When technological or social changes start altering the business landscape in a particular industry, people involved in that business tend to respond in three general ways:
The visionaries immediately see where their world is going, jump to the front edge of it and make sure that the change is as swift and painless as possible, resulting in as good new business environment as possible. They immediately sell their horses and invest in the development of the internal combustion engine, gear-boxes, brakes and start building car factories.
The followers are much more timid, but they are astute enough to know that they can choose to either adapt of die. So they watch for a while and, once they are ready, they sell their livery horses, turn their stables into garages and start driving schools, taxi-cab services, limo rentals, rent-a-car chains, road-paving companies, etc.
The fools feel threatened and, in a knee-jerk response, start buying more livery horses, expanding their stables and, to show off their foolishness, they get on their high horses and start yelling how cars are the tools of the Devil and, like, totally un-American.
The Web is changing the business world of the science publishing industry. You can guess where this post is going now, can't you....
There are now 2811 journals in the Directory of Open Access Journals, the seven PLoS journals just being the most well-known of them, with many smaller journals being published by BioMedCentral and Hindawi. Those are the visionaries, the organizations that are making sure that the new business world of Open Access, now quite inevitable, is reached in a way that is the best for everyone: researchers, readers/taxpayers, universities, publishers, libraries, students, medical practitioners, the governments of the world, etc. The old business model is quickly giving way to the new model and the early adopters are experimenting with it and showing that it can be done without too much pain and with universal benefit.
There are others, watching and getting ready to jump as soon as they feel comfortable doing so. I can bet money that Nature will go Open Access as soon as the forward-looking editors manage to persuade their backward-looking corporate overlords that the data and statistics show that this is the sound business way to go. Science is making some small noises as well, but they have to deal with the Victorian mindset of their AAAS bosses. They'll get there, but it may take them a few years. And once Nature and Science go Open Access, everyone else will have to follow suit.
Except the screamers. Those who are buying livery horses right now. One such livery horse is Eric Dezenhall, the PR guy from the Frank Luntz school of obfuscation, recently hired by outfits like Reed Elsevier and American Chemical Society to get on a high horse and scream how Open Access is the tool of the Devil and, like, so un-American. Oh, btw, he suggested to the Association of American Publishers to join forces with American Enterprise Institute and National Consumers League, those paragons of honesty, freedom, democracy and openness, to launch a campaign of lies and defamations against the Open Access movement. Just sayin'....
These folks have now come up with another Luntz-grade moniker: PRISM, which stands for, believe it or not, "Partnership for Research Integrity in Science & Medicine"!
Their main points, from the front page of the website (and if you dig around the site, there is some even more incredible stuff there):
What's at risk
Policies are being proposed that threaten to introduce undue government intervention in science and scholarly publishing, putting at risk the integrity of scientific research by:
* undermining the peer review process by compromising the viability of non-profit and commercial journals that manage and fund it;
* opening the door to scientific censorship in the form of selective additions to or omissions from the scientific record;
* subjecting the scientific record to the uncertainty that comes with changing federal budget priorities and bureaucratic meddling with definitive versions; and
* introducing duplication and inefficiencies that will divert resources that would otherwise be dedicated to research.
Oh, up is down. Black is White. War is peace, Freedom is slavery, Ignorance is strength. Stalin is the coryphaeus of science. Socialized medicine is inefficient. Bush would be pleasant to have beer with. We are winning in Iraq (but first we have to find the WMDs which are like so there). Clean Air Act actually cleans air. Evolution is 'just a theory'. Global warming is a hoax. When you stop laughing (the kind of laugh one usually tries to suppress at a funeral), read some of the first responses on blogs:
Peter Suber debunks their claims one by one:
The Orwellian censorship argument doesn't need or deserve an answer. But if you want one, here's how I answered it...
Oh, and Peter is not done with them yet. There are, so far, already two updates here and here:
When journalists let us down, thank goodness there are bloggers.
Watch his blog for more...
Martin Fenner rightly warns them about a potential backlash:
These "arguments" were obviously created in a PR department, as they don't make sense to anybody involved in scientific publishing. The peer review process is not different in open access journals. And to call deposition of NIH-funded research papers in the NIH-managed PubMed Central "government interference" is difficult to understand.
PRISM might be successful in avoiding a change in U.S. legislation, but the strange logic used by PRISM could lead many scientists to think twice before submitting a paper to a journal that endorses the PRISM principles. Which in the end could be worse for the journal publisher than the proposed change in legislation.
