[دکتر مایک تیلور، پژوهشیار دانشکده علوم زمین در دانشگاه بریستول، بریتانیا، در مقاله بحث انگیزی در یک شماره اخیر روزنامه گاردین نقش کنونی ناشران علمی را در رابطه با پیشرفت علم به سختی به چالش گرفت و این ناشران را به "ضدیت با علم" متهم نمود. این مقاله، همچنان که می شد انتظار داشت، واکنش ناشران علمی را به دنبال آورد. کمتر از دو هفته بعد، گرام تیلور، مدیر نشر علمی، آموزشی و حرفه ای در انجمن ناشران بریتانیا، در پاسخ به این اتهام در گاردین نوشت که دادن چنین نسبتی به ناشران علمی "توهین آمیز و غلط" است. متن انگلیسی و کامل هر دوی این مقاله ها، پس از ترجمه بخش هایی از آنها به فارسی، در پایین آمده است.]
[نظر دکتر مایک تیلور:] اکنون زمان آن رسیده است که ناشران [علمی] همه ادعای خود درباره طرفداری از دانشمندان را به کناری بگذارند. آنها در گفتار شریکان سنتی دانشمندان بوده اند، اما حقیقت این است که ناشران علمی ضد علم و ضد نشر شده اند. لایحه قانونی کارهای پژوهشی، که در 16 دسامبر [2011] تسلیم کنگره آمریکا شد، در عمل نوعی اعلان جنگ توسط ناشران است.
اصلی ترین سازمان تامین کننده مالی برای پژوهش های مرتبط با بهداشت در آمریکا "موسسه ملی بهداشت [ان.آی.اچ.]" است که 30 میلیارد دلار در سال بودجه دارد. سیاست عمومی ان.آی.اچ. بر این است که هر پژوهشی که با هزینه مالیات-پردازان [مردم] تامین مالی می شود می بایستی به صورت آنلاین برای همگان قابل دسترسی باشد. این بدان معنا است که افراد جامعه، که یکبار هزینه آن پژوهش را پرداخته اند، هنگامی که می خواهند آن [نتیجه اش] را بخوانند نباید دوباره پولی بپردازند. این سیاست کاملا منطقی است که پیامدهای انساندوستانه عظیمی به همراه دارد، چرا که در این حالت پژوهش های پزشکی به صورت رایگان برای هر کس از هر کجای جهان قابل دسترسی است.
بریتانیا نیز اکنون می خواهد سیاست مشابهی را اتخاذ نماید. ... اما، آنچه که برای علم سودمند است لزوما برای ناشران علمی، که منافع آنها از هم پیمانی با [دانشمندان] فاصله بسیاری گرفته است، سود ندارد. در مدل پیشین، ناشران صاحبان مقاله هایی می شدند که آنها را چاپ می کردند، حق تالیف به آنها تعلق داشت و نسخه های آن را به سرتاسر جهان می فروختند – یک خدمت مفید در روزهای پیش از اینترنت. اما اکنون این کار عبثی است که مقاله های چاپ شده را به سراسر کره زمین بفرستیم، [بنا بر این] هیچ دلیلی وجود ندارد که دانشمندان بخواهند حق تالیف خود را به ناشران واگذار نمایند.
