- Feb 2021
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www.stm-assoc.org www.stm-assoc.org
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Emerald
https://www.emeraldgrouppublishing.com/products/open-research-emerald/our-open-research-policies
Emerald already has progressive green open access / self archiving policies which allow immediate open access for the authors accepted manuscript (AAM) under a creative commons attribution non-commercial license (CC BY-NC). This demonstrates that Emerald cannot agree with much of the statement they are signing. Note, Plan S ask for CC BY or CC BY-ND is permissible under Plan S by exception. The funders' request for a more permissive CC BY license is all I can identify as a potential problem, but there are no specific concerns raised in the statement.
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Wiley
Similar to CUP and IOP, Sage, and Springer Nature, many UK institutions have signed a contract to fund Wiley's publishing activities for four more years as a result of Plan S, regardless of how many authors accepted manuscripts (AAM) are openly available in repositories. This fact undermines the arguments made above by the STM Association about the rights retention strategy (RRS) undermining financial sustainability.
Furthermore, the financial credit cap for the Wiley deal is operationally low, resulting in additional expenditure for institutions at the end of the calendar year when open access support funds are running low. This additional cost is not sustainable for many institutions and unintentionally creates inequitable access to no-additional-cost publishing.
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Springer Nature
UK institutions have been through several terms of the Springer Compact deal and continue to negotiate amendments and additional terms with added expense. The Springer Compact deal delivers no-additional-cost publishing for an upfront commitment of funds by institutions. Regardless of how many authors accepted manuscripts (AAM) are openly available in repositories institutions continue to support Springer Nature's publishing activities. This fact undermines the arguments made above by the STM Association about the rights retention strategy (RRS) undermining financial sustainability.
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SAGE Publishing
Similar to CUP and IOP, many UK institutions have signed a contract to fund Sage's publishing activities for three years as a result of Plan S, regardless of how many authors accepted manuscripts (AAM) are openly available in repositories. This fact undermines the arguments made above by the STM Association about the rights retention strategy (RRS) undermining financial sustainability.
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IOP Publishing
Similar to CUP, some UK institutions have signed a contract to fund IOP's publishing activities for four years as a result of Plan S, regardless of how many authors accepted manuscripts (AAM) are openly available in repositories. This fact undermines the arguments made above by the STM Association about the rights retention strategy (RRS) undermining financial sustainability.
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Cambridge University Press
Many UK institutions have signed a contract to fund CUP's publishing activities for four years as a result of Plan S, regardless of how many authors accepted manuscripts (AAM) are openly available in repositories. This fact undermines the arguments made above by the STM Association about the rights retention strategy (RRS) undermining financial sustainability.
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ensure that the vital process of verification and trust in science is maintained to a high standard
This conclusion is focusing on the statements above, which I personally do not consider to be accurate.
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what is allowed
What is allowed = what is legal (i.e. copyright law) and what the journal is willing to publish or reject. If authors are told they should consult the journal and the only response is the journal's own policy, assuming it contradicts the right retention strategy (RRS), the Publisher/Editor/Production Editor will be misinforming the author and denying them their legal rights.
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to be sustainable this is a decision that needs to be applied at the level of individual journals, not through blanket policies
It's my interpretation that the funders agree which is why Wellcome Trust wrote to publishers asking if they would change their policies to reflect the rights retention strategy.
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undermine the integrity of the Version of Record, which is the foundation of the scientific record, and its associated codified mechanisms for corrections, retractions and data disclosure.
This misrepresents the situation. Authors accepted manuscripts (AAM) have been shared on institutional and subject repositories for around two decades, with greater prevalence in the last decade. Despite this the version of record (VoR) is still valued and preserves the integrity of the scholarly record. The integrity of the VoR continues to be maintained by the publisher and where well-run repository management are made aware, corrections can be reflected in a repository. The solution to this problem is the publisher taking their responsibility to preserving the integrity of the scholarly record seriously and notifying repositories, not asserting that authors should not exercise their right to apply a prior license to their AAM.
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the Rights Retention Strategy is not financially sustainable
So far as I know this is not tested or based on any evidence. If the publishers think an open accepted manuscript would undermine the version of record, it doesn't demonstrate much confidence in their added value to me.
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eliminates the ability to charge for the services that publishers provide
This is an inaccurate statement or at the very least misrepresents the situation. Despite the Rights Retention Strategy (RRS), publisher may - and many do - continue to charge page charges, over-run charges, colour charges, submission fees, society fees, etc. to the author. The author may also choose to pay an open access article processing charge (APC), without using their funder's money. Furthermore, the RRS does not eliminate the publisher charging subscription fees, licensing fees for the reproduction of content (e.g. figure resue), access to meta-content, docdel etc. or, indeed, individual access to the version of record (VoR) where a reader has identified a need to see the VoR after seeing the authors accepted manuscript (AAM)
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free
Repository based open access is not free. Institutions and other organisations have invested significant resources into the development, maintenance, management and quality assurance of repositories and their content. This would not be necessary if academic journals publishing was more equitable, transparent and sustainable.
