This article is adapted from my newsletter: http://www.insidepublicaccess.com/
October 12, 2018
Plan S Architect stonewalls
interview
By David Wojick, Ph.D.
Synopsis: OA guru
Richard Poynder asks Plan S boss Robert-Jan Smits some hard questions and
doesn't get many answers.
Poynder interviews Smits here.
Robert-Jan Smits is the Open Access Envoy of the European Commission and
previous Director-General for Research and Innovation at the EU. He is one of
the architects of, and a principal spokesperson for, Plan S,
The questions are often detailed and probing, while the
answers tend to be political and therefore superficial, but viewed in that
light they can still be illuminating. Moreover, Poynder's explanations of the
various issues are very good and worth reading all by themselves. Below is a
quick look at some of the key points, in order of occurrence in the interview,
not in importance.
When asked about the tight Jan 1, 2020 start date, Smits
says this -- "Plan S cannot and will
not override contracts which are in place before 1/1/20 and of course, we are
willing to respect short-term transitional arrangements and on-going
discussions on such arrangements."
Given that Plan S will be implemented via research contracts
issued by the funding agencies in Coalition S, if it actually begins with
contracts issued after January 1, then the papers involved will not appear
until some time after, a long time after in many cases.
Just who "we" is, that will negotiate short term
arrangements, is a very interesting question. Is this Coalition S or the
individual funding agencies? As we said last issue, everything actually happens
at the agency level, but there seems to be no indication of this at this point
in the process. There may be serious legal issues here.
When Poynder mentions that publisher resistance is likely,
Smits says this -- "We expect
publishers to come forward with offerings which comply with the principles outlined
in Plan S."
As we have said from the beginning, when it comes to the
major publishers this expectation may be completely unrealistic. They can do
perfectly well without the Plan S papers. But they may well start some new OA
journals, closely aligned with their most prestigious subscription journals, to
take the Plan S money.
Smits ducks the academic freedom issue, which Poynder puts
very well. Here is the full exchange:
"RP: Another
concern that has been raised is that Plan S is contrary to long-standing
principles of academic freedom. For instance, since Plan S says that hybrid OA
is not compliant with its principles European researchers will be banned from
publishing in a great many journals that they currently publish in and love. As
Nature put it, “as written, Plan S would bar researchers from publishing in 85%
of journals, including influential titles such as Nature and Science.” This
concern about academic freedom might seem a genuine grievance in light of a
1997 UNESCO document that states, “higher-education teaching personnel should
be free to publish the results of research and scholarship in books, journals
and databases of their own choice”."
"R-J S: Strong
mandates have been in place from many funders in different countries for many
years so the principle of funder mandates in the research system is
well-established. See what Peter Suber writes about this. It is for publishers
to provide Plan S-compliant routes to publication in their journals so that
researchers can choose where to publish when accepting funding from those who
sign Plan S."
That funders have the power to dictate where papers can and
cannot be published is not the issue. If authors have been free to publish
where they choose, and that choice is now restricted, then this is clearly a
loss of freedom. There is, however, the question whether it is a loss of
"academic freedom," as that term may have a narrow technical meaning.
Smits also ducks the issue of the limited scope of the
boycott mandated by Plan S, including the possible role of the US (which would
fall under the Public Access Program):
"RP: (snip) I understand you also hope to get the US to
buy into the Plan, which would seem to be an even greater challenge since the
US has historically preferred green OA and it does not have the same
centralised system as Europe. As Roger Schonfeld has put it, “[T]he higher
education sector in most of North America is very different from Europe, in one
key element: North America is as decentralized as Europe is, at a national level,
centrally coordinated.” The challenge here surely is that Plan S can only
achieve its objectives if the whole world signs up to it, or at least all those
countries with large research budgets? Unless they do, for instance, Europe
will find it is having to pay for gold OA plus continue to pay subscriptions in
order to access the research produced in countries that do not sign up. Would
you agree? How hopeful are you that you will manage to sign up a sufficient
number of countries to make Plan S workable?"
"R-J S: Why do
you keep on saying that Plan S is about Gold Open Access? Do read the 10
principles again and you will notice that the plan does not use Gold or Green
terminology. The plan welcomes self-archiving and repositories. I am confident that Plan S is workable."
(Emphasis added.)
The short emphasized statement is Smits' entire answer. The
part about Plan S not mandating gold OA is something of a red herring. The
major publisher's present terms for green OA do not comply with Plan S and it
is hard to see the publishers changing that.
Poynder also raises the huge issue of the potentially
adverse impact of Plan S on the global South:
"RP: On the other
hand, if Plan S does succeed it will further marginalise and disadvantage those
in the global South. If all the world’s subscription journals flipped to gold
OA, for instance, where today researchers in the global South are not able to
afford to access the world’s research, in future they would be unable to afford
to publish their own research – which might seem a worse position to be in.
Does Plan S have a solution to this problem? Will it provide money to enable
those in the global South to publish their research? I am not aware that this
issue is discussed in the various Plan S documents."
"R-J S: Getting
rid of paywalls will help researchers in the global South to access publicly
funded research without charge. This huge advantage cannot be denied. Furthermore, there are many routes to
publishing research available to all countries including no-embargo open
access." (Emphasis added.)
Smits' single sentence response (emphasized) in no way
addresses Poynder's core question. It is virtually meaningless.
So all things considered this interview raises a lot of good
questions but provides few good answers. This is not Smits fault, because these
answers do not yet exist. They may never exist, because the problems Poynder
points out may be irresolvable.
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