Tim Worstall (and nearly everyone else) is wrong about open access publishing

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I get it that Tim Worstall as an independent researcher is on the sore end of the historically dominant publishing business model. To remind you, this model is where the authors of research get published for nothing, get paid nothing and the publisher flogs the journals back to academic libraries for expensive subscriptions. Hence this what Tim is celebrating:

Knowledge is a public good, such research papers are meant to be read to spread it and almost all of the research was tax funded to boot. It does seem odd there’s a there’s a few gatekeepers waxing fat off the journals.

Now I'm not going to get into the economics of all this so won't be asking whether or not knowledge is a public good. However, it is moot whether what we buy from academic publishers is knowledge per se or whether what we're buying is the publishing process. After all there's absolutely nothing to stop researchers doing what Tim does and just plonk their work on a free to air blog. There won't be any peer review, it'll be hard to find and it is tricky to protect against copying or plagiarism but authors can do this right now without restriction.

Unless they choose to submit is to a recognised journal so as to secure the peer review, the editing, the abstracting, the writing of key words, the indexing, the dissemination and the guarantee that the work will be seen alongside other similar work with the assurance of quality. Plus - since the copyright has transferred to the publisher - the assurance that copying and plagiarism will meet with a robust response. Under the terms (they vary from publisher to publisher, these are Elsevier's) the author will be able to:

Share their article for Personal Use, Internal Institutional Use and Scholarly Sharing purposes, with a DOI link to the version of record on ScienceDirect (and with the Creative Commons CC-BY-NC- ND license for author manuscript versions)

This means the author can but a copy onto a personal site, can use the article in teaching, can share the work with other researchers and can put the article into an institutional repository. All of which uses are open and sit outside the article cost or journal subscription. Nearly everyone who wants or needs to view the research can do so. Indeed, for credentialed science journalists the big publishers mostly give free access to published research and nearly all research is free to air within six months to a year following initial publication (in Elsevier's case this extends to post-docs not in academia).

So wholesale theft aside, what's the alternative to this model? This is what's called open access and, far from being free, it replaces subscriber pays with author pays. And, because the authors of articles in academic journals are academics, they aren't about to start paying personally for something they've had for free up till now. So the 'author pays' is, in reality, 'author's institution pays' or 'author's funder pays'. All we have done is to shift the cost from the library budget to the faculty budget and research budget. And the cost is anything up to £3,000 per article (depending on the particular journal) so it's not really accessible to the independent researcher in the way the old system was accessible.

The bigger problems with open access publishing, however, relate to who gets published and the quality of the published work. Firstly, the control of publishing shifts from the editorial boards and academic peers to either the institution or the funder (most typically a government body or a private corporation). An academic can only get published what his institution is prepared to pay for since they have to stump up the three grand to pay the publisher for the privilege. We move from the system where the gatekeeper is the publisher to one where, overwhelmingly, it is the government or an institution dependent on the government for its funding, authority and existence.

The second issue is one of quality - here's Beale's List:

This is a list of questionable, scholarly open-access publishers. We recommend that scholars read the available reviews, assessments and descriptions provided here, and then decide for themselves whether they want to submit articles, serve as editors or on editorial boards.

The worst of these publishers are indistinguishable from a vanity publisher - except that they're exploiting institutional budgets rather than a personal, individual wish to be published. Other simply play fast and loose with the peer review process, with systems for citation and loopholes within the infrastructure around open access publishing. Also, given the way in which people (and especially non-academic people) search, there is a big risk that poor quality, under-reviewed research is given the same credence as high quality, fully reviewed research.

Here from one publisher is an example:

You may suggest information of some particularly qualified reviewers who have had experience in the subject of the submitted manuscript, but who are not affiliated with the same institutes as the contributor.

And

You may also submit a list of reviewers to be excluded.

There's nothing wrong with open access systems but we need to understand that this isn't about whether knowledge is a public good but rather about whether the value added by the publishing process - however it's paid for - is worth the price. The simple 'research should be free to everyone' argument is essentially identical to the 'free access to medicine' argument - it may be right, even a good idea but it certainly isn't free. Which is why Tim Worstall - and many others banging on about open access and 'free knowledge' - are wrong.

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Secrecy is inevitable and probably necessary

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Secrecy is necessary.

I don’t say this as some form of defence for authoritarian government, for the gagging of journalists or to defend “national security”. These are spurious explanations for secrecy.

No, we need secrecy. And shall have that secrecy.

To illustrate, let me tell you a story about a former colleague, now an MP. Whenever there was something he wanted to say – a discussion needed – he would suggest we went for a walk. At the time, I assumed that the reason was to allow us a talk and smoke – but now I realise that the point was to avoid being overheard and to ensure that anything said was unattributable. Secrecy was protected since only the two of us knew what was said and, as importantly, every thing said was deniable. I know a great deal about that former colleague.

The theft of diplomatic cables and their transfer to a third party has been lauded by some as a kind of ultimate freedom of information success. Yet if we stop and think for a minute or two, we’ll realise that the result of these ‘leaks’ – the consequence of insecure systems – will be to end the documentation of opinion and analysis. This creates a less transparent, riskier and more corruptible policy and decision-making process. We have seen the degree to which our masters are trustworthy and having a yet more opaque system would act only to increase the opportunity for self-interest and greed to dominate choices made by politicians, civil servants and other public servants.

You may revel in this new age of open-ness – where theft is excusable because of some cod interpretation of public interest. But we will all pay for it since the response of governments will be to make undocumented decisions wherever possible. We will become a land governed even more by tittle-tattle, back-stabbing and slander rather than an more open, more democratic society.

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Big Society Bank: can we really treat dormant accounts as treasure trove?

In the discussions about the ‘Big Society Bank’ there have been spluttering observations featuring the word ‘stealing’ – and the makers of these comments maybe have a point since neither they nor I have any real understanding as to what actually constitutes a dormant bank account (by which I mean the nature of the former ownership). They could be accounts where it is simply too expensive to track down the owner. Or we could be talking about small accounts for defunct little associations – local fishing clubs, ladies tea clubs and the like. Or even where there are no heirs meaning the money really does belong to the Government.

Which rather begs a question as to whether we should simply leave the money there in the (probably) vain hope that somebody will arrive with proof of ownership? After all it doesn’t belong to the government, does it? But then it will just sit there with the only people profiting from it being the banks who have control of the money. Indeed given the very small risk of substantial claims, the banks are able to treat the money as their own.

Alternatively – as has become the case – the Government can seize the money saying that it is, in effect, unclaimed treasure (using the same droit du seigneur as is the case with real treasure). And this does not seem an unreasonable approach given that the alternative of ‘finders keepers’ isn’t applicable. The only difference relates to age of the trove - treasure only applying to coins and precious metal more than 300 years old whereas the Dormant Bank & Building Societies Act 2008 only requires there to have been no customer activity for 15 years. Moreover, the Act requires any monies to go for charitable purposes whereas treasure trove is the explicit property of the crown.

It seems to me that, if treasure (whether governed by the treasure act or dealt with under ‘finders keepers’) isn’t theft, then using money in dormant bank accounts could also be seen in this light. Whether 15 years is long enough seems to me a matter for discussion and the success of unclaimed finance websites suggests that a review of this time period might be sensible. However, the principle underlying the Act seems reasonable even though an absolutist approach might define it as theft.

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