Saturday, March 9, 2019

Plan S end game

(This post is taken from a recent edition of my subscription newsletter Inside Public Access)

By David Wojick, Ph.D.

Synopsis: Now that the Plan S comment period is over and the comments made public, we can see that there is a raging debate over whether journals ought to comply or not. So it is time to consider the possible end games, which range from a lot of journals complying, to just a bunch, to almost none. The differences are pretty stark.


Everything depends on how many journals choose to comply, which in turn may well depend on how many articles fall under Plan S. At this point China and India look like the wild cards in the game.

The Twitter-verse indicates that India is considering signing on to Plan S. If true, this would be an important development. However, the Indian Science Adviser's tweets seem confused in several ways, so perhaps not to be taken too seriously. It sounds like he does not know what he is talking about, nor is this in any way official.

Note that under Plan S in its present form, middle income countries like India (and China) get an unspecified discount on all APCs. We do not know if this is 10%, 50% or 90% at this point. But a country does not have to join the S Coalition to get the discount. In any case if the discount is large it might prevent a lot of journals from flipping to Plan S compliance.

Financial disclosure is also one of the most onerous rules. It is also the funniest, because what is required -- direct costs, indirect costs and surplus -- are grant accounting terms, not business accounting. There is no such thing as indirect costs to a business.

But if India and China actually implement Plan S that is a lot of papers, perhaps bringing Plan S articles to 30% of the total submitted globally, which Smits is reported to be predicting.

The abstract question for a journal is this: What fraction of submissions has to be precluded by Plan S to make it a good decision to comply? I pointed out early on that if you have an 80% rejection rate that fraction can be large before damage occurs. On the other hand, journals do not want to write off large numbers of authors as unpublishable. It is a hard choice.

Assuming that something more than a few journals do make the leap, but many do not, we get a rather strange world in which Plan S authors can only publish in a specific subset of journals. This may be the most likely outcome, but it seems to be little discussed. The impact on the Plan S authors is probably adverse, especially if the top journals choose not to comply.

Another outcome that is quite possible is that relatively few journals choose to comply. That will be really bad for the Plan S authors, until the funders withdraw their Plan S rules, which could take a long time. A debacle in slow motion, as it were.

The worst (or best) case is where very few to no journals choose to comply. To my knowledge none are presently in compliance. What are the Plan S authors to do? This would call for emergency action by the funders, but most are government agencies so this might be difficult.

The spread of possible outcomes is very large at this point. Welcome to limbo.

A fascinating game indeed.

Two notices to notice

Two groups are now actively working to advise journals on transitioning, one to OA in general the other specifically to Plan S OA.

Here is the Plan S specific notice:

Helping learned societies transition to Open Access and explore Plan S-compliant business models

Wellcome, in partnership with UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) and the Association of Learned & Professional Society Publishers (ALPSP), have engaged Information Power to explore a range of potential strategies and business models through which learned societies can transition to Open Access and adapt and thrive under Plan S. The project is called Society Publishers Accelerating Open Access and Plan S (SPA-OPS).

Plan S
, developed by the European Commission in partnership with Science Europe, seeks to move to a world where all research findings are made Open Access (OA). 

As the number of researchers covered by Plan S-compliant funding increases it will, in time, put pressure on the business models of many learned societies, which rely on hybrid journal publishing not only to cover their publishing costs, but to generate revenue for other important activities they undertake such as hosting meetings/conferences and awarding fellowships and other grants.

Robert Kiley, Head of Open Research at Wellcome said, Wellcome and UKRI recognise the value learned societies play in supporting researchers and contributing to a vibrant research ecosystem. We are keen for them to be successful in transition to OA in line with Plan S.  We are delighted to partner with ALPSP to explore via the team at Information Power a diverse array of potential strategies and business models through which learned societies can adapt and thrive to this changing landscape.

The team including Alicia Wise, Lorraine Estelle, and Hazel Woodward at Information Power plus additional expert Yvonne Campfens will document and develop a range of transition approaches and business models for Learned Society publishers to consider.  These will be developed in dialogue with Society publishers, libraries and consortia, funders, Society members, and Society publishing partners. Pilots with two Society publishers will bring some of the approaches and models to life.  The final report will be published in July 2019, and all materials will be available under a CC-BY licence.

About Wellcome Trust:
Wellcome exists to improve health by helping great ideas to thrive. We support researchers, we take on big health challenges, we campaign for better science, and we help everyone get involved with science and health research. We are a politically and financially independent foundation.  https://wellcome.ac.uk/

About UKRI
UK Research and Innovation is a new body which works in partnership with universities, research organisations, businesses, charities, and government to create the best possible environment for research and innovation to flourish. Operating across the whole of the UK with a combined budget of more than £6 billion, UKRI brings together the seven Research Councils, Innovate UK and Research England. We work with our many partners to benefit everyone through knowledge, talent and ideas. https://www.ukri.org/

About ALPSP
The Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers (ALPSP) is an international membership trade body that supports and represents not-for-profit organizations and institutions that publish scholarly and professional content.  With over 300 members in 30 countries, membership also includes those that work with these publishers. Our mission is to connect, inform, develop and represent the international scholarly and professional publishing community. https://www.alpsp.org/about-alpsp

About Information Power:
Information Power Ltd has provided consultancy services in the research information space since 1985. The team works with funders, libraries, consortia, publishers, agents, vendors, and universities to advance learning, research, and scholarly communication. http://www.informationpower.co.uk/



Here is the more general one, from the ever active University of California:

On behalf of the University of California systemwide Office of Scholarly Communication, I am writing to share a new toolkit to help journals (& librarians or professionals who support them) interested in transitioning their publications to open access.

