La complainte du fabricant de carrosses

L’association des éditeurs belges (ADEB) entre en résistance contre l’avant-projet de décret de la Fédération Wallonie-Bruxelles. Il est clair qu’ils sont victimes des abus outrageux commis par les toutes grandes maisons internationales qui pratiquent des augmentations annuelles de prix et affichent fièrement des profits de plus de 40%, des méfaits qu’on ne peut leur reprocher. Le ras-le-bol causé par les requins de l’édition (Elsevier, Wiley, Springer et consorts) jette l’opprobre sur toute la profession, souvent injustement, et en fait subir à tous les conséquences fâcheuses. Néanmoins la combinaison de plusieurs facteurs, à savoir cet agacement extrême, le progrès technique de la communication électronique, le souci croissant du respect d’une éthique scientifique plus stricte, le besoin de réduire la pléthore d’articles et d’en améliorer la qualité, ouvre toutes grandes les portes d’une nouvelle ère, généralement appelée « Science Ouverte » (Open Science). Cette évolution est inexorable et personne ne parviendra, sous aucun prétexte, à l’empêcher de prendre le pas sur les pratiques désormais anciennes. Il s’agit ici d’un phénomène extrêmement répandu sous le nom de « désintermédiation-réintermédiation » que connaissent bien les banques, les opérateurs de télécommunication, les compagnies aériennes, les librairies et beaucoup de marchands au détail, pour lesquels l’Internet a déstructuré le modèle d’affaires. Rien de très particulier ici, donc.

Aucun « business model » n’a jamais résisté à l’évolution des techniques. La jante en polymère et le pneu ont remplacé la roue en bois cerclée de métal qui était pourtant, et pendant des siècles, une véritable merveille. Et ceci au grand dam des fabricants de roues de carrosse. Ceux d’entre eux qui s’en sont bien sortis sont ceux qui ont fait preuve d’adaptabilité et qui ont reconverti leurs activités dans une ligne plus en phase avec les nouvelles tendances. Qu’on me comprenne bien, j’ai le plus grand respect pour les fabricants de roues de carrosse, qui ont rempli leur rôle en temps utile. Ma parabole n’a rien de méprisant pour les métiers disparus ou en voie de disparition (ou de transformation). Elle vise seulement à faire comprendre que c’est le progrès qui dirige, dans la mesure où il crée des options plus efficaces, plus rapides et plus accessibles à tous, bref, mieux adaptés. Les modèles d’affaires doivent donc évoluer en conséquence, soit en montrant la voie, soit en la suivant de près.

Qu’on le veuille ou non, les nouvelles générations de chercheurs vont communiquer en utilisant les moyens modernes dont elles disposent déjà aujourd’hui. L’Internet est gratuit et immédiat. La nécessité d’intermédiaires comme les maisons d’édition ne reposera bientôt plus que sur l’habitude paresseuse des évaluateurs de la recherche qui consiste à soi-disant « mesurer » le prestige des journaux dans lesquels les chercheurs parviennent à publier leurs travaux et d’attribuer cette « valeur » à l’objet de l’évaluation (un chercheur, une équipe, un projet, etc.).

L’argument des éditeurs pour conserver leur quasi-monopole actuel est qu’ils seraient les seuls à pouvoir assurer la révision par les pairs, c’est-à-dire le contrôle de qualité, faisant mine d’oublier qu’ils confient la totalité de cette tâche à des chercheurs qui s’en acquittent pour eux gracieusement et par pur intérêt scientifique (ceux-là ont anonymement la primeur de l’information en exclusivité, ce qui ne manque pas de poser des problèmes éthiques, mais ceci est encore une autre question).

Dans un monde idéal, les publications scientifiques devraient être déposées sur des plateformes publiques non-commerciales, être soumises à la critique par les pairs de manière totalement ouverte, être modifiables en versions datées et numérotées successives en fonction de l’évolution des travaux de l’auteur mais également en fonction des critiques (positives autant que négatives) du monde scientifique compétent. En d’autres termes, la publication de recherche devrait reproduire exactement la méthode que les chercheurs appliquent depuis toujours dans les congrès scientifiques où la critique est ouverte et personnalisée.

