Saturday, November 07, 2009

On OA, language barriers, and the meaning of 'ambush'

I missed the original “Open and Shut?” blog post, but reading Walt Crawford’s “Cites & Insights” for November 2009, I saw that Richard Poynder “seems to suggest that [I] have been an effective agent for ‘ambushing the OA movement’”. Ambushing? Not being a native speaker of English, I thought I’d better look up if ‘to ambush’ could have another meaning than “staging a surprise attack”, and to read Poynder’s original article. Actually, Poynder, in his post “Open Access: Whom would you back” of 10 March 2009, doesn’t just ‘suggest’ that I have been an effective agent for ambushing the OA movement, but he asserts: “Velterop began to mastermind stage two of the publisher's strategy for ambushing the OA movement: accelerating take-up of Hybrid OA in order to marginalise Green OA.” Perilously close to libel, Mister Poynder!

Poynder is entitled to his views, of course, but it would be nice if he could expound them without misrepresenting and insulting people (yes, I am offended, and an apology on his blog is appreciated!). He doesn’t do OA any favours, either, with a blog post that is teeming with inaccuraces, conjectures, and mistaken inferences, and given that, it doesn’t surprise me that he even misses the fact that BioMed Central, now Springer, actively promotes repositories (green!) and offers services to universities to install them. Fortunately for OA, there are many more people like me, who truly work on advocating OA in its wider sense, and who are not drawn into what in my view is a narrow-minded pseudo-orthodoxy that only sees green.

The idea that whatever I did or advocated with regard to accelerating gold OA was in any way an ‘attack’ on green OA (“…in order to marginalise…” even) is preposterous, and that it could be a surprise is nothing less than absurd. The surprise is more likely that anybody could see advocating OA in general and working on gold OA as an attack on green OA.

How advocating gold OA as one of the routes to OA could be an attack on green OA is a complete mystery. The original Budapest Initiative recommended two, complementary, strategies, that later came to be called ‘green’ and ‘gold’ open access by Stevan Harnad. Both were hailed as welcome strategies to achieve Open Access, and Harnad, as well as I, and all the other participants of the meeting that effectively kick-started the ‘movement’, signed the Initiative. Poynder was not on the OA scene yet. Although the Budapest Initiative spoke of ‘OA journals’, a little while later the Bethesda Statement clarified that Open Access is a property of individual works, not necessarily journals or publishers. Poynder has a problem with so-called hybrid journals, but according to ‘Bethesda’, the OA articles in hybrid journals are true open access. No surprises there, no attack on the OA movement, no ambush. Just genuine, pure OA. Of articles in otherwise traditional journals.

Hybrid journals were an attempt at transiting existing journals to OA. In some cases it worked (Nuclear Acid Research), and in other cases not (yet). I would be the last to deny that the hybrid model is problematic. Because it gives a choice to authors, it cannot impose either the traditional model or the OA publishing model. And because of the widespread, but naïve, perception that a journal’s subscription price is, or should be, proportional to the number of papers published, it is not understood and sometimes severely criticised. Publishers, therefore, have good reason to dislike the hybrid model as well. They will, I suspect, move in the direction of full OA (what might be called the “pay-or-go-away” or “POGA” model), or revert back to subscriptions/licences (the “licence-sphere”, or “L-sphere” model).

Poynder brings up the affordability issue. And he complains about the level of article charges. That’s to the point, and fair comment. But it seemingly hasn’t dawned upon him that gold OA is open to competition, and these charges are bound to converge on a level that reflects this competition. Green OA, on the other hand, relies on the L-sphere, with its monopoloid characteristics, remaining intact for the foreseeable future. Dismissing the role of gold OA publishers in moving OA forward, because they see it as a business opportunity, is deeply misguided. It is like dismissing companies for making equipment to generate clean energy and reduce CO2 emissions on the grounds that they may benefit from doing that. Or venting the opinion that what these companies do is bad, because there might be even better techniques. Quite absurd.

Poynder seems to have it in for publishers, any publishers, be they OA publishers or not, and sees any differences between OA publishers and traditional subscription publishers as “a figment of OA advocates' imagination.” As one of the early OA advocates, I couldn’t disagree more. Besides, if OA is about publisher bashing and money only, then it’s bound to fail. Sure, a more economical system may be a desirable side effect of OA, but can’t be the core aim of it all. The mistake Poynder (and, I’m afraid, his guru Harnad) make(s) is to see so-called ‘green OA’ – seemingly not even OA as such ­– as an end in itself. It isn’t, and it shouldn’t be. The ultimate goal is to universally share (scientific and scholarly) knowledge, in what I call the noösphere (a term taken from Pierre Teilhard de Chardin), a ‘knowledge-sphere’ around the world that everyone can ‘inhale’. And OA is just one of the methods to share knowledge. Any OA. Including gold OA, and even ‘delayed OA’ (after all, ignoring the value of opening up older knowledge is devaluing older knowledge). Is delayed OA ideal? No, of course not. But OA itself is not ideal and is no more – or less – than one of the first steps to be taken to come to true knowledge sharing, to a true noösphere. OA is mostly about sharing documents, often enough just in PDF format. Access to documents is great, but it still leaves formidable barriers to knowledge sharing intact. One of the examples I have in mind is the language barrier.

