The Finch Report and its implications for the developing world

There are two routes to Open Access. With gold OA, publishers cease to charge readers to access scholarly journals (in the form of subscriptions), but instead charge authors, or their funders or institutions, to publish their papers (by means of an article-processing charge, or APC). This allows publishers to make research papers freely available on the Internet.

With green OA, researchers continue to publish in subscription journals (without payment), but then self-archive their papers in their institutional repository, usually after an embargo period. In this way, researchers can make their papers freely available themselves.

Over the years there has been much debate as to which is the better method for achieving OA, but no consensus has ever been reached. In the past month, however, a number of developments have served to focus minds on the respective merits of green and gold as never before.

It began with the publication on 18th June of the Finch Report. Chaired by Dame Janet Finch, a sociologist at the University of Manchester, the Finch Committee was formed last year by the UK Minister for Universities and Science David Willetts, and asked to consider how access to research could be expanded.

Clear policy direction

After giving the matter due consideration, the Finch Committee concluded that a clear policy direction should be set towards supporting publication in open access or hybrid journals, funded by APCs, as the main vehicle for the publication of research, especially where the research has been publicly funded.

In other words, Finch recommended that gold OA should be viewed as the norm for publishing research papers.

By contrast, Finch recommended that the institutional repository (i.e. green OA) should be relegated to the role of bit player, merely “providing access to research data and to grey literature” and assisting in digital preservation. Where self-archiving does take place, Finch suggested, it would be unreasonable to allow papers to be deposited before an embargo period of at least 12 months had passed (except where publishers do not offer a mechanism to pay for OA gold).

The Finch report ignited a firestorm of protest, not least because it estimated that its recommendations would cost the UK research community an additional £50-60 million a year. Since it was clear that there would be no additional funding from the UK government, this meant that universities would have to find the additional money from existing budgets.

University College London (UCL) Vice-Provost (Research) David Price concluded, “The result of the Finch recommendations would be to cripple university systems with extra expense. Finch is certainly a cure to the problem of access, but is it not a cure which is actually worse than the disease?”

Serving to spur on the complaints, a few weeks later a report commissioned by the UK Open Access Implementation Group (OAIG) concluded that green OA offered a much more cost-effective route. Specifically, OAIG said, where a unilateral move to gold OA in the UK would cost large research intensive institutions about £1.7 million a year, a unilateral move to green OA would cost only around £100,000 a year.

In this light, it is perhaps unsurprising that when on July 16th Research Councils UK (RCUK) announced its new OA policy, it reinstated green OA as an equal partner to gold, and insisted on no more than a 6-month embargo (except for humanities and social science papers), apparently ignoring many of the Finch recommendations.

RCUK’s new policy, we should note, was published just hours before David Willetts announced that he was accepting all the Finch proposals, bar one on VAT rates for e-journals.

The very next day (yesterday) the EC issued a Communication on providing better access to scientific information in which it proposed an OA policy that mimics the RCUK policy.

No easy task

Where this leaves the Finch recommendations remains unclear. What is clear, however, is that adopting a national OA policy in a research environment that is truly global is no easy task — particularly where gold OA is viewed as the main vehicle for achieving OA.

As Graham Taylor of the UK Publishers Association pointed out to me recently, “6% of global research outputs derive from the UK, but if that is funded by APCs then the UK alone must cover that cost, which was previously spread over global subscriptions.”

However, there is perhaps a more important issue at stake here. In assuming that OA could or should be approached in a purely national way, the Finch Report failed to see (or simply ignored) the implications of establishing a model for OA that would inevitably have serious negative implications for researchers in more financially constrained parts of the world.

For years now scientists in the developing world have been locked out of much of the world’s research, simply because the very high costs of journal subscriptions means that their institutions are unable to afford to buy access to most science journals.

To replace that with an author-pays OA model would simply replace one problem with another, and possibly a more serious problem at that.

Thus where today researchers in the developing world are unable to read much published research, gold OA will surely prevent many of them from being able to publish their own research — threatening to turn them into passive witnesses to the development of science, not active players. After all, if UCL is wondering how it can afford to pay for gold OA, how on earth could impoverished research institutions in the developing world hope to pay the necessary charges for their researchers to publish their papers were gold OA to become the norm?

In this light, Finch’s one-dimensional approach to OA appears most unfortunate. And it is no surprise that many OA advocates have welcomed the more balanced approach adopted by RCUK and the EC.

Who better to explain the problems that Finch poses for the developing world than the Electronic Publishing Trust for Development (EPT) — a charity whose mission it is to support the electronic publication of reviewed bioscience journals from countries experiencing difficulties with traditional publication, and which promotes open access initiatives in the developing world.

Below I republish EPT’s formal response to the Finch report, which was signed by EPT chairman Professor Derek Law.