Martin also reminds us that this is not new - this shady activity, by all the same people, has already been exposed a few months ago, see this Nature article, this article in the Scientific American, this article in Washington Post, as well as some older blog posts by me, Revere, Jonathan Eisen, Mike Dunford, Alex Palazzo, Steve Higgins, Tim Lambert, Corie Lok, Matt Nisbet, Afarensis, Josh Rosenau, Mike again and Alex again. Now you have the background on the group and, surprisingly or not, perhaps hoping that everyone forgot in the meantime, they are trying the same stunt again, using the same people and the same incredibly lame arguments.
Here are some of the most recent responses:
Evolgen:
Why is the publishing industry afraid of open access? I can't answer that question, but I can point you to the evidence for their fear: it's right here. Jonathan Eisen points out why PRISM, the anti-open access lobbying group, is total bullshit. The Open Reading Frame doesn't like it either.
Grrrlscientist:
Basically, it appears to me that this is an old boyz network who are determined to protect their turf: selling access to scientific information to academics and to the public.
Entertaining Research:
Reminded me the story of Hippasus; he was also murdered to avoid the "scholarly research of Pythagoras" getting tainted by letting people learn about heresies like irrational numbers.
Jonathan A. Eisen:
I looked through it an thought - this must be a spoof. A good April 1 joke about the dinosaurs of the publishing industry. The reason it seems like a joke is well, the stuff there is so incredibly inane as to make one laugh. In essence the whole site is an anti Open Access site.
------snip--------
I could go on and on about the silly stuff there ... but lets just say that everything on the site seems like a spoof. But alas, it is not. PRISM is for real. It is the last gasp of a dying breed - publishers who refuse to do what is the right thing for science and society. Yes, I understand there are some issues with Open Access that still need to be solved. But this McCarthy like tone of PRISM - basically equating openness with evil and godlessness is ridiculous. I think this is a sad day for the people behind PRISM - the AAP (Association of American Publishers). I am sure they have done some good things over the years. This is certainly not one of them and a good sign that anyone out there with any common sense who might be involved in AAP should get out or fight for change within the institution.
Bill Hooker knows what to do (and we should do the same):
This is disgusting. This runs counter to everything that science, academia, scholarship (and scholarly publishing!) stand for.
There are no names on the PRISM site yet -- but I'm going to find as many as I can and publish them here. Sunlight is the best disinfectant, and I want to know just who is taking part in this revolting effort to steal from the commons and turn public goods into private profit.
(We can start with the AAP: their members page is essentially one long list of companies and organizations with whom I will assiduously avoid doing business until and unless they dissociate themselves from PRISM, and preferably from the AAP altogether.)
Bill also wrote an excellent letter to Rachel Deahl, a senior news editor at Publisher's Weekly, who in her article parroted all the PRISM nonsense, and ends with some age advice:
I'm not sure whether this will do any good -- William Walsh has pointed out that Publisher's Weekly is owned, once removed, by Reed Elsevier, noted price-gougers and employers of the notorious Publisher's Pitbull, so Ms Deahl's options may be limited by her bosses. This is also a good place to point out that if you write to her, being a jerk about it will not only be pointless and stupid but will in fact damage the OA cause. (That should go without saying but these things do tend to get out of hand when emotions run high and email allows one to send in haste and repent at leisure...)
Peter Murray-Rast:
What disappoints me is that few of the conventional publishers have taken a positive view about the future. The future is EXCITING. The publishers are obstructing us getting there. Even the more forward-looking ones.
Part of the problem is that publishing is a cross between a public service and a commercial business. It hasn't worked out where it stands and where it should stand. It is becoming increasingly clear that if it takes the business route it will go down the video media route typified by the appalling FACT [1] adverts on DVDs. (These are the ubiquitous adverts telling you what will happen if you copy the DVD you have bought or rented. It really sets the scene for an evening's watching. Perhaps we should have:
"You wouldn't steal a car?"
"You wouldn't steal a TV?"
"If you read a scientific paper you are not entitled to this is THEFT!!!!"
And it should be mandatory to have to read this declaration for 30 seconds before you are allowed to read the paper.
After all I am not just a scientific reader of a paper, I am a potential thief. And I should be told what dire fate awaits me if I dare to read scientific research I haven't paid for. I shall have more replies from publishers to publish shortly.
