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A Society Publisher's view of Plan S
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A Society Publisher's view of Plan S
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Language: EN.
Segment:0 .
STUART TAYLOR: I guess what I wanted to do is talk a bit about some of the context and the background and dare I say the history of how we all got here and why we all do this stuff before getting into the Plan S thing. And remembering that publishing is actually mission activity-- not that you'd forgotten that, but it's just worth reiterating. The first science publishers, at least, first academic publishers, were learned societies going back to the 17th century.
STUART TAYLOR: And back then, publishing was not seen as a business. I don't think anyone conceived of the idea that the journal could be a profitable thing. It was done as a way of disseminating research findings and interesting knowledge. And certainly, the Royal Society actively spent quite a lot of money for the first 300 years publishing journals. It wasn't really until the middle of the 20th century that they even broke even.
STUART TAYLOR: And it wasn't really until the beginning of the 21st century that we made what I would call "proper money" out of the journals. But that's not to say that the previous 300 years had been a commercial failure. It's just that there wasn't the intention to make them commercial. It was just part of the stuff that we paid for, like we pay for public engagement and science policy advice and the other things.
STUART TAYLOR: So I think it's just important to reiterate that, because we often hear about learned societies facing threats to their business models and so on from open access. But it's quite recent, really, that that's been the situation. And it really dates back to, well, people like Robert Maxwell, if indeed there is anybody like Robert Maxwell. So in the '70s and '80s, we saw, if you like, the commercialization of academic journals and the realization that there was money to be made there and a much more business-like approach and then the boom in some of the big commercial firms actually taking on society contracts and publishing for them, which has resulted in some actually very large and highly commercialized "learned societies," particularly in the US, for whom this is really quite a big business.
STUART TAYLOR: But I think for most societies, if not all societies, who have journals, their publishing is a very significant part of their income stream. There was a graph published recently, I think, by the UK study that came out at the end of 2017, showing the proportion of income societies derive from their journals. And many were right over at the right-hand side of the graph, sort of the 80%-plus, sort of like the Royal Society of Chemistry or Institute of Physics and so on.
STUART TAYLOR: So it's become very significant, but I would say quite recently. So that kind of gives you a mission clash, if you like, because you're trying to disseminate knowledge on the one hand, which is clearly a mission objective. You're generating funds now with your journals, which helps you do your other mission objectives. So those are two mission objectives. But the problem is they are clashing, because it's much more profitable to restrict access than to open access.
STUART TAYLOR: That's just a given. You don't need to think about it too hard to figure that out. So which of these two do you choose? How do you reconcile this sort of balance? And particularly, as open access has come up, it's meant that as you're no longer having to charge people to receive your material in print and through the mail and so on, you can actually do this at relatively close to zero marginal cost.
STUART TAYLOR: It brings that into much sharper focus, which is why OA is seen as a threat to bodies like us. So we came to the game somewhat-- I wouldn't say dragged into it, but we were sort of publicly shamed into it a bit, I suppose, in 2005, when some of our fellows wrote to the president and said, why aren't any of our journals open access? This is kind of happening, and you should really get on with it.
STUART TAYLOR: And that was taken seriously. And so we launched a hybrid journal model for all our journals for the following year in 2006, which is actually the year I joined the Royal Society. We set an APC based on what we thought the revenue roughly was at the time for the journals, which looks pretty high for 2006, 2,400 quid. So we lowered that to a more sort of market rate, if you like, in 2010.
STUART TAYLOR: We launched our first fully open access journal in 2010, which coincided with the society's 350th anniversary, and then our second OA journal in 2014. And that's what's happened to our open access content. So the blue line there is the actual number of articles, and the red bars are the percentage of our output. So you can see last year, in 2018-- I don't know why I'm pointing there. You can't see that-- 2018, it was approaching 50% of our articles were immediately OA.
STUART TAYLOR: So we've actually really, I think, taken off in terms of open access. Our approach really has not been doctrinaire, in the sense that we haven't had an ambition to flip all our hybrid journals by a particular date. We've done the modeling, and it's a bit scary. We haven't actually taken that decision yet. But what we try to do is make sure that we're as flexible as possible so that we don't have to turn away any author.
STUART TAYLOR: So for us, that's the priority. It's being able to publish work, good work, by any author, rather than saying, we want to hit a particular profit margin or we want to aim at a particular access model or whatever else. So that means that we've had a diversity of approaches so that every time a new mandate comes out, we make sure we're compliant with it, even including the recent one from Plan S, the green mandate.