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Derek Law, EPT Chair

The recent publication of the Finch Report, set up in the UK to study and provide recommendations on ‘Accessibility, sustainability, excellence: how to expand access to research publications’, was eagerly anticipated by the scholarly community in the developed world (henceforth referred to as the North). It has, however, led to a deluge of negative comment from long-standing advocates of Open Access (e.g. see here and here).

The Electronic Publishing Trust for Development has worked for over a decade to facilitate both access to the world’s published literature for economically constrained regions of the world (henceforth referred to as the South) and the publication and global distribution of often unique research arising from research in these regions. The Trust provides a different perspective in considering the recommendations of the Finch Report from those already made known by a variety of experts.

The first thing to note is that this is a UK government commissioned report and so is concerned in the main with the impact of OA on UK research output and national wealth. Therefore, while it had no remit to consider the consequences of the recommendations on the rest of the world, as a leading research nation it will have consequences, and the EPT wishes to consider these and transmit its views to its fellow-researchers in the South.

The second thing to note is that whereas the Report refers frequently to the importance of UK research and also acknowledges that research is an international activity, it does not recognise the crucial impact that the research carried out in the South has on the development of international programmes.

Many of the world’s most intractable problems are felt primarily in the developing regions and local research, for example on malaria, animal health, agriculture or climate change, is critical to providing appropriate solutions.

Without this knowledge, inappropriate recommendations have been made (see examples in ‘The chain of communication in health science: from researcher to health worker through open access’ L. Chan, S. Arunachalam, B. Kirsop and the problems persist and even, in the case of infectious diseases, spread.

It is therefore important to all that research from the South is supported and well distributed globally. This has been the mission of the EPT and other organisations such as the active and long-established EIFL programme. Understanding this, recommendations made by the Finch group for improving access to the latest research findings are a matter of critical interest to researchers in the South.

Light at the end of the tunnel?

When the concept of OA was first proposed the consequences of this policy for the progress and success of the work of researchers in the South was almost unbelievable — ‘a light at the end of the tunnel’ was the most modest of responses, since free access to the world’s research findings coupled with the ability to promote their own work globally had seemed unattainable.

The new concept was of such significance that it took time for it to be believed and over recent years much effort has gone into awareness-raising and training in the new technologies which support such access.

The first developments towards free access were tempered with disappointment when the ‘author pays’ strategy was proposed and adopted by some journals, since the cost of paying to publish was merely a different disincentive to that caused by unaffordable subscription charges — even though it was possible to plead poverty and receive charitable dispensations in some cases. ‘Same old, same old’, researchers felt.

However, the less publicised strategy of Green OA was slowly recognised, thanks to the indefatigable efforts of knowledgeable people in the countries affected.

So, while some publishers (Bioline International, SciELO, MedKnow) in the South have adopted the Gold policy of OA journals, meeting their costs by a number of innovative alternatives (providing paid-for publishing services, online advertising, cost savings by moving to online-only publishing, national and commercial support . . .), others began to educate policy makers on the benefits of Green OA.

Institutes held workshops, training programmes, seminars and set up exchange visits, so that gradually a body of repository-literate researchers and policy makers evolved. The comparatively low cost required and the immediacy of establishing repositories have been driving factors in the ultimate acceptance of Green OA by the South.

The situation is that there are now nearly 700 institutional repositories in the South (source: Registry of OA Repositories), rising to 804 repositories if China and Russia are included, collectively holding vast numbers of research articles.

Trivialisation

Progress has been frustratingly slow, and it is clear that the notion of a Pandora’s box of research articles available for accessing without cost has taken time to absorb, and it is the acceptance by prestigious organisations in the North (NIH, UKRC, Wellcome Trust, UNESCO etc) that is now beginning to give the confidence that administrators needed in order to commit to the switch in policy. It is for this reason that the recommendations of the Finch report are important in the South.

While the overall adoption of the international OA movement as the new research distribution mechanism is greatly to be welcomed and will encourage many remaining doubters, it is profoundly disappointing that Green OA has been designated as merely a fringe resource for all manner of writings.

It is difficult not to sound unprofessional and populist when describing the huge imbalance between the importance of sharing essential research and that of retaining the profits of the publishing service industry, but publishing exists to support research, not the other way round.

The resolution to solve publishing deprivation via the Gold route will take many years and significant financial input to achieve, whereas the far smaller costs (some facts and figures here) and ‘do-ability’ required to set up repositories are immediately achievable.

There are now 33,914,611 articles deposited in institutional repositories to date (see here for a map of their location). How can the importance of this strategy which has both scale and momentum have been so trivialised by the Finch team?

There is a myth circulated regarding developing country access problems — ‘There is no evidence of a lack of access’, ‘We have established the HINARI Research for Life programmes that solve the problem’. . . But our decade-long experience working with researchers in the South, and many of the stories collected for OA Week and which are available from our web site demolishes the first myth, while the problems with the HINARI programmes have been well documented — sudden withdrawal by publishers of journals, availability only from designated libraries, selection of journals by publishers rather than according to research needs and so on (see here for example).

