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So we�ve had four stimulating talks
and hopefully we�ve been able to well to kind of seep
in and ruminate a little bit and perhaps as you�ve had a chance
to um digest some of these talks oh gee I wish I would have asked the following
question we due to other callings we lost Mark Morvant I�m going to ask our other
three speakers
from this afternoon to join me up here we�ve got about fifteen minutes or so um and I want
to just throw this
open again to questions as you�ve had a chance to think about something and oh I wish
I would have asked
now is your opportunity is your opportunity to do that so Heather, Michael, and Jennifer
will you join me up here?
And I wonder if we could get a mic or two up here? Well [inaudible] I see a
question in the back Sheila?
Thank you I want to tell all the speakers and the organizers this has been wonderful
I�ve enjoyed all the presentations, and I�ve learned quite a bit
um I think the one thing that scared me the most about what I�ve heard today was the
fact
I can't remember which speaker was talking about Elsevier and all the big publishers
thinking about going Open Access
that�s I think they said Open Access is the future, and I�m worried about I don�t
think they are going to give up their profits so what
is their version of Open Access and how is that different from what we�re hearing?
[inaudible] so the world of Open Access� is this on? Okay sorry I feel like a lounge
singer with these things
I feel like I should get up and start dancing a little bit you don�t need to see that
um okay� so less disturbing
is Elsevier um their version of Open Access I think is a scary environment for two reasons.
One is the financial incentive for them to reduce their profits is nonexistent so the
calculation that they are making,
and many of the large commercial publishers are making is to kind of do this very simple
calculation
they need a certain amount of revenue per article or a certain amount of revenue
for article in the subscription access world to achieve their current profit margins.
So the calculation that they�re making is we�re going to preserve the amount of revenue
and profit margin that�s
baked into the system by moving to an article processing uh calculation that basically says
we publish x amount of articles per year,
and we need x amount of revenue in order to hit these profit margins we�ll divide one
by the other and that�s the charge per article.
They�ve made the landed on the number of roughly three thousand dollars and article
across the board in order to achieve those those profit margins.
So one of the the scenarios that�s a little bit frightening is watching the commercial
publishers try to bake that number in as a given to the community
um where we have the advantage where it�s a little we have the opportunity there�s
a possibility for us to affect a difference in their
approach in a way that we can't do in the subscription market is that their leaving
out the one difference that the one elaborate piece of
leverage that we have which is that they have to compete for authors that are willing to
pay three thousand dollars an article or more whereas
librarians right now are being sold big bundles where they�re not competing on price with
librarians,
but their going to have to compete on price with the uh individual with processing fees
um the other piece of the scenario,
and then I think Mike wants to add some stuff to this um is again that licensing piece.
They�re going to call it Open Access,
but it�s not going to look like a full cc by license that�s attached to the articles.
So for me those are the two pieces that might just explain that�s another place where
authors
have leverage and where we as the community have leverage to not accept those terms and
conditions on the articles.
And I agree with everything, and we�re seeing a test case in the United Kingdom there was
a recent decision where the government
reviewed Open Access and thought that the US government approach of sort of this public
access read only access was insufficient
they liked the idea of you know the reuse rights, but um then decided we�re going
to just pay for it. The government�s just going to pay for it.
And then the question is then at what price, and this is when we�re seeing the publisher
say fine if you�re going to guarantee us our current level
of revenues I guess we could switch our model, but there�s no reason the price of an article
needs to stay at three thousand dollars um and and so
that that is one of the key points but the other is trying to create these value added
these value added services and the text mining services and
the analytics and all of that will be a hobbled version of what they could be in an open access
environment. So that�s the other issue.
I want to follow on with that. That�s uh I see the same kind of picture from where
I sit which is publishers with um vast amounts of
revenues uh such as Elsevier um being able to really invest in a level of um sort of
usability of what one is reading and so things
that really on top of that provide some value in terms of a larger eco system and so my
question sort of seeing that beginning to take
shape and understanding that business models will have to change my question to Jennifer
about how PLOS is thinking um and how this
community can engage with you in that very competitive environment in that I�m gonna
guess you don�t have the RND funds available
to take on a multibillion dollar company or several multibillion dollar companies so how
can this community engage with you um
creatively in a way that enables you and those publishers really trying work in this arena
to kind of compete in the next game the one coming.
That is a very good question. Um and you�re right we don�t have the RND funds that say
Elsevier or some of the
larger mammoth [inaudible] may have. The way that we go about doing so is we try to partner
with other small innovator,
so [inaudible] is one example um we recently was able to integrate um our PLOS supplemental
information files with um
the organization called [inaudible] I don�t just if your not familiar with them. They�re
an open repositories of figures
of all kinds they take format files ranging from tables CFV files all the way to code
and PDF and images and so forth.
