[IGSTK-Developers] IEEE Elections & Open Access

Sun Sep 18 20:10:13 EDT 2005

Hi Ziv,

Thanks for your comments.

I'm afraid that your point "b", although well-intentioned
is the unfortunate result of misinformation.

In the current publishing model, *authors already pay*.

Here is the editorial policy of IEEE-TMI
http://www.ieee-tmi.org/TMI/Information_for_Authors/IEEE_Edit_policy.html

Verbatim:
(quote)
Page Charges and Reprints: After a manuscript has been accepted for
publication, the author will be requested to pay a page charge of
$110.00 per printed page to cover the cost of publication. If this
charge, which is not a prerequisite for publications, is honored, the
author will receive 100 free reprints. Additional reprints may be
ordered upon return of proofs. A mandatory page charge ($220 per page
after the first eight) is imposed on all papers of length exceeding
eight TRANSACTIONS pages (about 28 double-spaced typed pages), including
illustrations. Details are provided at the time of acceptance; however,
authors are urged to keep this in mind when submitting and revising
their papers.
(end quote)

This means that a 10-pages paper in TMI will cost the  authors $1320.

The cost in Open Access journals is comparable.

For example, PLoS biology charges authors $1500 per paper (not per
page, since the number of pages become irrelevant for online-journals):

http://biology.plosjournals.org/perlserv/?request=get-static&name=policies#charges

Verbatim:
(quote)
Publication Charges

Authors are asked to pay $1500 upon acceptance of their article, to help
defray the costs of publication (read the FAQs on publication fees).
However, if you have insufficient funds to cover this payment, we will
accept payment of whatever amount you can afford or will waive the
charge entirely. Inability to pay will never influence the decision to
publish a paper.
(end quote)

For more details in this discussion you may want to consult

          "The Open Access Model"
          http://www.plos.org/journals/model.html

          "Publishing Open Access Journals"
          http://www.plos.org/downloads/oa_whitepaper.pdf

           "Who Pays for Open Access?"
http://biology.plosjournals.org/perlserv/?request=get-document&doi=10.1371/journal.pbio.0020105

and the following reports on the economics of publishing and its
relationship to Open Access:

Economics of Open Access Journals
   http://www.prism.gatech.edu/~mm284/OA.pdf

An Economic Analysis of Scientific Research Publishing
Report from the Wellcome Trust (a strong supporter of Open Access)

     http://www.wellcome.ac.uk/

This report provides a comprehensive analysis of an industry that 
generates some £22 billion annually

   http://www.wellcome.ac.uk/doc_WTD003181.html
   http://www.wellcome.ac.uk/assets/wtd003182.pdf

----

In any case,  "Researchers" never pay themselves for these publication
costs. The funds for publishing are typically taken from Federal or
State grants. So at the end it is the public who pays for the entire
research enterprise from end to end.

     1) The public pays for the research (including salaries)
     2) The public pays for publishing the results
     3) The public pays the subscriptions to journal to be able
        to read the results.

Those are part of the reasons why the US appropriations committee
ordered NIH to make publicly available the publications of all
research paid with NIH funds.

     http://www.nih.gov/about/publicaccess/index.htm

We live in strange times...

Times where some government agencies become revolutionary and
progressive while scientific societies become obscurantist and
closed, blinded by the benefits of their own little interests,
of their own little politics.

The publishing system is an obsolete mechanism that has survived to
its blatant inefficiency thanks to the fact that from its niche it
controls how researchers get degrees, jobs, promotions and funding.

The most shameful result of this status quo is that it has corrupted
the very basis of the scientific system, by leading people to believe 
that science is a construct of experts, good reputation journals,
good reputation institutions, and that it is completely detached from
verification, experimentation, validation and facts.

With its golden marketing slogan: "Publish or Perish" the publishing
system have managed to make researchers believe the their purpose in
life is to produce more and more papers.  Whether these papers solve
the health concerns of the public or not...that seems to be irrelevant.

The fact that most of the papers can wait one or two years for
appearing in press, shows clearly how trascendental they are...

Open Access is an oportunity to wake up from the narcissist and illusory
world of "publishing-for-publishing" and to remember that the moral
commitment of researchers is to serve the public with the results of
their scientific work.