Torn

We at the EPT are torn between wanting to publicise the Finch report since it strongly supports OA, and a wish to hide it, since to advocate unachievable strategies and to ignore the ‘do-able’ will be profoundly confusing to our colleagues in the South.

Here is a statement from researchers at the Raman Research Institute, India (see here): “Our repository collects and preserves the publications of the institute in a central place — thus making them available to students and researchers whenever needed. . . .This is of great value to our researchers as it is like carrying a no-weight library of all their relevant papers when they travel. It makes collaborative research a lot easier. In this way the repository contributes to the teaching, learning and research of the institute.”

And again, a posting by Charlotte Webber of BMC: “You won’t find the community of Macha on many maps. It’s 50 miles from the nearest road in the Southern Province of Zambia, itself a land-locked southern African country — it’s pretty much the last place you’d expect to find a community logged on to the Internet. But taking advantage of a satellite link installed by John Hopkins University Malaria Research Institute, the LinkNet Cooperative . . . has established the largest wireless Mesh Network in Sub-Saharan Africa. Now, by researching crop types, local farmers have already diversified . . . . And doctors and nurses at the local hospital can seek advice on treating patients from specialists in the capital. Screening for malaria has improved thanks to the John Hopkins link and rates of malaria have dropped by 90%. Local people are using the internet for research to establish businesses whilst transaction costs for basic goods have reduced considerably . . . . There are thousands of communities like Macha across sub-Saharan Africa. Macha proves that access to information is the critical first ingredient in helping local communities to help themselves. We’re proud to have the support of BioMed Central to help more and more projects like this.”

How do you compare the value of access to such resources with that of a publisher’s income?

It now seems clear that the argument for OA is irrefutable and it will become the standard route to the exchange of research publications (and data) going forward. But the best means to achieve it remain in dispute.

While valuable new trials and usage assessments continue, the EPT urges that the raising of the profile of affordable Green OA and the real needs of the majority of the world’s researchers is borne in mind as a priority.

And this is a matter of self-interest as well as public policy. British goods, products and services relevant to developing countries will be best sold in markets about which UK companies are well informed and to meet problems and issues which the relevant research literature describes.

As a Charitable Trust, the EPT will continue to support this strategy by all means available to it and, as an example of our efforts, we direct people to the announcement of the 2011 winner of the EPT OA Award, Dr Frances Jayakanth, National Centre for Scientific Information, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, India who, with colleagues, set up a vibrant repository now holding tens of thousands of research articles. “The University Grants Commission in India was impressed by the IISC’s IR and has directed all universities in India to replicate this effort” (see here for more information on the Award).

Where India leads, may the UK follow?

Yours Sincerely,
Professor Derek G. Law
Chairman,
Trustees of the Electronic Publishing Trust for Development (Registered Charity Commission No 1059867)
http://www.epublishingtrust.net

The OA Interviews: Jeffrey Beall, University of Colorado Denver

In 2004 the scholarly publisher Elsevier made a written submission to the UK House of Commons Science & Technology Committee. Elsevier asserted that the traditional model used to publish research papers — where readers, and institutions like libraries, pay the costs of producing scholarly journals through subscriptions — “ensures high quality, independent peer review and prevents commercial interests from influencing decisions to publish.”

Jeffrey Beall

Elsevier added that moving to the Open Access (OA) publishing model — where authors, or their sponsoring institutions, paid to publish research papers by means of an article-processing charge (APC) — would remove “this critical control measure” from scholarly publishing.

The problem with adopting the gold OA model, explained Elsevier, is that publishers' revenues would then be driven entirely by the number of articles published. As such, OA publishers would be “under continual pressure to increase output, potentially at the expense of quality.”

This is no longer a viewpoint that Elsevier promulgates. Speaking to me earlier this year, for instance, Elsevier’s Director of Universal Access Alicia Wise said, “Today open access journals do generally contain high-quality peer reviewed content, but in 2004 this was unfortunately not always the case.”

She added, “Good work in this area by the Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association (OASPA) has helped to establish quality standards for open access publications. For several years now Elsevier has taken a positive test-and-learn approach to open access and believes that open access publishing can be both of a high quality and sustainable.”

Prescient

While many OA publishers today are undeniably as committed to the production of high-quality papers as subscription publishers ever were, Elsevier’s 2004 warning was nevertheless prescient.

No one knows this better than Jeffrey Beall, a metadata librarian at the University of Colorado Denver. Beall maintains a list of what he calls “predatory publishers”. That is, publishers who, as Beall puts it, “unprofessionally exploit the gold open-access model for their own profit.” Amongst other things, this can mean that papers are subjected to little or no peer review before they are published.

Currently, Beall’s blog list of “predatory publishers” lists over 100 separate companies, and 38 independent journals. And the list is growing by 3 to 4 new publishers each week.

Beall’s opening salvo against predatory publishers came in 2009, when he published a review of the OA publisher Bentham Open for The CharlestonAdvisor. Since then, he has written further articles on the topic (e.g. here), and has been featured twice in The Chronicle of Higher Education (here and here).

