All right. Welcome, everyone to open access week
at Virginia Tech. We had one event this morning
. This is our big event, though. Forum
. We have seven events this week. Thank you
, Mark. Every year, I think the sixth
or seventh year that we've had over a week here
at Virginia Tech. Um, we have a number
of presentations throughout the week about where you can post
your publications online. The services that we offer here
at Virginia Tech, which are on this bookmark that
you can pick up. And some of those services
are repository detect works. We also have a data
repository detect data. We have a open access fund
that supports open access publishing in those journals that require
fee, we also publish journals ourselves using it's open
source software and on our servers. We also provide
a copyright, uh, guidance in the libraries as
well. So those are just a few of the
services that we offer in the libraries to support open
access of carrot, Virginia Tech. We're also very
fortunate to have a visiting librarian here from South Africa
who is going to give a presentation Wednesday about access
to research in South Africa. um so that would
be a very interesting perspective. One of the primary
rationales behind open access is that everyone around the world
will be able to access research without any barriers.
Um, and then later in the week, we
have a presentation on our open access fund. If
you encounter OA journals that have a fee, most
do not have a fee, But but some of
you and you need to meet that feed. Then
we have a fund that can help you publishing an
open access journal. So the schedule for the week
is up here for, uh, faculty who might
have registered through L. I. We have a
sign up sheet, and we also have a sign
up for the open VT email list, which is
an email list, low volume list where we send
out notices about events like this about open access,
open data and open educational resources going on on the
Virginia Tech campus. So if you'd like to sign
up for either of those, we have a sign
up sheet here and the list of library services here
. So again, welcome. And thank you very
much for being here. And I'd like to introduce
Peter Potter, our director of publishing strategy at university
libraries. Thanks, everyone. Thanks for coming out
tonight. Um, I know many of you required
the year, so we have a We have a
great panel tonight. I'm really happy with the group
that we have. Um, I'll just quickly mention
we have, uh, Monty Abbas, associate professor
of civil engineering. Um, Karen Paula Deen DePaul
. You all know Brian Whole who is founder and
CEO of Ubiquity Press, which is an open access
publisher. And he brings a real practical perspective to
our discussions tonight. Um, Siddhartha Roy Ghd candidate
and Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering involved in the
Flint Water project. And Mohammed, science PhD candidate
in the Department of Computer Science and coming off a
year as our graduate student representative on the board of
visitors. So he's been busy in his time year
. Um, so tonight, it's I want this
to be really pretty much open discussion. Um,
and but to start, I want to give a
little bit of background my own. My own background
is in university press publishing. Um, and I've
been following these developments in areas of scholarly publishing for
many years, and what I want to give you
is have a few slides that give you sort of
the the background. Some of the numbers give you
a sense of how big an industry scholarly publishing is
, and some of the numbers around open access so
that we have some framework with which to have this
conversation. So, um, I find these numbers
, um, just sometimes hard to get your head
around, but, um, you're looking at scholarly
publishing it globally as a. These numbers are purely
estimates. But as I read the literature on as
you see these numbers again and again, we're talking
about$28 billion business globe globally. You see journals
makes up 40% of that. Roughly books is still
a very small part of it, 16% and the
rest of it, 44% is in all the other
things around scholarly communication. And if you look at
market share and you can see the U. S
. Is still the primary mm as the biggest share
of the market by far. Um, but China
, um, is definitely growing. They are the
largest producer research papers. It's still in terms of
market share It's still a smaller percent. Mm hmm
. Um, to give you a sense of that
$28 billion figure. I always like to use this
to give you a sense of the U. S
. Music industry, um, is around six billion
. The box office sales on a yearly basis is
around 9 to 10 billion, and you can see
globally that 28 billion and then the U. S
share of that is around 14 15 billion. So
it's a bigger business than almost then Music and movies
combined. Um, and it's important to understand the
players in this arena. Um, I'm sure that's
becoming more and more complicated, and Ryan might have
ideas. And who else is part of this equation
now? But do you think the most basic terms
? We have the researchers you as both the authors
and the readers of the consumers of the content publishers
and publishers increasingly varied with scholarly societies, academic,
university presses, commercial publishers, libraries, our key
player, and still 68. 75% of journal revenues
, which is the biggest part of of the business
, come from library subscriptions and then research funders.
Which all of you are you familiar with or will
soon become familiar with. Um, when you look
at journals, this I find it really interesting.
So I was trying to figure out how many journals
are published in the world. And, um,
there are lots of different estimates about this. But
the number that you see cited most often now is
that we passed the 30,000 mark so that those are
30,000 active scholarly journals in the world. And you
can see the some of the statistics on revenue the
number of articles published per year to 2.5 million 5000
journal publishers. Um, and it's important to see
of these four publishers account for 40% of that market
. L Severe Springer, Wiley and Taylor in France's
. That's a huge, huge monopoly. They have
, um, and some figures there on a number
of active researchers and the global spending on R and
D. Damn, um, again thinking about journals
, Um, it's interesting to see that, or
to think about it, that the journal remains the
primary venue for publishing scholarship, despite the fact that
it's really a print based medium. And, um
, in many ways, we're still tied to the
idea of the journal, as it was originally considered
originally conceived, and it started with two functions.
One was a way to disseminate scholarship, and the
other was a way to register who who discovered something
. So from the very first journals it was,
You know, if you if there was a competition
or any any dispute over who discovered something, whoever
got into publication first, that's how you would determine
it. Over time, we've developed quality control in
the form of peer review, and peer review is
really a modern, I think, the 20th century
development. And here I think the fourth one is
what I think is really the most important factor for
what we're talking about. Tonight is the key indicator
for career advancement. That's how you get grants,
how you get tenure and promotion. And when you
think about moving from journals from a print environment to
a digital environment, all of these things dissemination,
registration of discovery, quality control doesn't matter what format
you're doing it in. What really holds us back
is this career advancement that the idea of prestige journals
that people want to publish him and they are still
tied to the ideas of subscription based in many cases
, uh, subscription based journals. Um, I
put this in here just It's a long slide,
but for this public good angle. And this is
for those of you who may not know, Budapest
Open The access initiative was one of the first early
statements, perhaps the first early statement on the open
access move movement from February of 2000 and two.
And here's the kind of the the high in the
sky kind of version of Here's what we see as
what's possible with open access. Why there is an
argument for open access and every I think we all
keep coming back to the principles here, Um,
and in the U. S. I think what
really got us going, um, was has been
the question of mandates. And 2013, the White
House Office of Science and Technology policy, um made
it a requirement that if you've received federal funding,
um, to a certain amount, you must make
your research available, open access or publicly accessible.
I think it's the term that they use, but
that really changed the equation. All of a sudden
, it becomes not just something we might want to
try to do become something that's required if you're getting
federal research dollars, Um, and what we're beginning
to see now is a result of that is the
beginning of a growing infrastructure for open access to happen
. So Pub Med Central. It's probably the biggest
repository right now for biomedical research, primarily. And
so, if you are doing research and you're getting
funding from any of these places, they all now
have open access policies, and many of them for
if you deposited at that central or public sectoral will
qualify for meeting the open access requirements of all of
these places. But in addition, many of these
have their own their own repositories. We have chorus
, which is, uh, an attempt. We're
beginning to see these efforts to create a A some
structure to make it possible for all of these open
access repositories to be connected. Um, but as
we look at it right now, we still have
a long way to go here again. This is
it's a little bit hard to define numbers here,
but to show you roughly about 30% of journal articles
published right now, or some form of open access
still over 70% that aren't open access. So,
um, that's the background I wanted to give you
. Just leave this up here because this has some
. I just started jotting down some of the rationales
for open access that I've been looking at some of
the barriers. Um, And as you think about
questions that you want to ask, I'll keep this
up here when? Now I want to open it
up to the panel and the questions. But I
wanted to start with and a friend of you read
inside Higher ed. Today, every year inside Iraq
releases a the fact that they survey a survey faculty
in the U. S. Their attitudes towards technology
and one of the things that they focus on the
scholarly publication and the question of open access journals.
And one in this survey. 50% of the faculty
surveyed said, but they consider subscription based journals more
authoritative and open access generals 50%. The other 50%
see no difference or see that they publish in either
one 50%. Still seen are skeptical about open access
. I wanted to open up the question because I
hear it here on campus quite a bit. There's
, I think, skepticism in many quarters on open
access journals is that a justified concerns Whoever wants to
jump it, I can start by saying that we
get a lot of advertisements, sometimes from some of
the open access journals that we don't know if they
are legitimate. So that's one of the concerns.
Maybe that feeds in the skepticism and the fact that
I could counter that a little bit by saying I
received. I'm a researcher still myself, when I
receive a lot of emails from subscription journals as well
, where I'm not sure how much of a leadership
those journals really have or how legitimate they are as
well. So there are a lot of people who
are very actively promote. There's Jeffrey Bill, this
one who has his Bills list of blacklisted journals,
and he only concentrates on open access journals. He
refuses to look equally at this thing. Closed access
journals mask. Are they behaving ethically as well?