نقشی که ناشران بر عهده دارند – هماهنگی میان ویراستاران، صفحه بندی، و گذاشتن مطلب بر روی تارنما –خدمتی است که اکنون نویسندگان می توانند آن را به بهای نسبتا ارزان خریداری کرده و دیگر لازم نیست تا حق تالیف خود را برایش واگذار نمایند. بنا بر این، نویسندگانی که آثار خود را به رایگان در دسترس می گذارند برای این کار بهایی به ناشران می پردازند، و ناشر دیگر مالک نتیجه کار نیست. [ادامه در زیر ... ]
[نظر گرام تیلور:] ... من در مورد اشاره های چند شمار [دکتر تیلور] به یک ناشر عمده – که تنها یکی از 2,000 ناشر فعال در زمینه علمی بوده و بیشترین آنها را انجمن های علمی تشکیل می دهد، نظری نمی دهم. اما، این غیر منصفانه و غلط است که یک صنعت پیشگام را با چنان ویژگی هایی توصیف نمود. این ناشران ضد علم، ضد نشر، و کسانی که تازه واردین به این صنعت را به تمسخر گرفته، آدم های دارای بیماری های پیشگیرانه را استثمار کرده ([اینها را] جدی می گویید؟)، یا کسانی که هیچ کاری برای "سودهای وقیحانه" خود انجام نمی دهند نیستند.
دادن برچسب "دشمنان علم" و کسانی که علم را به "درون باغ های دیوارکشی شده بر می گردانند" به آنها توهین است، در حالی که واقعیت این است که سرمایه گذاری هایی که آنها کرده اند سبب شده است تا بیش از هر زمانی در گذشته پژوهش های بیشتری با هزینه کمتری برای هر واحد در دسترس خوانندگان قرار گیرد. ناشران هم انسان هستند، و صنعت موفق ما، که بریتانیا در مرکز آن قرار دارد، شمار بزرگی از کارکنان متعهد را به استخدام گرفته است، بسیاری از آنها دانشمندانی هستند که برای نشر علم در سرتاسر جهان کار و تلاش می کنند. [ادامه در زیر تر ...]
Comment
Academic Publishers Have Become the Enemies of Science
The US Research Works Act would allow publishers to line their pockets by locking publicly funded research behind paywalls
Mike Taylor
guardian.co.uk, 16 January 2012
Article history
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2012/jan/16/academic-publishers-enemies-science
This is the moment academic publishers gave up all pretence of being on the side of scientists. Their rhetoric has traditionally been of partnering with scientists, but the truth is that for some time now scientific publishers have been anti-science and anti-publication. The Research Works Act, introduced in the US Congress on 16 December, amounts to a declaration of war by the publishers.
The USA's main funding agency for health-related research is the National Institutes of Health, with a $30bn annual budget. The NIH has a public access policy that says taxpayer-funded research must be freely accessible online. This means that members of the public, having paid once to have the research done, don't have to pay for it again when they read it – a wholly reasonable policy, and one with enormous humanitarian implications because it means the results of medical research are made freely available around the world.
A similar policy is now being adopted in the UK. On page 76 of the policy document Innovation and Research Strategy for Growth the government states that it is "committed to ensuring that publicly funded research should be accessible free of charge". All of this is great for the progress of science, which has always been based on the free flow of ideas, the sharing of data, and standing on the shoulders of giants.
But what's good for science isn't necessarily good for science publishers, whose interests have drifted far out of alignment with ours. Under the old model, publishers become the owners of the papers they publish, holding the copyright and selling copies around the world – a useful service in pre-internet days. But now that it's a trivial undertaking to make a paper globally available, there is no reason why scientists need yield copyright to publishers.
The contribution that publishers make – coordinating editors, formatting, and posting on websites – is now a service that authors can pay for, rather than a bargaining chip that could be worth yielding copyright for. So authors making their work available as open access pay publishers a fee to do so, and the publisher does not own the resulting work.
Open-access publishers such as the Public Library of Science are able to make a modest profit on a publication fee of $1,350 (£880). But traditional publishers have become used to making much more than this, and so resist the inevitable conversion to open access. Early in the process, they did this by pouring scorn on PLoS, predicting that it would never take off. But now that PLoS ONE is the world's largest academic journal, that attack can hardly be maintained. Instead, publishers have turned to the approach that uncompetitive corporations have always used in America: lobbying for legislation to protect their unsustainable model.