English may be the lingua franca of scholarly exchange; the notion that there is no unique scientific knowledge available in other languages is absurd. And even the notion that if it is available in English its true availability is universal is a wholly unrealistic one.

But it’s not just the barrier put up by different languages. Even between native speakers of English a lot of knowledge that is published and openly available in English is nonetheless lost. Lost in ambiguity. Researchers are famously (infamously?) sloppy with their language. And publishers, although they sometimes ameliorate the worst excesses, do not, on the whole, seem to set a lot of store by disambiguation of scientific literature. OA publishers are no better than traditional ones in that regard.

Open Access is a most significant element in getting to a global noösphere, and although it’s clearly not the only element, all efforts to promote OA, in any form, help. Unlike dismissing gold OA, which doesn’t.

Jan Velterop


7 comments:

  1. ON THE MEANING OF AGREEMENT

        "The mistake... Harnad... make(s) is to see so-called ‘green OA’ – seemingly not even OA as such ­– as an end in itself. It isn’t, and it shouldn’t be."

    No, no, Jan, you've got it backwards again: OA is the end in itself, and Green OA is full-blooded, 100% OA -- as you have many times argued it is not.

    (I hope that you won't find my pointing this out, too, "[p]erilously close to libel", Jan! I think I know you well enough to discern that you meant it as a joke even with regard to Richard, though you may perhaps not know that others have made this joke in a more sinister way: )

    Both Green and Gold OA are OA. The difference between them is that Green OA is swift and certain, because it can be mandated, and could be provided virtually overnight by the research community itself (the universal providers of all OA content), whereas Gold OA is slow and uncertain, because it depends on change in the publishing industry rather than just the research community.

    That is the reason I favor Green OA; it is also the reason I argue that (slow) Gold OA has become a digression and retardant to (swift) Green OA. It was welcome as a proof of principle. But what is now needed is full speed ahead on providing and mandating Green OA globally. Ironically, not only is this the swiftest and surest way to OA, but it is also the swiftest and surest way to eventual Gold OA.

    Apart from the question of the relative priority of Green and Gold OA (in the pursuit of OA), on which Richard and I might roughly agree (though I'm not altogether sure), there is also the question of the relative priority of affordability vs. accessibility, and the associated question of the urgency of publishing reform. On both the latter questions, Richard and I disagree (though you don't appear to have noticed it, and your polyphasic source -- never very engaged with the substantive issues, and the source of far more slights than insights! -- certainly did not): Like you, Richard considers the affordability problem to be more fundamental (and perhaps more urgent -- of that I'm not sure) than the accessibility problem, and consequently he too (like you) sees publishing reform as the real objective, not just, or primarily, free online access to the refereed journal corpus, as I do.

    Gurudev Maharaj

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  2. Jan Velterop6:36 pm

    Stevan, Stevan, when will you start reading properly.

    In my view the goal is to make universal sharing of scientific knowledge possible, and OA is a very important means to achieve that end. But not the only one. And I have never argued that Green OA isn't full-blooded OA. Fortunately – thank you – you provide a link and readers should follow that to see what I really argued.

    Don't worry about libel, Stevan. Expressing a preference for green OA or an opinion is not libel. But stating as a fact the malicious notion that I, OA advocate from the very beginning, should be "ambushing the OA movement...in order to marginalise green OA" goes beyond expressing an opinion or a preference. In combination with words like 'mastermind', that does indeed resemble libel to me.

    Indeed, as you say, both green and gold OA are OA. That's in the Budapest Initiative. And that's why working on gold OA (not even exclusively, as BioMed Central, when I ran it, also promoted repositories, and it still does) is not, in any way, "ambushing the OA movement."

    I have no problem with your favouring green OA. I also see the advantages of repositories, but I would like to see progress made with publishing reform as well, and not just wait with that until after green OA has fully succeeded, if indeed it will.

    Yes, my source was Cites and Insights, but I did not comment on the source; just on Poynder's original, and I don't know what the broadside against Walt Cawford has to do in your comment. And Poynder is perfectly in his right to regard the affordability problem as his priority. But does green OA solve that? Green OA depends on formal (toll-access) publishing to continue. Gold OA is green OA as well as at the same time being formal (OA) publishing.


    I take Gurudev Maharaj to be one of your nominative synonyms, like Stevan Harnad, Etienne Harnad, Harnad Istvan, et cetera, correct?

