31 August 2005
Professor Ian Diamond
Chair, RCUK Executive Group
Councils UK Secrerariat
Polaris House North Star Ave
Swindon SN2 1ET UK
Dear Ian,
The STM have written a
response to the RCUK
proposal in which they too, like the ALPSP a few
weeks ago, adduce reasons for delaying and modifying the
implementation of the RCUK self-archiving policy.
As in the (short
and long)
replies to ALPSP, all the STM points are very readily rebutted: Most
are based on rather profound (and surprising) but easily corrected
misunderstandings about the policy itself, and its purpose. A few
points are based on a perceived conflict of interest between what is
demonstrably best for British research and the British public’s
investment in it and what STM sees as best for the STM publishing
industry.
The principal substantive misunderstanding about the RCUK policy itself
is that the STM is arguing as if RCUK were proposing to mandate a
different publishing business model (Open Access [OA] Publishing)
whereas RCUK is proposing to mandate no such thing: It is merely
proposing to mandate that RCUK fundees self-archive the final author’s
drafts of journal articles resulting from RCUK-funded research in order
to make their findings accessible to all potential users whose
institutions cannot afford access to the published journal version – in
order to maximise the uptake, usage and impact of British
research output. As such, the author’s free self-archived version is a
supplement to, not a substitute for, the journal’s paid version.
STM (like ALPSP) express concern that self-archiving may diminish their
revenues. It is pointed out by way of reply (as was pointed out in the
reply to ALPSP) that all
evidence to date is in fact to the contrary. STM express concern
that self-archiving will compromise peer review. It is pointed out that
it is the author’s peer-reviewed draft that is being
self-archived. STM express concern that self-archiving the author’s
version will create confusion about versions: It is pointed out that
for those would-be users who cannot afford the paid journal version,
the author’s version is incomparably better than no version at all, and
indeed has been demonstrated to enhance citation impact by
50-250%. STM express concern about the costs of Institutional
Repositories (IRs): It is pointed out that IRs are neither expensive
nor intended as substitutes for journal publishing, so their costs are
irrelevant to STM. STM then express concern that the OA publishing
business model would cost more than the current subscription-based
model: It is pointed out that the OA model is not what is being
mandated by RCUK.
The point-by-point rebuttal follows. It is quite clear that the STM has
no substantive case at all for delaying or modifying the RCUK policy
proposal in any way.
I would close by suggesting that it would help clarify the RCUK policy
if the abstract ideological points, which currently have no concrete
implications in practice, were either eliminated or separated
from the concrete policy recommendation (which is to require
self-archiving and perhaps to help fund OA publication costs). The
“preservation” components are also misplaced, as the mandate is to
self-archive the author’s draft, not the publisher’s version (which is
the one with the preservation problem). It would also be good to remove
the confusing mumbo-jumbo about “kite-marking” so that ALPSP and STM
cannot argue that RCUK is proposing to tamper with peer review. And the
less said about publishing models, the better, as that is not what RCUK
is mandating.
Best wishes,
Stevan Harnad
Professor of Cognitive Sciences
Department of Electronic and Computer Science
University of Southampton
Southampton UK
SO17 1BJ
Point-by-point rebuttal of:
ACCESS TO SCHOLARLY RESEARCH: AN STM
RESPONSE TO THE RCUK PROPOSAL
STM: "business models must prove to be
optimally of service to all constituencies and… decisions and choices
[must be] made freely by those constituencies based on open evaluation,
not ideology or belief, and without government intervention or mandates"
(1) The RCUK access policy for the research it funds is not a business
model, and hence not a publishing business model.
(2) The only constituencies involved in setting the conditions on
research funding are the British research community itself, plus the
British public, which provides the research funds.
(3) No government intervention is involved in research funding.
Research funding is disbursed on the basis of peer review and the
conditions on its disbursement are set by the research community, based
on the interests of research and of the public that provides the
research funds.
(4) The decision to use the new medium (the Internet) to maximise the
access to and the usage and impact of UK research, in order to
maximise the return on the British public’s investment in
research is a natural one, and arises from the availability and
potential of the new medium. The decision is not based on ideology or
belief, but on objective data demonstrating the power of the online
medium to enhance research potential.