Image: http://amorasterix.over-blog.com/article-25744931.html

Can we grasp a utopian concept and make it happen ?

Evolution of scientific communication will need to climb three steps:
1. Universities must provide green open access to their entire research production (Green OA through repositories), making sure it is complete;
2. Universities must cancel all their subscriptions to scientific publications;
3. Universities must contribute to setting up free publicly-run publication platforms and favor open peer reviewing.
This is the dawn of an entirely new science communication and interaction paradigm, which is mimicking on the publication scale the process followed on a smaller scale in scientific conferences. But this requires universal enforcement of this principle. Nowadays, those universities which are taking step 2 run the risk of sacrificing their researchers’ access to information. We should encourage them in this act of resistance, or even rebellion, and we should move forward all together now.
Step 4: all researchers must cite only those articles that are available on line freely. The transition period will be difficult, like all transition periods, because of the scientific need to quote good relevant articles that are actually hidden behind paywalls, but after a while, it will decrease the pressure of the prestige factor and hopefully get rid of it, if human nature permits.

Strategic challenges and potential benefits of Open Access publishing – Lessons for senior management

An article published in EUA-CDE Doctoral Education Bulletin, Nr 8, Winter 2016-17 / Education Special Edition.

Sété pages 5 & 6.

 

Le choc africain

Invité comme keynote speaker à un symposium panafricain sur l’accès libre (Open Access) aux publications scientifiques (cela ne vous surprendra guère: je vous casse régulièrement les pieds avec ce sujet que, dans un article récent de la Libre Belgique, on qualifiait gentiment d’obsessionnel…), j’ai vécu quatre journées exceptionnelles.
En effet, si j’ai toujours défendu l’Open Access comme mouvement de justice sociale, et même si j’ai toujours prétendu que c’était particulièrement dans les universités des pays en développement que le besoin s’en faisait le plus absolument sentir, se retrouver face aux réalités de spécialistes de la documentation scientifique d’un peu tous les pays d’Afrique laisse pantois.
Bien formés et bien informés, ils sont confrontés à une quasi incapacité de se procurer toute source d’information pourtant indispensable et l’Open Access est, pour eux, une vraie solution quasi miraculeuse.
Et pourtant, à l’heure actuelle, l’Open Access ayant solidement progressé, il ne peuvent accéder gratuitement, comme nous, qu’à peine à la moitié de la littérature scientifique. Et à une proportion encore bien plus réduite aux manuels de cours et aux livres dont les étudiants ont besoin. C’est un immense progrès, partant de zéro il y a peu, mais c’est un manque qu’ils ne peuvent pallier faute de moyens.
En outre, une deuxième difficulté survient: comment donner accès à des milliers d’étudiants et de chercheurs aux ressources informatiques, l’équipement moderne et mis à jour faisant terriblement défaut.
Enfin un troisième écueil se présente: la résistance obstinée du monde Académique d’admettre le changement de paradigme de la diffusion du savoir que nous vivons actuellement.
Ces trois difficultés, nous les rencontrons toutes également, mais à un degré considérablement moindre, sauf peut-être la troisième…
Quoi qu’il en soit, je n’ai jamais caché ma conviction absolue de la nécessité d’une évolution de la diffusion des connaissances, de l’exigence d’un accès gratuit au savoir qui permet d’éviter toute discrimination sur la base des moyens financiers disponibles et de la nécessité de modifier totalement nos critères d’évaluation de la recherche et des chercheurs. Mais aujourd’hui, cette conviction n’en est que plus considérablement renforcée. Et elle se double d’une colère, d’une rage même, face à l’indifférence et au mépris ainsi qu’aux manœuvres d’intoxication intellectuelle que font subir les multinationales de l’édition, aveuglées par leurs profits excessifs et scandaleux aux chercheurs des pays en développement. Certes, elles se défendent en prétendant leur octroyer des conditions particulièrement avantageuses, mais cette ligne de défense ne tient pas à l’épreuve de l’analyse.

“If there’s any document that should be free, it is knowledge about your basic rights” (Albie SACHS, Capetown 5/12/2016).