STUART TAYLOR: We're one of only I think three publishers in the world to allow the green model to work, because we absolutely don't want to have to turn anyone away. This is obviously because there are some authors who have to have open access. So we want to be able to keep them. But there are also plenty of authors who don't want open access and have no funds for it.
STUART TAYLOR: We don't want to have to say goodbye to them, either. Now, you could say that these decisions are a bit easier for us because our income is not heavily dependent on publishing. It's only about 8% of our income. But it's almost half of our unrestricted income, which is, if you like, the valuable stuff that we can actually spend on anything we like.
STUART TAYLOR: So it is a significant issue for our treasurer. And he keeps me on my toes in this regard, makes sure I don't do anything too foolhardy with the society's silver. So to Plan S-- I'm an open access enthusiast, so Plan S should be great, really. And I find myself in an awkward position, not being very happy with Plan S, to be honest, because it ought to be fantastic.
STUART TAYLOR: I think funders and mandates are really the key here. Policy is going to drive OA. It's not going to be driven by authors and researchers because by and large, we know they're not massively interested in it. But I just think Plan S is the wrong policy. It focuses on journals and not articles. And funders don't fund journals.
STUART TAYLOR: They fund articles. So it's perfectly OK for them to say, we want this to happen with our articles that we funded. No problem with that at all. That's been going on for a long time. What they can't do is say, oh, and by the way, the rest of the journal also needs to flip to fully open access. Or we're not going to play ball with you.
STUART TAYLOR: That's really not their decision to make, it seems to me, because they're not funding those articles. So the downsides-- you've seen these rehearsed before. I think there are lots of them, but these are the ones that I see as most serious. And the biggest one, I think, is the impact on early-career researchers or researchers in general. Not being able to publish in the most prestigious venues will harm their careers.
STUART TAYLOR: Now, there's a whole different conversation. And I can see Katrina getting angry there about whether or not that's the way to assess people. I don't think it is. I don't think any of us think it is. But that's the world we currently live in, and so that is going to impact on researchers. The notion of having journals flipping by a particular date is not realistic, because journals met very massively in their take-up of OA.
STUART TAYLOR: And it's simply not feasible to say that. It needs to be based on proportion of OA take-up, not on a point in the calendar. The whole transformative deals thing is complex and difficult for learned societies, as you guys all know, and does risk driving the business even more into the hands of the big commercial companies, I think. There's rigidity over licenses. We've seen a bit of relaxation of that recently for the humanities, but it's kind of lip service.
STUART TAYLOR: And it's a bit grudging, and it's very couched, sort of caveated language. I do think it will have a chilling effect on research collaborations, which in the basic sciences are hugely important. It will reduce the number of OA articles because if you can't publish OA in a hybrid, then you might go green. And that means that your article's less visible.
STUART TAYLOR: So that's kind of inimical to what Plan S is presumably trying to get to. This one's a big one, alienation of the research community. They're already lukewarm about open access. They're already particularly not massively bothered about it. Now, many of them are actively opposed to it because of Plan S. That's not helpful to the overall cause, it seems to me.
STUART TAYLOR: And we've heard that if we flip all our journals, then what happens to all the people who have no access to funding or are not in a transformative agreement or retired, independent, global south, et cetera? That's a problem. So those are the main things. I couldn't actually fit any more on the slide.
STUART TAYLOR: So anyway, what do we do? We can't just end on a really negative note. Where I agree-- I think Sam mentioned this point, as well. Plan S has certainly shaken things up. And I think it has been valuable. It's meant that we've had to all discuss stuff with a lot more urgency, and we've really had to start thinking hard.
STUART TAYLOR: Let's collaborate. I've been involved in setting up something called "Society Publishers Coalition," which is specifically getting society publishers together to try and face these challenges together. We've got four members at this meeting, one actually in the room, Rod over there from IWAP. So if you're interested in joining us, do come and see one of us afterwards.
STUART TAYLOR: We ought to talk to our members and our fellows, in our case, about what they want. I think we perhaps sometimes forget that. Obviously, we need to explore transformative deals, although I think it's a bit of a sort of short-term, fudgy solution. And it's quite difficult for us to do. Subscription-equivalent transitions-- I would urge you to google that.
STUART TAYLOR: That's very interesting to me. Look up John Walensky. He's got some very exciting ideas. I haven't got time to go into it now. Work with Plan S. We're doing that actively as the Society Publishers Coalition. We're meeting with them regularly to try and refine their thinking, make them think a bit more clearly about what they're doing and what the impact is.
STUART TAYLOR: We really should be in this game. We started out in this game of publishing and disseminating research, and I think the research community want us to remain in it. It's just that we have to accept there will be a lot less money in the future, another point that's already been made. OK. Thank you.
