Graham Steel - Likes

Chapter, Verse, and CHORUS: A first pass critique - http://cameronneylon.net/blog...

June 7 from Science in the Open - Comment - Like - Share

Bill Hooker, Matt Hodgkinson, maʀtha and 5 other people liked this

The Association of American Publishers have launched a response to the OSTP White House Executive Order on public access to publicly funded research. In this they offer to set up a registry or system called CHORUS which they suggest can provide the same levels of access to research funded by Federal Agencies as would the widespread adoption of existing infrastructure like PubMedCentral. The bottom line is that it is necessary to bear in mind that this is the same group that put together the Research Works Act, a group with a long standing, and in some cases personal, antipathy to the success of PMC. There is therefore some grounds for scepticism about the motivations of the proposal. However here I want to dig a bit more into the details of whether the proposal can deliver. I will admit to being sceptical from the beginning but the more I think about this, the more it seems that either there is nothing there at all, or alternately the publishers involved are setting themselves up for... - Cameron Neylon

nice. I really like the last paragraph. - Heather Piwowar

PLoS ONE in the Media/Blogs

Nomination Deadline is Approaching—The Accelerating Science Award Program - http://blogs.plos.org/plos...

June 3 from Public Library of Science - Comment - Like - Share

Graham Steel liked this

Heather Piwowar

Today is my last day as a postdoc! The 3 years zoomed past: great great run. Next up: full time direct employee of @ImpactStory :)

May 31 - Comment - Like - Share

Björn Brembs, Kubke, Egon Willighagen and 17 other people liked this

I want to write a blog post all about it. Alas swamped on time and emotion dimensions at the moment (family estate stuff, grant applications, new code release...). Struggle just to tread water just now. so we'll see. - Heather Piwowar

2 more comments

so access to the literature will be come an even bigger thing :( ? - Christina Pikas

I'm really lucky: I'm going to be able to keep affiliations to UNC ("affiliate") and UBC ("honourary research associate"), so I can still access subscriptions and have a local community. I fear my own ramp in OA ranting the day that I don't have uni affiliations, I will admit! :) - Heather Piwowar

Happy last day! - Hedgehog

Heather Piwowar

We've been invited to submit a $300k NSF EAGER grant to track software reuse in ImpactStory! So exciting!! There will be textmining :)

May 24 - Comment - Like - Share

Scott Edmunds, James, Kubke and 13 other people liked this

Congrats! Both for getting the invite but also for getting this on their agenda! - Egon Willighagen

As tweeted, I love to see the CDK used as use case. E.g. how can we track how much this CDK-based tool is used (in literature)? "CRAFT - Chemical Reactivity and Fate Tool" -> http://www.molecular-networks.com/product... - Egon Willighagen

Egon Willighagen

Can I haz thiz PDF, pleaz? #icanhazpdf - http://chem-bla-ics.blogspot.com/2013...

May 20 from chem-bla-ics - Comment - Like - Share

OMG 404 Joe and Graham Steel liked this

Heather Piwowar

new @researchremix post: My champions of Open Science http://wp.me/p4g7f-nn

May 13 - Comment - Like - Share

Kubke, Graham Steel, Egon Willighagen and 3 other people liked this

and thanx! - Egon Willighagen

Marie

garlic naaaaaaaaaaan

May 9 from Advanced Tweets - Comment - Like - Share

Joe Silence, jtf, Chocolate Connoisseur and 13 other people liked this

I love the rosemary naan too - Meg V. Meg

^I'm listening... - Kelli H. from Android

John Dupuis to John's feed, LSW

For those that are interested, my interview with campus radio about Open Access is here: http://chrynews.wordpress.com/2013...

April 16 - Comment - Like - Share

Björn Brembs, Graham Steel and OMG 404 Joe liked this

It's longish at 20+ minutes. Apparently they got good feedback on the interview, so that's nice. - John Dupuis

3 more comments

Listening.... - Graham Steel

Yay - a good shout out about the OLH https://www.openlibhums.org/ - Graham Steel

Good job. 100% agreed with what you said and didn't find it "too heavy" in any way. - Graham Steel

Thanks. Maggie was fun to work with. She interviewed me a few months ago about Aaron Swartz and as she mentions this was kind of a sequel to that. - John Dupuis

Heather Piwowar

Re Mendeley/Elsevier one area I don't see being discussed in twitter stream etc, is that this buys Elsevier proprietary Intelligence. What Mendeley reveals in their Open API is only a tiny amount of their total data. It isn't click stream or highlighting or fine grained demographics etc. This means that Mendeley gives Elsevier a competitive...