His work on predatory publishers has caused Beall to become seriously concerned about the risks attached to gold OA. And he is surprised at how little attention these risks get from the research community. As he puts it, “I am dismayed that most discussions of gold open-access fail to include the quality problems I have documented. Too many OA commenters look only at the theory and ignore the practice. We must ‘maintain the integrity of the academic record’, and I am doubtful that gold open-access is the best long-term way to accomplish that.”

When presented with evidence of predatory publishing, OA advocates often respond by saying that most OA journals do not actually charge a processing fee. 

But as commercial subscription publishers increasingly enter the OA market it would be naïve to think that the number of journals that charge APCs will not grow exponentially in the coming years.

Whether this will lead to an overall increase in quality remains to be seen. It must be hoped that as more and more traditional journals embrace OA, so quality levels will rise, and predatory publishers will begin to be squeezed out. 

However, if Beall’s growing list is anything to go by, the omens are not currently very good. Moreover, if it turns out that there is indeed an inherent flaw in the gold OA model — as Elsevier once claimed — then the research community would appear to have a long-term problem.

 

The interview begins …

RP: You are a metadata librarian: what does your job involve?

JB: As a faculty librarian, my work is divided up into three components: librarianship, research, and service. My librarianship work involves creating and maintaining library metadata in my library's discovery systems, including the online catalogue, the discovery layer, and the institutional repository, and related duties.

My research component is thirty per cent of my job, and I am devoting it to my research in scholarly communication. The service component chiefly involves committee work.

RP: How and when did you become interested in predatory open access publishing?

JB: I became interested in predatory publishers in 2008 when I began to receive spam email solicitations from new, online, third-world publishers.

RP: What is the purpose of the list of predatory OA publishers you keep, and how many publishers does it currently include?

JB: The lists are part of my blog. I write the blog to help myself develop my ideas and to share what I am learning about scholarly open-access publishing. The lists are a means of sharing information about publishers I have judged as questionable or predatory.

There are actually two lists, one of independent journals that do not publish under the aegis of a publisher, and one of publishers. There are 38 independent journals and 111 publishers currently on the list.

RP: When you say independent journals do you mean journals published by researchers themselves?

JB: No, I mean journals that exist independently on the Internet that are not part of a publisher's fleet of journals. An example is the Global Journal of Medicine and Public Health.

Criteria

RP: Do you have any sense of how fast the phenomenon of predatory publishing is growing?

JB: Yes, the attention my blog has received has inspired academics and others to forward me spam emails they have received and to pass on information they have about new, questionable publishers. In the last couple months, I have been adding 3-4 per week. A new predatory publisher appears almost weekly in India, the location of most of my recent listings.

RP: Is predatory publishing in your view a phenomenon that originates primarily in the developing world?

JB: Yes, and in this I include publishers in the U.S., Canada, Australia, and the U.K. that are run by people from developing countries. They typically set up shop in developed countries and then market their services (vanity scholarly publishing) to the unwary worldwide, especially to those in their home countries.

RP: How do you define a predatory publisher?

JB: Predatory publishers are those that unprofessionally exploit the gold open-access model for their own profit.

RP: Presumably this implies publishers that charge a fee to publish scholarly papers (Not all gold OA journals do charge a fee)?

JB: By definition, gold open-access publishers levy an article processing charge (APC).

RP: How do you select publishers to include in your list? What criteria do you use?

JB: As I mentioned, most of the additions to the list result from tips from scientists and other scholars. I have composed and use a criteria document, currently in draft form, that I am preparing for publication on my blog.

Most importantly, I use established criteria, specifically those published by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), the Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association (OASPA), and the International Association of Scientific, Technical & Medical Publishers (STM). There is one statement in COPE’s code of conduct that nicely encapsulates all the criteria into one: “Maintain the integrity of the academic record".

OASPA

RP: Can you say what specific things you look for when assessing a potentially predatory publisher: for instance, do you look for evidence of spamming, poor or no peer review, the absence of information on ownership and/or location of the publisher, lack of an editor-in-chief, or editorial board, or what? What are the tell-tale signs of a predatory publisher?

JB: Yes, broadly I look for deception and lack of transparency. These two characteristics can manifest themselves in many ways, including those you list.  One thing (among many) that I look for is publishers that refer to themselves as a “center”,  “institute”, “network”, etc. For example, the Institute of Advanced Scientific Researchis not really an institute; it's a predatory publisher. This is deception. If you look at their contact address on Google Maps, it's an apartment.

RP: Is there such a thing as a subscription-based predatory publisher?

JB: No, not according to my definition of predatory publisher.

RP: You mentioned OASPA. OASPA has been accused of doing too little to stem the tide of questionable OA publishers. Would you agree? Could it be doing more? If so, what? On the other hand, might OASPA be the wrong organisation to attempt to control these activities? What is and should be OASPA’s role (if any) vis-à-vis predatory publishing?