If passed, the Research Works Act (RWA) would prohibit the NIH's public access policy and anything similar enacted by other federal agencies, locking publicly funded research behind paywalls. The result would be an ethical disaster: preventable deaths in developing countries, and an incalculable loss for science in the USA and worldwide. The only winners would be publishing corporations such as Elsevier (£724m profits on revenues of £2b in 2010 – an astounding 36% of revenue taken as profit).
Since Elsevier's obscene additional profits would be drained from America to the company's base in the Netherlands if this bill were enacted, what kind of American politician would support it? The RWA is co-sponsored by Darrell Issa (Republican, California) and Carolyn B. Maloney (Democrat, New York). In the 2012 election cycle, Elsevier and its senior executives made 31 donations to representatives: of these, two went to Issa and 12 to Maloney, including the largest individual contribution.
For all their talk of partnering with scientists, Elsevier's true agenda is nothing nobler than to line their pockets at the expense of scientists worldwide and everyone with a preventable or treatable disease.
It's hardly surprising that publishers would fight dirty to hang on to a business model where scientists do research that is largely publicly funded, and write manuscripts and prepare figures at no cost to the journal; other scientists perform peer-review for free; and other scientists handle the editorial tasks for free or for token stipends. The result of all this free and far-below-minimum-wage professional work is journal articles in which the publisher, which has done almost nothing, owns the copyright and is able to sell copies back to libraries at monopolistic costs, and to individuals at $30 or more per view.
What is surprising is how complicit scientists are in perpetuating this feudal system. The RWA is noisily supported by the Association of American Publishers, which has as members more than 50 scholarly societies – including, ironically, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, which by its implicit support of the RWA is making itself an association for the retardation of science.
What can we do to prevent the RWA from passing? US citizens should write to their representatives explaining what a disaster it would create, and how unfair and unnecessary it is. And every working scientist should check their professional memberships to see whether their dues are being forwarded to an association that promotes sending science back into walled gardens. If so we should pressure our professional societies to withdraw from the Association of American Publishers, or at least to publicly state their opposition to the RWA .
The bottom line for scientists is that many publishers have now made themselves our enemies instead of the allies they once were. Elsevier's business does not make money by publishing our work, but by doing the exact opposite: restricting access to it. We must not be complicit in their newest attempt to cripple the progress of science.
Dr Mike Taylor is a research associate at the Department of Earth Sciences, University of Bristol
Branding Academic Publishers 'Enemies of Science' Is Offensive and Wrong
Publishers have made more scientific research available to more readers at a lower unit cost than ever before
Graham Taylor
guardian.co.uk, Friday 27 January 2012 12.26 GMT
Article history
Writing in these pages last week, Dr Mike Taylor used strong language to support his assertion that academic publishers have "drifted out of alignment" with science – language that demands a response.
I won't comment on the multiple references to one significant publisher – which is just one of 2,000 active scholarly publishers, most of them learned societies – but it is unfair and wrong to characterise a progressive industry in these terms. These publishers are not anti-science, anti-publication, pouring scorn on new entrants to the industry, exploiting people with preventable diseases (are you serious?) or doing almost nothing to earn their "obscene profits".
They are offended to be branded "enemies of science" who are sending it "back into walled gardens", when the reality is that their investments have made more research available to more readers at a lower unit cost than ever before. Publishers are human too, and our successful industry, of which the UK is the epicentre, employs large numbers of dedicated staff, many of them scientists, working for the dissemination of science worldwide.
The scholarly world is not yet fully open access, nor even approaching it, but that is not the fault of the publishers. We are not philanthropists, charities or funding agencies. We need a flow of accessible funds through the scholarly communication system to finance what we do. Hitherto these funds have flowed through academic library budgets, the "old" subscription model, which Dr Taylor describes as "a useful service in pre-internet days". In future they will likely flow from research funding agencies (and a few charities and foundations) looking to enable open access.
This is entirely in their gift. As the Wellcome Trust has shown with its pioneering publication policy, supported by economic studies into the cost-benefits of the various publication models, such a policy would consume 1.25% of the overall cost of its grants.
