Re: [LIS-Forum] Open-access publishing fees (better known as APCs) deter researchers in the global south

Thanks very much Jean-Claude. I have been trying to convince our government, public funding agencies, research councils, scientists and librarians for God knows how long. I think it was at an IFSE conference at Rio, Brazil, in 2000, I spoke about the need for journals going from print to electronic and making all research papers available through 'open archiving,' and emphasised the need for helping developing country researchers take part in open archiving initiatives. [See http://www.eventos.bvsalud.org/bireme/ifse-rio/present/Subbiah_Arunachalam/s...]. It was at the Rio conference that I first met Stevan Harnad for the first time although I had read his paper on scholarly skywriting before and corresponded with him (to invite him to speak at our Foundation, MSSRF, Chennai). He had recommended self-archiving and his group at Southampton had released the Eprints software for institutional archives long before I became an active promoter of OA. I believe in his prescription that authors publish in any journal (academy, society, commercial, national or foreign does not matter) as long as they do not pay publishers to make papers open access, do not surrender copyright, use author addendum, AND place the paper immediately on publication in an interoperable archive so it can be seen by even those not working in institutions subscribing to the journal. After campaigning relentlessly and after running a widely subscribed discussion list for many years, Stevan was vexed with the lack of interest shown in OA archiving by the worldwide research community which on top of it was willingly or unwittingly playing into the hands of greedy commercial (and some society) publishers. He decided to quit advocating OA and moved on to devote his life to the mission of caring for all sentient beings, a cause far more worthy of his time and effort than OA which concerns only researchers and a few others who use research literature. As you have said, scientists (and science establishments) around the world have surrendered assessment of research value to commercial firms (the academic ranking industry, if we may call) such as THES, and QS, as they had earlier let commercial interests take over journal publishing when Mr Robert Maxwell came on the scene and made the audacious statement that science journal publishing "is a perpetual financing machine." [see https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/sep/13/scientific-publishing-... ]. You will be happy to see the wind blowing currently in favour of Diamond OA publishing. I would be happier if funders around the world *also* support archiving. I was glad when I read a few days ago that the Big Ten (actually 14) universities in the US have pledged financial support to arXiv. I am currently talking to many senior Indian scientists to write a joint letter to funding agencies under the Government to provide annual grants to arXiv. Regards. Arun On Fri, Feb 18, 2022 at 10:56 AM LIBLICENSE wrote:

From: "Jean-Claude Guédon" Date: Thu, 17 Feb 2022 13:00:25 -0500

I totally second Arun's message below. And I would complete it with the thesis that this financial situation exists only because the assessment of research confuses and conflates validation of knowledge, and value attached to research results (value, here, covers more than economic value). By delegating the allocation of research value to journal rankings, itself based on the impact factor, we ensure the institution of a super-Matthew effect (cf. R. K. Merton) which indeed advantages the so-called Western countries.

Open Access with APCs is simply an unacceptable form of open access. Diamond publishing (no fee for the readers or for the authors) is the way to go. Funding agencies with the right governance model can finance a research activity - publishing - which costs less than 2% of research.

Jean-Claude Guédon

Le 2022-02-17 à 10:36 a.m., LIBLICENSE a écrit :

From: Subbiah Arunachalam Date: Thu, 17 Feb 2022 13:08:01 +0530

Open-access publishing fees (better known as APCs) deter researchers in the global south, shows recent research from Brazil.

Please see the report in Nature: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-00342-w https://can01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nature.com%2Farticles%2Fd41586-022-00342-w&data=04%7C01%7Cjean.claude.guedon%40UMONTREAL.CA%7Cad2c010036ad4d10986d08d9f22b7dd3%7Cd27eefec2a474be7981e0f8977fa31d8%7C1%7C0%7C637807091424150709%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000&sdata=ASQd05WYhawWi0WF6aowfWoX90BgVjBKASaXsx%2BO%2F9I%3D&reserved=0

There is no reason why researchers in India's elite institutions should pay APCs to publish their work and in the process transfer funds from Indian taxpayers to the coffers of already super rich (and greedy) publishers in Europe and the US. To me it appears to be an unethical and immoral practice.

Arun