On 2010-08-01, at 7:48 AM, leo waaijers wrote:
Your reply is demonstrating my point.
I am not so sure that the jisc-repositories list is indifferent to this
discussion as your
rigidity is more
than a 'futility'. It has far reaching strategical consequences.
Currently, we see a three party game between the Green, the Gold and
the Gatekeeper. My plea is a co-operation between the Green and the
Gold. Your rigidity is an obstacle to that. You may not be powerful,
but you are highly influential. It is the Green-Gold dichotomy that
enables the Gatekeeper to simply do nothing and maintain the status
quo.
No, I don't think my reply is demonstrating your point (which is that my rigidity is slowing the progress of OA), Leo.
Rather, I think it is demonstrating (once again) that you (and, alas, many, many others of like mind) are not interested in reflecting upon or responding to the very specific, substantive points I keep making about the green/gold strategic contingency/priority question.
Your plea for "c
o-operation between the Green and the Gold" sounds ecumenical enough -- let 1000 flowers bloom -- but what it really means is that one should not, for example, criticize the Association of Netherlands Universities for reaching a collective agreement to pay Springer for Gold OA while not a single Netherlands university or funder has yet mandated green OA: http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/703-guid.html
I find that such a colossal head-shaker that I can scarcely understand why you would regard it as rigidity to criticize it -- rather than rigidity to be impervious to criticism!
I can illustrate (again) here, with elements of this discussion. You speak of "a three party game between the Green, the Gold and the Gatekeeper" -- as if OA were about "us" (the green and gold teams) against "them" (the publishers).
But I have tried to explain in painstaking detail for years that this is a self-defeating illusion.
The OA "game" is entirely in our own hands, the hands of the research community. Green OA and Green OA mandates leave the publisher out of the loop. It is Gold OA, and Gold OA alone, that envisions the game as depending on the "Gatekeeper" -- and that is because the goal of Gold OA is not OA, but Gold OA, through publishing reform.
That is what draws the Association of Netherlands Universities into such a short-sighted, unscaleable and unsustainable "big deal" with a single publisher, blinded by gold fever to the need to mandate green, cost-free, rather than throwing money at gold.
(And this is what you are calling green/gold "co-operation" against the common enemy, the gatekeeper. But the enemy now is not the gatekeeper, it is gold fever, which is blinding us to the fact that the goal is OA, not Gold OA, and that we can have OA, cost-free, if we (the universities and funders, the providers of all the content) mandate Green OA. -- And, before you say it: the costs of publication are currently being paid, in full, and quite generously, by subscriptions. So until and unless subscriptions are cancelled and the subscription model becomes unsustainable, Green OA and Green OA mandates are indeed cost-free, and should forge full-speed ahead. The time to convert to Gold is only if and when universal Green OA makes the subscription model no longer sustainable as the means of covering the costs, not before -- or instead!)
Is this rigidity, or reasoning?
In your prior posting you wrote:
"Sometimes I am dreaming of an agreement between Green and Gold in the form of a mutually accepted simple overview of pro's and con's of both options. We then could stop the relentless internal debates in the OA movement and use the released energy to approach funders together and tell them that if they take OA seriously, and I am convinced most of them do, they can make a contingency based choice."
But what do you imagine that this pro/con green/gold option "overview" is telling/asking funders to do?
What funders (and, even more important, universities and institutions, the universal providers of *all* OA target content, funded and funded, across all fields) need to do is mandate OA.
That means mandating Green OA, because mandating publisher policy is not within funders' and universities' mandates: All that funders and universities can do is throw more money at publishers. And that's fine with me -- *if* they first mandate green OA.
But your ecumenical pro/con green/gold option overview does not seem to take into account the causal contingencies and priorities that I keep banging on about, the ones you refer to as "rigidity." Yet it is precisely in the causal contingencies and priorities that all the substance lies, not in two flat wish-lists, as if they were parallel. independent and additive.
It makes a huge strategic difference, in the approach to funders and universities, if one makes it clear what one is asking them to do, why, and in what order, and why.
There is nothing wrong with asking them to spend their spare cash for whatever fraction of Gold OA for their research output they feel they can afford -- but only *after* they have mandated green OA for *all* of their research output (actually, ID/OA, which means at least 63% immediate OA plus "Almost-OA" for the rest), not instead of mandating Green OA for all of their research output.
These crucial contingencies and priorities are not getting through to most universities and funders yet (and certainly not in the Netherlands) because they are being presented with confusing and incoherent flat-lists of green and gold pro's (I rather doubt that OA advocates are being very explicit with their respective con's!), as if they were independent and additive, without providing the crucial causal details about the interactive contingencies.