(5) The mandate to self-archive research in order to maximise its
accessibility, usage and impact is no more nor less of a mandate than
the mandate to publish research (or “perish”: i.e., not to be further
funded). That researchers should publish their research is presumably
an interest of publishers. That researchers should wish to
maximise their research’s accessibility, usage and impact should
also be a wish of publishers.
(6) Even if it should happen to turn out to be the case that maximising
research accessibility, usage and impact -- which is indisputably
optimal for research, researchers, research-funders and the British
public that funds the funders and for whose benefit the research is
being conducted – proves less than optimal for publishers (and there is
no evidence that it will be) – then publishers will need to adapt to
the new optimum, rather than intervene in the conduct of UK research,
the disbursement of UK research funds, or the conditions on the
disbursement.
STM: "STM fully
supports the [RCUK’s first] fundamental principle: (1)… 'public funding
should lead to publicly available outputs'”
The support is much appreciated, but it is based on a misunderstanding
if “publicly available” is taken to mean merely “available for purchase
by the general public,” because most peer-reviewed research is not of
direct interest to the general public. The British public’s interest is
in maximising the impact of the research that it funds, and for that
the research must be accessible to the researcher-specialists who
will use it, apply it, and build upon it.
Publishers are the providers of paid access to that funded research,
for all those researchers and their institutions worldwide that can
afford their product, and that is fine. It is fair that publishers
should get free value from researchers’ (freely given) output, because
they add value to it -- by implementing the all-important peer
review (which researchers themselves provide for free as referees, but
publishers administer, funding the services of the expert editors who
choose the referees and adjudicate the reviews and revisions) as well
as providing the print product and distribution, and the enriched
online product and distribution, with copy-editing, reference-linking,
mark-up and many other valuable enhancements. It is only fair that
publishers should be able to recover their costs and make a fair return
on their investment in exchange for the value they add.
But researchers (and research) are also concerned with the potential
usage and impact from those researchers whose institutions cannot
afford their publishers’ value-added product. A growing body of
evidence across all fields is now demonstrating that those articles for
which journal access to the publisher’s value-added version is
supplemented by a self-archived version of the author’s own final draft
have 50-250% greater citation impact than those for which only the paid
version is accessible: http://opcit.eprints.org/oacitation-biblio.html
It is in order to close this 50-250% research impact gap that RCUK is
mandating self-archiving for the research it funds; and it is in this
way that the British public’s interest in maximising the return on its
research investment is best served. (We will return to this when we
deal with STM’s analogy to “public transport.”)
STM: "the RCUK
conclusions are precipitous and lack scientific rigour"
On the contrary. All the scientific evidence (see bibliography)
supports the RCUK’s conclusions, and the evidence is very strong:
Self-archiving has been demonstrated to enhance research impact
dramatically. What would be unscientific – indeed illogical – would be
to imagine that the optimal conditions under which to fund research are
somehow connected with publishers’ business models (one way or the
other). Publishers make a valuable contribution to research
communication, but research is not done in the interests of supporting
the publishing business. Publishers are meant to be helping to increase
the usage and impact of research, not to be trying to prevent it from
being increased.
Nor are the conclusions precipitous. They have a long history, starting
in the early 1990’s, with various memorable milestones since,
such as Harold Varmus’s Ebiomed Proposal in 1999,
the Public Library of Science Open Letter in 2001, and the
UK Select Committee deliberations in 2003.
All sides have been heard across these years, many times over, and the
optimal path is already clear (and has already been embarked upon by
about 15%
of the world research community): Self-archiving needs to be done to
supplement paid access, so as to make research accessible to 100% of
its would-be users world-wide. That is what the RCUK policy proposes to
do for UK research output, and the policy is not precipitous but
obvious, optimal, and long overdue.
STM: "[RCUK] appear to
presuppose that there are unsolvable problems in the current
scholarly information system, without debate or analysis"
Not at all: The problem (providing access to British research for those
researchers in the UK and worldwide who cannot afford paid access, in
order to maximise research impact and progress) is eminently
solvable, and RCUK has proposed exactly the right solution. What there
has been, exclusively, for too many years now is debate. The empirical
and logical analysis has been done. The results are in. Self-archiving
works, and it delivers what it promises to deliver: 50-250% greater
research impact. And it does so within the “current scholarly
information system,” without any change in business models, just a few
keystrokes from authors to deposit their final draft when it is
accepted for publication.