Publishers are certainly not opposed to open access. As Dr Taylor points out, PLoS ONE, in volume terms at least, has been successful, and its "review-lite" style has since been much emulated and extended into other communities. Dr Taylor offers no practical sustainable alternative other than his reference to PLoS ONE, yet a more systematic survey of the landscape of publishing would reveal a host of experiments and alternatives looking to exploit the potential of internet technology.
Publishers pursue the goal of universal access through whatever means are practically available. We are not conspirators looking to "cripple" the progress of science. Open access is being driven by market forces just as much as it is by funder mandates. It is widely acknowledged that there is not an access problem for researchers based in universities, research institutes or the corporate sector. We are actively working in the UK with other stakeholders, including funders, to extend access to global research into other sectors as well, such as smaller enterprises, perhaps through public libraries.
Public funds have not paid for the peer-reviewed articles that are based on research supported by agencies such as the National Institutes of Health (NIH). They have only paid for the research itself and whatever reports the researchers are required to submit to the agency. The journal article based on the research has been the subject of significant extra investment that must somehow be recovered if scholarly communication as we know it is to survive. That, to use Dr Taylor's words, is a wholly reasonable policy.
What of the US Research Works Act, the catalyst for Dr Taylor's tirade? The RWA, if it makes it through Congress to become law, would prevent US agencies from appropriating published articles for "network dissemination" without the prior consent of the publisher. It would also prevent the agencies from requiring authors to do so.
The case study for network dissemination is PubMed Central, a digital archive that predates the current NIH mandate to deposit final peer-reviewed manuscripts into the archive, and which was actually routinely populated by publisher deposits before the mandate was imposed on them.
It is not PubMed Central that publishers object to, but many do object to a mandate that appropriates their material without compensation. A better strategy would be to support the "gold" open access publication model, as favoured by the Wellcome Trust. This puts funds into the system, makes the "version of record" set up by the publisher (the full-functionality final published version set up with all the linkages in place) available via the web, and respects the need for a professional standard of publication as the final output of public investment in science.
The RWA has attracted much aggressive criticism, not all of it valid, but at heart it is a plea to government agencies to work sustainably with a successful industry and not to undermine us unfairly. To say that we are anti-science is unworthy and faintly ridiculous. Science needs a sustainable, adequately funded means to communicate and preserve its outputs.
Our UK science minister David Willetts, in his Innovation and Research Strategy published in December, has set out a commitment to open access, but in a way that ensures peer review and supports scholarly publishing. He acknowledges that publication needs to be paid for somehow, and not by appropriation. The industry recognises this direction of travel and is working towards it.
Worldwide, around 3m research papers are submitted every year to scholarly journals – rising by around 3% per year in line with research budgets – of which around 1.5m are eventually published, including over 120,000 from UK researchers. Such journals are on the whole by their very nature tailored and adapted to the needs and interests of specific research communities. This is a complex and nuanced system that needs time to adapt to new methodologies.
Dr Taylor's assumption that this can somehow all be routinely accommodated on a "service" basis is to misunderstand the nature of publishing. Publishers invest at their own risk and quality standards are essential to manage that risk. We need a market to organise such a high volume of transactions. Take that away and we would be left with a Stalinist nightmare.
Moving from the "old" system to a system whereby all science is available on open access, while maintaining the quality of the output and sustaining a service for those 3m submissions, is a far from trivial undertaking. The journey is under way, but the transition will take time.
Given that the cost of publication should be around 1% of the overall cost of science, surely it is not beyond the wit of the parties involved to evolve a strategy that supports the needs of all necessary actors for the benefit of the future of science, without degenerating into public adversarial rants. In the UK at least – and I know off-stage in the US as well – such sanity continues to work patiently for sustainable, forward-looking solutions, and that is where my colleagues and I intend to apply our energies.
Graham Taylor is director of academic, educational and professional publishing at the UK Publishers Association