I think you have to have a balanced view.
I've had some very bad experiences of subscription publishers in
the past, from the perspective of those graduate students
who have talked with back of the their advisors have
there as the subject come up at all the question
of publishing and open access journals. What's your sense
of that? Yeah. So it's actually come up
and lab meeting is quite a bit, Um,
there is still this negative oh view of open access
. And so we want mhm. It's kind of
a second second round, so we don't get into
the top tier close. That says journalism. Maybe
we'll publish it in one of those open access.
Hard time are open open once at that angle.
Okay, so it's still kind of look at sort
of glasses. How many of you have published an
open access? I wanted you to know that because
there's some of them are publishing. And it is
Do you? When doing that? Was that a
decision that you were? You did that willingly or
what was your thinking obviously open access? Yeah.
Yeah. Anyway, it was intentional. What?
It have the broadest reach for the work that I
I didn't Okay, um yes, that these microphones
just help for the students that are in northern Virginia
and anybody else that's on WebEx. Brian, you
were mentioning this morning that the issue of quality when
it comes to open access, it shouldn't have anything
to do with open access because it's really a question
of format rather than quality. It's a distribution methods
. We do exactly the same things with open access
journals. We peer review content exactly the same way
we types it and copy of the article is exactly
the same way. We send them to the same
indexes, well, even apply for impact factors and
things like that. Um, there's really no difference
. The only difference is the business model is a
bit different. People pay up front for the work
that's done, but only once and then the contents
free. And it's more broadly distributed. So the
big quality difference, really is that you're not.
You're not limiting the distribution of the work after it's
been published to me. But as an open access
publisher, we go out of our way to do
more than the big legacy publishers do. So we
, for example, when we publish books, we
peer review them, whereas companies like Elsevier don't peer
review their books. So we actually try to go
a few steps further and we make it really,
really obvious so that we can try and counter those
perceptions. And if I can jump in because back
to this discussion with the advisor when you want to
publish something in an open access journal and it was
intentional. But then in the discussion, there were
two steps. The first step is to to educate
them about what would happen. Access. Add to
my research because the counter argument was would be like
if your committee or even if you're applying for a
job, they may look down to the open access
journals. But on the other side, I kept
talking about how how our work would be more accessible
so that people can incite it more so that maybe
the H Index can increase and people and it actually
gets some numbers about how many people actually saw your
article, how many people read it and how many
people downloaded it. So all of these insights are
more available when you are publishing open access journal.
So that was the first step. The second step
after he said okay was okay, but this requires
us to pay money. So if you don't have
money to pay for this period to find a source
. So it was, um my my role,
actually, to explore the options. And then I
I knew that President has some funding, so that
was the next step to tell him. Okay,
so if you're okay with this, we can get
some funding from the university. But I'm not sure
if this is the case with universities to so maybe
some other institutions don't have this, um, funding
. Maybe Virginia Tech will need more funding for more
students to publish an open access journals. So generally
speaking, as these two steps that for whatever grass
, she didn't want to have this conversation with your
advisor. They should be well aware of what advantage
that they can get from publishing an open access journals
and how they can fund this, um, publication
for publishing process. Yeah. Um, um,
Gale can speak to that. We have the open
access fund here. You might say how much it
is now as compared to when we started three years
ago. Virginia Tech has an open access to pensions
paid article processing charges, coalition of an access journal
. And we started this as a pilot podcast about
four years ago, we had$24,000 for a pilot
project. This year our funding is$100,000 but that's
for this fiscal year. That means it started in
July. We've already allocated 50% of that month.
What? But at the same time, I want
to say that we in the past we've been able
to fund all of the articles that requested funding,
even though it went beyond what we were. So
it's really Mm. In fact, Philip and I
, another colleague, did a survey of research libraries
in North America to see who had open access funds
. And what did we find out? That a
small percentage, 33%. About a third of the
of the libraries that answered are serving. So we're
not talking very many. So Virginia Tech is a
very special place in this regard. Um, what
? What does everyone think of the? Are you
familiar with the concept of the article processing charge?
And I'm curious what people think of that, because
that is, that's the big difference between you know
how you fund it is. With open access publishing
, you have to fund it on the front end
rather than the back end through subscriptions. So what
many journals are now doing, They don't all do
it. But somehow you have to pay the piper
. And the way it's done typically is through article
processing charges. And now these charges can be$12,000
in article. So the idea is, I think
, supposedly, that if you're getting research dollars in
many cases you can use money that comes with research
funding to pay for the article processing charges. But
that's not always the case, or you're not always
going to have that access to that money. So
I have a feeling that is part of what contributes
to some of the skepticism around. Open access.
Is this idea of having to pay to get your
article published? Peter, just say one. Um
, if you'd like to know more about the fund
and how you apply for it and he's eligible,
we're gonna be doing a session on Friday afternoon,
so it's an open access schedule. If you want
to come and find out more, you can actually
bring your laptop. And if you've got an article
, you want to give it a try or you
can just kind of do a driver and see what
? The application process of flight areas, um,
thoughts about the article processing charges. That's something you're
familiar with. Or, um, that for those
of you who have published an open access terms,
did you pay an author processing? He won.
The good thing is that you can negotiate the price
. Um, but again, you do have to
pay for the thing. And there's no getting around
the fact, But I think, you know,
we need to step back for a second and look
at, uh, the values were investing when we
put the money in. I mean, not all
projects need to be open access. Uh, you
know, and some people might counter that we need
everything out there. But if their projects are ready
to public health, for example, of the environment
, uh, they can I mean, we can
find either the policy so that those articles, you
know, get some how we pay less, or
there's funding allocated for those. Um, so an
example that I can give is we recently published a
piece about a month ago in a journal. Uh
, it wasn't perverse. incentives in academic research.
So I think you guys talked about it in class
, and what was amazing is we wanted the article
to get out as much as possible. So we
paid the fees upfront, and, uh, we
I think in about eight days, about 200,000 people
read it. So it became the number one article
of 2016 in that journal in eight days. The
paradox says we were asking people to be skeptical about
metrics. And here I am telling about how great
paper did on on one metric. But I think
, yeah, I mean, if you have a
specific projects that appeal to a large base that can
benefit a large base citizen science projects, for example
, or a variety of defense things. Uh So
the point is, if you have projects that can
benefit a lot of people, it actually makes sense
to actually find the money or find a way to
get those into open access journals. Christine, I'm
I'm interested. Do you? When you think about
the future of of scholarly publishing that the model around
paying to publish upfront, do you think that is
a legitimate way to fund publishing in the future.
Yeah, I would like to have no payment,
but that is not necessarily the best business model.
Uh, so I think we may need to do
that as long as the business model is such that
it requires some kind of payment to, um to
get the articles out there. There are other ways
, um, and in in the couple thoughts flying
through my head is not all scholars have to pay
to publish. I mean, that's in certain fields
. There is the payment. Um uh, and
so that is a difference that we need to.
I think you, uh, keep in mind as
well. Um, and there are other ways of
getting some information out. Besides the pay for publishing
then. And I I actually I'd like to ask
more about what kind of peer review. How possible
is it to eliminate some of the funding? Um
, what would happen to the quality control? Are
there ways that we can think about still having the
quality control? Um, and I think there are
, you know, so that we can, you
know, share. You know, the information.
I mean, I would like to have it out
there so people can interact with the data. Um
, and the colleague from you, via I think
he is. Maybe somebody could talk a little bit
more about what he's doing over there, because yeah
, prison, right, and and the way some
of that information is being shared as well. Mhm
. I'm Brian. I can defend the A P
. C a little bit well, and I agree
with everything. All that you have said that the
the article processing shows we have, we do exactly
the same thing other publishers do. But our PCs
$400 not 4000. And the difference is we don't
have shareholders who expect us to make 40% profit.
Um, and we'll fire the CEO, which is
me if we don't do it. So you know
, those publishers are massively overcharging. That's and so
I don't I can't defend on a PC that's over
$1500 or something like that. Some of them have
more legacy costs and things that they have to go
for it. But a PC and principle is probably
the most cost efficient way you can charge for publishing
because you're only charging once for what you actually do
So we only spend$400 on managing peer review,
doing the typesetting, editorial support and so forth.
And that's it. Um, after that, everything
is free. So under the current model subscription journals
, it's done for free at first. But then
it sold multiple multiple, multiple times, and it
costs us billions of billions of dollars more than it
should. And that's money that's taken out of research
and out of the university budget. So in the
long term, what we should hopefully see as a
switch from funding paying for subscription journals to paying the
A. P. C s up front at a
capped rate, a low rate. It's just getting
getting that switch done so the libraries can stop paying
for the subscription journals. That's really hard. Yeah
, I think that's an important point to emphasize that
$28 billion figure that money is still getting paid to
primarily. A lot of it is going to commercial
publishers who are making a big profit on this,
and we as libraries are still paying the subscription costs
. So we're offering this support for off the process
article processing charges. But the hope is eventually our
subscription costs go down as more journals become open access
and that some of that money theoretically could shift.