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work against the shared objective of a more open and equitable scholarly ecosystem
Again, it is not at all clear what is meant by this statement. Equity in academia is an incredibly important goal. This statement currently reads like unsubstantiated rhetoric. Libraries, Institutions and funders have found that the unintended consequences of deficient deals with publishers supported by their funds can include inequitable access to no-additional-cost publishing. However, the intention of the Rights Retention Strategy (RRS) is to arm all authors with detailed knowledge of their rights to ensure they have the same minimum opportunity to widely disseminate their work. Furthermore, by providing a version of an output with a CC BY license there is greater equity around accessing the research and therefore greater opportunity to build on it for public benefit, making a more equitable environment for all. The version of record (VoR) remains important in this scenario, so more equitable access should not undermine the sustainability of journals and platforms which are valued.
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The Rights Retention Strategy ignores long-standing academic freedoms
It’s not entirely clear what is meant by this statement. This is incredibly inflammatory rhetoric for most academics who take academic freedom very seriously - for very good reasons. However, the academic has the freedom not to accept a grant if they fundamentally disagree with the funder’s desired approach to effective dissemination of the research they support. Furthermore, the rights retention strategy (RRS) is in place to give the authors more freedom of choice over what happens to the version of record (VoR). Because of the RRS, the author can submit to the most appropriate journal for the research regardless of whether it explicitly provides a compliant route to publication (assuming the journal takes the submission forwards) or whether or not the author can access funds to pay a publication charge (APC) in a hybrid subscription journal.
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The Rights Retention Strategy provides a challenge to the vital income that is necessary to fund the resources, time, and effort to provide not only the many checks, corrections, and editorial inputs required but also the management and support of a rigorous peer review process
This is an untested statement and does not take into account the perspectives of those contributing to the publishers' revenue. The Rights Retention Strategy (RRS) relies on the author's accepted manuscript (AAM) and for an AAM to exist and to have the added value from peer-review a Version of Record (VoR) must exist. Libraries recognise this fundamental principle and continue to subscribe to individual journals of merit and support lucrative deals with publishers. From some (not all) librarians' and possibly funders' perspectives these statements could undermine any mutual respect.
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However, we are unable to support one route to compliance offered by Plan S,
The publishers below will not support the Plan S rights retention strategy (RRS). In its simplest form the RRS re-asserts the authors' rights as the rights holder to assign a copyright license of their choice (CC BY informed by their funding agency) to all versions of their research/intellectual output. In the case of the RRS states that the author should apply a CC BY license to their accepted manuscript (AAM) if they cannot afford to pay article processing charges or choose not to apply a CC BY license to the Version of Record (VoR), which they are free to do. Therefore, this statement is either saying the undersigned will not carry publications forward to publication (most appropriate approach), or they will not support the same copyright laws which fundamentally protects their rights and revenue after a copyright transfer agreement is signed by the rightsholder.
Academy of Dental Materials
Acoustical Society of America
AIP Publishing
American Academy of Ophthalmology
American Association for Pediatric Ophthalmology and Strabismus
American Chemical Society
American Gastroenterological Association American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics
American Medical Association
American Physical Society
American Society for Investigative Pathology
American Society for Radiation Oncology
American Society of Civil Engineers
American Society of Hematology
American Society of Clinical Oncology
American Association of Physicists in Medicine
American Association of Physics Teachers
AVS – The Society for Science and Technology of Materials, Interfaces, and Processing
Brill
British Journal of Anaesthesia
Budrich Academic Press
Cambridge Media
Cambridge University Press
Canadian Cardiovascular Society
De Gruyter
Duncker & Humblot
Elsevier
Emerald
Erich Schmidt Verlag
French Society of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology
Frommann-Holzboog Verlag
Future Science Group
Hogrefe
International Association for Gondwana Research
IOP Publishing
Journal of Nursing Regulation
Journal of Orthopaedic & Sports Physical Therapy (JOSPT).
Julius Klinkhardt KG
La Découverte
Laser Institute America
Materials Research Forum LLC
The Optical Society (OSA)
Pearson Benelux
SAGE Publishing
Society of Rheology
Springer Nature
Taylor & Francis Group
The Geological Society of America
Thieme Group
Uitgeverij Verloren
Verlag Barbara Budrich
Vittorio Klostermann
wbv Media
Wiley
Wolters Kluwer
Tags
- CC BY
- Equity
- Policies
- Accepted Manuscript
- Repository
- Law
- RRS
- Sustainability
- Transformative agreement
- Version of Record
- Plan S
- Rights retention strategy
- Rightsholder
- AAM
- Finances
- Revenue
- Peer-review
- Choice
- Remuneration
- Income
- Relationship
- Investment
- Academic Freedom
- Copy Editing
- Creative Commons
- VoR
- Scholarly Record
- Attribution
- Expense
- opinion
- Typesetting
- Copyright
- Integrity
- EDI
- Editorial
- Rhetoric
- Licenses
- Services
- Funders
- Publishers
Annotators
URL
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