   Regards,

     Luis

----------------
Ziv Yaniv wrote:
> Hi Luis and all the rest,
> 
>  First of all I'll come clean and say in advance that I am all for
>  *Open Access* (its already here), but:
> 
>  Publishing quality journals, even ejournals, requires money (I
>  assume someone was paid to tell me that I forgot the page
>  numbers in bibliography entry 5).
> 
>  In the current *Closed Access* model:
>  a. Softcopies are usually available from the authors' web page, or by 
>     request.
>     I've seen many web sites with the final IEEE journal
>     version and a disclaimer stating that the paper is meant to further
>     knowledge etc., I'm guessing this is illegal.
>  b. Publishing doesn't cost the author (not counting over page
>     limits).
> 
>  One version of the *Open Access* model I am aware of turns things
>  around:
>  a. Journal access is free.
>  b. Author's pay for the publication costs, these are projected to
>     be very high.
> 
>   If the IEEE will turn to this *Open Access* model, then I'd
>   rather stay with the current model.
> 
>   I know that there are researchers (o.k., mostly young researchers)
>   that don't have the money to pay for publications.
>   From my experience and that of others I have very rarely
>   had a problem acquiring a journal paper.
> 
>   To summarize, I believe *Open Access* is here de-facto, but I'm
>   wary of what the official *Open Access* will bring with it.
>   If on the other hand we get both free access and no additional
>   publication costs, then sign me up.
> 
>                     No Free Lunch?
>                           Ziv
> 
> ---------- Original Message ----------------------------------
> From: Luis Ibanez <luis.ibanez at kitware.com>
> Date:  Sat, 17 Sep 2005 18:52:51 -0400
> 
> 
>> IEEE is currently holding elections for its board.
>>
>>
>>IEEE so far has been hostile to the notion of Open Access Publications,
>>mainly because the organization get about half of its revenue from
>>subscriptions to journals. For example, IEEE was among the organizations
>>that lobbied against the new NIH rule that publications of NIH-funded
>>research should be made freely available in PubMed.
>>
>>
>>If you are a supporter of *Open Access* and an *IEEE member*, here is
>>your opportunity for making hear your opinion on this issue.
>>
>>
>>As you vote for the new members, you may want to take into account
>>their position with respect to the Open Access movement.
>>
>>
>>
>>You will find the full statements of the candidates at
>>
>>                  http://www.ieee.org
>>
>>
>>As a help, here is the summary of the statements from
>>presidential candidates with respect to Open Access, as
>>it appeared in "The Institute" this month:
>>
>>
>>1) James Tien:
>>
>>   Sales of IEEE publications account for approximately
>>   half of the IEEE revenue and therefore are not something
>>   that the organization can unilaterally and easily abandon.
>>   For example, total IEEE revenues reached US$ 247 million...
>>
>>
>>2) Gerald Peterson:
>>
>>   suggested to look at the IEEE standards association's
>>   corporate membership program that allowed free downloads
>>   of its popular wireless networking suite of standards...
>>   ... industry groups have decided that wide dissemination of
>>   the new technologies took precedence over generating revenue...
>>
>>
>>3) Leah Jamieson:
>>
>>   Pointed out that in a sense, papers are free. An author may post
>>   his or her paper on a corporate Web site, where it would be available
>>   for free to anyone. But the agglomeration and organization of all
>>   IEEE articles through the IEEE Xplore document delivery system adds
>>   value and is not free.
>>
>>
>>
>>In my humble opinion we can interpret these statements as:
>>
>>
>>1) James Tien: IEEE is first of all a business and we should take
>>               care of making money instead of fulfilling the
>>               mission of a technical society.
>>
>>   with his opinion, IEEE will end up like the American Chemical
>>   Society who opposed the creation of NIH Open Databases PubChem
>>   because it was detrimental to a paid service that the society
>>   provided:
>>
>>    http://osc.universityofcalifornia.edu/news/acs_pubchem.html
>>
>>   as a response, Richard J. Roberts (Nobel Prize 1993) resigned
>>   to his 20 years membership to the ACS and posted the following
>>   open letter:
>>
>>    https://mx2.arl.org/Lists/SPARC-OAForum/Message/1977.html
>>
>>    ACS (as well as IEEE) also oppossed Google initiative of
>>    Scholar Google, that fine tunned the search engine for
>>    searching technical and scientific literature.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>2) Geral Peterson:  "If there is a will there is a way".
>>              At least he recognizes that dissemination of
>>              technical information is more important than
>>              generating revenue, and that IEEE have done
>>              so in some activities.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>3) Leah Jamieson:  Dr. Jamieson seems to be is ill-informed
>>             on the US copyright laws,
>>
>>              http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap1.html
>>
>>             and most of importantly on the standard policy of
>>             IEEE publicaitions of requiring copyright transfer
>>             from the authors to the society as a requisite for
>>             publishing in IEEE journals.
>>
>>     http://www.ieee.org/about/documentation/copyright/cfrmlink.htm
>>
>>             Progressive Open Access journals do not require
>>             authors to transfer their copyright, they simply
>>             obtain permission from them in order to disseminate
>>             the document. The Creative Commons Attribution License
>>             clearly demonstrates that other models are viable:
>>
>>               http://creativecommons.org/about/licenses/
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>In any case,...
>>
>>
>>This is just to encourage you to take this factors into account when
>>you cast your ballot for IEEE board members. Just consider whether
>>IEEE is supposed to be a Corporation or a Technical Society.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>    Luis
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
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>>
> 
> 
> 