So that money that that's going to subscriptions Now we
go to paying for for scholarship to be published.
Um, right now we're in this kind of netherworld
where we're stuck still paying exorbitant, um, journal
subscription costs. I mean, our budget here in
the university for for the library is in the millions
of dollars. What we pay in subscription fees,
that money could be being used in other ways.
That's a big, big part of the problem.
So question we deal with all the time is how
do we flip the system is something that can be
flipped quickly. I mean, you just rip the
band aid off. If so, how do you
do that? Or is it something that has to
happen over time? And I think in your class
here, what you've been talking about is this this
idea of preparing faculty for the 21st century and it
is this generation of faculty coming along new faculty.
We're going to have to be the ones who stand
up and say, we're not we're not going to
support this system anymore. Uh huh. So what's
your most expensive journal? Mhm. I have an
idea. Two weeks. Mhm. I'll tell you
who the publisher is. A specific term on Taylor
and Francis is probably our most extensive. L severe
. There are the last I used to work for
elsewhere. That's extremely expensive, but the most expensive
. A PC. I mean, we don't we
don't. We have a cap at$1500 with ABC
. But we still ask, What is the publisher
charging? And the most expensive charge that we've seen
has been$5200 from nature. Mhm. Uh,
but last I knew there was There were there were
a few journal about a year, but we're a
subscription fee were over 25,000 year. Yeah,$25,000
. 15 years? Yeah, so that I mean
, it doesn't eat, doesn't take a lot of
calculating. Figure out that's unsustainable business model. And
when you see how the percentage of budget that goes
to subscriptions, how that has increased over the last
20 years, it's it's increased way beyond the rate
of inflation. So yeah, the thing I wanted
to say is that, uh, it's A.
It's a complex system, of course, and what
is going to work for? Some faculty members and
their research group might not work for the others.
Or maybe to some extent, there are faculty members
who publish maybe 10 papers a year and if they
want to pay for publication, is not going to
be sustainable for them. Uh, but maybe they
can start with, you know, one or two
or, you know, whatever is available. But
the counter argument for that would be, um,
some of the grants that they get. They pay
money not to publish, but to travel to conferences
. And so, in a sense, they are
paying for that publication. So it becomes a trade
off between. You want to publish it, or
do you want to go to a conference and interact
with people and talk to them? And I don't
think there is a one size fits all and is
that I think it's going to be combination of things
was open access also, I think whenever there is
a change in a system that has to be some
, it's like a history. Seize control like there
has to be a a jump in benefits where people
start shifting. Otherwise they will just go whatever that
they have been doing. So it takes, takes
effort. I guess this kind of a forum is
something that would help in that direction. Question Michael
. So I have a question about the convention fund
and kind of following a speaker just talking about continuing
previous practices as there's new opportunities. So, for
example, in my field, the place that I
might anyways published, too, you know, I
can pay something and have this cyber of an access
model where they'll make this publication available. But if
perhaps I my research group, beliefs that may be
open access is the way to go for this work
by paying this, you know, publisher who doesn't
cut this is part of their policies. Are we
, you know, perpetuating a system that's contrary to
the things that were kind of, you know,
in favor of and supporting them by having the speed
or we perhaps helping them make the transformation open access
journal by showing the viability is approached. Very curious
, especially. Yeah, sure, Yeah, but
what do people think about that? Well, just
very quickly. I mean, there are the whole
country is now. They won't. They won't give
funding for hybrid journals. So most of the Scandinavian
countries now refused to pay those fees because their publishers
, first of all, charging a lot They're charging
twice. They're charging, people subscribe to the journals
and then they're also charging the authors, so that
is called double dipping. So yeah, hybrid journals
are very, very unpopular funders and and so forth
. So if possible, I would go for 100%
of access. But we're one of the few institutions
with the suspension from it does on hybrid journalist because
we require that they reduce the subscription unilaterally. Yes
, in terms of the number of articles, open
access articles. So we're trying to hold them to
the not, but they have to. They have
to have a very clear policy. You can see
that there is this reduced subscription based on open access
publishing, and then we'll fund Yes, I believe
, actually, the European Commission, which they found
a large amount of research in Europe, of course
. And they were about to refuse hyper journals as
well. I think the idea are one of the
early ideas about hybrid journalist was that that was kind
of the beginning of a trend. You would go
first to hybrid, and then you would go to
full open access. But we just haven't seen that
mhm. So I'd like to just step back a
little bit. So I bought into this whole transparency
reproducibility idea, and it's great as a graduate student
to see tooling like Evolved. And I think,
like a few years ago or a year ago,
like nature, had written a post about everything that
you published needs to come with, like at least
like my python or a book or something where your
code is accessible. So, like one of the
slides said, you know, and including this one
like transparency, reproducibility and disseminating of ideas is extremely
important. But what if we go one step before
open access and just have everything open source? Because
if you think about open access, that's really just
like a business model, that's something someone is making
a decision. But if you're doing research and publish
all your code or your lab notebook to, like
get hub, for example, then you know it's
still freely available to everyone else. It's really just
the prose text. That's what you're paying for for
people who you know, this abstract is really cool
. That's just produces like that's actually as a graduate
student. That's what I care about more. It's
like, Okay, I write this paper, It's
great. How do I extend that? Well,
there's no numbers in here. There's some code anywhere
, and that's actually almost feel more problematic. So
I don't know if anyone agrees Headlight. Maybe.
Maybe the way that, like nudge the field,
is to, like, just publish everything, make
that available and just have the business people the fallout
from here. Alright, I could say the day
open science is, uh, Bryant and and that's
up on the screen on all the scripts now,
Um, or that's that's green. I mean,
I'm not the expert to talk about that, but
you want to talk. Share that because it gets
at this question. Sure, those of you who
are familiar with the Senate for Open Science based in
Charlottesville, this open science framework, which is really
a it says there are scholarly comments that enables you
to do your research as transparently and it's open as
possible, and I do think it is. This
is the direction things are going. And, um
, I don't know yet how broadly used this is
. You might you might have a better sensitive.
It's becoming more and more popular all the time,
and it gives researchers a choice. What to make
open when so when they just started pre print service
, to which kind of gets to the kind of
opened from start to finish idea as well. So
as soon as you have a first draft, you
put your your first submitted version up there, and
which more and more journals are allowing now for you
to just post your first surgeon of the article,
as as it's under review. So I think it
is becoming more and more popular. Well, we
as an institution Virginia Tech are participating in A is
the trial with the Center for Open Science, where
we are an institutional, um, test case for
them. So we'll be because they are opening the
center for, uh, open science framework. They're
opening it up now to institutional participation, and we
are one of the institutions that will be participating in
that. So we're helping them to get this out
for widely used Oh, at the time so I
can I can make a comment on this, and
this is where I'll give you the faculty perspective and
it's not a good thing. I'll tell you from
now, Uh, it's something that we have to
suffer this what we really want to do and what
the system forces us to do. So what we
really want to do is that we want to learn
what an advanced science we want to share. That
molecules, everyone, right? And then the reality
is, every faculty member is worried about their students
, they graduate students and their funding, and we're
going to have to go out there and fight for
getting funding. And the more you make your research
available for anyone to just use it right away,
Um, you lose some edge, that you lose
some competition age. It's unfortunate, but that is
what is happening. So the idea of making everything
available to everywhere makes it difficult to sustain the funding
for the graduate students you have. It's not something
that we like, but it is what is happening
. I can make it. Yeah, go ahead
. So we've been having a discussion in our preparing
the story, a class about ethics. And we
had a visitor, the co founder of Retraction Watch
. So this brings up being a the issue of
why is there a peer review system to begin?
So I always got to have it back in the
back of my mind. And I can I can
always publish whatever I want on my website. My
mom, my dad, will see you. It
won't be peer reviewed, and no, no care
. So I guess part of the system and maybe
you guys can weigh on this is are the system
is that I give it to these publishers open access
or close access or limited access. Um, and
they then have this network of experts that can review
it. Give me comments, right? Make it
better, verify that it. And then. And
so whenever I see something like this, I'm always
leery of that, very wary of where what it
may lead to. So I forgot what they're called
. But there's there's something else where you can kind
of just publish. You can print servers. Put
up your preference of your work before it's been yeah
, it's important to realize that archive. The is
a pre print server for physicists, and it is
the official is the place to go. It's not
that you so you can post their whether it's been
pure and you're not, probably hasn't. But the
idea is, once it's up there, then the
community police is what is available on the site.
Um, and it doesn't prevent you from then going
later on and publishing an article somewhere else. But
it gets it out there, and that is a
that's a That's a model that seems to have worked
very well in certain fields, and it would seem
like that could be applied elsewhere. And I'm a
little surprised that it hasn't. It's starting to more
. They're starting to be humanity's frequent service and social
sciences ones. They're starting to come, but I
think you need all those things. I think they're
all really important. I think peer review and publishing
. It's kind of like it gives you a passport
for your work to be discussed in the scholarly discourse
. People just have that confidence that that work is
being filtered and it's ready to be discussed. I
think you should, you know, if I if
I was a young researcher today, I'm I'm still
finishing a PhD, but I'm no longer young.