Fact vs Fiction : Green Open Access

Source: Rentier, B. « Open Science: a Revolution in Sight? » (2016) Interlending and Document Supply (ILDS), in press. Already available in « ORBi« , the ULg Institutional Repository, by courtesy of Emerald Group Publishing Ltd which supports Green OA for publications in ILDS.

Denouncing the imposter factor

In 2013, the American Society for Cell Biology and several scientific journals launched the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment, DORA, meant to put an end to the ridiculously unscientific practice of using the impact factor of journals to assess individual researchers or research groups or even institutions. According to the original text, this practice creates biases and inaccuracies when appraising scientific research. The impact factor must no longer be considered as « a measure of the quality of individual research articles, or in hiring, promotion, or funding decisions ».

At this day 12,747 institutions and individuals worldwide have signed the DORA. And yet only a handful of institutions who have signed it have actually implemented the DORA. Review committees, assessment jurys, funding organizations and academic authorities have continued using, openly or discreetly, the journal impact factor as a determining element of judgement on the output of scientific research.

Let’s look at data collected patiently by my collaborator Paul Thirion (ULg) whom I thank for this : he listed all 1,944 articles published in Nature in 2012 and 2013 and looked at how many times each one has been cited in 2014. Only 75 of them (3.8%) provide 25% of the journal’s citations, hence of the journal’s impact factor (IF = 41.4…, I’ll spare you the other digits !) and 280 (14,4%) do account for half of the total citations & IF… While 214 (11%) get 0 or 1 citation.

A graphic representation is even more striking:

This does not take away the fact that a high impact factor is a legitimate measurement of the prestige of a journal. But if one can generally admit (not everybody does) that a scientist’s contribution to science can be somehow measured by the citations of his/her work (although not true in all domains of knowledge), using the impact factor of the journals where he/she publishes is like measuring someone’s qualities by the club where he/she is allowed to go dining. Stars are for restaurants, not for their customers…

This goes to show that most Nature authors do benefit from an IF generated by a happy few (if you admit that citation is a valid assessment indicator, of course).

But if the very convenient assessment by impact factor is to be banned, what is intended to replace it ? Ideally, the solution is a thorough reading of the work by a competent reader, a very unrealistic task nowadays. DORA makes several suggestions, such as BiorXiv. The British HEFCE has analised the question as well. Altmetric has developed new methods. All in all, a combination of these procedures may provide a useful measurement but it should be kept in mind that comparisons across disciplines make no sense at all, even between similar fields. A wider reflection is clearly needed to come up with a manageable solution, so long as one agrees that evaluation, as we see it, makes sense. In any case, it cannot be reduced to a single figure, as if such a value could by any means represent a basis for a comparative evaluation.

EOS, the un-secret story

At first, it did not seem to be something worth writing about. But a few days ago, a totally unexpected attack came up in a commentary by Peter Murray-Rust, a well known chemist at Cambridge University, in Richard Poynder’s blog, « Open and Shut« .

Richard’s blog article of December 17th, « Open Access slips into closed mode ? » was about his surprise to discover that « Berlin 12 », the 12th edition of a major yearly gathering of the Open Access (OA) community, was paradoxically “by invitation only”, something you could call « restricted access »…!

His astonishment was understandable (even though he came up strangely with the concept of « secret society »). But to me, another surprise came from Murray-Rust’s aggressive and unfair comment (or perhaps simply paranoid) :

I have sympathy with Richard on the issue of the « secret society. Look at ‘Enabling Open Scholarship‘ (EOS) « where the great and good set up a secret organisation to manage OA. It includes many of the professors, etc. of OA [sic] and shuts out people like me and you. This was 7-8 years ago and suggests that the OA movement was a privileged clique that dictated what others should do. There is no sense of « Open » in the way that « Free/Open Source is Open » (underlining is mine).

