COPE, HOPE and OA

[Stevan Harnad <amsciforum@gmail.com>]

On Thu, 17 Sep 2009 Heather Morrison wrote:
http://poeticeconomics.blogspot.com/2009/09/compact-for-open-access-publishing.html

> the Compact for Open Access Publishing Equity (COPE)
> is a key initiative in the transition to open access.
> http://www.oacompact.org/

In my last two postings -- "Please Commit To Providing Green OA 
Before Committing To Pay For Gold OA!" and "Fund Gold OA Only 
AFTER Mandating Green OA, Not INSTEAD" -- I have been at pains to 
make it as clear as possible precisely why and how COPE, far from 
being "a key initiative in the transition to open access," is at 
best a waste of a university's scarce funds today and at worst a 
distraction from and retardant to a university's taking the 
substantive initiative that actually needs to be taken today to 
ensure a transition to open access (OA).

OA means free online access to published journal articles. A 
transition to OA on the part of a university means a transition 
to making all of its own published journal article output OA.

COPE makes only a fraction of university article output OA today 
-- that fraction for which the university has the extra cash 
today to pay "equitable" Gold OA publishing fees -- while the 
lion's share of the university's potential funds to pay for 
publication are still tied up in journal subscriptions. Hence, at 
best, this token pre-emptive payment for Gold OA is a waste of 
scarce funds.

But if -- because the university imagines that committing to COPE 
is the "key initiative" for providing OA today -- the university 
does not first take the initiative to make its own article output 
OA by mandating that it must be self-archived in the university's 
OA repository (Green OA), then committing to COPE is not just 
wasteful, but a diversion from and retardant to doing what 
universities urgently need to do to provide OA today.

> Signatories are asked to make a commitment to provide support for open
> access publishing that is equitable to the support currently provided
> to journals through subscriptions.

Universities currently "provide support" for whatever journals 
they are currently subscribing to. That is what is what is paying 
the cost of peer-reviewed publication today.

Universities committing to spend whatever extra funds they might 
have available to pay for Gold OA publishing fees today provides 
as much OA as the university can currently afford to buy, at 
"equitable" prices, over and above what it subscribes to.

One need only go ahead and do the arithmetic -- calculating the 
number of articles a university publishes every year, multiplied 
by the "equitable" Gold OA price per article -- to see that a 
university can only afford to pay for Gold OA today for a small 
fraction of its annual article output as long as it is still 
subscribing to non-OA journals. (Most journals -- especially the 
top journals that most universities want and need to subscribe to 
and most authors want and need to publish in -- are non-OA today, 
let alone "equitably" priced Gold OA.)

The notion that a commitment to paying pre-emptively for 
"equitably" priced Gold OA today only gives the illusion of being 
"a key initiative in the transition to open access" if one 
equates OA with Gold OA. Otherwise it is clear that COPE is just 
a very expensive way of generating some OA for a small fraction 
of a university's research output.

Meanwhile, as I have also pointed out, three out of the five 
signatories of COPE to date (60%) have not mandated Green OA 
self-archiving for their research output.

That means that those signatories have failed to take the 
"initiative in the transition to open access" that really is 
"key" (if OA means open access, rather than just the Gold OA 
publishing cost-recovery model), which is to mandate that all of 
their research output must be made OA through author 
self-archiving.

Instead, the majority of the COPE signatories so far have indeed 
assumed that signing the commitment to pay for whatever Gold OA 
is available and affordable really is the "key initiative in the 
transition to open access."

If all universities who commit to paying for whatever "equitable" 
Gold OA they can afford today by signing COPE would first commit 
to making all their research output OA by mandating Green OA 
self-archiving today, then there would be nothing to object to in 
promoting and signing COPE. COPE would simply be universities 
spending their spare cash to try to steer publishing toward their 
preferred cost-recovery model, at their preferred asking price, 
having already ensured that all their research output is made OA 
(by mandating Green OA self-archiving).

