Research Community Interests and the Publishing Lobby's Latest Trojan Horse (CHORUS)

[David Wojick]

I have already responded to these points. The publisher's self interested motivation is to keep the web traffic to its journals. Studies suggest they are losing 20% to PMC. The publishers believe this, whether it is true or not, thus their motivation.

The mandate is that the articles be made publicly accessible and the articles are the publisher's so they are not third party contractors, whatever that might mean. The fundees need play no role. The publishers are making a ground breaking concession by agreeing to the Federal embargo deadlines. This is great news for OA. I have no idea what you mean by letting them sit. They will be on view in their on-line journals, which is arguably where they belong.

The repository approach made sense when the publishers refused to provide access. That day has passed.

David Wojick

On Jul 23, 2013, at 8:50 AM, "Pikas, Christina K." <Christina.Pikas at JHUAPL.EDU> wrote:

> Adminstrative info for SIGMETRICS (for example unsubscribe):
> http://web.utk.edu/~gwhitney/sigmetrics.html
> 
> The vast majority of OA advocates are not anti-publisher exactly but are justifiably skeptical of publishers' motivations, activities, and proposals.
> 
> This proposal is not a healthy one for scholarly communication, in my opinion. The mandate is between the funders and the fundees and the publishers are third party contractors. The US federal government often likes to push off work to contractors that is inherently governmental and that should be done by (less biased) government employees.
> 
> The publishers' proposal may be an easier route to go and might be attractive with the lobbying and the advocates like you pushing it, but in the long run the publishers serve their own bottom lines (as they should in a market economy) and not necessarily the best interests of scholarly communication. The products of federally funded research are too important to let sit and should be in repositories run by the funders and/or fundees.
> 
> This is all in my opinion and is not the position of my employer (or anyone else, for that matter).
> 
> Christina Pikas
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: ASIS&T Special Interest Group on Metrics [mailto:SIGMETRICS at listserv.utk.edu] On Behalf Of David Wojick
> Sent: Tuesday, July 23, 2013 8:07 AM
> To: SIGMETRICS at listserv.utk.edu
> Subject: Re: [SIGMETRICS] Research Community Interests and the Publishing Lobby's Latest Trojan Horse (CHORUS)
> 
> Adminstrative info for SIGMETRICS (for example unsubscribe):
> http://web.utk.edu/~gwhitney/sigmetrics.html
> 
> What Federal system design arguments have I not responded to? It is not an ad hominem to point out that the Federal policy is not anti-publisher, as many OA advocates are. It is an important fact about the policy. I have to be repetitive because Harnad is presenting the same non-design arguments over and over. Arguments such as that publishers cannot be trusted, access should be immediate via institutional repositories, delayed access is not open access, etc. My response does not vary.
> 
> David Wojick
> 
> On Jul 23, 2013, at 7:33 AM, Cristóbal Palmer <cmp at CMPALMER.ORG> wrote:
> 
>> Adminstrative info for SIGMETRICS (for example unsubscribe):
>> http://web.utk.edu/~gwhitney/sigmetrics.html
>> 
>> On Tuesday, July 23, 2013 at 7:05 AM, David Wojick wrote:
>>> 
>>> Your personal dislike of publishers is not a system design argument, nor is it Federal policy.  
>> 
>> Your personal inability to stay focused on the arguments presented and reliance instead on ad hominem plus repetition isn't a system design argument either.
>> 
>> Thanks,
>> --  
>> Cristóbal Palmer
>> 
>> cmpalmer.org  
>> 
>