In the comments to my last post ("Why does the ACM act against the interests of scholars?") ACM's Director of Group Publishing, Scott Delman, left a multiple-comment response. It's a response both to the views I expressed and to the views of others that I summarized. He agreed to have his comments posted as a post here; I'll leave my own thoughts for a separate post or the comments.
Ok, here's the other side of this, which I feel compelled to throw out there after reading Rob's post and a few of the related comments.
Like most things in life, things are not always as black and white as some would lead us to believe. In this case, I think there is a basic misunderstanding of the ACM and the AAP (which is incidentally an organization that does a great deal of good work on behalf of both publishers and the scientific community).
Let's start with the ACM....which is a non-profit organization founded in 1947 by members of the computing community with the primary mission of advancing the field of computing. The Association is organized as a 501(c)3 corporation with daily operations run by a small staff of approximately 75 individuals who ultimately take their direction from a volunteer leadership of hundreds of dedicated scientists, scholars, educators, practitioners, and students who graciously donate a significant amount of their time to direct the Association forward in a way that benefits the computing community as a whole. It is important to point this out, because there is an implication in the original post that the ACM is an entity that is in some way acting against the scholarly community, when in fact the ACM is an organization that is literally run by the scholarly community.
Keeping this in mind, we are either left with a situation in which the scholarly community is either acting against itself by the policies it sets and supports (such as ACM's copyright policy and ACM's subscription model) or something else is going on here. Since it doesn't seem logical or even practical that the top-decision makers at ACM (such as the ACM Publications Board of Volunteers or the ACM Executive Committee of Volunteers, who oversee all major strategic decisions of the Association) would support policies that actively work against the interests of their own community, I think it is more reasonable to suggest that what is going on here is that the issues are not as cut and dry or as simplified as some advocates of "immediate and unrestricted" open access to all scholarly literature would lead us to believe.
Whenever I discuss the topic of open access with colleagues and friends, I think it is useful to try to imagine what the world would look like if the US Federal Government or other Foreign Governments decided to pass legislation that required all scholarly material that is in some way supported by public funding be made instantly open and freely available to the world without any paywalls of any sort. Well, as ACM's publisher and someone who is intimately aware of the tangible costs of publishing and disseminating high quality scholarly literature, I can tell you without a shadow of a doubt that the end result of this sort of legislation would be catastrophic for the scientific community and scholarly publishers alike. If in a blink of an eye, organizations like ACM were required to simply open up our archive of articles (the ACM DL) without the ability to recoup the costs of publishing and disseminating those articles (or all of the technically sophisticated services built around that content inside the ACM DL), ACM would cease to be the sustainable organization it is today and would eventually shutter its doors at some point in the future, instead of continuing to be the sustainable force for good that it is today. If this sounds like PR-dribble, I apologize, but I really do believe this!
What's more, the senior volunteers who are most familiar with ACM's activities and who sit on ACM's various committees and boards recognize and understand the tradeoffs that are necessary to maintain a sustainable organization. Over the past few years, I have participated in meetings with our Publications Board, which is the governing body for publications related strategy and decisions at ACM, where the issues of open access and alternative business models have been repeatedly discussed, and when all of the facts have been taken into consideration it has been overwhelmingly clear to these members of the community that ACM's approach is in the best longterm interests of the scholarly community. In fact, the ACM Author-Izer service, which is written about in the above post, was conceptualized at one of these meetings as the result of an in-depth discussion about how to balance the legitimate need of our authors to make the "archival versions" of their articles openly available while at the same time preserving the revenue stream that ACM relies heavily on to do its good work. ACM's pre-existing copyright policy already addressed the issue of posting "accepted versions" of an author's work, but ACM's volunteers decided that it was even more beneficial for the community if the "archival versions" could be made available from the author's site using the "Author-Izer" perpetual link. In general, while Author-Izer is still relatively new, the initial responses have been extremely positive and there is widespread recognition (including Rob's above) that this is a step in the right direction....
Let me briefly address the "opposing views" raised in Rob's post. First, in an instance where an author graduates, moves, or retires, it is always possible for the initial link to be replaced by a more up-to-date link. The ability to manage the URL that hosts the link is in the hands of the author, so I don't see a significant issue here and at the very least the effort on behalf of the author is no greater (and perhaps significantly less) than it would be to move their vitae or "pre-published" articles to a new website. What's more, ACM has simplified this process for authors and eliminated the confusion that is caused by having "multiple versions" of articles available on multiple websites by creating a centralized place (their ACM Author's Page, which includes all of their ACM and non-ACM publications) from which authors can update their Author-Izer links. By hosting the archival version of the article on a single and "sustainable" site, we strongly believe this is a better solution for the community.
