Stephen Francoeur's Commonplace Book

Pull quote: “Conversations about open access are no longer about whether it is a good idea; rather, the focus is on best practices, sustainability, and maximizing OA’s impact. With this shift in conversation, it is imperative that information professionals are ready to support open access and all it entails.”

Pull quote: “I cannot say the same thing for Elsevier. As most academics and many knowledge activists know, Elsevier has engaged in some pretty evil maneuvers. Elsevier published fake journals until it got caught. Its parent company was involved in the arms trade until it got caught. Elsevier played an unrepentant and significant role in advancing SOPA/PIPA/RWA and continues to lobby on issues that undermine scholarship. Elsevier currently actively screws over academic libraries and scholars through its bundling practices. There is no sign that the future of Elsevier is pro-researchers. There is zero indicator that Mendeley’s acquisition is anything other an attempt to placate the academics who are refusing to do free labor for Elsevier (editorial boards, reviewers, academics). There’s no attempt at penance, no apology, not even a promise of a future direction. Just an acquisition of a beloved company as though that makes up for all of the ways in which Elsevier has in the past _and continues to_ screw over scholars.”

Pull quote” And yes, a lot of these suspect journals charge authors for publishing their works, just like open access journals like PLoS do. But suggesting, as the article does, that scam conferences/journals exist because of the rise of open access publishing is ridiculous. It’s the logical equivalent of blaming newspapers like the NYT for people who go door-to-door selling fake magazine subscriptions.”

Pull quote: “think one of the important advantages of open access is that, by moving all the charges to authors, the real cost of organising and disseminating the scientific literature becomes visible. Authors at universities rarely see or care about library subscription charges, but the transparency of the OA model provides useful downward pressure on the costs of publishing. Let’s not forget that most of those costs are met from public or charitable purses.”

Pull quote: “As a developer, this irks me. As a librarian working with faculty to embrace open access, this offends me. Librarians like to think of themselves as researchers (because we are) and things like RDA, our bibliographic records – these are part of our research output and data. And yet as a profession, we continually tell other communities through our actions that we value our research more than we value others as we refuse to follow the same open access principles that we preach.”

Pull quote: “Librarians and staff hosted the drive for two hours each day at three locations around campus: the Library, the Graduate Life Center, and the Fralin Life Science Institute. They gave away buttons and snacks—and with laptops in hand — they helped interested scholars register for repository accounts.”

Pull quote” To submit a paper for consideration in PeerJ, authors must buy a ‘lifetime membership’ starting at $99. (You can submit a paper without paying, but it costs more in the end to publish it). This would allow the author to publish one paper in the journal a year. The lifetime membership is only valid as long as you meet certain participation requirements, which at minimum is reviewing at least one article a year. Reviewing in this case can mean as little as posting a comment to a published article. Without that, the author might have to pay the $99 fee again (though as yet it is of course unclear how strictly PeerJ will enforce this rule).”

Pull quote: “There is no doubt that professional societies outside of the sciences are in a horrible bind between the drive toward open access and the need for sustainability. But history tells us that no institution has the privilege of remaining static.”

Pull quote: “So the big question for governments and funders as they consider how best to support the transition to public access is why some traditional publications cost so much (and would pass those alleged costs on to taxpayers) while Gold OA journals and Green self-archiving seem to be more cost-effective alternatives. A lot of additional transparency would be required before recommendations such as those in the Finch report could be taken seriously.”

Pull quote: “We should not allow FUD (fear, uncertainty & doubt), which is often spread by institutions that are trying to preserve the problem to which they see themselves as the solution (to paraphrase Clay Shirky), to narrow our vision of a sustainable system of scholarly publishing. The problem we should be addressing is predatory publications, OA and subscription-based, and publishing ethics across the board.”

Pull quote: “Why is writing a book about open access, getting paid for it and having it published by a publisher that charges for the book not hypocritical? First of all, the core goal of the open access movement is to remove toll access barriers to the primary scholarly literature. This book is not part of the primary scholarly literature. It is a general introduction to a topic, almost a textbook if you will. As such it is more of a professional trade publication. But it is not a scholarly monograph.”

Pull quote from Peter Suber: “‘For authors who would normally publish in fee-based OA journals, even occasional publishing in PeerJ could save them money,’ Suber said. ‘The same is true for authors who would normally publish in subscription-based or non-OA journals, where about 75 percent of titles levy page charges, color charges, or other author-side fees.’”

Pull quote: “The core idea is that scholars will be able to pay one fee (starting at $99) and be able to publish on the PeerJ platform for life. The truly interesting aspect of this is that PeerJ is peer reviewed. It’s kind of like a cross between PLoS ONE and the arXiv. To me it seems to resemble what we think of as a disciplinary repository like arXiv in that it will be a large collection of articles that will be at least somewhat unstructured. But at the same time, like a PLos ONE, will also have very strict peer review.”