I say. I think you should do all of
those things because it's much to your advantage. You
should release your data and allow other people to validate
your work because that's part of the social contract of
science that you let other people validate what you've done
, um, and software and so forth helps them
to reproduce it more efficiently. But it's also part
of the more you share your work, the bigger
the networks you're going to form in the world,
the more international collaborations you're going to come to and
therefore probably the better chances you're going to have a
finding grant funding and so forth and future. I
mean, it's a it's a tricky balance, right
? But if I was a younger researcher, I
would be betting on having a strong international network behind
me to build my career with. And then if
I'm going to a university, I'll say, Well
, I can bring these connections which will get me
grant funding. Mm. I'm not saying we should
be judged on grant funding as well as publications,
but You know, I think it's a very sound
strategy to have these days. Two things to add
to that. Um, first off, there is
the rise of post peer review. I mean,
getting everything published. So the retraction watch guy he
talked about pop here. And the idea is,
you know, everything is published, everything is out
there. And, uh, people in your field
can still comment and show if there are issues with
your papers. So, uh, that kind of
gets into making sure that even if something is out
there, uh, if it's substandard, uh,
people will point that out. It would not stay
in the literature forever. Uh, number two is
, uh, you know, we saw on the
slide before that there are 2.5 million articles published each
year. I'm pretty sure a lot of that is
crap. Without a doubt. I mean, you
when you you mean looking at papers, writing your
reviews, You see a lot of papers that are
just nonsense, but they're out there. They're published
in respected journals. So as you guys going to
, you know, academia in the future and start
publishing looking at research, uh, the quality of
your work with, uh, if the idea is
, we want to get as many papers, uh
, as possible out there. There'll be a lot
of, uh, you know, the networks would
have a lot of pressure, like, look,
looking at 2.5 million articles every year. That's a
lot of work. So if you guys do a
better job of writing less paper, it's a better
papers. Uh, you know, every everyone would
benefit. But then that comes down to a tenure
and promotion. And if I have only five papers
, uh, would I get tell you? So
there's a lot to consider, but I think there
are good practices coming in, like post peer review
that can help a lot of good science stay in
place. And just add to this question about,
um, what kind of resources you need to make
open. It's important to notice that Open doesn't me
only free, and they'll send these discussions about okay
. We have free access to this article river,
but it doesn't matter. It doesn't mean that it's
an open access has to be reducible. It has
been producing. It has to be reusable. Everything
that is related to this paper should be, to
some extent available online, and that's required this whole
ecosystem of peer review and these places that you can
publish your work knowing that people will read it without
, uh, without suspecting as credibility. Uh,
so that's why the whole existence should work with us
. But again, it's not only about being free
, and it's important to mention to the federal remembering
correctly the the federal mandate from the White House was
public access and access of data to the data has
to be made accessible. But in terms of public
access, it doesn't mean that you can have a
more restrictive license. I think on the work that
you publish in the sense of being able to remix
or doesn't doesn't necessarily require the most liberal treatment of
that material. But, um, the question,
I think is as we become more and more and
more people, yeah, and exceed to this idea
that science and research should be open. Is are
we dealing with an inevitable push? Is it going
to be say, in the next generation? Are
we going to see the tipping point where we go
to, uh, either as a at least a
dominantly open access system. What do people think about
that? Is it Is it inevitable? Okay,
yes, I think tipping points very close, very
close, even with 70% still not getting access.
Yeah, but I think there's a lot of policy
starting to come behind it. And now it's a
matter of finding other ways to shift the financial model
. It's really universities need to have the resources to
spend to support open access because it's it. And
it's also things like changing the changing the rules for
tenure and things like that. I think that's the
hardest thing. But I've heard great optimism that it's
possible because in the UK, people will talk about
all the time. It's like that's the one thing
we don't know how to change it. It's too
ingrained, so people can start to lobby for that
. That would make a huge difference, I think
because there's less pressure to publish and then the subscription
journals will the rules will change a little bit.
I think we need to get back to thinking about
why we do research and it sounds and what why
I think we do research is to share the results
with others. And it's not for tenure and promotion
. And it's not for publication. It is both
of those. But it is really about sharing knowledge
, and that's what higher education should be about.
And so we have. We have to continue to
keep that in the forefront, I believe, Um
, and if that is the case, then I
think we will have open access. I think we're
being pushed, pushed and pulled towards that. We've
got NIH and NSF and you know, our government
talking about it. We've got libraries that are encouraging
it. Virginia Tech being one of them. We
have classes like this one where we talk about the
, you know, the future and being much more
open to sharing in different ways. It is the
faculty, and I'm one of them that created the
tenure promotion system. And we are the ones who
can change it if we are willing to give up
a little bit of our power. Um, in
that because we created it. And what happened in
the sixties, I was not 10 years done.
I'm not at all. Uh, but what happened
in the sixties for 10 years? Somebody walked down
the hall and said, You're tendered. That's not
the system now It has evolved over time, and
it can. I'm avoiding devolved. But it can't
evolve in another direction to be much more inclusive,
Um, and making the changes that I think we
need to have in higher education. Brian, it
sounds like you think the tipping point is soon.
I want to share that optimism. I think we
have. As I said before when we were talking
up here, Um, we have incoming generations of
faculty who will think differently. And once we retire
, some of us who are in that older generation
and not as willing to change, then I think
that's when the tipping point is going to happen.
Generals are going to push a society. Society should
push us and say, and legislators are you know
, they're saying, Where's accountable? I'm spending all
this money and what do I get? Nothing.
I can't subscribed to the Journal. I'm not paying
25,000 with that term. Well, I'm curious,
so I'm new. I've been here at Virginia Jack
since January, and I know a number of institutions
have instituted open access policies where the back of the
are mandated to publish or to at least do a
green, open access version of their papers. We've
not done that at Virginia Tech. Has there been
what has been the conversation around? That is that
Is that a way that we should be going towards
more institutions doing that? No. We haven't done
that as tech that I'm aware of any conversation or
open conversation about it. Not that I'm aware of
. We should. We should be having the conversation
. I'm sure there's been pockets. Yeah, Mohammed
, you know that there used to be some conversations
around the campus and that the library has kind of
recommendations for faculty to population to have a copy of
the papers. I think the real story for the
library. But the thing is, and going back
to what the dean was talking about, that even
if the government is not pushing us through this even
if not, if you're not so close, even
if the faculty are thinking this way about the quality
for But I always go back to Virginia Tech at
this kind of it's one of those institutions who are
Public Land Grant University. Uh, so for the
mission of this institute. It's quite different than some
of the other institutes. Even if we are not
, even if the government is not pushing us to
, it should be us who actually lead the efforts
, because this is our mission, which is to
disseminate knowledge. If you are not doing this,
we are not actually doing the mission of a Land
Grant university. So what I'm thinking about it this
way. It's kind of we are not following what
we're supposed to be doing. Regardless, the other
institutes, regardless, the government and the legislation's it
should be asked to move forward would take the first
steps. And that's why I keep thinking about our
faculty, maybe to think in a different way than
what faculty members and other private institutes me think about
. So to follow up on that, I think
when we talk about faculty, it all boils down
to time. And you know, if you want
to do everything that you are supposed to do as
a faculty member, you need 60 to 80 hours
a week and some things that I give you gotta
get something go. And as as as long as
the system is not pushing on you, then you
can push in those kinds of directions. So but
I agree with Dean Deep. I think it's a
the tenure and promotion pressures that we have right now
probably is not leaving a lot of leeway for faculty
to go into these directions. I don't think faculty
opposed to that. I just think that they have
. They have to, you know, way different
options when they they follow up on things. And
again, that does not mean not to do the
open access. I just think that it's a you
know, some open access. I'm not hoping to
access depending on the time. I'm not academic,
but I'm a little confused. If the money if
there were a fun if the Bill and Melinda Gates
Foundation said we will provide but$5 billion a year
, Um, and I don't think that's funny money
. I'm not saying to do that, but you
know, some kind of public good we would the
faculty then it is that the stumbling block is that
the stumbling block that is that it's expensive if you're
producing tent. If you're a professor producing 10 papers
a year that could be$50,000. That's no small
thing. And you have hundreds of faculty who are
fighting to produce, right? Or is it the
prestige of the journals themselves? Because you want to
do something that's free is human nature. I think
you're being less valuable unless you can put your finger
on the network effects. What is it that that
stands in the way? I realize it's a complex
of different things. It could just be the money
. I don't think it's just the money. I
think well, it's exactly what you said. It's
a complex, you know? It's a complex thing
. Uh, I think a faculty Let's say you
know the tenure track faculty who are going up 14
year in five years when they start for everything they
do, they would be thinking about when my case
comes up for evaluation. How would my committee look
at this? Um, would I get tenure?
