
Two major research funders to bar grantees from publishing in hybrid journals - sohkamyung
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/11/win-open-access-two-major-funders-bar-grantees-publishing-hybrid-journals
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Vinnl
I just read Wellcome's announcement [1], which has this interesting bit:

> We will no longer cover the cost of OA publishing in subscription journals
> (‘hybrid OA’). We previously supported this model, but no longer believe
> that it supports a transition to full OA.

Whereas Plan S, IIRC, explicitly stated that research funded by them could not
be published in hybrid journals, Wellcome merely states that they will not
cover the cost - implying that well-resourced researchers are still allowed to
use other funds to publish there?

Another interesting part of their OA policy is that they require organisations
they fund to commit to DORA, i.e. to work towards not judging researchers on
the names of the journals they publish in, but on the inherent quality of
their work. In my opinion, this is the largest problem that is currently
holding back the transition to open access and many other problems in science.
(Disclaimer: I work on a project that hopes to solve this problem as well.)

[1] [https://wellcome.ac.uk/news/wellcome-updating-its-open-
acces...](https://wellcome.ac.uk/news/wellcome-updating-its-open-access-
policy?utm_source=twitterShare)

~~~
sergiosgc
For academia outsiders, like me: DORA is the San francisco Declaration on
Research Assessment [[https://sfdora.org/](https://sfdora.org/)]

------
rotskoff
Currently, for "hybrid" journals, the researcher must pay a publishing fee,
typically on the order of $2000-$3000. I have an independent postdoctoral
fellowship, which means I have some funding, but not enough for it to make
sense to pay. These fees essentially lock me out of open access publishing.

Of course, I could simply choose to publish only in open access journals
(running the risk of career consequences). I hope changes like this will lead
to increasingly prestigious fully open access journals. However, I have found
the most practical option to be posting my papers on arXiv.

~~~
chrisseaton
I don't know what field you're in, but in my field, nobody pays to publish,
and everyone just puts pre-prints on their websites and everyone seems totally
happy with that. Is pre-prints on websites or arXiv not an option for you for
some reason?

~~~
xamuel
>pre-prints on their websites

People don't realize how inadequate this is long-term. Hundreds of years from
now when scholars look back at the early 21st century, it's going to look like
the dark ages.

~~~
tialaramex
Institutions with pro-OA policies will either require their employees to shove
stuff into their own archive, or they'll automatically crawl their staff's
sites to add to the archives. Those archives are usually controlled by the
same department as the university's library, people who already have some idea
about preserving things for "hundreds of years from now".

In the UK the funding mechanism for (some?) academic research hinges on
publication data so there's a rationale for bean counters to ensure the
archive is properly funded - if you build this Open Access archive you get the
data for your funding paperwork as an output. So this creates an incentive
even in fields where Open Access is not normal.

(e.g. big swathes of Physics are OA, same in Computer Science, but for all I
know Paleontology is a desert for open access)

------
sonnyblarney
Bravo, this is a huge deal, more to likely follow, it rather seems a secular
shift is inevitable at least in some manner. One wonders where this will end
and what it will mean for classical publishing. In my experience, incumbent
industries are more powerful than we'd imagine, and I'll bet that rather than
witnessing classical publishing overturned, we'll just arrive at some kind of
new equilibrium.

~~~
jillesvangurp
Agreed, I hope this helps ends the period of time where research funds were
funneled to publishing houses by the billions instead of being used for their
intended purpose, which is to do research. The time where they provided a
useful service is long over. There are enough reputable open access channels
now to be able to stop depending on closed access.

I expect the next few years, most universities will stop paying the likes of
Elsevier except maybe on a case by case basis for access to older articles
outside of the scope of these rules.

~~~
matt4077
Elsevier has revenues of $2.5 billion and profits of around $1 billion. Double
that to include other for-profit journals and you're still looking at only $2
billion.

While that's certainly a significant sum of money, it is but a small fraction
of science expenditures: The US (federal) government alone spends around $150
billion p. a.

The fact that the latter has shrunk by about a third over the last decades (in
terms of % of GDP) leads to my point: It seems that the issue of publishing is
easily grasped and evokes some sort of deep-seated notions of fairness (or
lack therefore). In turn, it gets a far larger share of our collective
attention and outrage than warranted by the numbers alone.

The numbers regarding Elsevier's revenue vs profit also point to another
often-neglected fact: being for-profit journals and having the luxury of not
having to pay authors or reviewers does not mean that nothing of value is
added by Elsevier. That misconception is why it often takes people by surprise
to learn that Open Access journals need to collect hefty fees from authors.