Those causal contingencies are precisely what I am expounding, and they are the reason for the joint punch-line, integrating the contingencies that I've already summarised in a single sentence:
"Institutions and funders should mandate green OA and they should on no account promote or fund gold OA until and unless they have first mandated green OA."
(That's it; all the rest is in the specific, substantive reasons and the evidence on which that stern-sounding injunction is based -- the ones you, Leo, are systematically ignoring, as you argue instead against my "rigidity" and in favor of team spirit, so that green and gold can jointly face off against the "gatekeeper":
What you have forgotten is the *goal*, which is OA, global OA, as soon as possible, for the sake of research, researchers, their institutions and their funders. OA itself is long overdue, whereas you -- and many others -- still believe that the goal is not OA itself, but Gold OA, through publishing reform.)
Stevan Harnad
Stevan Harnad wrote:
[log in to unmask]" type="cite">On 2010-07-31, at 11:56 AM, leo waaijers wrote:
Yes, I think that a public discussion of your
rigidity may advance things. Not your rigidity as a personal
psychological feature, but as an operational or tactical factor. My
point is, your rigidity is not a success factor.
Sometimes I am dreaming of an agreement between Green and Gold in
the form of a mutually accepted simple overview of pro's and con's of
both options. We then could stop the relentless internal debates in the
OA movement and use the released energy to approach funders together
and tell them that if they take OA seriously, and I am convinced most
of them do, they can make a contingency based choice.
I always have the feeling that your rigidity prevents such
a development. Am I right?
Dear Leo, I think you are wrong.
The "agreement between Green and Gold in the form of a mutually
accepted simple overview of pro's and con's of both options" of which
you are dreaming is in fact precisely what prevails today; it is indeed
the result of "contingency based choice" -- and it is not advancing
things, nor generating much success, anywhere near quickly enough.
Universal OA is still far away: almost as far as it was a decade ago
(though the repositories and the few green OA mandates and gold OA
journals have brought us a little closer).
It is this simplistic, unreflective status quo that I am trying
(unsuccessfully) to challenge and disrupt. It is so far too rigid for
reasoning or evidence to penetrate it. But although it may be "an
operational or tactical" futility, I have not yet given up. (in that
sense you are right that I have been "relentless.")
My main point is so simple that it can be summarised in a single
sentence: "Institutions and funders should mandate green OA and they
should on no account promote or fund gold OA until and unless they have
first mandated green OA." (That's it; all the rest is in the
reasons and the evidence on which that stern-sounding injunction is
based.)
But I am interested in knowing (preferably offline, because I doubt the
jisc-repositories list shares my curiosity) the basis on which you
imagine that my "rigidity prevents... contingency based choice":
Do you imagine that I have any power or authority whatsoever to
prevent people from making their own choices? (For I assure you that if
I did, they would not be making the unfortunate choices they are making
today -- and I bet you that progress toward universal OA would be
incomparably faster!)
But I continue to think that an on-list discussion of my rigidity is a
waste of list-member's time, whereas a (multilateral) discussion of my reasoning
would be a refreshing tactical and operational change.
(The usual pattern is that I post detailed, substantive
critiques, and no one responds -- or responds just to tell me that I am
being rigid and should "stop the relentless internal debates in the
OA movement"...)
Best wishes, Stevan
[log in to unmask]" type="cite">
LW: But shouldn't you accept then
that different repository managers may have various 'mandates'? You
seem so rigid in this.
SH: Yes, I am rigid as rigid can be on what makes sense and what does
not. But why does this trouble you? I have absolutely no power. It is
not I who set repository managers' or repository managers'
mandates: All I do is try (mostly in vain!) to help them make more
sense out of what they are trying to do.
But for this sort of nonsubstantive discussion, I really don't think
this list is quite the place.
My prior postings were trying to point out the profound problems with
the Chair of the UK Council of Research Repositories arguments
for taking a "gold only route." I have no idea whatsoever whether
anyone has taken any notice of the substantive points I raised. Not one
of them has been taken up in the subsequent postings (except by
Steve Hitchcock, but we already see eye to eye).
I really don't think, however, that a public discussion of my rigidity
is going to advance things, do you?
[log in to unmask]" type="cite">
SH: And my mandate, Charles (if you will permit me!)
is to continue describing, as clearly and as concretely as I can, what
it is that I take to be the mandate of repositories, repository
managers, and repository managers -- and why.
LW: Is this a self-imposed mandate Stevan? If so, are
we all entitled to define our own mandates?
[log in to unmask]" type="cite">
[log in to unmask]" type="cite">
SH: Yes, self-imposed, Leo.
And, yes, we're all entitled to impose mandates on
ourselves.
(Some, unfond of extended metaphors, might prefer to
call it their "mission." Mine's been open access archivangelism 'lo
these nigh on 20 years...)