And would I be rejected? Tenure? And there
are cases where people don't get drafted 10 years,
so that's a that's the real thing that wagons are
afraid of. So the prestige of the journal comes
in as a factor, and of course, If
if there is a way to show that these open
access journals are as prestigious, then I think then
that would be taken out of the equation, because
then people are going to go for So if you
could spend money, I'm just talking conceptual. If
you can spend money for the A P C.
And you can spend money for the platform, um
, quality stamp of approval and whether it's an algorithm
or it's a terrific editorial board or it's this network
effect and maybe because I'm obviously focusing on money because
money can buy things bad things or buy good things
. But if you had, but you probably need
to be able to buy both, you have to
buy the production piece so you get a high quality
, easy production and you were talking about smoothing Brian
. But you would also need to have that editorial
seal of approval, and I don't mean to denigrate
by acting in Good Housekeeping seal. It's very important
and difficult because people who do that of other things
to do, like, published their own pictures.
What one thing people talk about a lot these days
is the journal is the problem that we, we
everything is. We judge a piece of work based
on which journalism so people. A lot of the
papers published in high impact factor journals are not good
quality either, but they're they're judged to be high
quality because they got in there. So one of
the things we could look at is is being judged
purely on the metrics for your paper. How many
downloads, How many views, how many citations does
the paper have, rather than which journalists did so
if the Tenure Committee's weren't even able to tell the
generals things that would make it an easy problem?
In a sense, I mean signal economists information signaling
effects and that kind of people have done a lot
of work around the difficulties how to price it created
incentive structure gets people in a particular environment like this
, particularly by the whether these complex issues. If
you wanted money, you wouldn't be fighting for tenure
. You want to publish if you want to research
and you want to delete your type. I think
a big part of the problem in this country is
the fact that higher education is so decentralized and I
mean Brian knows this better than I do. But
in the UK, where you have the the research
councils of the U. K. Where it's more
of a top town approaching things, there's no way
in this country, too. I mean, the
White House mandated, this is the closest we have
. But even there it's not. It doesn't.
It just simply says you have got to do this
. It doesn't implement any structure for it to happen
. And everything has to happen with all these institutions
, many various and different kinds of institutions all buying
in, and nobody is sort of taking the lead
. You had attempts by some institutions like Harvard does
they require. There are gradually to publish open access
. They have an opt out, but the default
is you opt in. But it's not just Harvard
University, Kansas, for instance. So another land
grant institutions. So it can be. I mean
, there has to be collective will, and unfortunately
we don't have any way to harness that collective will
at this point in this country with a you or
land grant. They failed. You aren't there are
organizations like that that would be correct system. I
would think so. but they don't have teeth.
They can't the members of the au jus. How
many? How many members? But they're powerful,
right? But are all those members going to to
agree? I don't know. It's a good idea
. Let's assume that what one thing they have to
be prepared to do is play the lobbying game.
Because the large publishers are all constantly lobbying Congress for
against open access, trying to get the mandates shut
down and so forth to even sometimes when you're defending
a position, you put more resources into and when
we want to change things were not prepared to.
So we have to. We have to be prepared
to play them at their own game this month.
So I think that there are other kinds of contributions
besides the the organized collected will. So as graduate
students and future faculty, you will be asked to
review, and you probably already do review articles.
You might end up being an editor, So the
decisions that you make as to what you will say
, yes, I love your view for this journal
will give my free labor. Um, yes,
I will serve on an editorial board. I ran
a journal. Those are also impactful decisions that you
can make to support or not support what kind of
reality he went to the future. A good example
. I'd like Brian to mention he gave this example
this morning of a journal that his company publishes that
started as an Elsevier's journal and how that happened just
to give people a sense of how it works,
when when there's a rebellion and open rebellion against subscription
. Uh, there's been a lot of rebellions against
also because they do fund the fund, these bills
going before Congress and so forth that are anti away
. So that was the cost of knowledge petition a
while back, 30,000 signatures saying We will never review
for elsewhere on Reddit for them or anything like that
. I signed it. So now I I did
publishing a lot of the journalism, my field,
even if it's open access, because I said I
wouldn't do that because that's one. There are large
numbers of people trying to change things, but this
journal was with with how severe it was called lingua
linguistics, quite a popular one very, very top
in its its area of the discipline and they repeatedly
ourselves severe. They gave them lots of chances.
They said We want to be open access and they
said No and they said We want They said eventually
. Also, they said show that's OK,£3000
dollar ABC And they said, No, we need
it to be a fair price that people can afford
. We don't double nothing else if they said no
and they have very, very strong contracts and they
really didn't believe that the Journal would leave. But
what happened in the end was because the Journal didn't
own it wasn't owned by the editors. So they
all resigned on Mass that the editor in chief resigned
. All 31 board members resigned and they founded a
new journal. Um, and about 100 people withdrew
their papers and moved them to the new journal.
Um, and that that was really important. But
what also happened was the large amount of community got
very active on social media and so forth and said
encouraged people not to submit to the old elsewhere journal
because the community was no longer behind it. So
it is really possible for journals now to move and
now there's a lot of funding coming behind that sort
of activity. So if journals do want to move
away from large publishers, there are funding bodies.
The Dutch government, for example, is funding a
lot of this in Europe. Um, they'll say
, Okay, we'll cover all the PCs if you
if you shift because you know, if you're if
you're willing to take the plunge. So yeah,
and I think there's we need more of that happening
. I think that's and that's where the faculty of
tomorrow I'm willing to do this, take the risk
. And once you've seen people take that risk and
actually achieve the flip, then you realize it's much
more possible than we thought before, possibly we assumed
they were just so everybody in this jail, Michael
and his skills of searching the Internet has something you
and a pl you. Tracy. It looks like
they're in favor of a longer embargo. I believe
faster. It was not a good thing. Yeah
, it looks like it's something that was that was
one of those pieces of legislation that was put forward
after the last ones taken down. Does everybody understand
the concept of embargo? What happens when that some
journals will say. Okay, well, well,
some publishers say, well, they want to protect
their journal subscriptions. So what they say? Well
, go open access, but it will be after
a period of, say, a year, so
they protect their subscriptions. But then it goes open
access later on, and that's maybe find to a
degree. But in some areas of research, it
is. That year is critical to the distribution of
that. That work? Mm hmm. It's slowing
down scientific communication by a year. That's hurtling,
right? So right. I guess the problem in
my mind is really he is overcharging and the abuse
of the system. Right? And, you know
, I'll give a small anecdote. I was at
a conference. I stopped by a publisher. I
won't say which one you know, they were talking
about if you want to publish. And you I
asked them. So what would the deal B.
I was just curious as an author. How much
would I get back from the book? And they
said, Well, you know, it depends.
And so I said, Okay, just give me
a number. Said, Well, if the if
the book is sold for$100 you will get back
$6. Is it really? So you get 94%
of the of the prophet. It's really an overcharging
in the system. So in, in in my
mind. So let me ask this question, uh
, to me charging up front or charging later on
, it's just the business model, and you could
potentially overcharge these away. Now the open access folks
are not doing that. So that's two dedicated.
But while some of them are, some of them
are Some of the open access journals are charging.
As we said,$5000 ABC's. And it's hard
to justify that, Um and And when you talk
to the journal publishers, what I what? What
I hear is these numbers. They didn't come up
with these numbers by working up a budget. They
sort of throughout an early number and said, Well
, let's start with 2500 or 3000 And it wasn't
based upon, as far as I can tell.
Any reality they were probably thinking, if I want
to retire by the age is what I need to
charge every year, they have to charge more because
their their shareholders insist that they make a bigger profit
every year, right? So why Why Why aren't
we trying to figure out a way where, uh
, this overcharging can be stopped by some kind of
your? Your studio has one win and insisted they
kept the, um, the assistance of$1500.
Well, that's that's a good thing. One thing
I'll point out is from a library perspective. The
libraries all have to negotiate deals with these publishers and
the public libraries are not allowed to talk to one
another. Otherwise, it's collusion so that the system
is, as Donald Trump would say, rigged.
Um, yeah, that's the peak. Yeah,
yeah, because if libraries could all get together and
say, Okay, well, we're not going to
do this. You can't You can't do that.
I can't sit here and listen to that. I
think I'm a lawyer back. So there there's issues
that they have a monopoly position. It's still collusion
. The fact they have a monopoly position is the
issue. I think it more than the library should
Glue library shouldn't just get that goodbye, but But
I mean, the the fundamental question is what is
it gives them the blocking position that it seems to
me everybody in this room knows that the blocking position
is related in some fashion, to the nature of
which tenure and promotion and research plays into the incentives
within the academic community and the fact that the publishers
, I mean this will pass. It always does
. You know there's a famous but can't keep going
on period. It does eventually and maybe the tipping
points here. But it seems to me it is
. It is that mixture of the signaling, the
prestige signaling. It's, you know, it's the
faculty community sites who gets tenure. Nobody is going
to take the risk to say this is a brilliant
person, man or woman who was published and and
And if you go into, uh, call it
the Internet or whatever, you find that this paper
is cited and you know that's risky proposition. Next
year, why not? But it's hard for me
. I'm a business guy. It's hard for me
, not. It's hard for me to understand in
this day and age wise. That's what I was
saying earlier about the four these four mm services that
scholarship performed. The journals perform the first three can
all be done easily in an open access environment.