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  3. "REPUBLICANS HIJACK DEMOCRATS' MEDICARE AGENDA..."

        JV: "It should not be 'free VERSUS open', but 'free AND open' or at the very least 'free AS A MOVE TOWARDS open'... I have never argued that Green OA isn't full-blooded OA..."

    Umm, if X = X, what are we to make of "X AND X" or "X AS A MOVE TOWARDS X"?

    (To forestall further rounds of reading impropriety: Green OA means free online access, tout court.)

    I can't speak for Richard, but here's my guess: For Richard, the important goal is publishing reform (especially copyright reform), with the solution to the affordability problem being one of its corollaries. The reason he uses the metaphor of "ambushing" (he could have said much the same thing with the much more commonly used term "hijacking" -- without any penal liability in either case for having accused anyone of being either a highwayman or a terrorist) is that, in his view, the promotion of Hybrid Gold OA locks in a form of publishing, as well as a fee, that Green OA would unlock.

    Hence, Richard might say "If my interest were both to maximize my (publishing) company's revenue and to provide OA (out of intrinsic conviction, as in your case, Jan, when you were a publisher, or just in order to placate client demand for OA, as in the case of publishers with less noble motives), I would push for hybrid Gold OA, at current asking prices, rather than admit candidly to my customers that they can have exactly what they seek (namely, OA, full-blooded OA) by simply self-archiving their articles (Green OA), rather than paying me extra for Gold OA."

    For you, the "universal sharing of scientific knowledge" may be the goal, and OA only the means. For me OA is the goal and Green OA mandates are the means. We could both be right, and happy, with the ultimate outcome. But not if pre-emptive Gold Fever keeps distracting and delaying things.

    I think the probability of publishers reforming of their own accord, by downsizing to just providing and charging (fairly) for peer review alone -- in the absence of subscription cancellation pressure from global Green OA -- is close to zero. The most they are likely to do of their own accord is to try to keep generating their current revenues per article, without phasing out any products, services or costs, via hybrid Gold OA.

    That's one of the (many) reasons why the Gold OA road is such a slow and uncertain one.

    And that's all Richard means by "ambushing/hijacking."

    Suilevalliv bis


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  4. I see both Green and Gold OA as "real" OA, and both certainly address the issue of making scientific results available for all to read. I also will not deny the Green OA is probably the faster approach.

    However, I see one big problem with the Green OA approach: whereas it does enable people to read the publications, it makes text mining unnecessarily difficult due to the complete lack of standardization of the deposited documents.

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  5. "REPUBLICANS HIJACK DEMOCRATS' MEDICARE AGENDA..."

            JV: "It should not be 'free VERSUS open', but 'free AND open' or at the very least 'free AS A MOVE TOWARDS open'... I have never argued that Green OA isn't full-blooded OA..."

    Umm, if X = X, what are we to make of "X AND X" or "X AS A MOVE TOWARDS X"?

    (To forestall further rounds of reading impropriety: Green OA means free online access, tout court.)

    I can't speak for Richard, but here's my guess: For Richard, the important goal is publishing reform (especially copyright reform), with the solution to the affordability problem being one of its corollaries. The reason he uses the metaphor of "ambushing" (he could have said much the same thing with the much more commonly used term "hijacking" -- without any penal liability in either case for having accused anyone of being either a highwayman or a terrorist) is that, in his view, the promotion of Hybrid Gold OA locks in a form of publishing, as well as a fee, that Green OA would unlock.

    Hence, Richard might say "If my interest were both to maximize my (publishing) company's revenue and to provide OA (out of intrinsic conviction, as in your case, Jan, when you were a publisher, or just in order to placate client demand for OA, as in the case of publishers with less noble motives), I would push for hybrid Gold OA, at current asking prices, rather than admit candidly to my customers that they can have exactly what they seek (namely, OA, full-blooded OA) by simply self-archiving their articles (Green OA), rather than paying me extra for Gold OA."

    For you, the "universal sharing of scientific knowledge" may be the goal, and OA only the means. For me OA is the goal and Green OA mandates are the means. We could both be right, and happy, with the ultimate outcome. But not if pre-emptive Gold Fever keeps distracting and delaying things.

    I think the probability of publishers reforming of their own accord, by downsizing to just providing and charging (fairly) for peer review alone -- in the absence of subscription cancellation pressure from global Green OA -- is close to zero. The most they are likely to do of their own accord is to try to keep generating their current revenues per article, without phasing out any products, services or costs, via hybrid Gold OA.

    That's one of the (many) reasons why the Gold OA road is such a slow and uncertain one.

    And that's all Richard means by "ambushing/hijacking."

    Suilevalliv bis

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  6. Jan Velterop8:04 am

    Always thought that Poynder was Harnad's apologist, but it seems to be the other way around.

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  7. or maybe we're each just saying what we have reason to believe to be true...

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