Comments on: Dark Secrets: Open Access and Author Processing Charges

By: Self-Publishing and Scholarship Don’t Mix Well | Self-Publishing Review

Self-Publishing and Scholarship Don’t Mix Well | Self-Publishing Review — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 02:28:27 +0000

[...] Yet, they aren’t monitoring how the money is being spent or revealing much information about how they’re using it, either. And therein lies the biggest [...]

By: The Tip of an Iceberg? « The Scholarly Kitchen

The Tip of an Iceberg? « The Scholarly Kitchen — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 10:42:49 +0000

[...] Phil Davis has pointed out in other posts on this blog, there is a lack of transparency to how author funds are being spent and the oversight of these funds may not be adequate. In addition to pots of money coming from [...]

By: Cornell’s Open Access Author Fund « The Scholarly Kitchen

Cornell’s Open Access Author Fund « The Scholarly Kitchen — Tue, 26 May 2009 10:43:37 +0000

[...] I spoke with Hermanson on this issue, and he responded that the details have not yet been worked out by the library board, but that the board understands the importance of implementing policies and priorities on how the monies should be spent. These details should be no secret. [...]

By: Philip Davis

Philip Davis — Thu, 14 May 2009 16:58:10 +0000

These are all good questions but they skirt around the main issue of why I received only 2 responses, and why even these two responses were unable to provide me with any meaningful (even summarized or anonymized) data.

Transparency does not mean selective dissemination based on who you consider to be your friends or enemies.

As a former academic librarian, I would not wish to assume that my peers do not understand how to use email or are unable to forward a request to a colleague. Even if this were the case, my office phone number was provided in the request.

By: JQ Johnson

JQ Johnson — Thu, 14 May 2009 16:27:03 +0000

Transparency is a good thing, but there are other values that are also important in our community. For example, consider the release of information about specific funding requests while an article is still in the publication pipeline (our experimental program will accept requests before submission, but won’t reimburse until author actually pays the fee, which would happen after acceptance). If we were to publish the author name and title immediately, that would compromise blind peer review.

By the way, when I in March queried the same institutions that Davis did, I got lots of cooperation. For example, UNC pointed me to a public letter (2/20/2009) to their vice chancellor that summarized in some detail the 12 requests they had funded to date. I’m puzzled why Davis got the response he did. Did he ask the wrong people?

By: Robert Kiley

Robert Kiley — Thu, 14 May 2009 16:23:54 +0000

Phil

Though the Wellcome Trust does not directly administer author side fees – we give grants to institutions to cover Wellcome OA fees – you can access all Wellcome papers which are in UKPMC via the “UKPMC Funders Home page” http://ukpmc.ac.uk/funders/homepage.php?funder=WT

From this page you can then filter the articles to “author manuscripts” or “publisher depositions”.

And, though not all publisher depositions will have attracted a fee, if you sort the articles by publication date, it is reasonable to assume that most of the very recent publications (i.e. with no embargo) will have attracted an author side payment.

You can do this analysis for any of the UKPMC Funders.

I appreciate that this is not exactly what you were looking for — but it is one way to access a list of author-pays papers.

You can also use the “Special Collections” tab at PMC to find author-pays articles (See http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/fprender.fcgi?tabindex=7)

By: jrochkind

jrochkind — Thu, 14 May 2009 05:34:01 +0000

Wow, yeah, the flap over the Elsevier fake journal stuff puts another spin on it, thinking about funded research as marketting. Of COURSE the pharmas will happily fund open access — if OA articles end up with better exposure (and citing) than non-OA articles, all the better for them, and it will be a good investment on their part.

By: Amanda R

Amanda R — Wed, 13 May 2009 19:04:29 +0000

Thanks for the clarification, Philip. Again, you certainly deserved a professional response, and I’m in agreement that the end result is a lack of transparency. I’m just not sure we can attribute an intent, and I read your post (with wording like “dark secrets”, “requesting a field manual for interrogating prisoners of war” and “stonewalling requests”) as leading readers in that direction.

I do think this is a good prompting for libraries to get transparent budgeting and reporting mechanisms in place. Thanks for the discussion.

By: Philip Davis

Philip Davis — Wed, 13 May 2009 17:53:26 +0000

BioMed Central Press Release: “Pfizer shows support for open access” (May 5, 2009)

By: Roberta Arnold

Roberta Arnold — Wed, 13 May 2009 17:07:16 +0000

Phil’s questions to the librarians and call for transparency are excellent. On the subject of transparency and why it’s necessary but not sufficient for the integrity of the medical literature, BioMed Central has recently trumpeted its agreement with Pfizer to cover the author publication fees for any researchers employed or funded by Pfizer when they submit articles to one of BMC’s OA journals. When pharmaceutical companies can not only fund research but pay for its publication, I’m concerned about the skewing of the “open access” literature in the direction of commercial interests.