Greg on Nodalpoint:
I don't participate much in the OA Debate, largely because I see the outcome as a foregone conclusion. What we are seeing now is the reaction of publishers with an established business model (read license to print money) being threatened by change. Given that OA will not be going away, in my opinion what publishers should be doing is thinking creatively and developing new business models for scientific publishing. Of course there is always the option of being ridiculously reactionary, resulting in unintentional hilarity: PRISM - Partnership for Research Integrity in Science and Medicine.
--------snip------
Of course this made me think of the anti-comunist/open-source propaganda poster that's been doing the rounds of the net: If you program open source, you're programming COMMUNISM (see included image). If anyone has Photoshop/GIMP skills, please modify the image to read "If you publish in OA journals, you're publishing COMMUNISM! - A reminder from your friends at PRISM.
Andrew Walkinshaw:
This, as they say, makes matters interesting. There are a whole bunch of issues being conflated here; the (editorial) role and responsibility of journals, the assessment of scientists and of science, the scientific culture we want to foster, live and work in - and all of these are bound up with economic and political considerations.
Dorothea on Caveat Lector:
I think that's the action of a terrified group of amoral scumbags who see the future rushing in and will do whatever they can think of to stop it. I think it's the action of a terrified group of amoral scumbags completely bankrupt of actual insight or innovation and utterly desperate to keep their current unjustifiable profit margins. I think, in short, it's the action of a terrified group of amoral scumbags. I am just that appalled.
Mike Simpson:
Translation: "Please don't devote any of the incredibly scarce resources that you have left over after you finish paying our protection money to attempt to escape the less-than-zero-sum game that we've constructed for you."
William at Issues in Scholarly Communication:
See where Dezenhall tells publishers to equate peer review with traditional publishing and public access to censorship? Nice. All this for an estimated $300,000 - $500,000.
Oh, William uncovered some more:
Speaking of Elsevier, I noticed that PRISM's "In the News" section features a statement by Representative John Conyers voicing his concerns over a mandatory NIH access policy. According to Opensecrets.org, Reed Elsevier, through its PAC, contributed $2,000 to his campaign during the 2006 election cycle. It also contributed $2,000 during the 2004 cycle and $1,000 during the 2002 cycle. Since Opensecret's data was last updated in June, I checked the Reed Elsevier Inc. PAC's 2007 mid-year report from the FEC. It lists a $500 contribution for the 2008 cycle.....While there is nothing wrong with these contributions, isn't it fair to say that government is already involved in science publishing?
Tom Wilson:
What this recent initiative by the publishers points to is that the only sure way for the scholarly communities to take charge of the scholarly communication process is to rid themselves of their commercial exploiters and promote the publication of free, collaboratively produced and subsidised journals. Forget the Green and Gold routes insofar as they depend upon the acquiescence of the business world and go for the Platinum Route - it is the only way to take charge, and you have been exploited long enough.
Perhaps 'PRISM' really means, 'Publishers Resisting Intellectual Solidarity in the Market'!
Tom Wilson again:
I have another suggestion: since the publishers are spending so much money on the peer review process, isnt't it time that those who do the reviews were properly paid for it? The University and College Union in the UK, I believe, has a recommended daily rate for consultancy and similar work - or at least the Association of University Teachers had such a rate and, when I last looked, it was £650
It takes me, typically, about a day to properly review and write my comments on a paper, so £650 would seem a fair return for the work.
However, apart from that, the real issue is that the commercial publishers are making the running in trying to persuade the population to support their ludicrous claims - so what are the academics going to do? Sit back and wait to be rolled over? Business as usual? There's only one response to this development and that is to fight it. What are the American Association of University Professors and the UCU going to do in response? Can we expect them to lobby Congress and Parliament to counter the action of the publishers? I don't live in the US, but perhaps someone could write to the AAUP and ask them, and I shall do the same here in the UK asking the UCU how it proposes to counter any developments here.
And there is something else, which is long overdue, that all academics can do: resign from the editorial boards of non-OA journals, and state their daily rate for reviewing. Let's have a bit of action! I doubt if anyone will notice it when I resign from the two commercially-published journals on which I serve (one of which I founded), but if we have concerted action from thousands of academics then perhaps the publishers will understand that setting up PRISM to peddle their lies is counter-productive.
And Tom also wrote a letter:
In spite of its title, this is, in fact a lobby group for the publishing industry and, no doubt it will seek to extend its activities in some way or other to the UK. So, my question is: What is the UCU intending to do to counteract the highly misleading propositions put forward on the PRISM Web page?
