Tripping Point: Delayed Access is not Open Access; "Chorus" is a Trojan Horse

[Stevan Harnad]

On Sat, Jul 20, 2013 at 3:56 PM, David Wojick <dwojick at craigellachie.us>wrote:


>  The US Government is developing a green OA system for all articles based
> even in part on Federal funding, with a default embargo period of 12
> months. The publishers have responded with a proposal called CHORUS that
> meets that requirement by taking users to the publisher's website. Many of
> the journals involved presently have no OA aspect so this will
> significantly increase the percentage of OA articles when it is implemented
> over the next few years.
>

> *[David Wojick * works part time as the Senior Consultant for Innovation
> at OSTI, the Office of Scientific and Technical Information, in the Office
> of Science of the US Department of Energy. He has a PhD in logic and
> philosophy of science, an MA in mathematical logic, and a BS in civil
> engineering.]


Let us fervently hope that the US Government/OSTP will *not* be taken in by
this publisher Trojan Horse called
"CHORUS<http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2013/06/scientific-publishers-offer-solu.html>
."  It is tripping point, not a tipping point.

If not, we can all tip our hats goodbye to Open Access -- which means free
online access immediately upon publication, not access after a one-year
embargo.

CHORUS is just the latest successor organisation for self-serving anti-Open
Access (OA) lobbying<http://www.google.ca/search?hl=en&lr=&q=harnad%20OR%20Harnad%20OR%20archivangelism+blogurl:http://openaccess.eprints.org/&ie=UTF-8&tbm=blg&tbs=qdr:m&num=100&c2coff=1&safe=active#lr=&c2coff=1&safe=active&hl=en&tbm=blg&sclient=psy-ab&q=(lobbying+OR+lobby)+blogurl:http%3A%2F%2Fopenaccess.eprints.org%2F&oq=(lobbying+OR+lobby)+blogurl:http%3A%2F%2Fopenaccess.eprints.org%2F&gs_l=serp.3...14364.16642.0.17599.8.8.0.0.0.0.165.748.7j1.8.0...0.0...1c.1.16.psy-ab.9T7OcUOL6gE&pbx=1&bav=on.2,or.r_cp.r_qf.&fp=41411a1f1a5d3b02&biw=1260&bih=674>
by
the publishing industry. Previous incarnations have been the "PRISM
coalition<http://www.google.ca/search?hl=en&lr=&q=harnad%20OR%20Harnad%20OR%20archivangelism+blogurl:http://openaccess.eprints.org/&ie=UTF-8&tbm=blg&tbs=qdr:m&num=100&c2coff=1&safe=active#lr=&c2coff=1&safe=active&hl=en&tbm=blg&sclient=psy-ab&q=(prism+OR+pitbull+OR+pit-bull)+blogurl:http%3A%2F%2Fopenaccess.eprints.org%2F&oq=(prism+OR+pitbull+OR+pit-bull)+blogurl:http%3A%2F%2Fopenaccess.eprints.org%2F&gs_l=serp.3...41865.56372.1.57067.38.30.8.0.0.0.129.2666.28j2.30.0...0.0...1c.1.16.psy-ab.oY8Xj19aWIM&pbx=1&bav=on.2,or.r_cp.r_qf.&fp=41411a1f1a5d3b02&biw=1260&bih=674>"
and the "Research Works
Act<http://www.google.ca/search?hl=en&lr=&q=harnad%20OR%20Harnad%20OR%20archivangelism+blogurl:http://openaccess.eprints.org/&ie=UTF-8&tbm=blg&tbs=qdr:m&num=100&c2coff=1&safe=active#lr=&c2coff=1&safe=active&hl=en&tbm=blg&sclient=psy-ab&q=%22research+works+act%22+blogurl:http%3A%2F%2Fopenaccess.eprints.org%2F&oq=%22research+works+act%22+blogurl:http%3A%2F%2Fopenaccess.eprints.org%2F&gs_l=serp.3...15413.22277.0.23563.20.20.0.0.0.1.137.1792.17j3.20.0...0.0...1c.1.16.psy-ab.JkaNf1Hb3Oc&pbx=1&bav=on.2,or.r_cp.r_qf.&fp=41411a1f1a5d3b02&biw=1260&bih=674>
."