April 9 - Comment - Like - Share

Kubke, Kaan Öztürk, Garret McMahon and 12 other people liked this

advantage on what scholars do and how they do it. People are talking about whether Mendeley will treat all publishers equally like Scopus does... there is a difference. Scopus is built on citations, which anyone could in theory get with enough money. With Mendeley, Elsevier gets workflow information, and no other publishers get that. It is a smart move for them, but a blow to people who think that propping up Elsevier is not best for the industry. - Heather Piwowar

62 more comments

yes. please write that blog post. - RepoRat

Will try but no time today. Someone else free free to beat me to it, no need for attribution. - Heather Piwowar

the way things have worked before, a given aggregator only had access to individual user behavior related to their own publications, and not even always (library proxy servers protect people to some extent). Now Elsevier knows what every Mendeley user is reading and saving; they may even know some of where Mendeley users *get* what they read and save. if that doesn't seem worrisome to people, they weren't paying attention to the Attributor thing. - RepoRat

link to Attributor thing? - Heather Piwowar

http://scientopia.org/blogs... and http://scientopia.org/blogs... I think Elsevier would LOVE to peg Mendeley users who aren't clearly downloading via library or toll-gate access mechanisms. - RepoRat

Even if they are, the shared groups (which I'll admit to having been one to encourage for cross campus collab) means all the researchers then have access. - Hedgehog

But doesn't this mean they're going to start getting sued like whoa? I mean, it was my understanding that Mendeley's provision of (some of?) this data to the publishers was one of the only reasons they weren't already getting sued like whoa. - Meg V. Meg

Bjoern Brembs says http://bjoern.brembs.net/comment... - Graham Steel

Meg, I hadn't heard that. Got linky? Because that's a reeeeeeally interesting angle. - RepoRat

Hard to stop thinking about Mendeley-as-elsevier-loyalty-card for data collection. I'm not thinking about it wrt subscription enforcement, but rather as intelligence for future Elsevier product innovations. Future product innovations that help Elsevier as priority #1 and scholarship and open scholarship with the same priority Elsevier has previously shown. - Heather Piwowar

Is Meg referring to something like what Jason Hoyt mentioned this moring? http://enjoythedisruption.com/post... - Hedgehog

And now VictorH says http://paidcontent.org/2013... - Graham Steel

Heather, regarding the insight available through the API and user activity. Imagine Elsevier was out of the picture, what would you say if Mendeley used it to do the same for itself. Develop and innovate on features that it had exclusive insight to, toward its own advancement? - Ricardo Vidal

I'd be ok with that. I've been assuming that's what you've been doing till now. - Heather Piwowar

So, following that logic, because you see Elsevier as evil, you consider that they'll certainly use the same tools to their advantage. Which is therefore bad. - Ricardo Vidal

Suber chimes in - https://plus.google.com/u... - Graham Steel

I don't consider Elsevier evil. I consider them interested entirely in their own bottom line and very demonstrably willing to make decisions that are not in the best interest of science to defend and promote it. I don't want to help them do that with papers, my review hours, or my click data. - Heather Piwowar

as somebody said recently in a different context, if you're using their products when you have a choice, then you are funding their work. Unfortunately, academic libraries don't have much choice when it comes to subscribing to the journals, but we do have a choice of citation management platforms - DJF from Android

So we've talked about the enforcement angle and they understand this would be a really dumb thing to try to do. They want us more as a application platform since the whole Sciverse Apps thing didn't go all that well. - Mr. Gunn

Thanks for the feedback Heather. I see your point and can only hope that we can keep doing our good work and proving Mendeley a valuable tool and resource for researchers. - Ricardo Vidal

We've so far been successful with the approach that Open Access papers are read more, but if all the OA advocates leave Mendeley, then it's going to be hard to keep making that case. Having a strong OA community *within* Mendeley is really important and I hope people will stick around to show them that. - Mr. Gunn

soooo... instead we should implicitly say "Elsevier sucks except when they own something we like?" That's a stance I personally am kinda uncomfortable with. Like PSuber, tho, have never been a Mendeley user, so easy for me to say -- I'll just chug right along with Zotero the way I've been doing. - RepoRat

it doesn't matter whether the OA advocates are on Mendeley or not. People will still be reading their papers a lot. That's the point of OA. - DJF from Android

yes, but having good quality data accepted by even the most conservative groups showing the OA advantage certainly helps, and that's what Mendeley can provide - Mr. Gunn

Mendeley can definitely provide that, but again, it doesn't require that the OA advocates use it to achieve that. - DJF from Android

well, there will be less data on OA papers, less people doing interesting OA-related things with the data, etc. That's why I think people should stay. Just picking up your toys and going home is the easy way out. - Mr. Gunn

Sure, if we were children, and if this were a game. However, "if you're using their products when you have a choice, then you are funding their work" - Meg V. Meg