But everything there is Open Access um, and it�s a fantastic new outfit that is based
out of London. So by partnerships
on that level we�re able to continue to build out these services um we do in fact
just take a step back we do in fact
do face some of the um author APC charge um I think competition that will more likely
be increasingly steep in the
future so um as Heather mentioned you know we�re if subscription costs are no longer
part of the equation for
companies to generate revenue what will it move to? APC�s are just one example um,
but the hope there is that
there will become a market for other processing charges. Um there are a number of independent
researchers who
have put out and have done actually cross publishing um uh studies of the different
journals and their author
processing charges and um they�ve also tacked along with it some of the more traditional
metrics for how research
will fair if you publish with that publisher. Um so you know I think researchers, and rightly
so they should become
more informed as to what their paying for um this is not well put because again it�s
a misnomer uh misconceptulization
to really think of it as an author charge but in the sense that that the burden of that
fee will be on the researcher
um perhaps shouldered by the funding agency and so forth. I think you know some of these
um examinations in fact will be quite revealing.
And I think in the long term more information, and more insight into this is better.
If I could just add to that so the idea of article processing fees is a competitive market
it is you know the hope right?
So one of the things that SPARC is working on for the librarians in the audience is actually
a joint project with PLOS
to do an examination of the article processing charges out there to get basically we�re
going to paint an environmental
scan to take a look at what�s out there and then to do a little bit of projecting
in terms of the behavior that we see coming
from commercial publishers. So the commercial publishers success in our market place came
from in the online environment bundling together your subscription dollars uh uh for
multiple journals into one pot of money.
They are already attempting to do that with article processing fees or Open Access journals.
Coming soon to a negotiating table near you is your friendly international publisher
who is going to ask you to consider ponying up a significant amount of money up front
for a discount
but essentially bundling your APC fees paying in advance for a 20-30% discount across the
board on APC, but you will then be committing
[inaudible] a significant chunk of your money that can fund Open Access publishing and other
outlets to commercial publishers once again.
Buyer beware this is something that we�re going to have to be very very conscious as
a community not to fall in the trap because we know how to do it.
We know how to negotiate subscriptions or bundles because it feels familiar it doesn�t
mean it�s the right path to go down in this environment,
so that�s in one way that PLOS SPARC um [inaudible] all the other publishers who are
out there who are not from private publishers and interested
in competitive market place in Open Access can really collaborate by talking to one another
and being conscious of those buying behaviors.
I have a question for you Heather because you have more of a view into this and perhaps
you could share a little bit of insight as to whether
or not there are already movements or you anticipate there being some back door collusion
in price setting I mean I don�t know if that�s what happens in other markets [laughing]
You know I don�t know collusion is a strong word, but there are certainly an understanding
on I think the commercial publishers part they know how to sell
to our market and they know what our behavior is they know um I can't remember I think it
was our who is not here who I had a question for� Mark um talked
about reducing the frictions and making it easier and one of the reasons that you people
stick with commercial textbook publishers is that it's easier to
actually buy the product rather than to go to the open product. And I think in purchasing
or in payments and fees that sort of a friction thing still applies.
So whether it�s deliberate and collusive um I would hate to speculate, but I would
be� I would be on the look out for that type of um [inaudible] type behavior is a
lovely way to put it.
Uh I had a question for Jennifer about the uh ALM with regard to the use of twitter and
Facebook and things like that are you tracking back the originating twit or tweet I�m sorry
uh to
determine or maybe that too because what I was really getting at was with regard to citation
information you know there excluding self citing and things like that.
What are you doing in the gathering of that kind of data to exclude people who might start
their own popularity with tweets.
Thank you for your question it is a um it touches on a big concern that is quite wide
spread amongst all people that we speak
to about article level metrics when we speak specifically about some of these social media
sources um so for twitter there are
two potential huge problems one is that it can be games is a perhaps another way that
your question may be framed um and a second one
is that we don�t have a very good sense now as to who in fact engaging in the twitter
conversation and so unlike citations whereby
other researchers who are publishing papers are engaging are the defacto community um
that are involved in this activity.
Twitter is an open public platform right and um we�re in the very beginning of developing
the sophistication of this particular technology.
We hope to in fact be able to give a far more granular view as to whether or not um this
particular set of tweets may have come from
um researchers who IP�s are from a research institution. Um versus that of tweets that
have come from the general public
and I do mean to still include this latter group because depending on who you are and
depending on what you�re looking for
you may very well in fact want to surface stories that have become more wide spread
popular within a general population.
Altmetric.com which is one of the entity I mentioned earlier um they have started they
are far more advanced in being
able to give a better sense of to where these tweets are coming from. And um I definitely
recommend you checking them out
it's uh just Altmetric.com um and so between all of the data aggregation providers that
I including us we�re these are all
things we�re thinking about in trying to build out um better tools for. Um just to
quickly wrap this comment up on the note
of gaming or self initiated elevated activity that may be able to promote um one researchers
interest over that of the general well fair.