JB: Only one or two of the publishers on my list are OASPA members. Therefore, there's little the organization can do to control the predatory publishers. In fact, most of the publishers on my list lack affiliation with any professional association, and they fail to follow many established publishing standards. It's not really my role to tell OASPA what it should be doing.

RP: One of OASPA’s founding members, Hindawi, was at one time on your watchlist, but subsequently you removed it. However, your current list of predatory publishers still includes the International Scholarly Research Network (ISRN). ISRN is one of Hindawi’s brands. What do we learn from this?

JB: If you're a publisher, don't call yourself a network when you're not a network.

RP: When and why do you remove a publisher from your list?

JB: I have removed publishers from my list for two reasons. First, if the publisher's website disappears, I remove it from the list. This has happened only once or twice, and I removed them from the list without saving the names. Second, I remove a publisher from the list when I receive convincing comments from colleagues disagreeing with my having added it to the list.

Legal threats

RP: Have you ever removed a publisher from your list as a result of receiving a legal threat? Have you ever received any legal threats in connection with your list?

JB: My answer to the first question is no. Regarding the second question, yes, I have received two legal threats.

RP: I am struck that at least one of the publishers that you have removed from your list — Dove Press — was formerly a member of OASPA. Dove has been the subject of some controversy, and is no longer a member of OASPA. Why did you remove Dove from your list of questionable publishers?

JB: I removed it based on comments that JQJohnson left on my old blog. He is Director, Scholarly Communications and Instructional Support, at the University of Oregon and someone whose opinion I respect. I took his comments as a form of "peer review" and decided to accept his suggestion to remove Dove Press from the list.

RP: People have said to me that you tend to “shoot from the hip” when listing publishers as predatory, sometimes making your decision on too little information. Would you agree? Have you ever regretted putting a publisher on your list?

JB: In most cases, the decision to place a given publisher on my list is an easy one because the publisher is so clearly corrupt and predatory. Thus, a decisive and resolute action is appropriate, and no, I don't agree, for I believe I make the decisions with sufficient information.

I now regret having the watchlist on my earlier blog. The feedback I received indicated that the watchlist painted a negative picture of the publishers on that list given the context in which the list appeared (juxtaposed with a list of predatory publishers). I acted on the feedback and now no longer have a public watchlist, though I do maintain one privately.

Conflict of interest?

RP: Others have suggested that you might have a conflict of interest, pointing out, for instance, that you are on the editorial board of a subscription journal. Should such claims be taken seriously? Why? Why not?

JB: Two people have said that. One is Scott Albers, an attorney from Great Falls, Montana and author of  the article, "The Golden Mean, The Arab Spring And a 10-Step Analysis of American Economic History", a paper published in the Middle East Studies Online Journal. He asked me for advice as he was submitting the same article to a second publisher. I told him the publisher was essentially a vanity press, and he became offended and then contrived the conflict of interest story. The second is Ken Masters, the editor of Internet Scientific Publications' The Internet Journal of Medical Education. Masters is an assistant professor at Oman's Sultan Qaboos University, and he took it personally when I put Internet Scientific Publications, a publisher run out of a spare bedroom in Sugar Land, Texas, on my list.

The truth is there is no conflict of interest. I have no financial stake in Taylor & Francis, the publisher of the journal on whose editorial board I serve. In point of fact, my service on the editorial board has enabled me to learn a lot about the scholarly publishing process and scholarly publishing in general. Masters has been trying to bait people on email lists, including LIBLICENSE, with the conflict of interest story, but he has been ignored.

RP: The implication in the above claim, I assume, is that you are anti-OA. How would you describe your position vis-à-vis OA: advocate, sceptic, opponent?

JB: I am not "anti" anything. I am in favourof the best model for scholarly communication, whatever it turns out to be. If that is gold OA, then so be it.

I review science books for Library Journal. Occasionally, I'll give a book a negative review. That doesn't mean I'm anti-science. My list is essentially a collective review of gold open-access publishers. It's a re-invention of what librarians call "readers advisory".

RP: Whatever your position vis-à-vis OA, do you think the author-pays publishing model is inherently flawed so far as scholarly publishing is concerned?

JB: It's too early to tell, so I don't have a final opinion on this yet. On the one hand, the evidence I see every day argues that the model is indeed flawed. On the other hand, we need to ask, Which is the best model for the future of scholarly communication? It's too early to eliminate a potentially successful and sustainable model.  

Abused the system

RP: I assume most researchers publish in the journals of predatory publishers without realising that they are dealing with a predatory publisher — and clearly a list like yours can play a useful role in helping them avoid doing so. On the other hand, I have had researchers say to me that they have knowingly paid to appear in a predatory publisher’s journal, explaining that they did so because they were having difficulties being published in a more reputable journal, or simply needed to get a paper published quickly for tenure or promotion purposes. I do not know how common the practice is, but does it not suggest that the research community is conspiring in the growth of predatory publishers, and, therefore, that the phenomenon is likely only to grow?