1. It is by now evident to everyone that OA is inevitable, because it is
optimal for research, researchers, research institutions, the vast R&D
industry, students, teachers, journalists and the tax-paying public that
funds the research.

2. Research is funded by the public and conducted by researchers and their
institutions for the sake of research progress, productivity and
applications -- not in order to guarantee publishers' current revenue
streams and modus operandi: Research publishing is a service industry and
must adapt to the revolutionary new potential that the online era has
opened up for research,* not vice versa*!

3. That is why both research funders (like NIH) and research institutions
(like Harvard) -- in the US as well as in the rest of the world -- are
increasingly mandating (requiring) OA: See ROARMAP<http://roarmap.eprints.org/>
.

4. Publishers are already trying to delay the potential benefits of OA to
research progress by imposing
embargoes<http://www.google.ca/search?hl=en&lr=&q=harnad%20OR%20Harnad%20OR%20archivangelism+blogurl:http://openaccess.eprints.org/&ie=UTF-8&tbm=blg&tbs=qdr:m&num=100&c2coff=1&safe=active#q=embargo+OR+embargoes+OR+embargoed+blogurl:http://openaccess.eprints.org/&lr=&c2coff=1&safe=active&hl=en&tbm=blg&tbas=0&source=lnt&sa=X&ei=xemwUeqMEOSwyQGjn4DgBg&ved=0CBsQpwUoAA&bav=on.2,or.r_cp.r_qf.&bvm=bv.47534661,d.aWc&fp=41411a1f1a5d3b02&biw=1260&bih=672>
of
6-12 months or more on research access that can and should be
immediate<http://www.openaccesspublishing.org/delayed/laakso_bj_rk_delay_preprint.pdf>
in
the online era.

5. The strategy of CHORUS is to try to take the power to provide OA out of
the hands of researchers so that publishers gain control over both the
timetable and the insfrastructure for providing OA.

6. And, without any sense of the irony, the publisher lobby (which already
consumes so much of the scarce funds available for research) is attempting
to do this under the pretext of *saving "precious research funds" for
research*!

7. It is for researchers to provide OA, and for their funders and
institutions to mandate and monitor OA provision by requiring deposit in
their institutional repositories -- which already exist, for multiple
purposes.

8. Depositing in repositories entails no extra research expense for
research, just a few extra keystrokes, from researchers.

9. Institutional and subject repositories keep both the timetable and the
insfrastructure for providing OA where it belongs: in the hands of the
research community, in whose interests it is to provide OA.

10. The publishing industry's previous ploys -- PRISM and the Research
Works Act -- were obviously self-serving Trojan Horses, promoting the
publishing industry's interests disguised as the interests of research.

Let the the US Government not be taken in this time either.

[And why does the US Government not hire consultants who represent the
interests of the research community rather than those of the
publishing industry?]

Eisen, M. (2013) A CHORUS of boos: publishers offer their “solution” to
public access <http://www.michaeleisen.org/blog/?p=1382>

Giles, J. (2007) PR's 'pit bull' takes on open
access<http://cwis.usc.edu/hsc/nml/assets/AAHSL/Nature_PR%20Pit%20Bull%2007-0124.pdf>.
Nature 5 January 2007.

Harnad, S. (2012) Research Works Act H.R.3699: The Private Publishing Tail
Trying To Wag The Public Research Dog, Yet
Again<http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/867-guid.htm>
. *Open Access Archivangelism* 287 January 7. 2012

At 01:39 PM 7/20/2013, Stevan Harnad wrote:
>
> *Summary:* The findings of Eric Archambault’s (2013) pilot study “ The
> Tipping Point - Open Access Comes of Age<http://users.ecs.soton.ac.uk/harnad/Temp/ISSI-ARchambeault.pdf>”
> on the percentage of OA that is currently available are very timely,
> welcome and promising. The study finds that the percentage of articles
> published in 2008 that are OA in 2013 is between 42-48%. It does not
> estimate, however, *when in that 5-year interval the articles were made OA
> *. Hence the study cannot indicate what percentage of articles being
> published in 2013 is being made OA in 2013. Nor can it indicate what
> percentage of articles published before 2013 is OA in 2013. The only way to
> find that out is through a separate analysis of immediate Gold OA, delayed
> Gold OA, immediate Green OA, and delayed Green OA, by discipline.
>
> See: http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/1022-OA-2013-.html
>
>
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