And if I trusted Elsevier with the kind of data I would put into Mendeley. Here's the thing: I DON'T. That's not entirely Elsevier's fault (MIT and JSTOR and Attributor and Facebook own some of the blame, among others)... but I don't think Elsevier has exactly covered itself with glory, either, and it's *crystal* clear which financial side of the bread is buttered. Do I trust Elsevier to resist temptation for the sake of ethics? THEY HIRED ERIC DEZENHALL FFS. No. I don't. - RepoRat

So I'm glad that Mr. Gunn and Ricardo Vidal think Elsevier will do right by all this, and I think *they* believe that; I don't believe they're trying to blow smoke up FF's collective arse. I just... don't believe that will remain the case. Temptation much too great. Elsevier won't fsck up tomorrow, or the day after... but they'll fsck up. Guarandamnteed. - RepoRat

Elsevier is a big big place. I wish I could quote to you from the email I just got from some people within Elsevier promising their support in helping us make a business case for openness - saying they're our allies, but acknowledging that a huge organization like this isn't all going to be aligned internally. - Mr. Gunn

I got some great email about a global text mining plan too. Many people there really believed it. There was a time and a place and a scheduled tweetup. Plug got pulled. - Heather Piwowar from iPhone

no organization is immune from having plans canceled - Mr. Gunn

I agree. Though it wasn't a passive "plans were cancelled". Someone at Else cancelled the plans because they were too liberal/edgy/threatening even though had all sign offs till the day before. I just share that story to say we all know great email doesn't always work out. - Heather Piwowar from iPhone

Fair enough. Just pointed it out to show some nuance beyond the "everyone at Elsevier is evil and eats puppies" narrative extant. I have a feeling the task is even bigger than I realize, but that can't stop me from trying, and that really shouldn't stop you from supporting me, either. - Mr. Gunn

I'll try really hard not to take the quote "everyone at Elsevier is evil and eats puppies" out of context when I cite it in my next paper. :-) - OMG 404 Joe

I haven't seen that narrative on this thread. I'm trying hard to figure out a good way to support you that is consistent with what I believe, because I want to support you William Gunn :) - Heather Piwowar from iPhone

I support you, man. I just think they're gonna fuck you over, and it makes me sad. I do not want them to do that. - RepoRat

I do recognize the possibility, but I have to give it a shot. - Mr. Gunn

Salon commented here: Elsevier: All your data belongs to us http://www.salon.com/2013... via @Salon - WarLord

"some people within Elsevier promising their support in helping us make a business case for openness" Yes, and I'm sure all the hundreds of trillions of bacteria living in/on Hannibal Lecter and all his trillions non-neuronal cells were all nice and friendly - if only it wasn't for the measly 70-90b of neurons in his skull... Quite likely, the large majority of people working at... more... - Björn Brembs

I honor your efforts, Mr. Gunn. They remind me no little of my own vis-a-vis the libraries I've worked in. - RepoRat

This post captures Heather's sentiment, I think: http://www.salon.com/2013... - Björn Brembs

Maybe I will try my hand at a timeline of blog posts kinda like what John D does. - OMG 404 Joe

http://www.hyperorg.com/blogger... - OMG 404 Joe

http://svpow.com/2013... - OMG 404 Joe

Mendeley may want to look at the fate of BioMedNet, sold to Elsevier by the Current Science Group in 1998 and shelved in 2004: http://newsbreaks.infotoday.com/nbreade...; http://www.sarahgreene.net/past-pr... - Matt Hodgkinson

Wow, I haven't been back here in ages. Been trying to sort out my own thoughts on this...and I don't think I have a clear answer. I have a Mendeley account, I use it for a bunch of things including feeding the bibliography on my blog, and I haven't deleted it yet. Matt's point is the one that troubles me, Elsevier do have a history of running things into the ground. On the other hand it... more... - Cameron Neylon

...but there is another side to this which is that I know some of those cancelled projects of which Heather speaks and they had lots of those good people in them. So I worry about the inverse problem. What will happen to those people who have been on the inside working for change (and being shafted from time to time) now that there is a new shiny Open thing, both as the beacon everyone... more... - Cameron Neylon

Like Cameron, I haven't made my mind up yet. Personally, I don't intend to delete my Mendeley account at present. - Graham Steel

"It was the destruction of BioMedNet that meant Vitek could hire a bunch of people to create BMC." So I should be grateful to Elsevier for my career :) - Matt Hodgkinson

I also remember when Elsevier bought the Beilstein database, and they have since greatly marked up access to that data. 1998 and 2007 were key years of that. http://www.elsevier.com/about... This is kinda similar. - OMG 404 Joe

fwiw, i posted on it here: http://scientopia.org/blogs... I'm pretty pragmatic when it comes to this sort of thing. It's not my primary reference manager (RefWorks is, sigh), but I intend to keep my account. - Christina Pikas

I also intend to keep my account, so that I can keep on putting stuff into the OA Irony Award group. A good bit of it from Elsevier. - OMG 404 Joe