STM: "we think… the
creation of a new more routinised publishing system through
RCUK-mandated repositories and systems as proposed will [1] decrease
diversity in journals and the peer review process… [2] threaten the
value of investments made by STM publishers… [3] improve neither access
nor quality for scholars… [4] exacerbate the… problem of differing
versions of research papers… with researchers unsure… which… has been
subject to peer review"
First, there has been no proposal for a “new, more routinised
publishing system.” The RCUK is proposing a supplement to the current
publishing system: self-archiving the author’s version for those
would-be users whose institutions cannot afford the publisher’s
value-added version.
(1)
This does not entail any change in either the diversity in journals or
the peer review process. (Authors are to self-archive their own final
drafts of articles that they continue to publish in the current
peer-reviewed journals, leaving both their diversity and their peer
review untouched.)
(2) There is no evidence at all that
self-archiving has any effect on the investments of STM publishers.
Self-archiving has been practiced for nearly 15 years now, and in some
subfields of physics
has even reached 100%, yet both of the major physics publishers (APS
and IOPP) report
that they can detect no cancellations associated with this growth.
(3) There is now a great deal of
incontestable evidence
that self-archiving improves both access and impact for scholars. (No
claims were made that it would improve research quality -- though that
has not been tested: it may well be the case that enhanced access,
usage and impact enhance research quality too!)
(4) There is no “version problem,”
there is an access problem: Those researchers who cannot afford access
to the publisher’s version are not the ones raising the hue and cry
about versions. Is STM proposing to speak for them, suggesting that
they should rather do without than be subjected to access to the
author’s version?
STM:
"There is substantial and compelling evidence that the current
publishing and licensing systems of STM publishers [have] created a
vibrant research infrastructure in the UK in which all four RCUK
principles are embodied and are functioning with enormous
success. There is no evidence to the contrary, although there are
concerns about appropriate budgeting to support ever-increasing
research outputs"
The RCUK policy to supplement paid access to the journal version with
free access to the author’s self-archived version for those would-be
users who cannot afford the journal version does not imply that the
journal version does not continue to be valuable, vibrant or
successful. The evidence that we can still do much better comes from
the 50-250% impact enhancement data.
STM: "The Government
itself, in its November 2004 response (the “UK Government Response”) to
the report of the Science and Technology Committee of the House of
Commons called “Scientific Publications: Free for All?”, noted that it
did not see any 'major problems in accessing scientific information',
nor “any evidence of a significant problem in meeting the public’s
needs in respect of access to journals…'”
The government evidently did not see (or perhaps understand) the
growing body of access/impact data. But
the RCUK (being researchers) evidently did.
STM: "[Even though]
most STM member publishers permit authors to deposit their works in the
authors’ institutional repositories (“IR” or “IRs”), such repositories
do not appear yet to have created a substantial archive of research
material."
It is not clear exactly what STM mean here, but if they mean that there
are not yet enough IRs in the UK and they do not yet archive most of
their own institutional research output, STM are quite right, and that
is one of the things the RCUK policy is intended to remedy.
STM: "Only about a
fifth of the CIBER survey respondents had deposited"
That sounds right. Estimates of the current proportion of annual
research article output that is currently being self-archived vary by
field, but they all hover around 15%, as noted (though a recent JISC survey finds
that 49% of authors report having self-archived at least once).
The purpose of the RCUK policy is to raise that 15% to 100% for UK
research output.
STM:
"Institutional repositories do not seem to be able to provide improved
access to verified research results"
Now this observation, in contrast to the preceding one, is very far
from correct! Author self-archiving (whether in IRs or anywhere else on
the web) has been demonstrated in field after field to improving
research citation impact by 50-250%. Since citing research results is
rather more than just accessing them, we can safely conclude that
self-archiving must be improving access by at least that much too.