I mean, they all can be, but the
last one is is the biggest hurdle. It's that
how do we get past tenure and promotion and the
sense of prestige that people will pay? People will
pay more money than they should. If they're going
to get a prestige journal, they think it's prestigious
. They're going to pay more than what market.
Yeah. Uh huh. Partly it's because it takes
time for journalists to gain prestige in any new journal
being watched. There should be an open access point
, really, So eventually they will. In any
new field, you'll be launching an open access probably
, and you will gain prestige eventually. That's not
gonna happen quickly, so, but again, to
get back to that point, it's not open access
versus not open access. It's a matter of overcharging
or not overcharging because even if we say open access
, but all of a sudden we end up with
open access for charging 5500, then we are back
at the same problem. So that's one aspect of
the last comment. You will always have folks gouging
because it will always be market forces. But let's
play with the hypothetical that we actually dismantle. How
10 years treated in academia. Let's just say that
what Dating spoke about earlier occurs and folks started using
open access. Maybe you can send a 50 50
split. It moves to 80 20. Can you
not see how we would then direct the same power
structures that we currently have in academia in an open
access environment? Were simply just transferring our behaviors into
a different marches to war? It really requires dialogue
when pressing you guys to talk about is why is
there not dialogue taking place between academia and the open
access community so that there could be a strategy towards
a smart change and not creating a new opportunity to
simply transfer the power over to the new format?
Well, I do think that conversation is happening.
It's just it's building and it's growing over time.
But I don't again. It's a question of whether
there is enough. Their structures are in place to
be able to once that discussion happens to actually make
a, you know, national or international change that
is, there. Is there the framework in place
to be able to actually shift the system. That's
that's something I just I don't think it's there yet
. Yes, I think one of the issues and
this is where you're coming from from someone who's on
the other side of the graduate student, hopefully a
future faculty members. I just don't see the incentive
to go open access because he's talking about price gouging
. Price gouging? Well, only difference right now
between limited access versus open access. If I go
on Google Scholar and I search it and its close
access to copy paste the name of the article Growth
library website and, like search and then have to
go like I have, like, five or six
more clicks to get access it right. So the
institution then fronts the cost and versus open access.
Okay, pdf comes out. Um, and then
when publishing obviously has a faculty member or even as
a grad student publishing, that means I've got to
pay a front versus I don't have to pay or
it's a very small fee or something. So the
the incentive and we're talking about how much how big
the industry is. The publishers are creating that much
of an incentive for us to want to go open
access as as, uh, faculty members. Because
here it's reducing the upfront cost to stay closed access
. So we don't have to pay as much up
front to publish the institution, whether it be at
a national lab or at a company where I was
working in industry. So the company will pay per
article or a subscription or the university or the research
institute. They would pay for the subscription and then
publish articles, Close access and it's free. Or
, you know, the incentive. I feel like
maybe it's on purpose. Maybe they're trying to distance
to incentivize. Sure. Well, definitely. This
is what I think should I'm interested with yours.
Your perspective on this Looking at Flint? Mhm.
All right. There's a community that most people probably
do not have access to the research, and you've
seen it firsthand. What? How would you respond
to that? So, I mean, you were
right when you said you personally have any incentive to
go open access or open data and open science or
open uh, whatever. The point, though,
is Should you care if your research affects people,
impacts people changes lives. A big mission statement that
every university has and most of them don't follow is
, you know, dissemination of knowledge service to the
public. It's all great words, but people just
don't follow it. And the culture that is in
place currently is says, you know, X amount
of dollars. Why? Why? Number of papers
via a number of parents, and that's how I
move forward. If I don't do that, I
wouldn't have a job. I won't have 10 years
. I would not progress. So if academics don't
talk about it to begin with, nothing is gonna
change. Open access, closed access. We can
talk about that later. So first it's the matter
of institutional cultures. Uh, if all of us
start talking about how our research can impact, science
can advance knowledge can change the world. Once we
get to that point where everyone is interested in actually
pursuing research as a public good, that's the title
of, uh, the forum. If all of
us agree that we can advance knowledge and help the
public help the scientific community, then we can talk
about a case like Flint that I mean we,
I think, broke every rule in the academic rule
book. Uh, in my opinion, uh,
because we did what's called citizen Science, where normal
citizens, uh, tested, you know, took
water samples, send them back to us. And
we published everything online as we got them. Uh
, so usually, you know, we hold on
the data that we publish it, and now I
have a paper. Everyone, please love me.
I have a paper now. Um, but here
, everything was so dire. I mean, the
consequences of not getting the data out was people would
be drinking toxic water. So Flint is a great
example of where you need data. You need information
. You need a, uh, you know,
vetted quality scientific information out there that people can look
at and see. Okay. Should I be worried
about my my child or my family? So open
? And we knew going in that this was self
funded by the way we the group spent over a
quarter of a million dollars on this endeavor. Uh
, no, that really researcher has that kind of
money. So the structure in place, everything is
stacked against you. I mean, if a community
reaches out to you and asks for health. You
don't have money. You have limited lab resources.
But I have my research projects, and money is
scared. NSF want this project, And why should
I help? So our our incentives are so out
of place where there is no motive, there is
where we should be helping society. So I mean
, And while you said we're talking about open science
and people are getting on board, but I don't
think it's fast enough. There is the people of
the 20th century. Researchers who are sitting on these
high positions have a vested interest on this continuing,
uh, that, you know, they are in
this position because even if they produced scrap science,
they have an H index of 95. So they
mean they want the system to be in place.
And if you and I don't change it, this
will continue. I had dinner with this great national
academy, uh, scientists who got a job at
Berkeley because someone called him and said, Hey,
do you want to be a professor? And he
said, Yes. This was in the 19 fifties
when used to write when you need money for a
for a research project he would write like one pager
and he would have money. That's not the structure
. Now you write 15 pages for a research project
that you know will get funded. You know,
if it's brand new or it's exciting, it won't
get funded. So the point is, our structures
are culture, and academia is so misplaced that you're
right. You would not help or you would not
do anything open. Yeah, let me just add
a little bit because as I hear all of us
talking, for the most part, we're talking about
a product called article. What we should be talking
about and I think it gets to Henry's point is
rather than the final product. It's the briefings they
pay the data that you put out there. So
I think we need to move away from the product
of research, the journal article, etcetera and more
into the process of sharing information, which is not
just open. Well, it is open access,
but it's kind of like what our colleagues at U
V. A are doing. But it is really
rethinking how we do the scholarship and how we share
it, and the times when we share it that
is going to change the paradigm. And, Henry
, I'm hoping that when this paradigm shifts, we
don't just repeat what we're doing now reproduce that of
the past, but that we take a whole different
way of looking at how we, um, share
and we do our the process. And is there
something about open access that leads us to think that
it is inherently less our you know, the power
structure is different. Going to be different in an
open access. Well, um, I think it
can be I think it should be, in fact
, some of the things that you sent for class
I'm trying to remember which one had the, uh
the piece about you can interact with the data and
searching If you've got open access, you have all
of these journals. And it's not just cutting and
pasting and getting it. But open access allows for
me to sit there with 200 different pieces and do
some sorting and pulling the information together, which then
helps me. I can't read all those articles,
but I can go through and gather all of that
. That, to me, is part of what
open access is It's not just a product, it
is the process by which we gather additional information.
That's where I say, I think where, when
I think of it that way, I start to
think that it's an inevitable thing that it's going to
happen because the cash is out of the bag.
It's hard to go back once you start getting a
taste of what open access allows that access to data
, the ability. And when we see the immediate
results of big data and what kinds of advancements we're
having, it's hard to look back and say that
the old system is better. So but just to
comment again, I don't I don't see a contradiction
between sharing your data or sharing your Jupiter notebook or
any of that. It was the old system.
It could still happen. There is nothing that prevents
. I'm not advocating for it. I'm just saying
we're kind of confusing some things together here, Uh
, and again it seems to me like so look
, I mean human beings, you've got fear.
You've got agreed. You got survival instincts. You
put those things together. People are not going to
change. They're going to be pushing toward what they
are doing, you know, And it seems like
the system is already protecting itself by not having libraries
colluding or talking to each other. Right, Um
so maybe a competition in place is gonna He's going
to make people go to over the better system.
So the question I have is why? Why don't
universities, Because having their own journals and go for
that Well, we're trying to do that. We're
trying to do that, but it's, you know
, you're finding a big big when 60 or 40%
of the journals are owned by A by four publishing
companies. And they, as Brian was saying they
will sue at every instance they will. They're going
to the clinic is what they you know, Uh
, the out of my day and trying to pull
my gun. You know, that's that's their approach
to their journals. But we have some strings.