In relation to argument from Russell O'Connor, I reject the plausibility or even the possibility that the ACM might "go evil" for the reasons I've outlined above. Since ACM ultimately carries out the well thought out wishes of the community itself since the decision makers are the very members of the community who are impacted by those decisions, it is just not possible for such a scenario to occur. Bankrupt is another story, since it is always impossible to predict how an organization's finances will be managed in the future, even though for the record it is exactly the kind of decision making I've mentioned above that currently keeps the ACM is a very strong position. Nevertheless, contingencies are in place for this unlikely scenario, as it relates to ACM's publications and all articles in the ACM Digital Library. Several years ago, ACM established partnerships with two very well established organizations (CLOCKSS & Portico) to ensure that ACM's publications would be preserved and made available to the scientific community (at no cost) in the unlikely event that ACM ceased to exist. [Rob's note: here's a press release about that.] Both organizations take different approaches to longterm digital preservation, but both are non-profits that exist for the sole purpose of maintaining a longterm perpetual archive for the scholarly community and nearly all major scientific publishers participate in one or both of these initiatives. ACM participates in both to provide an even higher level of redundancy than most other publishers. So, it is not clear what would happen to Author-Izer in the event of this doom-day scenario, but what is for certain is that ACM's archive would be made available to the scholarly community in any event.
Lastly, it is worth noting that the AAP is one of the publishing industries' primary advocates and they do an enormous amount of good work. Rather than deriding this organization that supports and protects the interests of over 300 well established publishers, including ACM, I would suggest that we focus on the spirit of what the Research Works Act represents, which is to limit the ability of the federal government to mandate decisions that would almost certainly have a longterm catastrophic impact on an industry that partners with and supports (and in our case is one and the same) the scientific community.
Respectfully,
Scott Delman
Director of Group Publishing
Assoc. Computing Machinery
Posts
The logic that concludes "ACM is run by the scholarly community so won't act against the scholarly community" would also conclude that "the federal government is run by the people community so won't act against the people community". Why limit the federal government then?
ReplyDeleteIt's true that "things are not always as black and white as some would lead us to believe". To "reject the plausibility or even the possibility that the ACM might 'go evil'" is to succumb to the fallacy that things are always black and white.
Scott - thanks for your thoughtful response! I had a thought that reinforces 單中杰's above; it's probably influenced by the amount of Matt Yglesias's blog I read: professional societies act against the interests of their constituent community all the time, usually by privileging existing practitioners against future or potential ones. (I am not accusing the ACM of doing this.)
ReplyDeleteThought experiment: the professional organization for Foo City taxicab drivers is very motivated to make sure that noone else can become an NYC taxicab driver, even though this, in the very long term, could lead to effective non-taxi competition or even in people just moving to Bar City instead. But more taxicab drivers means more competition for their current members, the current taxicab drivers.
Similarly, the members of the ACM Publications Board of Volunteers or the ACM Executive Committee of Volunteers are established computer scientists, they can afford an ACM membership, and most of them have access to the DL through their university networks, and every article that someone. Again, my personal opinion is that the ACM is doing a pretty darn good job, and I hope and expect that it will go on "continuing to be the sustainable force for good that it is today." However, I reject the argument that acting in the best interest of scholars is just the obvious thing for the ACM to do, even though it's led by (some of the elite of) that community.
I wanted to specifically ask you about the spirit of what the Research Works Act represents, which is to limit the ability of the federal government to mandate decisions that would almost certainly have a longterm catastrophic impact on an industry that partners with and supports (and in our case is one and the same) the scientific community. I think that's a pretty important point.
ReplyDeleteIt might well be bad for the government to totally change publishing "in the bink of an eye" as you say, but I don't think that's what this act is doing, I think it's rolling back the clock on open access in the NIH-funded community, undoing decisions (and significant government investments) that have already been made to that end. That's not preventing "in the blink of an eye" changes going forward, that's trying to return to a less-optimal past.
Have the ACM's more NIH-funded siblings withered in the face of this catastrophe, necessitating that they be pulled back to the brink into the more-copyrightful world that NSF-funded research inhabits?