As explained on our blog post, (https://osc.universityofcalifornia.edu/2019/02/transitioning-journals-to-open-access-guidance-from-and-for-the-field/), we have just released two resources:

Guide to Transitioning Journals to Open Access Publishing. This guide is designed to help stakeholders understand basics about journal ownership, operations, and funding models, and to begin gathering important information necessary for OA publishing decision-making.

Checklist for Consultations About Transitioning Journals to OA
This checklist is for libraries and institutions to help facilitate consultations & conversations about journal operations, finances, and strategies so that journal boards and editors can come away from the conversation with a clearer understanding of how to proceed with an OA transition.

We hope these resources are of use, and we'll continue to add more. Please contact OSC@ucop.edu with any questions.

Best,
Rachael (on behalf of the whole OSC team)
-
Rachael G. Samberg, J.D., MLIS
Scholarly Communication Officer
University of California, Berkeley
438 Doe Library
Berkeley, CA  94720-6000

rsamberg@berkeley.edu
Ph. 510.664.5095 [N.B. new number]



Friday, January 4, 2019

Plan S does not exist

This article is based on the December 27 issue of Inside Public Access, which includes Inside Plan S.


December 27, 2018

Plan S does not exist

By David Wojick, Ph.D.
(davidwojick@insidepublicaccess.com)

Synopsis: Absent the APC cap, Plan S is decisively incomplete.

In a very real sense Plan S does not exist, because one of its most central features has yet to be stated. This is the amount or form of the cap on APCs. I say "form" because it is entirely possible that the cap will be complex. For example, given the way the discussion is going, it might be different for society journals and commercial ones. Or it may be larger for smaller publishers, etc. It is, after all, clear that the Plan S people are trying to design a new publishing system. The APC cap is a good tool to tinker with.

The key point is that the APC cap is probably the biggest single factor that publishers need in order to decide whether or not to try to comply with Plan S. Thus the publishers and journals are all in limbo until this factor is specified. Given that the Plan S people say they are going to do a study on this first, it might be a long time coming.

But the supposed 2020 compliance deadline is approaching fast. So what we have at this point is a huge mess.

The tipping point for me was a recent article, innocently titled "Thoughts on Plan S implementation guidelines" by Tony Ross-Hellauer (R-H)

R-H argues that some of the implementation guidelines for repositories are so expensive that they might cause some repositories to choose not to comply, basically opting out of Plan S. Well the same is certainly true for journals, especially given the very limited membership of funders. They are presently estimated to generate less than 4% of all journal articles, so most journals can probably do without them.

Angela Cochran's fine piece in The Scholarly Kitchen -- "Plan S: A Mandate for Gold OA with Lots of Strings Attached" -- details many of the expensive requirements that flow from the guidelines. But the cap on APCs could be by far the greatest cost. It makes an enormous difference whether the cap is, say, $1000 or $3000. Given the apparent mindset of the Plan S people it might even be as low as $500 and it certainly will not be as high as the $5000 some leading journals say they need.

In fact the two types of Plan S costs are additive. Adding expensive features while cutting income might easily make compliance financially unsustainable for most journals. That the Plan S architects are either indifferent to this outcome, or somehow unaware of it, seems clear.

R-H, who is a prominent member of this radical wing of the OA movement, actually takes it a step further. He proposes that APCs be voluntary! That is, authors can choose to pay the full amount, or less, or even nothing. That a ten billion dollar a year industry, including many non-profits, can not reliably operate this way is apparently irrelevant.

Unfortunately this is the kind of anti-business thinking that seems to dominate Plan S. It is actually rather perverse to introduce a massively disruptive plan while withholding the central feature determining its viability. All of the discussion of its details that is presently going on may in fact be pointless if the APC cap is set too low, which almost seems likely.

Yet Plan S is calling for comments. It is hard to comment on a proposal when the cost is unknown. I attribute this folly to the arrogance of funders, who are used to having absolute power over researchers. They have no such power over the journals.

In fact at this point I have to say that Plan S is -- as the saying goes -- programmed to fail. The extent to which this is true will have to wait until the APC capping system is announced, presumably some time in 2019. I am not optimistic that Plan S will be viable.

In the meantime we, just like the journals, are all in limbo because there simply is no complete Plan S to evaluate. There must be (1) a proposal and (2) a price, but Plan S has no price at this point.

Half a plan is not a plan.

Interesting times lie ahead. Stay tuned.

David


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