JB: I don't think there's a conspiracy, but I do think that some individuals have unprofessionally abused the system for their own benefit. But that's why we have tenure and promotion committees. It is the committees' job to vet the research of their tenure candidates. Tenure and promotion committees must now bring greater scrutiny to candidates' published works than they did in the past, given the presence and abuse of scholarly vanity presses and the disappearance of the validation function that traditional publishers have so effectively provided.

RP: In the UK recently the Finch Report recommended that all publicly funded research should be made freely available on an OA basis, and by means of gold OA. This, it said, would require UK universities to pay an additional £50-60 million a year in order to disseminate the research they produce. If other countries follow suit, and if the author-pays model does indeed turn out to be inherently flawed, we can presumably expect the research community to find itself in trouble at some point can we not?

JB: Yes, and I am dismayed that most discussions of gold open-access fail to include the quality problems I have documented. Too many OA commenters look only at the theory and ignore the practice. We must "maintain the integrity of the academic record", and I am doubtful that gold open-access is the best long-term way to accomplish that.

RP: What future plans do you have for your work on predatory publishers? Will you be adding new features to your blog, for instance?

JB: One weakness of my list is that it is binary: a publisher is either on the list or it isn't. I would like to classify the publishers more granularly in terms of their quality, an upgrade that would differentiate among the borderline ones and the really bad ones. I am also in the middle of a research project about library catalogues and inclusion of predatory journals and hope to carry out additional research on open-access publishing.

The OA Interviews: Audrey McCulloch, ALPSP Chief Executive

On 1^st June, the Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers (ALPSP), along with the Publishers Association (PA), distributed a press release advertising the results of a survey that had recently been commissioned. 

Audrey McCulloch

The objective of the survey had been to estimate the likely impact of making journals freely available after a six-month embargo — as many advocates of Green Open Access (OA) have been proposing.

The results of the survey, the press release said, suggest that a six-month embargo would cause  research libraries to cancel 65% of their Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences journals and 44% of their Scientific, Technical and Medical journal subscriptions. “ALPSP is very concerned about the effect this may have on non-profit publishers, many of whom may not survive,” commented ALPSP’s Chief Executive Audrey McCulloch.

The press release indicated that the report had been prepared by Linda Bennett of Gold Leaf. 

Below is an email Q&A I had with McCulloch about the survey, and the report.

Survey

RP: I have a number of questions about the ALPSP survey undertaken in May 2012. I understand this was done by someone called Linda Bennett of Gold Leaf.

AM: Please let me have your questions. I’d be happy to help you where I am able.

RP: Can you say who or what Gold Leaf is, who Linda Bennett is, and why she was commissioned to do the 2012 survey? Was the work put out to competitive tender and she submitted the best proposal, or what?

AM: Goldleaf is the name of Linda Bennett’s consultancy. The survey started life as a question I wanted to know the answer to and wished to speak to a small number of librarians about. Linda works regularly with librarian groups so I contacted her to ask a UK sample of librarians the simple question you see in the full survey. 

The responses that Linda received were concerning and I then wondered if this was peculiar to a small UK subset or if they were reflected in the wider library community.

RP: I believe the survey was jointly commissioned by the ALPSP and the Publishers Association? Was the Publishing Research Consortium (PRC) involved in any way?

AM: ALPSP and the PA together decided to extend the scope of the limited survey. PRC was aware but was not involved.

In order to ensure that we could compare the results of the wider survey with the responses from the original survey, the PA and ALPSP asked Linda to send out the same question as before but to a global sample of librarians.

RP: Bennett is herself Chair of the ALPSP research committee is she not?

AM: In both the original and wider survey, Linda clearly declared her position as Chair of the ALPSP research committee.

RP: To those she contacted yes. I believe Bennett is also the ALPSP representative on the steering group of the PRC, a publishers’ organisation. And she describes herself on the Book Fair web site as a field reporter for the PA. I am wondering whether — given the sensitivity of the issues surrounding self-archiving and Green OA, and the way the results of the survey have been used to promote the cause of the publishing industry — it might not have been better to hand the initial work that Linda had done over to an independent consultant, and to have commissioned them to do the follow-up study?

AM: The responses to the survey speak for themselves and are presented as an opinion piece. Linda was not commissioned to interpret the responses, only to report the answers to the question. The PA pays Linda as a field reporter for selected events, but this does not make her an employee of the PA and as an independent consultant she works for many other organisations. 

We commissioned Linda because she has practical experience in conducting surveys. But the nature of the survey makes the contractor irrelevant. Using someone else would not have influenced the result.

I have also mentioned in our exchanges several times that I represent ALPSP on the PRC Steering Committee. Linda is an invited attendee.

RP: To confirm, the earlier survey was sent out to 34 librarians and the results were never published?