But if universities commit to paying for whatever "equitable" 
Gold OA they can afford today INSTEAD of committing to make all 
their research output OA by mandating Green OA self-archiving 
today, then COPE is a highly counterproductive red herring, 
giving universities the false illusion of having adopted a "key 
initiative in the transition to open access" while in reality 
diverting and dissipating initiative for the transition to open 
access from a substantive step (mandating Green OA) to a 
superficial and superfluous step (funding Gold OA).

(Heather Morrison seems to be missing this substantive strategic 
point completely.)

> One of the reasons COPE is key is simply the recognition that
> universities (largely through libraries) are the support system for
> scholarly communication.

It is hard to see the substance or purpose of this formal 
statement of the obvious. Everyone who knows that it is 
university library subscriptions that both pay the publication 
costs and provide access to most journals "recognizes" that 
"universities (largely through their library budgets) are the 
support system for scholarly communication."

Did universities have to go on to commit whatever spare cash they 
had, over and above what they are already spending for journal 
subscriptions, in order to earn "recognition" for this obvious 
fact?

And what has all this formal recognition of the obvious to do 
with providing OA?

No, the incoherent, Escherian notion behind all of this formalism 
is obvious: COPE is about the hope that INSTEAD of paying to 
subscribe to their incoming non-OA journals, as they do now, 
universities will one day be able instead to pay "equitable" fees 
to publish their outgoing articles in Gold OA journals. (The COPE 
initiative has even been called HOPE.)

But hope alone cannot resolve a geometrically self-contradictory 
Escher Drawing: Universities subscribe by the incoming journal 
but they publish by the individual outgoing article. There are 
25,000 journals, most of them not Gold OA, let alone equitably 
priced Gold OA, publishing 2.5 million articles a year from 
10,000 universities worldwide. The tacit hope of COPE is to 
persuade all journals to abandon subscriptions and convert to 
equitably priced Gold OA by offering to pay for equitably priced 
publication today.

Now here is the crux of it: There is no incentive for journals to 
renounce subscription fees and convert to equitably priced Gold 
OA today just because some universities offer a commitment to pay 
for it. To induce publishers to do that, we would not only have 
to wait until most or all universities committed to pay for Gold 
OA, but until they also backed up that commitment by collectively 
committing to cancel their subscriptions (in order to release the 
funds that they can then redirect to pay for Gold OA).

Without that cancellation pressure, the inelastic market for 
university subscriptions remains, so that the best that can be 
hoped for is the publishers' hedged option of "Hybrid Gold OA" -- 
the option either to leave an individual article in a 
subscription-based journal non-OA or to pay that same journal a 
Gold-OA fee to make that individual article Gold OA.

This Trojan Horse (which really amounts to double-paying 
publishers for articles) is (some) publishers' "hope" -- their 
counterpart for universities' COPE/HOPE -- to the effect that 
universities will buy into this double-pay/Hybrid Gold model in 
exchange for the promise that publishers will faithfully reduce 
their subscription and Gold OA fees in such a way as to keep 
their revenues constant, as and when the demand for the Gold-OA 
option grows.

Such an equitable deal between 10,000 universities and 25,000 
journals for 2.5 million individual articles -- each university 
subscribing to different subsets of the journals annually, and 
publishing in a still different subset, depending on author, and 
varying from year to year -- is the publishers' variant of the 
Escherian transition scenario that the signatories of COPE are 
likewise hoping for.

What is clear is that this transition is not only speculative, 
untested, remote and far-fetched, but it does not depend on the 
university community: It is a transition that depends on the 
publishing community, journal by journal.

In contrast, open access to all of OA's target content -- the 2.5 
million articles published annually in the 25,000 journals 
virtually all come from the planet's 10,000 universities -- is 
already within immediate reach: All universities have to do is o 
mandate Green OA self-archiving, as Harvard and MIT have already 
done, before signing COPE.

My only point -- but it is the crucial point -- is that 
universities should on no account commit to funding Gold OA 
before or instead of mandating Green OA.

> Scholarly publishing is not a straightforward business 
> transaction where one side produces goods and
> the other purchases them.  Rather, it is university faculty who do the
> research, writing, reviewing, and often the editing, often on time and
> in space provided by the universities.  Scholarly publishing is a
> service, rather than a good.

