those journals have (for now) the power to
> force a trade-off by authors, between compliance with a grant regulation,
> and support by their universities for promotion/tenure, probably future
> grants where program managers or reviewers look at impact factor ratings
> without taking into account that they may be in direct conflict with the OA
> policy, for younger researchers, hiring decisions in the first place, or
> start-up support, teaching loads, etc.
>
> If that is the main driver, then it should be purely a matter of the
> combination of institutional design and getting coordination among enough
> players in the system to provide power sufficient to push back against the
> effectively rent-power (a power inherent in existing position) of Elsevier,
> Kluwer, Springer, or whomever.
>
> Like so many other things that seem to fail, it just seems easier to get
> coordination in some kinds of systems (firms, markets) than in other kinds
> of systems (academic communities, civil society), and the more-easily
> organized tend to accumulate power advantages, which can sometimes become
> extreme.
>
> But some data and analysis would probably say whether there is any
> substance in the above guesses.
>
> Eric
>
>
>
> On Apr 16, 2014, at 7:53 PM, Russell Standish wrote:
>
> The question I have is what advantage is there in not having your
>> research work open access?
>>
>> Given it is such a pain to download a non-open access paper, the open
>> access papers percolate to the top of my reading list.
>>
>> The only answers I can think of
>>
>> - publishing open access is more expensive (publishers often offer an
>> open access option for more dollars),
>>
>> - prestigious journals prevent archiving of papers in arXiv or other
>> repositories,
>>
>> - its a fag to upload your paper to arXiv or your institution archive
>>
>>
>> In my case, uploading my publications to arXiv and linked from my
>> website is my default option. I will usually amend any copyright
>> transfer agreement to allow this, if not already allowed. It's a right
>> PITA when the publisher doesn't accept my amendment, as I then need to
>> remember that that paper is a special exception :(
>>
>> Cheers
>> --
>>
>> ------------------------------------------------------------
>> ----------------
>> Prof Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile)
>> Principal, High Performance Coders
>> Visiting Professor of Mathematics [email protected]
>> University of New South Wales http://www.hpcoders.com.au
>>
>> Latest project: The Amoeba's Secret
>> (http://www.hpcoders.com.au/AmoebasSecret.html)
>> ------------------------------------------------------------
>> ----------------
>>
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>
>
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