I would say there is a pretty significant difference between career politicians in Washington, who are constantly balancing two opposing goals (1) getting re-elected and needing to serve special interests to do so and (2) representing the best interests of their people, and the ACM Volunteer Leadership, who are not paid and volunteer their valuable time to do nothing other than serve the community. However, like any modern form of representative government (such as a democracy), representing the people doesn't always equate to doing exactly what the people want their representatives to do, but rather balancing their needs, wants, and best interest in a way that benefits them over the long run. I think this is generally how the senior ACM Volunteer Leadership tends to look at things, and this has served ACM and the community fairly well over the past 60 years.
ReplyDeleteRegarding RWA, I can not speak intelligently about every aspect of the proposed legislation or existing mandates at NIH, but I would say in general that it is important for Publishers and organizations like AAP to keep a very close dialogue going with decision makers in Washington and one of the ways that such organizations do this is by working with members of Congress to introduce legislation that will get debated, revised, and debated again before going to formal votes. Rarely does legislation end up where it started, but the process almost always ends up better informing our representatives....to make better decisions. Without naming specific organizations, I can say without hesitation that Open Access mandates have impacted small, medium, and large non-profits and commercial publishers in significant ways. For some who have no strong "business model" in place for delivering their content to the community, I would say they are on a path to "catastrophe" and the government intervention in this regard hasn't helped. As an aside, I do not think "copyright" is in anyway to blame or a villain here. In fact, I think we should be focusing on ways to strengthen copyright protection, as a way to protect authors' intellectual property, not look to dismantle the entire system, and by removing the ability for Publishers to hold this copyright and leave it completely in the hands of the individual, I am not convinced that this is in the communities' best interest either. More on this later, I'm sure....
Your aside is well taken, I should have said something like "permanent-transfer-of-copyright-ful" instead of "copyright-ful;" I didn't intend to have the phrase be pejorative though I certainly see how it reads that way, I was just emphasizing that these things exist on may kinds spectrums.
ReplyDeleteI should have also emphasized that by "ACM's siblings" I meant professional organizations. While I imagine you might feel differently, I am totally unconcerned about the fate of both non-profit and commercial publishers. In fact, that is precisely the point; the AAP seems intent, with it's support of legislation like SOPA and RWA, to go the way of many other media trade organizations in trying to fight to preserve outdated business models (at whatever public cost it requires) rather than innovating and/or making way for new models.
I very much hope that the business model of membership-based professional organizations like the ACM who also act as publishers of high-quality research will choose to act as an alternative and tie themselves to the future, not the past. That's why I hope to see the ACM leave the AAP.
I appreciate Scott Delman's response, but I'm not persuaded by it. I accept that the ACM is well-intentioned and does many useful things, but using closed access to bankroll those useful things doesn't justify closing access: ends don't justify means. The traditional scientific publishing model grows less and less viable with each new funder mandate. If this bill passes, it may turn back the tide in the US for a couple of years, but eventually open access will win. The worldwide trend is simply too strong. The sooner the ACM realizes that open access is inevitable, and stops trying to make money from closed access to current research, the better off the ACM—the organization and its members—will be.
ReplyDeleteNow, if the ACM did want to stop trying to make money off of preventing people from accessing science (often, science that those people paid for already through their taxes), it would need to find additional revenue. A few suggestions:
1. Increase dues. (Right now, I don't like paying my ACM membership dues, thanks to the ACM's support of closed access. If the DL were truly open access, I would cheerfully pay much more. Currently, my ACM dues pay for themselves with the first conference I go to, anyway!)
2. Charge publication fees. We already pay thousands of dollars, in total, to attend ACM conferences. Paying a few hundred dollars to publish an article wouldn't make a huge difference to the authors, but it would help replace the lost subscription revenue.
3. Divide the DL into "historical" and "current" sections, and keep the historical section behind a paywall. I think most institutions would continue to pay subscription fees, for fear of losing access to older material. This isn't ideal, but it would be better than the status quo.
If the ACM wants to preserve its fiscal stability, it would start actively engaging its membership (individual and institutional) in a discussion of how to make a graceful exit from the closed-access publishing business. And then it would have no reason to lobby for a bill to help publishers keep the public from accessing research that the public paid for.
I hope Scott will elaborate on his remark about "strengthen[ing] copyright protection, as a way to protect authors' intellectual property". Even from a purely self-interested angle, I can't see how that's a good idea. Sure, if I wrote a textbook, and wanted to make money from it, I would copyright it. But I don't make money from journal articles and conference papers; I want as many people to read my papers as possible. (BTW, open access works are cited more often.)
