Many of you will already have read of Science Magazine’s account of Sci-Hub, the “pirate” site for scholarly publications. “Science” is often seen as one to the “top three” outlets, along with Nature and Cell. Here’s the original:
http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/04/whos-downloading-pirated-papers-everyone
And here’s a typical commentary which applauds the research in the article but criticizes the accompanying editorial showing that Science has an ethically flawed business model.
This (and following) blog is one of the most important I have written, and I shall choose words carefully. I shall include facts, opinions, and what I intend to do and not do, and why. I am always open to criticism and try to be polite and constructive. My message is already spreading to more than one posting. This one sets the scene.
This blog is nearly 10 years old. I’d like to believe that I have tried to help make scholarly publishing fit for the 21st Century (C21). I’ve seen Tim Berners-Lee’s vision of the semantic web for scholarship – I was there in CERN in 1994 – and it made sense then and even more so now. I (“I” includes many collaborators, but I use”I” to make it clear that the views here are mine and mine alone. Special Thanks to Henry Rzepa, my wonderful ex-group in Cambridge, Open Knowledge, ContentMine, Blue Obelisk, Crystallography Open Data Base (COD), librarians in Cambridge and others. Please accept this pronoun).
I write and use Computer Programs.
- I write programs and deposit them in Github/Apache/OuterCurve/BitBucket, etc.. People use them, build on them and acknowledge me. I’ll use “Github” as a generic pointer.
- Others write programs and reposit in Github. I use them and build on them and I acknowledge them.
- I offer constructive criticism.
- I ask questions on Stackoverflow and I also answer them.
- I’ve set up the Blue Obelisk where chemists can commit programs, make them interoperable.
This represents the pinnacle of what is possible in C21, with very modest/no funding and a collaborative intent. It works. It makes my heart soar. It’s wonderful. I’m proud to be a small part of it. Everyone wins.
There’s a similar ethos in Wiki/pedia/media/data. (“Wikipedia”). Everyone can be a Wikipedian – all you need is to do it.
- I have used Wikipedia for enhancing my knowledge and have contributed my knowledge to it.
- I have used systems built by Wikipedians and I have contributed systems for use.
- I have been to Wikipedia meetings, worked with the Wikipedians.
- I promote Wikipedia.
I have been on the Advisory Board of Open Knowledge Foundation since it started. I have used OKF resources. I have contributed to them.
And so on… groups that I use and would contribute to if I had the time
- Open Streetmap
- Geograph
- Open Corporates
- MySociety
- Mozilla
- …
Most of these are cash-starved, and find innovative ways to generate enough income to make their primary products free and Open. (“Open” == “Free to use, free to re-use, free to re-distribute”, “Free as in speech”, “Free as in liberty”).
The C21 makes the sharing knowledge communities possible. It’s very very wonderful. If you don’t understand what I am saying then maybe you have to try it. Contribute to Wikipedia, add a photo to Geograph, “Write to Them” to your MEPs, FOI with “What do They Know”.
And you can start to be a C21 citizen at a very early age. The knowledge century is a wonderful place to live.
BUT…
Sadly …
Scholarly publishing in the 21st Century (C21) is completely broken
It’s a 20 Billion USD industry.
That’s
$20,000,000,000
of citizens’ money
It’s probably 1000 times more money than the average project mentioned above. Maybe even more.
So how is it broken? (If you know and love Github or Stackoverflow use them as a comparison of the wonderful against the broken). I am not going to apportion blame to publishers, libraries, authors, funders. They have all, wittingly or unwittingly contributed to one of the most dysfunctional knowledge systems on the planet.
And it matters. It’s not just money. It’s:
- Human lives. I coined the phrase “Closed Access Means People Die”. I have been attacked for it. If it makes you feel more comfortable “Open Knowledge saves lives”.
- The planet. To work out what is going to happen from anthropogenic (“human-made”) change of all sorts we need as much knowledge as possible. We are being deprived of it.
- Citizens. It’s an unacceptably divisive system. Only 1% of the UK population (those in universities) are involved. Most of those are passive. They get told what to do. Citizens – doctors, teachers, politicians, businesses, taxi-drivers are excluded. Yes! Until taxi-drivers have a right to be involved in scholarship we are a divisive society.
- Values. It’s distorting values. Ask a librarian/researcher/administrator why scientific publications should be free to everyone and you’ll probably get:
1. “The Funders require it”.
2. “You’ll get more citations if you publish Open Access”.
The moral and ethical imperative (“we have a responsibility to make knowledge free to everyone”) often isn’t mentioned.
- Community. For me “Open” is not primarily about money, it’s about working together, and being transparent.
… and in detail …
- It’s criminally expensive. Publishers receive ca $5000 for each paper. It’s largely public or personal (e.g. student fees) money. It actually costs around $300 (administration: reviewers don’t get paid, authors don’t get paid). Maximum. Many people publish for $0 and give their time and marginal resources. That money could be used for research, could be used for teaching. The amounts spent on journal subscriptions in the UK (ca $1billion/year is similar to the cost of postgraduate education).
- It’s criminally inefficient. Much of the work is carried out by humans when C21 systems could do the same for 5% of the cost. Stackoverflow manages 10 million questions.
- It’s criminally slow. Some papers take years to appear. Postings to repositories take fractions of a second. The great Physics/Maths site arxiv can do this. But many publishers take years to publish a paper.
- It’s elitist and probably corrupt. It stresses “top” journals. I am all for public competition and the best winning, but this isn’t that. It favours “top” institutions (I heard of one large research org that negotiates with a “top” publisher on how many papers they are allowed per year – before the work is done).
- It destroys the real purpose of publication. I believe that science requires that you tell the world (not an elite) – fully (not in summary):
- What you did
- Who did it
- Why you did it
- How you did it (verification and re-use)
- When you did it
- Where you did it
- what you discovered (or didn’t discover)
And invite the world to confirm/refute/help/criticize continually and continuously. Some competition is valuable. But competition has now become an end in itself and is destroying the other values.
I am involved in trying to bring these ideas into scholarly publishing. I have very largely been unsuccessful, when measured against the other Open activities where I have ben able to help create the C21 knowledge community.
- I’ve developed semantics for chemistry (Chemical Markup Language, CML). Chemists, chemical publishers, universities ignore this.
- I’ve developed open data bases (CrystalEye/COD). Publishers and universities ignore these.
- I’ve prototyped semantic publication . Ignored.
- I’ve pushed for a fully Open community of scientific scholarship. The Blue Obelisk. Ignored.
- We’ve developed new tools for University Libraries. (Open Bibliography and BibJSON). Ignored.
- I’ve campaigned for reform of Copyright. Ignored by academia and publishers
- I’ve developed tools for using machines to help everyone read the scholarly literature. Active opposition.
Everyone blames everyone else. Some suffer, some get super-rich. Everyone is losing out.
It must change. Completely. If not from within, then from without.
Sci-hub is one of the external factors that could change scholarly publishing.
Completely.