This is again stating the obvious in a formalistic way that sheds 
no light at all on what makes peer-reviewed research publication 
such a special case, let alone how to resolve the Escher drawing:

"Scholarly publishing is a service, rather than a good": What 
does this mean? What is the service? And who is performing it for 
whom? And who is charging whom for what?

Assuming we are talking about journals (and not books), is the 
publisher's printed copy of a journal not a good? Is that good 
not to be bought and sold? Individually and by subscription?

Same question about the publisher's digital edition: Is that not 
a good, bought and sold, individually and by subscription?

Should publishers be giving away print journals and online PDFs, 
as a public service?

To be sure, scholars do research as a profession, and because 
they are funded to do so. Perhaps we can call this a "service." 
They also write up their research, submit it for peer review, 
revise it, and finally allow it to be published, without asking 
for any revenue, because that too is part of their profession and 
what they are paid to do; and because the impact of their 
publications -- how much they are used and cited -- is beneficial 
both to research progress and to their careers. So let's say 
that's a service too.

It is also a fact that scholars do peer review for publishers for 
free. So let's say that's a service too.

But how is this complicated, intertwined and interdependent 
picture of what researchers -- as authors and referees -- their 
institutions and funders, and their publishers do, jointly, 
captured by saying that "scholarly publishing is a service, 
rather than a good"?

Is the devil not in the details of who is doing what for whom, 
why, and how?

> Once we understand that academic library budgets are the support for
> scholarly communication, it is much easier to see that we should be
> prioritizing supports that make sense for scholarly communication into
> the future, and equity for open access publishing is a great beginning.

OA is not about academic library budgets. It is about access to 
research articles. Universities are the research providers. They 
now need to also become the access providers for their own 
(peer-reviewed) research output. That leaves peer review to be 
implemented by independent honest brokers (journals), the results 
certified by their name and track-record for quality standards.

But these vague generalities about scholarly publishing being a 
"service rather than a good" do not give even a hint about how to 
get there from here -- i.e., how to generate a coherent 
transition that resolves the Escher drawing.

And neither does COPE.

Yet the answer is simple, and has nothing to do with COPE,n or 
with academic library budgets: Universities need to provide OA 
for their own research output by mandating Green OA 
self-archiving.

That done, universities can, if they wish, commit to whatever 
they like if they think it will speed a transition to a 
publication funding model that they find more congenial.

But committing to a more congenial funding model without first 
committing to providing OA is certainly not "a key initiative in 
the transition to open access."

> Best wishes to COPE.  I encourage every library and university to
> join.  There is no immediate financial commitment required, rather a
> commitment to develop models for equity.

Would it not be more timely and useful (for OA) to encourage 
every university to provide OA for its own research output, by 
mandating Green OA self-archiving, rather than making formal or 
financial commitments before or instead of doing so?

> Supporting transition to gold OA, in my opinion, in no way diminishes
> the importance of green OA.  There are good reasons for pursuing both
> strategies, both in the short and the long term.

This again blurs the point at issue completely, and turns 
priorities upside down: The issue is not short- or long-term 
pursuits but immediate and urgent priorities. Mandate Green OA 
today, and go ahead and pursue Gold OA in any way you think will 
help. But pursue Gold OA only if you have mandated Green OA.

(Stuart Shieber, by the way, has proposed another rationale for 
COPE, based on his experience with having successfully forged a 
consensus on adopting Green OA mandates at Harvard: COPE assuages 
authors' prima facie worries about the viability of peer-reviewed 
journal publication should subscriptions eventually be made 
unsustainable by Green OA mandates. But this rationale for COPE 
is only justifiable if committing to COPE is indeed coupled with 
mandating Green OA. The actual evidence to date includes not only 
COPE, which has more non-mandating signatories than mandating 
ones, but also the very similar SCOAP3 commitment in physics, 
which includes incomparably more non-mandating universities than 
mandating ones. To support Stuart's hypothesis, universities 
committing to COPE or SCOAP3 should also be committing to Green 
OA mandates. The effect instead looks more like the reverse.)

Stevan Harnad