AM: As exactly the same question was presented to a much wider group of librarians, the responses of the earlier survey (conducted a few weeks previous), were combined with the latter and a single report produced.

Different conclusion

RP: It has been pointed out to me that the ALPSP commissioned a similar survey in 2006. That one was undertaken by the independent consultant Mark Ware, and published as the “ALPSP survey of librarians on factors in journal cancellation”. It seems that Ware’s survey came to a very different conclusion to Bennett’s. Why do you think that was so?

AM: The 2006 survey was six years ago. It is interesting to note the changes in the last six years, as open access publishing has evolved. It will be interesting to discover how different things are six years from now.

RP: In discussing why journals are cancelled, Ware explained in the 2006 report: “The three most important factors used to determine journals for cancellation, in declining order of importance, are that the faculty no longer require it (i.e. relevance to research or teaching programme), usage and price. Next, availability of the content via open access (OA) archives and availability via aggregators were ranked equal fourth, but some way behind the first three factors. The journal's impact factor and availability via delayed OA were ranked relatively unimportant...With regard to OA archives, there was a great deal of support for the idea that they would not directly impact journal subscriptions.”

In commenting on the survey OA advocate Peter Suber wrote at the time, “Bottom line:  journals have much more to fear from their own price increases than from OA archiving.” You say things have changed in the last six years. What exactly has changed?

AM: 2006 was an important year in the development of publishing via Open Access, as evidenced by Peter Suber himself. Information about such changes and their understanding takes time to filter to all stakeholders. Attitudes towards, and opinions, of Open Access are evolving.

RP: You may know that Heather Morrison is a librarian at Simon Fraser University in Canada. She drew my attention to the earlier Ware survey and asked, “Since the 2006 study found that the first 3 most important factors in considering journal cancellation are needs, usage, and price (OA being fourth), why conduct a survey in 2012 omitting these factors?” How would you answer Morrison’s question?

AM: I have already stated that the question that was asked was one to which I wanted to know the answer; it’s a snapshot in time of librarian opinion and is presented as such. 

RP: Morrison also points out that the typical journal cancellation process, as described by Ware, “follows a path of analysis, consultation, review and finalisation. The consultation may involve the librarian proposing candidates for cancellation, or providing data but asking patrons to suggest cancellations. It may also involve reader surveys of varying sophistication.”

Morrison then asks, “Since ALPSP conducted a study in 2006 which found that librarians do not make cancellation decisions without consulting faculty, why would they design in 2012 a survey asking librarians to respond Y or N to a question about cancellations?” She adds that librarians do not run universities, but act merely as a service point, and further asks, “Why ask people what decision they would make, when you know (or ought to know if you read your own research reports) that they do not have the decision-making power?”

How would you respond to Morrison on these points?

AM: We asked librarians their opinion and presented the results. That is clear from the report. 

RP: The Bennett report was published three days after the PEER end of conference event. The PEER study looked at the question of self-archiving, and concluded that there is no evidence of any harm to publishers as a result of embargoed Green OA. Indeed, it found evidence that Green OA through the PEER project actually drives usage at the publisher site. Why do you think the conclusions of the Bennett survey are so different to those of the PEER group study?

AM: It is very difficult to compare the results of the large-scale PEER group study, which looked at the impact of green deposits on author behaviour, user behaviour and journal downloads, to responses to a single question posed to just librarians hypothesising a largely OA world, and I don’t believe they should be compared.

Opinion  piece

RP: You say the 2012 report was presented as an “opinion piece”. I do not understand the implications of the distinction you are making. Both the press release and the document itself describe the document as a “report”. What is an opinion piece in this context and in what way was the document presented as an opinion piece? I.e. how would the reader have known that it was only opinion, not empirical evidence? After all, in the press release you said, “The responses in the report show that the ‘green’ model of open access will reduce the number of journals and thus choice available to academics.”

AM: The responses to our survey speak for themselves. We asked a single question of librarians, hypothesising a world of widespread Green OA on six-month embargoes. We did not control for any variables, so the survey stands as an opinion piece only. PEER, as is clear, was a four year longitudinal observatory. And the variables studied were different: user and author behaviour.

RP: Would you agree with those who argue that the PEER study is a more accurate predictor of the likely impact of Green OA and embargoed access than Bennett’s opinion piece?

AM: Probably not. We continue to believe that a high volume of articles available on short embargoes will undermine the subscription model.

RP: The PA’s Graham Taylor said of the Bennett survey that 1,000 research librarians were contacted and 200 replied. He added, “We don’t claim this to be definitive or statistically significant.” The report itself says, “The target respondents were not chosen at random. The aim was to obtain a set of representative responses from librarians at the different types of library served by academic publishers, while at the same time focusing particularly on obtaining replies from librarians at the world’s most prestigious academic libraries.” In fact, it was not just prestigious academic libraries, or even just research librarians, that were contacted, but schools, colleges, and corporate libraries too. Given the acknowledged limitations of the Bennett survey, what would you say to those who might argue that the results were oversold, and presented to the press in a somewhat hysterical manner?