It was of course shocking to me and all other EOS members, even though we have been targeted by the same person before, but never publicly. This time, it cought the attention of Richard Poynder and that of Rick Anderson, who reacted on the same blog and on Twitter and wondered if EOS was really open to all organisations and if it was truly public, calling for answers by someone involved in EOS. As Chairman, I could not do less than send the following declaration which was made public by Richard on his blog:

The EOS story is actually much simpler and it lacks all the spicy stuff of conspiracy theories that some would like to see in it. I am sorry to disappoint them now with a very dull explanation…

EOS was created originally by Alma Swan and myself after a small meeting held by us in Liège in October 2007. It was a time when, as rector of the University of Liège, I had recently passed a new regulation at the University Board mandating green open access with a strong enforcement based on a link to assessment procedures. Our primary objective was to encourage university leaders to adopt the same policy. Indeed, we thought that propagating green OA needed strong personal involvement by academic authorities, and not only that of librarians who were already widely convinced themselves but generally less able to convince researchers.

We thought the name of the Association was explicit enough, and its contraction, EOS, meaning « Dawn » in Greek, was symbolic of the rise of a new era.

We asked a few people we knew in various countries (their names are listed on the website’s « People » section) and who could contribute to expand our goals (clearly defined on the website) to join us for a start.

Due to administrative slowness, it took some time to establish the Association, a legal entity under Belgian law (no international plot, not even to set up a Brussels lobby…, but just because I’m a Belgian citizen, sorry about this lack of gloom !).

Our aim was clearly to create a web support to disseminate information about OA to universities and research centers and to provide them with technical and legal advice as well as with experienced counseling.

To make a long story short:
– The only universities/research centers who actually joined EOS were the Queensland University of Technology, the University of Salford and the University of Liège, where Tom Cochrane, Martin Hall and myself were holding leading positions.
– The only personal members who ever joined were those listed in the « People » section on the website, i.e. the Founders.

These two facts have nothing to do with restrictions or selectivity on our part, they were just failures to recruit, I must admit. This lack of recruitment made it difficult to generate enough money to hire someone, even part-time. So everything (i.e. the site and the answers to questions) rested mostly on Alma’s benevolence and I take this unfortunate opportunity to congratulate her and thank her warmly for her valuable efforts. Thanks Alma ! Some people may be disappointed you are no Mata Hari…

This lasted until 2013, as shown clearly by the last updating of the website. Indeed, in the meantime, EOS has been instrumental, as a partner, in developing and obtaining an investigation program financed by the European Union and called PASTEUR4OA.

The management of this project needed so much involvement and dedication by Alma that she could not longer conduct both activities in parallel. I envisioned for a while to take over but soon realised that my duties as a rector and my uneasiness in English made it almost impossible. It was definitely too time-consuming. Moreover, the rise and success of other OA-promoting websites and discussion forums made it less essential to keep spending more time on the EOS one. Perhaps our mistake was to keep it open…! None of us though that our negligence would some day be mistaken as obscure malevolence…

If EOS has been useful only once, it would be when it helped setting up the PASTEUR4OA project. The latter will end in July 2016 and will provide the research community and political powers with very complete information on the various national OA policies, leading hopefully to a homogenisation throughout Europe and possibly elsewhere in the World.

After completion of this programme, the future of EOS will be reexamined.

So much for that. I am terribly sorry that this does not sound like a novel by John LeCarré but constitutes a very simple and unexciting story, revealing nothing but candid characters and a lot of good will. Not even the plot for a B-series spy movie…

 

Comparing numbers makes things look more real and proportionate: Elsevier vs Greece

Elsevier has published its annual business report.

Heather Morrison’s summary: « Before adjusting for currency, Elsevier is reporting a 4% decrease in revenue for Scientific, Technical and Medicine and a 3% decrease in profit. The numbers are a 2,048 GBP revenue, 762 GBP adjusted operating profit, for a 37% profit rate (down from 39% last year). Elsevier is counting both revenue and profit as a slight increase after adjusting for currency ».

I am often told that researchers do not realize how unjustly expensive their own work is predated upon, legally and with their full consent. I even read lately that we should « stop bothering academics and publishers about a
library-made problem » (Thomas Krichel, here). I am not a librarian. I don’t consider this outrageous profit a library-made problem. It is everyone’s problem and specifically all researchers’ problem.

Circumstances put things sometimes in a better perspective, just by chance. Isn’t it amazing to compare Elsevier’s 1.07 billion € profit built upon worldwide research fundings (a 37% benefit margin out of a 2.88 billion € revenue) with Greece’s  1.4 billion € national unpaid debt to the IMF ?

