"The #EU is ready to agree that immediate #OpenAccess to papers reporting publicly funded research should become the norm, w/o authors having to pay fees & that the bloc should support #nonprofit scholarly publishing models.
What is meant by publishing? If I wrote a paperI can upload to arXiv for free I think, I am not in academia so don't fully understand the processes.
I can write any document and make this available on my website for free anyway.
Maybe some publishing models belong in the 20th Century (and before) we have the internet and a new way of doing things and sharing information, but yes those doing the research / writing the results HAVE to be properly compensated.
@zleap@david@petersuber@mjskay self hosting is certainly a way, but in that case you're accepting the "publishing" costs - ie. Those of having a website in the first place.
In the case of a journal the same ongoing costs would be present too - server space/time; even if it was 100% automated, it would still need to be running the software somewhere.
To be clear, I'm not defending the "old model", but I'd like a new one that doesn't vanish when websites stop being paid for by individuals 😁
European University Association (#EUA), Science Europe, Ass of European Research Libraries (#LIBER), European Federation of Academies of Sciences & Humanities (#ALLEA), Association of ERC Grantees (#AERG), Marie Curie Alumni Ass (#MCAA), European Council of Doctoral Candidates & Jr Researchers (#Eurodoc), #cOAlition_S, #OPERAS, & the French National Research Agency (#ANR).
"Hereby, we wish to express our full agreement with the Council of the European Union’s conclusion, that 'it is essential to avoid situations where researchers are limited in their choice of publication channels due to financial capacities rather than quality criteria'."
@petersuber what‘s the point of no embargo? Embargo is an effective measure to give equal access to journalists and give them time to properly research a topic without having to go into a rat race 🤔
@hfalcke
Dropping #embargoes accelerates research. It helps authors and their new work reach readers faster. It helps readers find and read new work faster, and that includes readers who happen to be journalists. Once research is ready to share, artificial delays in sharing it are an artificial brake on applying and building on that research. Dropping embargoes is esp important for time-sensitive research, such as developing tests and vaccines during a pandemic.
@petersuber Fields a different. In our case an embargo is usually 2 days only. In most cases those two days won’t change the course of the world. However, it gives journalists the chance to check a story and collect independent- sometimes critical- voices. This gives better science reporting and increases trust rather than having to race after the next hype. Moreover, you are sneaking something into the open science discussion that doesn’t belong there.
@hfalcke
I grant that a 2 day embargo is pretty harmless to researchers. But the older funder OA policies permitted embargoes of 6-12 months, which is very different. The new policies are pushing back against that.
On your final point, embargoes are relevant to OA and open science because past funder OA policies permitted significant embargoes and now tend to prohibit them. In any case, I'm commenting on the policies, not trying to limit myself to any particular notion of open science.
If a researcher decides that they don't need or want the things a publisher offers - some mixture of peer review, editing, branding, marketing, hosting, printing and distribution (if dead tree versions are still being produced) - then they don't need to use a publisher, no. They can write whatever they like and stick it on their own blog, which their institution probably pays the costs of.
And a number of academics do in fact do this. Though it probably helps if they're sufficiently advanced in their career that they've already established a reputation / brand. How seriously would you take a random blog written by someone you've never heard of? - not very, not least because you'd probably never come across it in the first place.
If a researcher does want those things that a publisher does then someone has to pay for them. Whether the publisher is for profit or not is just the standard public / private debate - sometimes public sector is cheaper, and sometimes it isn't.
This seems to be very similar to the campaign by the @fsfe PublicMoney{ublicCode #PMPC that code written using public funds should be free software. Great idea. If research is funded via taxation then taxpayers partly own that research. OpenAccess is really important for other people to read, and build on.
@petersuber the "W/O authors having to pay the fee" is huuuuuge. It's been the biggest very valid detraction from these arguments. So happy to see this!
@dillonthebiologist@petersuber So if content is to be made available free to users, and authors don’t pay fees to have their work published - how is the act of creating and publishing journals going to be funded?
@MartinC@petersuber it's specifically the open access fee, which is often thousands of dollars extra on top of publication. The fees themselves are already severely bloated, but tacking on even more is an insult.
It's like working for a newspaper where the journalists paid the newspaper for the journalists work, then the newspaper charged a subscription fee for the readers as well.
All the money for the newspaper. None for the author's.
@dillonthebiologist@petersuber But the open access fee has to be be paid by someone - and if it’s not paid by those who access (or provide access) to the content to end users then it has to be the author or the organization the author works for?
I do agree the current system is stacked against the author - though payment for the authors work should be at least part of what the public funding covers.
@doc@dillonthebiologist@petersuber No, but it costs money to make sure that significant numbers of potential users know that server exists, have access to the link and can be authenticated to have legitimate access to that content. There is a marketing and operational costs to making sure content can be found and used.
@MartinC@dillonthebiologist@petersuber I’m not sure what you are looking at, but the ArXiv is a staple of maths and physics. Operational costs aren’t that much, and are gladly borne by Cornell. It’s amazing what you can save when you don’t need fucking marketing armies, droves of lawyers, and pay-per-view.
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