What is certainly true is that providing Institutional
Repositories for them is not enough to induce enough UK
researchers to self-archive spontaneously: The same JISC survey that
was cited above has also reported exactly what more is needed, and it
was the authors who indicated what that was: an employer/funder
requirement to self-archive. Of the over 1200 authors surveyed, 95%
replied that they would comply with such a requirement – and the only
two institutions that have already adopted such a requirement
(University of Southampton’s ECS
Department and CERN
Laboratory in Switzerland) both report over 90% compliance, exactly as
predicted by the JISC survey.
(And, by way of a reminder: the author’s final, refereed, accepted
draft is the “verified research results.”)
STM:
"the potential costs to improve such repositories to enable them to be
successful have not been analysed properly to determine whether they
are significantly less expensive than current publishing models."
It is very thoughtful of STM to worry about IR costs for the research
community (just as it worried about the risks of exposure to the
author’s version) but STM will be reassured that the costs of creating
and maintaining IRs are not only risibly small (amounting to pennies
per paper), but they are irrelevant. Because what IRs need in order to
be successful is not pennies but the RCUK policy itself (as the JISC
study showed), requiring researchers to deposit their “verified
research results.”
In any case, the costs of self-archiving have nothing whatsoever to do
with the costs of publishing, since self-archiving is not a substitute
but a supplement, provided to those who cannot afford the costs of the
published version. Self-archiving in IRs is not a competing business
model for publishing, but a complement to the existing publishing
system.
STM: "‘public access’
does not necessarily mean ‘free access’, in the same way as ‘public
transport’ does not mean ‘free transport’, even though in this country
tax payers seem to contribute as significantly to the latter as they do
to scientific research."
“Public access” does not mean free access, but “open access” does. And
open access is concerned with goods from which (unlike the products and
services of the public transport industry) one of the two co-producers
(and the primary one) seeks and receives no sales revenue whatsoever:
The researchers give their writings to their publishers, without asking
any royalties or fees, in exchange for the peer review and publication
they receive, which in turn brings them a certain measure of research
impact, which is what they really seek. But in the online age it turns
out that researchers are losing 50-250% of their potential impact if
they do not, in addition to giving away their research to their
publishers for free, also give it away online for free.
Moreover, there is in a sense a third co-producer, or at least a
co-investor in the “product,” along with the researcher and the
publisher, and that is the British public, the tax-payer who funds the
research: Like the researcher and the researcher’s institution, the
public’s interest is in maximising the degree to which its research
investment is used, applied and built-up, in other words, maximising
its impact, which in turn depends on maximising access to it.
The publisher is a co-producer, having added value, and is fully
entitled to seek revenue for that contribution. (The publisher, after
all, unlike the researcher, is not publishing merely for impact –
although the publisher too co-benefits from enhanced impact.) But the
researcher (and the third co-producer, the public) are just as entitled
to supplement the impact their research received from the publisher’s
version with the potential impact from the self-archived supplement,
provided for those who cannot afford access to the publisher’s version
(exactly as reprints were provided by authors to reprint-requesters in
paper days).
(Now please find a counterpart for all that in the “public transport
industry” analogy!)
STM:
"The concept of ‘reasonable access’ is probably more appropriate in
this case."
What is reasonable is that when a new medium is invented that makes it
possible to enhance research access and impact substantially, no one
should try to restrict research impact simply because such a
possibility had not existed in paper days. Or, more succinctly, it is
not reasonable to expect research and researchers and the public that
funds them to renounce potential research impact in the online era.
STM: "Researchers
report a high level of trust in existing peer-reviewed journals."
Indeed they do. And it is the articles published in those trusted
peer-reviewed journals for which the author’s versions are now to be
self-archived in order to maximise their research impact, in
accordance with the RCUK policy.
STM: "Quality can
always be improved, but it is difficult to imagine how author-pays
business models or repositories will be more effective with respect to
quality than existing publishing systems."
That may well be, but it is absolutely irrelevant to the matter at
hand, since the RCUK is not proposing to mandate author-pays business
models, but author self-archiving. And it is not mandating
self-archiving primarily to improve quality but to improve impact. And
in this respect the IRs are a means (to improve impact), not an end in
themselves (although IRs have other institutional uses too).
STM: "Mandating a
centralised peer review system for repositories will not be an
improvement on the current journal-based and highly diverse review
procedures."