What on earth are we talking about ?

Will mankind come to their senses…?

Enfirouapé. An open letter to Elsevier by Didier Pelaprat

Didier Pelaprat (INSERM, France) wrote recently an open message to Alicia Wise (Elsevier) on the Open Access Forum GOAL. It is so right to the point, so much in line with what I think and so much better written than I could have, that I cannot resist republishing large excerpts here (it is called ‘reuse’… Thanks, Didier).

[…]
« Alicia, […]

Elsevier makes profit on scientific publishing. Big profit. Normal: they are not a charity.
Elsevier is a very dynamic company, which perfectly knows how to react in order to maintain and increase profit.
As a very dynamic and reactive company, Elsevier succeeded, for years, to reorient, invest, develop and diversify activities, in order to find revenues in other sectors whenever the income in some others did decrease.

For Elsevier as for any company, « commercial » ones as well as some of the so-called « non profit » ones which do it:

– compelling the authors to sign that they reserve the exclusivity to the company, as if they had written a novel and been paid for that;
– compelling the authors to sign that they transfer all their patrimonial rights to the company for eternity;
– imposing embargoes;
– imposing APCs up to 5.000 $ (in addition to the « normal » page charges in hybrid journals),

means that the company decided to make, maintain, and increase profit on the publication of the scientific work, at the expense of the missions, the fund availability and the interests of the scientific community and the institutions which employ them, i.e. at the expense of the gain which can be brought by science to the whole society.

Tell me that. I will trust it and, even if I do not find that [this] decision is in accordance with what I consider to be the social role of a company, I will respect you in having said that.

But never call us « partner ».

And never try to tell me that you did it for our benefit.
Lying does [not] belong to the elements that make a relationship […] fruitful and sustainable between social actors.

There is a quebecois term I find very illustrative of this kind of behavior: « enfirouaper  » (in fur wrapped).
I hate feeling that somebody tries to m’enfirouaper.
I positively hate it.

Didier »

Why run for EUA Board Membership ?

On Thursday April 16, the European University Association (EUA) will renew its Board. Five positions (reserved for current or former university rectors/presidents) are open for election and a first and second runs of selection in the fall of 2014 have restricted the number of candidates to 10. Why, as a former rector, do I apply for one of these 5 positions?

Today and in the coming years, European (and actually all) universities are facing many challenges and the mission of EUA is to support and advise them. Among these challenges are the issues of « openness ».

Open Access (OA) is one of them, nowadays almost universally adopted in principle, but still facing many difficulties and possible options.

Open Data (OD) is a very different matter but it is challenging universities very strongly, creating the same anxiety (or perhaps even more) as OA did 5-10 years ago. The European Commission has launched an OD pilot in its Horizon 2020 Research Programme (FP8) just as it has done for OA in the FP7 Programme in 2007. It is important to note that, after this pilot phase, OA has now become mandatory for all research project publications in H2020… Although very different in scope, responsibilities and level of difficulty, OA and OD are now grouped in one single challenge called Open Science. Universities need information and guidance in these new avenues.

Finally, Open Learning is now appearing clearly, with MOOCs, electronic teaching and distance learning as main issues for our universities.

All these « openings » are considerable worries adding to the many concerns universities may have these days. I believe that advice, guidance and support in these areas should be constantly provided by the EUA to its members at a time which is clearly a turning point for most universities and it is essential that at least one of the Board members specialises in these topics.

Having myself been deeply involved in the OA evolution during my rectorate years (2005-2014) and before that, as Vice-rector (1997-2005), setting up in Liège one of the most efficient Institutional Repositories (since 2007), writing blogposts in French for my local community, in English for a wider audience, having remained active in this area since my retirement last October, keeping a close watch on the evolution of these matters, participating in the EUA task force on Open Science (with JP Finance and S. Nordaa) in charge of setting up informations and recommendations on OA and OD, chairing EOS (Enabling Open Scholarship, an international organisation promoting OA worldwide), I believe I have all the credentials to fill this role.

I am deeply convinced that these new « open » fields demand strong scrutiny and wise counseling and that these missions should be at the core of EUA’s preoccupations today.