Heather Morrison is on a roll:
One of the tactics of the latest anti-OA lobbying effort has some interesting implications. With apologies to my fellow open access advocates, let me offer some help to the opposition (they obviously need it!), and point out that this could backfire, badly - or beautifully, depending on your perspective.
Heather is having fun:
Here is a sample letter, that a researcher who gives away their own work, but worries about the terrifying possibility that the publishing industry might have to do without hundreds of millions of dollars a year, might send:
Heather Morrison is having more fun:
The following message contains satire. Reader caution is advised.
PRISM, the Coalition of the highly profitable publishing industry developed by a branch of the Association of American Publishers, is alerting us to their concern that they believe that the hundreds of millions of dollars a year of revenue they enjoy is at risk, and that we average citizens and voters MUST act to join their lobbying effort, and share our deep concerns about this with our U.S. representative.
I am sure that you, dear reader, are every bit as concerned as I am about this horrendous possible loss of profits for the wealthy. Urgent action is needed, now!
Let's set up a charitable foundation to help out these poor profit-makers. We can call it, "Save the Millionaires!".
Heather has more:
How would be academics who are accustomed to providing free peer review services know what to charge these highly profitable publishers for our services?
Tom has done some homework! ---------snip----------£650 translates into($1,300 US, $1,377 Canadian).
Heather hits a trifecta (or is it five now?):
When we academics provide free peer review to not-for-profits whose goal is dissemination of knowledge as part of the service component of our work, it makes sense that our employers provide the equipment, offices, and occasionally a bit of work time, for free. If we're working for a highly profitable for-profit company, though, it seems to me that there are other rules that apply...
Neil Saunders:
I still recall the excitement of publishing my first journal article. I also recall the confusion that I felt when I was sent an agreement by email, telling me that I was signing away all rights to my article. "This can't be right", I thought, "I generated the data, I did the work, I wrote the words and it's not mine?" Ultimately, your peers convince you to accept this as quite normal practice and move on. It's not normal though, is it?
Alex Palazzo:
This is mostly spin. How will OA stifle competition? If all journals operate using the PLoS model they would still exist as separate entities. I just don't get it. And then there is tghe whole copyright issue. If journals get publishing fees, what difference would it make whether it held the copyright? And then bias? Budget uncertainties? This is just crying wolf.
------snip--------
If PRISM wants to be a credible organization they should name their supporters. But they won't because it'll mostly be the scientific publishers.
Shelley Batts:
PRISM's issue is this: if more and more research is made open access (ie, free) how will traditional publishers make any money? The concern is legitamate, but the hoopla, rhetoric, and obfuscation shown on their website suggests that they would rather bend the facts to create a non-issue (that peer review is under attack) rather than face a more real, but less sympathetic issue (how to keep making money). Their main beef seems to be the nebulous threat of "government interference," specifically that the government would like open access to the research that, ya know, it pays for. GASP.
This is bothersome, because I think that a real conversation could be had between 'old school' publishers and open-access publishers without running to a slick PR firm. It seems that the Association of American Publishers would rather the issue be weighed in the court of mis-informed public opinion rather than in the light of day, where both monetary concerns can be considered along with what is paramount to the scientific endeavor.
Tara Smith:
What is this policy being proposed that's so horrible, you ask? It's the NIH's public access policy: the requirement that all research funded by federal grants be available freely to the public. The group behind PRISM (the Professional & Scholarly Publishing Division of the Association of American Publishers - AAP), however, thinks this means the end of peer review, apparently...
Dave Munger of Cognitive Daily (cross-posted on BPR3):
There are plenty of reasons why PRISM's logic falls apart (see here for a thorough bashing), but I wanted to point out just one: they're hypocritical. While their entire web site advocates strict enforcement of copyright laws, the images they've used on their front page are a violation of copyright law. Take a look at this screenshot from their front page:.....
Gene Expression:
It seems that a coalition of non-Open Access journals, Partnership in Research Integrity in Science & Medicine, is out to take down journals like PLOS. I know people have to put bread on the table, but really there isn't an open-ended guarantee that you can milk your business model forever. In any case, Blog Around the Clock has links to many comments around the web in regards to this issue.
OK, this by Marlene is in French:
Pour l'instant pas vraiment d'échos côté francophone, mais l'intérêt pour l'OA est moindre, et puis c'est encore un peu les vacances...
Bayblab:
What a bunch of spineless bums.
Cross-posted from A Blog Around The Clock.
I will add more links to responses as they appear, so check this space later....