Hi, Eric, What if Professional Societies were to declare that nothing is "published" until it has been made available to the public. I might permit a reasonable handling fee, such as a nickel a page, making the downloading of a paper roughly equivalent to the cost or Xeroxing it. And then Universities follow suit by declaring that nothing goes in your personnel file that has not been "published".
Nick Nicholas S. Thompson Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology Clark University http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/ -----Original Message----- From: Friam [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Eric Smith Sent: Wednesday, April 16, 2014 6:20 PM To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Open Access Publication 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) > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > ------ > > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe > at St. John's College to unsubscribe > http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