That is definitely one of the issues, and we think that um like citations which also
can be gamed too um that it will require a whole set of processes
and on behalf of the data providers certain particular gates or considerations that they
take into account when they process their data.
Um it will also um involve I think you know the establishment of community norms of what
is appropriate behavior um when you�re engaging
with research that can that is captured and trapped in a certain way. Um you know it's
we do feel that you know in so far could potentially
be used for research assessment for hiring tenure promotions and so forth but these are
all very important um kind of considerations and that
like something say like plagiarism that there needs to be some sort of larger um behavioral
norm that is set up and also policed by the community
at large along these lines. Um so it will take multiple efforts along different line
to really um address this issue, but it�s certainly um a legitimate valid one.
I'm Mark Greenburg from the University of Kansas and I'm glad that you mentioned uh
that citations too can be gamed because I was going to make that comment as well
uh in fact that was brought up in Berlin ten that citation itself isn�t a very good necessarily
the best way of measuring in part because of that. But uh what I wanted to do
is return to the question of APC�S or APR�s uh a problem that a couple of colleagues uh
and I have been working on at KU, and that is that I would like to encourage everybody
to think about the problem of shifting the costs of publication uh not just in a first
world framework but also in a global framework uh we you know we can probably figure out
how to pay our charges and I know that PLOS has this this mechanism for uh waving the
fees for I think ninety countries or so that are below a certain level but it still ends
up
being a barrier to participation to global scientific communication because there are
psychological barriers uh asking for the waiver people don�t want to do it it�s embarrassing
sort of a colonial model people don�t want to engage in. Uh in fact just as I was sitting
here today I got the notice that the article that three of us uh [inaudible] and I have
written town works and global issues of uh evolutionary biology ecology worked with uh
working groups in Africa and South America and so forth, and he�s constantly engaged
in these
conversations, so he�s brought a lot of this data to the table. And I work in eastern
Europe where we have the same kinds of problems,
so it ends up ghettoizing uh a number of constituents is what we want to do is think about not just
the fourteen year old boy who
uh you know is the mind we want to capture to bring all the best minds to the table for
our problems
but also our colleagues in other parts of the world who engage in creative strategies
to solve scientific problems.
I agree completely that you know access to publishing should be uh democratized but you�ve
got the problem in the developing world
just on the other side right. Where readers are denied access because of cost barriers,
so
you�re just somebody is going to get denied unless more unless some subsidies is made
because somebody has got to bare the cost of publication
um I think the hope is in a world dominated by article processing charges that we can
competition will drive those down so that that access barrier
is easier to manage than the pricing barrier on the readers side um so you know it's not
a perfect world.
Your points well taken and managing the sort of neocolonial optics is a is an essential
part because I think certainly folks at PLOS and others you know
really do have a democratic ethic of what the academy is and should be. But figuring
out how you allocate the costs and how you identify where the subsidies come from is
an evolving area.
Um a quick point and I hope that this is relevant but um we had a PLOS article published last
year and this was done by a set of
researchers who were not affiliated formally with a research institution and they were
all trained researchers by their own right,
but they were not working they are not currently working with any research institution they
so I don�t know if you want to call the citizens finance whatever
what they did was research and then they created a kick starter campaign and so the crowd sourced
it was funded through crowd source means and this is one
example and perhaps it is a very rare one and perhaps it will never ever occur again
but I�m seeing a lot of very exciting things happening in the realm of
creating alternative ways in which to fund science itself that is its own you know the
state of funding versus science
is its entire own ball or bag of worms or can of worms that is in very difficult [inaudible]
at the moment um as it relates to publishing
I think there may be some cross over in so far as their new um and previously unimagined
ways in which this money was coming together and magically appearing.
I don�t know whether or not this means there is an opportunity in the future for um the
funding of science and the funding of the publishing of science to be as much of a philanthropic
effort
as say it is the New York Philharmonic or the Metropolitan Museum of Art
um, and perhaps there is room in fact for future you know NGO�s in fact that are dedicated
to get raising money
for international you know pub funding of science as well as publishing of the science.
I like ending on the very optimistic note I want to ask you to join me in thanking our
speakers today.
I want to just plant the seed uh tomorrow we�ll be starting promptly at nine one of
the things that we want
to do is turn the corner here and being to take this conversation in the direction of
asking so what can we do here in Oklahoma?
How can we implement some these ideas in Oklahoma? What do we need to do both at OU and OSU to
move forward in this space?
We�ll begin uh with a continental breakfast I believe about eight thirty in the morning
so if you arrive early they�ll be something to sustain you until we get started
and I suggest now it might be appropriate to step next door where we might uh lubricate
our throats and enjoy one another's company. Thanks for joining me today.