Even Elsevier's profits may not entirely represent saving to be easily
realised. Because nothing says that they manage to capture 100% of the value
they are adding. In fact, it's very unlikely that they do, considering nobody
has ever managed to pull of such a remarkable feat of capitalism. And the
problems of switching to open access journals we have seen ever since the idea
came up 10+ years ago illustrate this point rather well: We can collective
groan whenever publications in Nature and Science are used as a proxy for
research accomplishment. But the insistence of smart people to use them as
such, when (trust me here) they have heard arguments against that practice
myriad times, points at the fact that such proxies are needed, and that none
better have yet emerged.

Any expectation of reducing costs by switching to open access should probably
be discarded.

The benefit to be gained is something different, and the movement's name hints
at it. In economic terms, it's the "deadweight loss" of the general public
being priced out of this market (and the less-general public that happens to
work at a research institute not able to afford every single journal
subscription).

This is the age-old conundrum of copyright: We'd love to let you read this,
and we understand that you can't afford its current price. But if we do,
anybody would claim the new, lower, price. And the new price/volume
equilibrium would not cover the costs of production.

Moving to open access is therefore not much different than suggestions for a
"cultural flat-rate" or a tax-funded creative industry. It's going to be
interesting how it turns out.

~~~
Vinnl
> points at the fact that such proxies are needed, and that none better have
> yet emerged.

Yes, I feel that this is the core issue: we keep relying on journal brand
names as some sort of proxy for a vague notion of "academic excellence". That
is what is driving these prices up disproportionately, and which results in
publishers like Elsevier being able to capture so much money merely (or at
least primarily) for being the owners of those brand names, rather than for
actual value they are adding. This fundamental unfairness is what gets people
riled up, and what also feels like an "easy" way to increase funding for
research, even if "just" by less than one perfect of US federal spending.
(Which still is significant.)

Of course, there is __also __the hope that by lowering the barrier to
contribute to the scientific process, we can increase the pace with which we
do research.

------
Vinnl
Wellcome and the Gates Foundation have long been on the forefront of the
transition to Open Access, and it's good (and luckily unsurprising) to see
them join the front ranks here as well.

Note that the original consortium has already expanded from the initial 11 as
well Wikipedia currently lists 14.

------
buboard
So , they 'll switch some of their major journals to open-access-only and
everyone will publish there. The publishing fee remains, and honestly i don't
see the progress to better peer review, like for example, publishing of the
reviews along with the manuscript

~~~
Vinnl
The main reason for this is that the goal of Plan S is not to improve the peer
review system; its goal is to make more research openly accessible, and to
limit the costs of doing so (it also involves a cap on publishing fees, though
an exact amount has not been specified, and apparently Wellcome will not
adhere to that part of the plan).

~~~
buboard
scihub does that already tbh. And arxiv/biorxiv

~~~
Vinnl
Sure, but Sci-Hub is not a sustainable long-term solution, still relies on the
traditional paywalled publishing system, and doesn't legally make works
available under an open license. arXiv and other preprint servers are limited
in their reach.

We're certainly not in Open Access utopia yet, and anything that brings that
closer should be commended, in my opinion, not criticised for not achieving
other goals such as improving the system of peer review.

~~~
buboard
I don't know. Open access has been advocated for 15+ years, but scihub has the
most impact in everyday work. At this point i think we should push for
governmental intervention that retroactively abolishes the copyrights for all
existing publicly-funded works or otherwise mandates the creation of publicly-
accessible copies.

~~~
Vinnl
Yes, Sci-Hub has been a great boon. It's still not a sustainable long-term
solution though, and not only do we need to abolish copyright for existing
published work (whose copyright will already eventually -but only after far
too long a time- expire), but also make sure that future published work will
become immediately available to access and re-use. That's what this is about.
(Note that Plan S was initiated by governmental organisations, so there's the
governmental intervention for you.)

------
stonewhite
I have a couple questions due to lack of background and/or perspective in
these matters:

    
    
      - What is the new business model that is forced upon these scientific journals?
    
      - Also, would this move influence the quality of content in the published papers?

~~~
Vinnl
\- There is no new business model enforced; that's up to the journals to
figure out. However, the currently dominant model is an author-pays model,
where authors pay a publishing fee ("Article Processing Charges", APCs) rather
than readers paying a subscription fee. These funders explicitly free up funds
to pay those fees, although this plan does include a stipulation to put a cap
on those fees, since they tend to rise uncontrollably. (Although according to
this article, Wellcome Trust will not be applying this cap, but will keep an
eye on these fees itself.)

\- There is nothing in these plans that should affect the quality of the
content. Open Access journals can maintain exactly the same system of peer
review as their subscription-based equivalents.