That is absolutely correct, and no one is proposing to mandate a
centralised peer reviews system for repositories. RCUK is proposing to
mandate the self-archiving of the author’s version of peer-reviewed
journal articles.
STM:
"the argument has often been made (and never successfully refuted) that
the mixing of scientific and financial barriers to an author accessing
the journal of his/her choice may lead to unintended consequences with
respect to reviewing standards."
The argument may (or may not) be sound, but it is absolutely irrelevant
to the matter at hand, since the RCUK is not proposing to mandate the
mixing of scientific/financial values, nor to mandate the author’s
choice of journal. RCUK is proposing to mandate the self-archiving of
the author’s version of peer-reviewed journal articles.
STM: "Many reports have
now indicated that major research institutions would have to pay more
for author-pays business models than in the traditional subscription
models."
That may (or may not) be true, but it is absolutely irrelevant to the
matter at hand, since the RCUK is not proposing to mandate author-pays
business models, but self-archiving.
STM:
"The cost of maintaining a large number of independent repositories…is
likely to be significantly higher and less cost-effective than current
publisher-hosted systems."
It is again gratifying that STM is so concerned about RCUK and
university IR costs, but let them be reassured that not only are those
costs happily low, but IRs are not intended to be substitutes for
publisher-hosted systems but supplements to them, for those researchers
who cannot afford the publisher’s version. Hence there is not even any
point in comparing their costs, which are orthogonal.
STM: "STM agrees that
there are significant and important concerns about the ever-increasing
gap between the relatively high level of research funding, resulting in
ever-increasing output of research results, and the relatively static
level of library funding. This issue deserves serious debate and
consideration, but the RCUK proposals do not seriously address these
issues, if at all."
That is correct. The RCUK policy is not intended to generate more
revenue to pay for more paid access, but to supplement the existing
paid access, such as it is, for those would-be users who cannot afford
it, in order to maximise the impact of the research that the RCUK funds.
STM: "The British
Library maintains one of the most complete academic libraries in the
world, and the university research library community is similarly
focused on preservation. Many UK university libraries now have
access to very large collections of STM journals… The cost of
duplicating such archives in digital form on various e-repositories, as
appears to be suggested by the RCUK, is daunting and unnecessary."
Journals are not to be duplicated, authors’ drafts are to be
self-archived, to maximise their impact. The costs, such as they
are, are not pertinent to STM, so it is unnecessary for STM to be
daunted by them.
STM:
"we welcome new publishers and new business models to our
markets. We see nothing new in the RCUK proposal other than
unfunded mandates that arbitrarily favour some models over others."
The RCUK proposal is not about new publishers or new business models,
nor does it favour any model. It is about self-archiving RCUK-funded
research in order to maximise UK research impact. (It is unfunded
because IRs are keystrokes are distributed and cheap, and that’s all
that’s needed.)
STM: "STM submits that
the research community, and the four RCUK principles, are well served
by the many dynamic business models that are currently in existence and
experimented with, as a result of competition and innovation, in the
marketplace."
STM may well be right. But well-served as they are, the British
research community would quite like to improve this excellent service
with the 50-250% impact that the 85% of British research that is not
yet self-archived is still currently losing, needlessly, daily,
monthly, and yearly.
STM: "In summary, STM
believes that it would be in the interest of the research community and
the broader community as a whole if STM and RCUK start a serious and
systematic dialogue, based on the mutually agreed “four principles”, by
jointly assessing and evaluating areas where the research information
infrastructure can be improved and working with both the publishing and
research communities to achieve this, including by the development of
mediation and investigative bodies for research ethics issues, the
support of the development of technical standards to identify versions
and forms of research papers, and the like. This way we can all
avoid the trap of prematurely promoting solutions that are based on
unproven assumptions."
It is an excellent idea for STM to confer and collaborate with RCUK on
ways to improve things over and above the long-overdue self-help policy
that the RCUK is already planning to adopt for British research output.
Such collaboration would be very useful – but certainly not instead of
implementing the self-archiving policy, as and when planned. None of
the above misunderstandings about the nature and objectives of the
policy, nor all the irrelevant points about alternative business
models, add up to any sort of rationale for deferring or diverting the
implementation of the policy in any way at all.
Stevan Harnad