So, for example, you know, for example
, Virginia Tech, one of the top 10 in
engineering or in civil engineering. I'll talk about my
field, Um, so if if you have a
journal for civil engineering, you know it's respected,
it's you're going to have for genetic. You're going
to have to You're gonna have Berkeley. You're going
to have Mitt in that field, right? And
then some other colleges are going to be, uh
, maybe by some, uh, Virginia attack or
some other places. So it's not a matter of
suing. It's not colluding. It's not. It's
none of that. It's a competitor. That is
respectful. Everything. Yeah. Yeah. I mean
, I I get that. Yeah, that has
to start to be more instances of the of the
people say Okay, well, we're going to forget
to provide an alternative. We're going to stop.
We're going to agree to stop publishing each other.
Journals. You had a question? Yeah. Didn't
really have a question that I was just hearing multiple
times that open access and the system which is in
place right now are very comparable. And actually,
it's all about overcharging. Um, but I think
the very important part um, you shouldn't miss is
that it's much easier in the system right now to
overcharge because I thought it was like 2.5 million publications
and 25 billion revenue or something like that. So
that means for every publication you would have to charge
10,000 bucks or more to actually achieve the same ballot
like volume of money. And it's much easier to
, um, to charge a little more. Uh
, if it's like a a lot of people having
having their subscription to a journal to say, Hey
, you have to pay, like 500 bucks more
. But like thousands and thousands, people are actually
having having the subscription, then telling one person,
Hey, you have to now pay the Piper Bucks
. I charge 10,000 people. You have to pay
that because if I multiply 5000 times my 100 bucks
more or whatever, it's just a number a single
person could not pay anymore. And so you cannot
charge a single person as you could abroad abroad membership
of subscribers. And that's essential difference. And because
of that, you could never abuse the max system
as you can. The system, which is in
place right now. I remember one publisher I used
to work for There was a journal was the subscription
price was maybe 30,000 year or something, but it
made a profit of something like 3.5 million the publisher
, because they sold it so many times mhm going
back to what I said. Is there a way
that the back end and open access system, the
back end data the you know, all of the
information about the science itself and how it was done
? People's ability to use that is that Is there
a way that that could day the A. P
. C. S? Because even the University Journal
somebody's got to pay for or you've got to allocate
resources are among the groups in the university. So
in a sense, you you have always had the
same resources issue gougers. But you have resourcing issues
nonetheless. Is there a way I mean, alluded
to something you've been thinking about tickets to this morning
, Brian. Maybe it's too soon to talk about
how the kind of network effects among the global users
and how that may generate, uh, ways,
you know, money. But I'm not. I
don't want to have all the money. It is
the reverse of the problem. This gentleman talked about
where you have everybody paying a penny rather than the
individual who wants to publish the article having to pay
5000 if everybody in the world pays a Penny because
they all have access to the data which I gathered
currently under the close system, you've got to have
a subscription to get the data, and they're not
making innovative, maybe stale data. I mean,
is there a way that that works? Mhm.
It's the vacuum pace for the front end in this
global users environment. I think that the subscription model
, well, that's what they have now, obviously
. But there there's a big there's ways that big
data in other fields generates enough. Uh, you
know, it could be subscription or tiered. Decide
the pricing model. Everybody. We have a model
we're looking at, which potentially could do that if
it gets taken up to where grow open access and
so all our content is free. But we're considering
selling it to libraries, paradoxically, because libraries can't
accession content into their collections and pay for it.
So we're saying okay for a very small amount,
will sell you a collection will give you mark records
and special reports. You can measure its use,
but if every library pays a very small amount collectively
, that's quite a lot of money, which could
then be a suspension for the article processing charges.
Just create an out. I don't see. I
might I might miss something, but I think I
don't see where where the funding issue is before.
Right now, the libraries have millions to to subscribe
, and we have programs. Exactly. Exactly.
And we have programs where students who have papers get
sponsored for publishing. So if you wouldn't have to
subscribe to any of the big, big subscriptions anymore
, you could use all that money to sponsor students
. So I have to drop those journals pretty quickly
. I don't see where, really The funding issue
is because university allocate a lot for for students and
not knowledge exchange. Right now, it's just for
, like, buying all that. But it could
also just be for Hey, I sponsored my students
for publishing, um, so I don't see where
that there any number of ways that the money could
be redistributed. But who's gonna do the redistributing?
I mean, there's the instance of archive. So
I mentioned earlier archive pre print server is, But
Cornell has been have been paying for that. And
then they did an open call to institutions, saying
, Would you consider contributing because you all benefit from
this and a number of institutions said, Okay,
well, will$1000 in our lab, you know
,$5000 a year, so they were able to
keep it going on that basis. But that kind
of big sale approach to a scholarship, I don't
see how that can be. Extend it out without
some kind of coordination. High level coordination. You
just You can't keep a that system going on that
kind of sort of basis. I think on the
screen, I think it has always been from this
situation. Where do you copy the link of the
paper that you want? And then you go to
your library and you cannot access because your library is
not subscribing to the I think the field comes from
this maybe one year or more number of years when
we decided not to pay these subscriptions until we moved
to the dolphin access thing. And I've heard this
a lot from many people here in conversation that you
cannot handle. I'm talking back about this luxury of
having of how easy it is to copy the link
that you want to access where I come from.
My country Actually, it was actually very hard to
get access to this article. So you can You
may not think only about what we have here,
because your your research can be can be used and
cited and implemented in many different ways in some other
countries and places that don't have access to the throne
. Us. So talking about incentives, maybe some
incentives that we cannot actually find we don't see here
. But it's very important for some other people who
are letting some other place that is very important for
them. And you can think about it like if
you're having your Facebook post as like friends only versus
public. And you can count how many lights you
can get because your face, you're supposed to see
my brother like that. So this can just be
an example. Uh, we have some, uh
, we have been spoiled. How easy we can
access the articles and research in general. But if
we think about some people who don't have this luxury
, uh, it will be on itself. It
would be a UN incentive and without without any incentive
, I keep thinking about if a researcher doesn't believe
that the mission of research is to be disseminated for
free. So we have an issue that we need
to talk about. I mean, usually the open
access discussions go into the funding models and money issues
, which keeps us away from from the real issue
. Because if researchers, grad students and faculty,
you don't believe that this is what research is here
. Four. So we'll keep talking about money,
but we are. We are avoiding the main problem
that should be discussed. So this can be a
question, maybe more for the dean and faculty members
on the channel and with us as an aspiring faculty
member myself. So he wants to go back.
Can this be something that you bring up in your
interviews, something that you bring up in your team
? P dossier? Something that you say, You
know, it may appear that my publications are of
Lower Caliber or X y and Z four, our
field field specific. You know, the best journals
are X, Y and Z. These closed access
whatever. But I have a mission, and I
have I'm of this philosophy, and so if you
feel that my papers may are all of you know
you'll see the theme. They're all in this open
access journals category. But if you feel that they
may be inferior, bring them yourself. You can
you Can you say that having served on committees may
be yourselves? Would you feel that that would?
Because, I mean, this is something that's a
real concern. You know, The reason why I
asked The question is not because I'm like, you
know, you know, care all that. But
this is you have to fight, you know,
philosophically. And we talk about this all the time
being an advocate, you know, having a philosophy
versus the reality of the system and being an academic
, you know, you have these core beliefs as
a mentor and as an academic and as a scientist
and philosopher, and then what the reality is,
which is you need to get a job to put
food on the table. You have money in your
bank account. And if you don't get tenure,
if you don't get hired, um, then you
simply can't achieve these goals. And so this is
the question. Would you be so negative that negatively
? Okay, So Well, While people that are
faculty and others who were qualified to answer this.
Can I throw something else out? Alternatively, what
wouldn't it be cool if people who are writing really
fabulous research papers got accepted in the journals and then
said, You know, sort of in a viral
campaign My behavior was accepted, and I chose not
to publish with severe whoever because I'm going to open
access to what you're saying is I hit the bar
. I have that problem. I have the email
on your Facebook and then and then say, But
I'm going to open access. And then and then
and then that started to she grew up. The
problem, though, is those are individual battles.
The thing is, if you and I acknowledge there's
a problem. If university leadership acknowledges there is a
problem in every institution, only then can those discussions
be welcomed in those interviews. If the powers that
be do not see any problem with the problem,
nothing's gonna change. So I mean, I think
all of us need to have that attitude to it
research, and then, uh, develop a more
holistic profile when we go into these interviews of how
our article or work had an actual impact and was
not just in a high impact factor journal. Um
, unless the people at the top acknowledge the problem
. Uh, the young folk would not be able
to get in and justify a lot of these open
access and open endeavors being a question back here.
