OWF14 - Plenary Session : Louis-David Benyayer, Président, Without Model
OWF14 - Plenary Session : Marie Farge, Research director, Ecole Normale Supérieure
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Marie Farge LMDCNRS, Ecole Normale Supérieure, Paris Paris, October 30 th 2014 The Future of Scien2fic Publishing
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The general scheme is the following: we scientists write scientific papers and peer-review them without being specifically paid for that, since it is an essential part of our academic duty already covered by our salary. After our papers have been checked, improved and accepted by our peers, publishers are in charge of their publication. To do so they require we transfer our copyright to them for free, and, if we refuse, our papers are not published. Then they sell them, at the price they fix, to our research institutions, with subscription contracts kept secret since they own the intellectual property rights. This secretive process reaps massive profits for the publishers. Last year the largest one, Elsevier, made 39% profit, and it keeps increasing by more than 3% each year. Elsevier revenue is more than the budget of CNRS, the largest research institution in Europe and the first in the world for the number of published peer-reviewed papers (cf. Scimago institutions rankings 2013). Moreover, publishers are also controlling bibliometry that is very often used to evaluate research, with a considerable impact on our careers. This system is prevalent worldwide, and all research institutions, including those belonging to industry, suffer from this oligopolistic situation. We scientists need to recover the control and ownership of our results in order to make them available and usable to anyone and to any institution, for the sake of the advancement of knowledge. Which model do we propose? First, journals should be owned by their editorial boards in charge of the peer-review. Second, authors should keep their copyright, and make their papers available to anyone under a Creative Commons CC-BY license. Third, funding agencies should no longer pay subscriptions and article processing charges directly to publishers. They should instead finance open access publishing platforms, developed with open source software, that would offer all needed services for editing and publishing a large number of journals, selected for the quality of their peer-reviewing. In this framework publishers would keep their business going as service providers to the publishing platforms, but no more as content owners of our journals, of our papers and of the data they contain, as it is the case today. Such open access publishing platforms already exist (e.g., scielo.org [scielo.org] in Brazil or revues.org [revues.org] in France), but the key effort should go to their generalization. We need to develop and promote new commons of scientific information, publicly owned and freely used by researchers, companies and citizens. This should be the path to follow for a long-term investment by the European Commission.
Transcript of OWF14 - Plenary Session : Marie Farge, Research director, Ecole Normale Supérieure
Marie Farge
LMD-‐CNRS, Ecole Normale Supérieure, Paris
Paris, October 30th 2014
The Future of Scien2fic Publishing
What is scientific publishing?
Scien'fic research is a collabora've ac'vity, in both space and 'me, that advances through
discussions, seminars, conferences and peer-‐reviewed ar'cles
Publishing means making scien'fic results
publicly available (1)
€
⇒This guarantees
valida'on, reproduc'on, transmission and conserva'on of scien'fic results for the advancement of knowledge
(1) To whom? How? Who pays?
To whom are articles available ?
Only to scien'sts working in ins'tu'ons and countries rich enough to afford the very costly subscrip'ons
and ar'cle processing charges imposed by publishers but
scien'sts in developing countries, companies, highschool teachers and all ci'zens who finance public research
cannot access scien'fic papers
Principle of intellectual commons : Ideas are not of the same nature as material objects.
Ideas are only fruiEul if they are exchanged, discussed, cri'cised, improved, reproduced and explained.
When you share your ideas you don’t lose them. Ideas are not merchandise but intellectual commons !
hBp://www.worldmapper.org/
hBp://www.scimagoir.com/
Most prolific publication of scientific papers
How are peer-reviewed articles produced ?
Scien'sts write papers, prepare them in final format,
referee papers and are editors of scien'fic journals
this is paid by taxpayers
Librarians negociate subscrip'on contracts, pay them, control access to the journals
and curate the collec'ons
ALer papers have been accepted by referees and editors,
publishers put them online, insure their visibility,
occasionally print them and sell them
L’Obs Dessins
Scientists give their copyright for free!
Publishers require scien'sts to give them
their copyright for free
Publishers own the intellectual property, of the text, figures and data contained in the papers (for more than 100 years), they are thus able to
sell ar'cles at the prices and condi'ons they set, with confiden'al contracts
€
⇒
Publishers also own scien'fic journals, plus all deriva've products, such as databases, plus the bibliometric sta's'cs used to evaluate
research projects and scien'sts’ careers 30-‐40% profit !
L’Obs Dessins
Three publishers control publishing Three transna'onal commercial corpora'ons dominate market :
Reed-‐Elsevier, Springer-‐Kluwer and Wiley-‐Blackwell
7.6 Billions € Reed-‐Elsevier revenue in 2013
hBp://www.reedelsevier.com
2.5 Billions € CNRS budget in 2012 hBp://www.dgdr.cnrs.fr
Financial results of Reed-‐Elsevier for peer-‐reviewed journals in 2013 Revenue: 2.7 Billions € Profit: 0.8 Billions € Profit margin: 39% (+6% compared to 2012)
>>
Those publishers impose their model for Open Access journals, where authors should pay them costly ar'cle processing charges
How could scientists take back control?
Journals should be owned by their editorial board in charge of the peer-‐reviewing, while
editors and referees will con'nue to do this for free
Authors should keep their copyright and make their papers available in open access under a Crea've Commons licenses CC-‐BY
Funding agencies should no longer pay, subscrip'ons and ar'cle processing charges, directly to publishers
as long as market is oligolis'c with confiden'ality clauses
1
2
3
Scientists need publishing platforms
Funding agencies should provide to the scien'fic community publishing plaEorms, developed in open source soLware,
for edi'ng and publishing peer-‐reviewed journals with the help of librarians and publishers as subcontractors
Funding agencies would thus control the quality of peer-‐reviewing, by selec'ng the journals having good prac'ces and reputable editors
1
2 Publishing plaEorms would offer to anyone
freely usable scien'fic papers, in open access under CC-‐BY licenses,
without authors having to pay to publish
3
Publishing platforms already exist
Created in 1999 it publishes 448 journals
in Open Access financed by
public agencies: CNRS, EHESS, BSN, Aix-‐Marseille and
Avignon universi'es
Created in 1999 it publishes
1661 journals in Open Access financed by
public agencies: FAPESP, CNPq,
BIREME and Spain
+
+
In conclusion
Scien=fic publishing today :
Investments for wri'ng and peer-‐reviewing scien'fic papers are public,
but ownership of scien'fic journals and profits from subscrip'ons are private
Scien=fic publishing tomorrow :
Scien'fic papers will be available for free in open access, and their content usable, to anyone and to any ins'tu'on,
for the sake of the advancement of knowledge
Publishers should become compe'ng service providers to the publicly funded and publicly owned publishing plaEorms,
but no longer intellectual content owners
€
⇒
hBp://wavelets.ens.fr
For more information
hBp://wavelets.ens.fr/OAC_ENS_2014
hBp://wavelets.ens.fr/BOYCOTT_ELSEVIER
Click on Publica=ons
Paper n°312 : Avis sur les relaSons entre les chercheurs et les maisons d'édiSon scienSfique, Comité d'Ethique du CNRS, 2011
Paper n° 307 : Oh! Une idée, c’est si rare! WissenschaLskolleg zu Berlin, 2011
2nd Open Access Colloquium, ENS Paris, 2-‐3 July 2014
Ar'cles, declara'ons, blogs, conferences, videos, interviews, mails related to the movement The Cost of Knowledge that launched
a boycol of Elsevier in 2012 followed by 14830 scien'sts worldwide