ReplyDeleteI just realized something obvious: my previous example about the taxicab drivers was completely redundant, because the American Association of Publishers is a much better example! They are working against the existence of a healthy publishing industry in the future by fighting to protect incumbent publishers. (It was this post that made this obvious.)
ReplyDeleteAnd the ACM's membership in the AAP says that it stands with the dying incumbents.
Sorry for the multiple comments, but I'd like to respond directly to Scott's suggestion that we "try to imagine what the world would look like if the US Federal Government or other Foreign Governments decided to pass legislation that required all scholarly material that is in some way supported by public funding be made instantly open and freely available to the world without any paywalls of any sort."
ReplyDeleteThis is already happening, albeit at finer granularity than entire countries. Rob brought up the US NIH, which is certainly one of the most important mandates, but ROARMAP* lists 51 funder mandates for open access (plus many more institutional mandates). Many of these are medical research mandates, probably because the ethical aspects are more sharply focused: medical research can have direct, personal benefit to the public, whereas, say, research on intersection types doesn't seem to.
I also find it puzzling to, on the one hand, present 100% public access to publicly funded research as some kind of nightmare scenario, while simultaneously recognizing "the legitimate need of our authors to make...their articles openly available". The ACM's publication policy isn't nearly as liberal as I'd like, but it certainly does allow authors to make their papers "instantly open and freely available to the world without any paywalls of any sort worldwide"!
* http://roarmap.eprints.org/
Somehow or another, the Association for Computational Linguistics manages to put out an open-access journal and make the proceedings of all of its conferences open-access too. It's pretty great.
ReplyDeletehttp://aclweb.org/anthology-new/
Mr. Delman has sharpened his logic from "ACM won't act against the scholarly community because ACM is run by members of the scholarly community" to "ACM won't act against the scholarly community because ACM is run (1) fairly well over the past 60 years (2) by members of the scholarly community who are different from people who run the federal government". Part (1) still justifies the conclusion that the federal government won't act against the people community, so again, why limit the federal government? Part (2) merely presupposes that people who run the ACM "do nothing other than serve the community". Mr. Delman flanks this presupposition by suggesting that people called volunteers who are not paid cash must do everything right. He invites us to relax because the ACM "ultimately carries out the well thought out wishes of the community itself", even though it paradoxically "doesn't always equate to doing exactly what the people want their representatives to do".
ReplyDeleteIn the end, the RWA can only be justified on its own merits, not by gesturing at the habitual good intentions of some of its supporters. In this regard, Mr. Delman just says that open-access mandates spell catastrophe for (a) publishers and thus (b) scholars. Mr. Delman's certainty in making this two-pronged pronouncement contrasts sharply with his caution that "like most things in life, things are not always as black and white as some would lead us to believe". Now is a good time to start a fact-based discussion of open-access mandates, not for the RWA to cut that discussion short.
How are different fields navigating the new landscape? I know that the NIH policy requiring placement in a repository is being accommodated (though the for profit publishers don't like it); it is having an unintended consequence, the devaluation of research that isn't NIH funded (in, say, psychology) because that work doesn't end up in the database. The devaluation isn't huge, because university based researchers still have plentiful access (right now, though I see these budgets being cut as public universities, in particular, face challenges). But, it's there.
ReplyDeleteIs the model in computing different enough that ACM can maintain paywall access and still be relevant?
How are physics and chemistry navigating the new publishing landscape?
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ReplyDeleteLet's try this again, shall we.
ReplyDelete"In relation to argument from Russell O'Connor, I reject the plausibility or even the possibility that the ACM might "go evil" for the reasons I've outlined above. Since ACM ultimately carries out the well thought out wishes of the community itself since the decision makers are the very members of the community who are impacted by those decisions, it is just not possible for such a scenario to occur."
The fact that an individual is part of a group which will become negatively influenced by certain actions does not mean this individual will not have an incentive to do so; it just means that such an incentive would come from someone for whom the interests of said group does not matter. This is the definition of corruption and only the most naiive would not realize that a position that enables this -- even inadvertently -- is very vulnerable. It's not like companies are forever; if someone in the ACM enronizes it (by accepting outside incentives which ultimately work against the ACM's users', and therefore the ACM's, interest) he can just go on with his life; in fact the quicker he can do it the shorter the agony, so that's an extra incentive to burn the grassfields and get out.
Saying "I'm one of you" is the first thing the wolf in sheep's skins does.