AM: I disagree that the results were presented in a “hysterical manner”.  We asked a question, and reported on the answers that we received.

RP: As a result of the press release you distributed about the report, the Times Higher Education (THE) published a news story suggesting that a six-month embargo would “bankrupt publishers”. THE cited the report saying, “Libraries would be impacted by the collapse or scaling down of academic publishing houses … Most publishers would be obliged to review their portfolios; and a substantial body of journals, especially in AHSS subjects, would cease or be financially imperilled.”

How would you respond to those who might argue that the publication of the report (three days after the PEER end of conference event) was done solely in order to undermine the PEER findings — which found that Green OA  and embargoed access causes no harm whatsoever to publishers?

AM: The THE chose their own words, as journalists do. The reporter did not consult us. Journalists look for stories and put their own spin on reports. We did not release the results of our report to undermine PEER, such a conspiracy has never occurred to us. The timing was a coincidence.

RP: You say THE chose their own words and put their own spin on the story. In fact, as I noted, they quote the words used in the press release and the report itself. True, the report did not use the word “bankrupt”, but in the press release you yourself say, “ALPSP is very concerned about the effect this may have on non-profit publishers, many of whom may not survive.” Does that not imply that publishers will go bankrupt?

AM: Any business that provides a service and is not remunerated for that service (or is unable to obtain appropriate income from some other source) will not survive. 

RP:  Why did the 2012 survey not cite the PEER Group study, and why did it not refer back to the 2006 study?

AM: As I have said already, this is an opinion piece and has flagged an area of concern. It would be incorrect to compare it to the other studies.

RP: I understand that the 2006 survey is a membership benefit. Non-members are asked to purchase it for £90. As such, it sits behind ALPSP’s paywall. However, it did not use to be behind the paywall, or at least a summary of its findings was freely available here. The summary seems no longer to be available, even on the Wayback Machine. Can you say when and why the freely available summary of the 2006 report was removed from the ALPSP site?

AM: ALPSP upgraded their main database at the end of 2011. Our old and new systems were incompatible and much transfer work had to be carried out manually. The new URL is here.

Goldleaf

RP:  It does seem regrettable that before it released its new survey ALPSP did not provide a URL redirect to the old one. However, can you point me to the web site of Linda Bennett’s consultancy and say how many consultants are attached to it?

AM: Goldleaf currently has no online presence.

RP: You do not say how many consultants work at Gold Leaf. Can you also say where it is based? I can find no details of any such an organisation anywhere, including at Companies House.

AM: Just one, Linda, but why does that matter?

RP: Maybe it doesn’t matter, but some might argue that presenting the 2012 survey as one undertaken by an organisation called Gold Leaf is not the same thing as flagging that it was produced by the research committee Chair of the ALPSP, an organisation that has a vested interest in the outcome, and which itself commissioned the survey. As you say, the sample email on Page 6 of the report indicates that Linda is the ALPSP research Chair. But anyone who read the press release alone would read only, “The report has been prepared by Linda Bennett of Gold Leaf.” Moreover, those reading the report might easily fail to make the connection between the author of the report and the author of the email question cited on page 6.

In addition, Bennett made a recommendation in the conclusion of the report that no mandate be issued requiring all or most journal articles to be made available free of charge after a six month embargo. Do you not feel that it might have been more transparent if Bennett’s affiliations had been made clearer, both in the report and in the press release? As it is, many are unaware that the author works for both the ALPSP and the PA, and that the recommendation came in effect from ALPSP and the PA, not from an independent consultant?

AM: The PA and ALPSP asked Linda to produce a report from the work she had done. Neither ALPSP nor the PA feel it is acceptable to make any changes to such reports unless they are being professionally typeset. I should point out that Linda does not work for either ALPSP or the PA.

RP: But as we noted, Bennett is Chair of the ALPSP Research Committee. If journalists and others reporting the results had known that, would they not be likely to have concluded that she had commissioned herself to write the report? And would they not have drawn attention to the connection?

AM: The survey was not carried out in Linda’s capacity as Chair of the Research Committee. I have already explained how the questioning came about; I wanted an answer to a question and Linda was able to help me discover the answer. Using someone else would not have changed the result.

RP: Let me stress that I am not for a minute suggesting that anything inappropriate occurred, or that the survey was not undertaken properly and responsibly. But I wonder whether the way in which it was carried out, the decision to have ALPSP’s own research committee Chair undertake it, and the dramatic way in which the results were released to the press — even though the findings are acknowledged not to be statistically significant, and the variables were not controlled for — would be likely to conspire to give the wrong impression, and encourage people to reach the wrong conclusions. Would you agree? If not, why not?

AM: I think it’s difficult to reach any other conclusion, if you look solely at the responses that were received to the single question that was asked in the scenario presented hypothesising a world of widespread Green OA on six month embargoes.