Uh huh. Well backwards. Um, so I
know when you submit a paper, you have to
do a statement like this. Work has not been
publishing another journal. Or you're not thinking about publishing
somewhere else. Doesn't that journal? If they step
your paper, have the right to publish it after
that, or you can retract. So they've already
spent the time sending it out for peer reviewed and
editor overview. Can you? Well, there's an
it's more of an ethical issue that you haven't signed
any contract, so you only sign the contract when
your paper is accepted and you agree to publish,
That's the contract. So you could in theory do
that. But I feel like it's important you get
your paper. And what if the somebody on the
board or somebody that was that's on the board of
the journal says Okay, well, that person work
out, make sure that they don't do the job
, that's possible. But you can imagine the kind
of blackballing that might go on that this will happen
with the language example. 100 people withdrew their articles
, but they were doing it on Mass and they
as a community. Can I say something back to
the question of, uh, interviews and what it
should be said? Uh, so that's that's why
instead of using the impact factor of the journals,
you need to go to these interviews prepared with some
other metrics, trying to make it more scientific.
So we have for most of them the open access
journals. They have this tool that can get you
to know how many people actually saw your article,
how many people not only cited, but how long
they even spent training your article, how many people
download the article, and even from from which areas
of the world. So you can know that which
areas are more impacted with your research. So going
to interviews not only saying that this is a good
journal and I'm doing good research, but these are
some metrics and they're actually evolving. There have been
many conversations about the metrics on how good your research
as versus just using an impact factor. And,
uh, and that's how you are well prepared for
this kind of questions. That's what I think.
I believe that some people are doing actually doing this
in their interviews as a great students, and they're
applying for jobs. So they are trying to make
clear in their city that this publication, you can
click this link and get more information about how it's
used and how it's being, uh, cited and
downloaded. So you can add an example from when
I was, uh, book publishing. I published
a book by an anthropologist who published his article in
one of the American Anthropological Association journals they have.
This one hasn't gone open access yet, but the
Triple A had on their website statistics on how often
these articles were downloaded and one of the articles that
he published that was the basis of the book and
then the most downloaded article in 2010 or whatever year
it was. And as a publisher, that was
like he's got a built in audience for this,
and it certainly made an impact on me and the
decision to review that manuscript kind about publishing the book
and then end up being a successful book so that
as we build these kind of the metrics that they're
going to be a more and more important part of
the decision making process, I give you my point
of view. I think you can say that.
But whether you get 10 year after that or not
, that's a different story. When I was your
job to continue. So when I was going through
tenure, we have, uh, annual reviews.
And every time I get, you know, comments
back saying that you should be publishing in that journal
, not in this journal. And I would say
, But my research is actually in this area,
not in that area, but so that goes on
. I think at the end of the day,
it's a matter of portfolio. And is this the
same group of people that would be reviewing you for
tenure? Yeah, that's the same. Yeah,
uh, it's a matter of portfolio, and you
you should have a balanced portfolio just like everything else
. All the metrics is great, but I have
a paper that has over 100 citations, and that
is nothing you know, if you look at the
our vice president for research, for example, she
has paper that has, like, 1000 citations.
But when I looked at what metrics I found only
one guy to eating about one of my neighbors one
time if I was counting on that for 10 years
. But is it a bad thing now? It's
a good thing. So you got to balance your
your portfolio when you when you're trying to get a
job to go. And that's the reality department.
Um, I can answer your questions another time,
but what I am sitting here thinking is that it
is in order to make change, the system has
to change and the individuals have to, so you
have to do it and the system has to change
, and that's the way we will affect change.
And so it's not. And I know it's scarier
for an individual to stand up. I get that
I basically have based my life on on that standing
up, Uh, but then the system has to
change, so we have to be brave on all
of those fronts. And so it's not just the
new folks. The younger ones coming in. It's
the those of us who have been around who have
to be willing to go out and they change textbooks
and we can do it. So I have a
question. I'm a little disheartening listening all these things
like Dinosaur, and that's never going to change.
And everybody has to change. To retire. We
still have to retire. So aside from as a
graduate student publishing an open access journals, what are
some concrete, actionable items that we can take away
tonight to be like Maybe we can help us report
labor, But that looks like educating faculty, letting
them know What does it mean to publish an open
that situation? Well, I just wonder what what
are the things we can do here. At an
intense, higher institutional of other things is the question
of and open access policy can that be approached even
if there's an opt out for special cases? Could
we? Is that something we could push? The
other thing is, we've got I've mentioned, you
know, in my comments earlier, beyond boundaries,
are they thinking about open access issues that these ethical
issues in those, um, how they're conceived,
they have how the Beyond Boundaries initiative is being conceived
. If it isn't baked into the to the you
know the whole approach from the beginning, it's hard
to think that it's going to get added on later
. Are there ways to to start that conversation?
I guess so. Here at this institution can we
can we actually begin initiatives that will that will change
the conversation So I can I can say that from
the system point of view, I don't believe in
adding constraints to improve the system performance. I think
, uh, you know, constraints are never gonna
make things more optimistic than just constraints. But if
you have add on values, that would be the
way to go. I think when I heard from
Philip the first time that there are some systems that
the library has to you know, Putin maybe draft
versions of our manuscript so that people can have access
to that was very excited and I wanted to know
more about that and and do more of that.
So I think having this kind of adult values that
faculty can can use to publish their work or make
it more available, they will opt in automatically without
, but not by forcing them, not by making
it and institutions, even though other institutions have done
. I think it will just be some added pressure
to a group of folks who already are pressure.
I don't I don't know if anything good is going
to come out of the University of Lee. Asian
Belgium is the most extreme one where they say they
won't even look at any publication for your promotion discussions
unless it's with access, for example, so that
they've gone that far and they have something like 95%
compliance. The question of whether you want to do
that, the policy as something that the faculty would
say, We want this not imposed on the faculty
. I don't think that's good, But having the
faculty sick, Yeah, we need to make some
changes, and this is how this is. These
are the rules by which we want to govern ourselves
. You always have to centers, but I don't
think having an externally imposed policies helpful. I wanted
to also stay the in answer to your question finding
out what journals are published here, who's on the
editorial boards? Do they know that these are issues
. Can they? Are they willing to engage with
the rest of their boards, too? Talk about
their options and what the impact of their decisions is
right now and to look at some smaller options.
I'd love to see you because I think there's a
lot of we have top notch people, as you
mentioned in in engineering and elsewhere, and we obviously
have some journals being run out of lots of editorial
board members. And let's talk to and I think
it's really important going back to your question to Mohammed
said, Educate the faculty is what he said.
I would, um, add to that educate ourselves
to really understand what open access is, Um,
and something that I haven't seen recently or what,
uh, dispelling the myths of open access because we
have a lot of misconceptions. You say open access
immediately. People think not quality. And so I
think if we were to and maybe we can do
this more in class or in a blog or something
. But talk about what are those myths getting the
truth of open access out and debunking those and beginning
the conversation. That's where I think it starts and
then we take on. We're not going to change
genuine promotion tomorrow as much as I would have liked
it yesterday. But I think it is starting with
debunking the myths. Is there something on the myths
of open access? Yeah, there's quite a lot
of resources. Yeah, then we need to get
that out and start with that conversation and some of
the videos. The PhD comic one I thought was
excellent. And that should be broadcast. Why so
, yeah, I will try to come up with
something on the myths later, and I'll circulate it
so that you have for the class. Well,
on that note, I think unless there any,
um, specific questions, I think, Well,
it's just that question because we usually talk about the
rule of grad students in talking to faculty and stuff
. So is there any of you had the advisor
or remember asking you to publish a journal, or
does it always go from the way the other way
? Is it all of the grad student talking to
the faculty about open access? Is there any situation
where your advisor or your a mentor asks you to
consider open access Journal for publishing the work. Okay
, you have questions. See, Muhammad, you
will work with you. So just just a cheap
plug for some stuff that we have been doing.
The idea of open access again, not necessarily in
contradiction with applications and whether it's in the standard way
or the new way. You know, we have
been developing games that help people learn subjects and transportation
, and we know we make those free on our
website for anyone to download and play with them.
And it's not even a matter of publishing them,
publishing them. So they are. They're so faculty
members do consider the outreach activities and the value of
the land grant institutions and all of that. But
that's not to be mistaken on whether we need to
publish in which way. Excuse me. I remember
concern here. Yeah, the open access system.
Yeah, talk about easy access to information and that
you can get it without any distinction. But then
people who are defending the strictest system that we're talking
about the money he's attacking the work process I am
seeing a couple of years finding that the cost of
private market investment disclosed those answers. System so we
might have you putting money as a non stop.
This is left to the next. You look ridiculous
that when you open system open open. It is
a cheap I think that you're going for So I
think this thing also need to be met together.
Managed to be used. The parts that are involved
in the process of burning should be used. They
are They are a means of to divert attention of
people from defend. As far as so one should
not be attached to these people. Stable, Closed
after system. Yeah, I don't know. I
don't mind in accordance. Yeah, I agree.
I have to wonder days, I think. All
right. Well, thank you all for for coming
. Give our panel way. If you'd like to
be on the email list for open events or if
you prefer in the line of credit on the rail
and we have we have remember flyers here for the
other events during the week. You feel free to
take lunch. Thanks again, everyone. I'll see
you next week.