STUART TAYLOR: [APPLAUSE]
Segment:0 .
STUART TAYLOR: I guess what I wanted to do is talk a bit about some of the context and the background and dare I say the history of how we all got here and why we all do this stuff before getting into the Plan S thing. And remembering that publishing is actually mission activity-- not that you'd forgotten that, but it's just worth reiterating. The first science publishers, at least, first academic publishers, were learned societies going back to the 17th century.
STUART TAYLOR: And back then, publishing was not seen as a business. I don't think anyone conceived of the idea that the journal could be a profitable thing. It was done as a way of disseminating research findings and interesting knowledge. And certainly, the Royal Society actively spent quite a lot of money for the first 300 years publishing journals. It wasn't really until the middle of the 20th century that they even broke even.
STUART TAYLOR: And it wasn't really until the beginning of the 21st century that we made what I would call "proper money" out of the journals. But that's not to say that the previous 300 years had been a commercial failure. It's just that there wasn't the intention to make them commercial. It was just part of the stuff that we paid for, like we pay for public engagement and science policy advice and the other things.
STUART TAYLOR: So I think it's just important to reiterate that, because we often hear about learned societies facing threats to their business models and so on from open access. But it's quite recent, really, that that's been the situation. And it really dates back to, well, people like Robert Maxwell, if indeed there is anybody like Robert Maxwell. So in the '70s and '80s, we saw, if you like, the commercialization of academic journals and the realization that there was money to be made there and a much more business-like approach and then the boom in some of the big commercial firms actually taking on society contracts and publishing for them, which has resulted in some actually very large and highly commercialized "learned societies," particularly in the US, for whom this is really quite a big business.
STUART TAYLOR: But I think for most societies, if not all societies, who have journals, their publishing is a very significant part of their income stream. There was a graph published recently, I think, by the UK study that came out at the end of 2017, showing the proportion of income societies derive from their journals. And many were right over at the right-hand side of the graph, sort of the 80%-plus, sort of like the Royal Society of Chemistry or Institute of Physics and so on.
STUART TAYLOR: So it's become very significant, but I would say quite recently. So that kind of gives you a mission clash, if you like, because you're trying to disseminate knowledge on the one hand, which is clearly a mission objective. You're generating funds now with your journals, which helps you do your other mission objectives. So those are two mission objectives. But the problem is they are clashing, because it's much more profitable to restrict access than to open access.
STUART TAYLOR: That's just a given. You don't need to think about it too hard to figure that out. So which of these two do you choose? How do you reconcile this sort of balance? And particularly, as open access has come up, it's meant that as you're no longer having to charge people to receive your material in print and through the mail and so on, you can actually do this at relatively close to zero marginal cost.
STUART TAYLOR: It brings that into much sharper focus, which is why OA is seen as a threat to bodies like us. So we came to the game somewhat-- I wouldn't say dragged into it, but we were sort of publicly shamed into it a bit, I suppose, in 2005, when some of our fellows wrote to the president and said, why aren't any of our journals open access? This is kind of happening, and you should really get on with it.
STUART TAYLOR: And that was taken seriously. And so we launched a hybrid journal model for all our journals for the following year in 2006, which is actually the year I joined the Royal Society. We set an APC based on what we thought the revenue roughly was at the time for the journals, which looks pretty high for 2006, 2,400 quid. So we lowered that to a more sort of market rate, if you like, in 2010.
STUART TAYLOR: We launched our first fully open access journal in 2010, which coincided with the society's 350th anniversary, and then our second OA journal in 2014. And that's what's happened to our open access content. So the blue line there is the actual number of articles, and the red bars are the percentage of our output. So you can see last year, in 2018-- I don't know why I'm pointing there. You can't see that-- 2018, it was approaching 50% of our articles were immediately OA.
STUART TAYLOR: So we've actually really, I think, taken off in terms of open access. Our approach really has not been doctrinaire, in the sense that we haven't had an ambition to flip all our hybrid journals by a particular date. We've done the modeling, and it's a bit scary. We haven't actually taken that decision yet. But what we try to do is make sure that we're as flexible as possible so that we don't have to turn away any author.
STUART TAYLOR: So for us, that's the priority. It's being able to publish work, good work, by any author, rather than saying, we want to hit a particular profit margin or we want to aim at a particular access model or whatever else. So that means that we've had a diversity of approaches so that every time a new mandate comes out, we make sure we're compliant with it, even including the recent one from Plan S, the green mandate.
STUART TAYLOR: We're one of only I think three publishers in the world to allow the green model to work, because we absolutely don't want to have to turn anyone away. This is obviously because there are some authors who have to have open access. So we want to be able to keep them. But there are also plenty of authors who don't want open access and have no funds for it.
STUART TAYLOR: We don't want to have to say goodbye to them, either. Now, you could say that these decisions are a bit easier for us because our income is not heavily dependent on publishing. It's only about 8% of our income. But it's almost half of our unrestricted income, which is, if you like, the valuable stuff that we can actually spend on anything we like.
STUART TAYLOR: So it is a significant issue for our treasurer. And he keeps me on my toes in this regard, makes sure I don't do anything too foolhardy with the society's silver. So to Plan S-- I'm an open access enthusiast, so Plan S should be great, really. And I find myself in an awkward position, not being very happy with Plan S, to be honest, because it ought to be fantastic.
STUART TAYLOR: I think funders and mandates are really the key here. Policy is going to drive OA. It's not going to be driven by authors and researchers because by and large, we know they're not massively interested in it. But I just think Plan S is the wrong policy. It focuses on journals and not articles. And funders don't fund journals.
STUART TAYLOR: They fund articles. So it's perfectly OK for them to say, we want this to happen with our articles that we funded. No problem with that at all. That's been going on for a long time. What they can't do is say, oh, and by the way, the rest of the journal also needs to flip to fully open access. Or we're not going to play ball with you.
STUART TAYLOR: That's really not their decision to make, it seems to me, because they're not funding those articles. So the downsides-- you've seen these rehearsed before. I think there are lots of them, but these are the ones that I see as most serious. And the biggest one, I think, is the impact on early-career researchers or researchers in general. Not being able to publish in the most prestigious venues will harm their careers.
STUART TAYLOR: Now, there's a whole different conversation. And I can see Katrina getting angry there about whether or not that's the way to assess people. I don't think it is. I don't think any of us think it is. But that's the world we currently live in, and so that is going to impact on researchers. The notion of having journals flipping by a particular date is not realistic, because journals met very massively in their take-up of OA.
STUART TAYLOR: And it's simply not feasible to say that. It needs to be based on proportion of OA take-up, not on a point in the calendar. The whole transformative deals thing is complex and difficult for learned societies, as you guys all know, and does risk driving the business even more into the hands of the big commercial companies, I think. There's rigidity over licenses. We've seen a bit of relaxation of that recently for the humanities, but it's kind of lip service.
STUART TAYLOR: And it's a bit grudging, and it's very couched, sort of caveated language. I do think it will have a chilling effect on research collaborations, which in the basic sciences are hugely important. It will reduce the number of OA articles because if you can't publish OA in a hybrid, then you might go green. And that means that your article's less visible.
STUART TAYLOR: So that's kind of inimical to what Plan S is presumably trying to get to. This one's a big one, alienation of the research community. They're already lukewarm about open access. They're already particularly not massively bothered about it. Now, many of them are actively opposed to it because of Plan S. That's not helpful to the overall cause, it seems to me.
STUART TAYLOR: And we've heard that if we flip all our journals, then what happens to all the people who have no access to funding or are not in a transformative agreement or retired, independent, global south, et cetera? That's a problem. So those are the main things. I couldn't actually fit any more on the slide.
STUART TAYLOR: So anyway, what do we do? We can't just end on a really negative note. Where I agree-- I think Sam mentioned this point, as well. Plan S has certainly shaken things up. And I think it has been valuable. It's meant that we've had to all discuss stuff with a lot more urgency, and we've really had to start thinking hard.
STUART TAYLOR: Let's collaborate. I've been involved in setting up something called "Society Publishers Coalition," which is specifically getting society publishers together to try and face these challenges together. We've got four members at this meeting, one actually in the room, Rod over there from IWAP. So if you're interested in joining us, do come and see one of us afterwards.
STUART TAYLOR: We ought to talk to our members and our fellows, in our case, about what they want. I think we perhaps sometimes forget that. Obviously, we need to explore transformative deals, although I think it's a bit of a sort of short-term, fudgy solution. And it's quite difficult for us to do. Subscription-equivalent transitions-- I would urge you to google that.
STUART TAYLOR: That's very interesting to me. Look up John Walensky. He's got some very exciting ideas. I haven't got time to go into it now. Work with Plan S. We're doing that actively as the Society Publishers Coalition. We're meeting with them regularly to try and refine their thinking, make them think a bit more clearly about what they're doing and what the impact is.
STUART TAYLOR: We really should be in this game. We started out in this game of publishing and disseminating research, and I think the research community want us to remain in it. It's just that we have to accept there will be a lot less money in the future, another point that's already been made. OK. Thank you.
STUART TAYLOR: [APPLAUSE]
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