(Slightly offtopic: here in this conversation we see what we lost when FF took a nosedive. This thread is better than all the scattered tweets and news links put together. I'm thinking it's time to re-invest in FF, since the sky hasn't actually fallen (I was a Chicken Little myself)...) - Bill Hooker

Good call. I'm in. - Graham Steel

Something slightly ironic about returning because its back to a smaller group of people though... - Cameron Neylon

"Hate" to say it - but other than monitoring Refs Wanted Room, FF is a dead donkey for me and has been for quite a while. Other than Libranians, it's a ghost town to what it was in the past.Twitter & Google+ for moi. - Graham Steel

Have to admit I saw a link to Heather's post and thought "oh yes, Friendfeed, I remember when I went there..."But it is still here and functioning clearly which is interesting in itself. There must be some measure of maintenance and upkeep going on behind the scenes. - Cameron Neylon

y'all should come back. Nothing else is as good. - Heather Piwowar

Yeah, it's still pretty awesome and unlike anything out there. - Ricardo Vidal

It remains the best. Reminds me of my empeg :-) http://www.empeg.com/ - Björn Brembs

Cameron, it's good to read your thoughts here. It's a good point also about BMC, which is itself now a part of Springer. I hope FF is still here 4 years from now when open access is the default and everyone realizes this ;-) - Mr. Gunn

I've just blogged about Elsevier's emerging workflows here. http://www.darkrepository.net/blog... Scopus a big winner IMO. - Garret McMahon

Heather Piwowar

Fun! My paper with @tjvision is @thePeerJ preprint #1 :) https://peerj.com/preprints/1/

April 4 - Comment - Like - Share

Kubke, Björn Brembs, Graham Steel and 5 other people liked this

I will admit to stalking the @thePeerJ site a little till the preprint "Submit" button appeared. To each their own fun :) - Heather Piwowar

One is most amused by your comment, Heather. "Well done for being number one" !!!! - Graham Steel

RepoRat to RepoRat's feed, LSW

Edwin Mellen Press has a new parody Twitter account: @EddyMellenPress. Whoever's doing it is having fun with it.

April 1 - Comment - Like - Share

Angel R. Rivera, Heather Piwowar, Betsy #TeamMonique and 12 other people liked this

(and no, it's not me, and no, I don't know who it is.) - RepoRat

17 more comments

it is making my day. - Marie

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA omg. They added me to a Twitter "librarians-to-sue" list because I followed the account. I tweeted "I'm an ex-librarian. Don't sue me bro!" Their response: "It's OK -- I'll have Amanda sue your estate." Seriously, this all sounds SUSPICIOUSLY like LSW humor. Don't out yourself on this thread because it's public, but damn, if it's you I would love to know. - RepoRat

And many of us are on their list of librarians to sue: https://twitter.com/EddyMel... - John Dupuis

Hey, Graham's on the list too. Honorary librarians, too, I guess. - John Dupuis

Yep, just noticed.... - Graham Steel

Proud to say I'm on their list, too. I did note the URL from the Twitter account's profile suggests the mastermind might be in the UK: https://www.google.co.uk/search... ETA: I can confirm that I am not currently in the UK. - Catherine Pellegrino

Being UK based, I confirm it's not me. - Graham Steel

I'm offended: I'm not on the list. Who can I sue? - Walt Crawford

I'm now dead sure that @EddyMellenPress is a librarian or other person working in libraries, not a garden-variety academic. Latest tweet was about whether a class-action lawsuit against ALA would prevent the press from exhibiting in Chicago... - RepoRat

C informs me that the (real) EMP was at the Shakespeare Association of America conference last week; I regret not getting him up to speed on this debacle before he went. - Catherine Pellegrino

man, i should set up a fake booth at ACRL. i could have so much fun... - jambina

dayumm. wonder if we can figure out their travel sked? - RepoRat

nothing current, but we may be able to extrapolate from http://client.marketmailer.co.uk/new... - RepoRat

They aren't on the list for ACRL13, I just checked. The list for Annual 2013 isn't out yet. - Catherine Pellegrino

I broke their consultants to sue cherry. bam! - ♫410 I Coach 'em Up♫

Looks like they attend lots of little conferences and very few big ones, and pretty much no library conferences. - Walt Crawford

Well, they may be crazy, but they're not dumb. - Catherine Pellegrino

... actually, they kind of are. - RepoRat

Kubke

RT @thePeerJ: New interview with Fabiana Kubke - @kubke - the 2nd in our Series focusing on the thoughts of @thePeerJ Editors: http://blog.peerj.com/post...

March 6 from Twitter - Comment - Like - Share

Graham Steel and Claudia Koltzenburg liked this

Heather Piwowar

Articles in the April 2013 #altmetrics ASIST Bulletin special issue are all CC-BY... because in my role as guest-editor I simply asked the authors if they'd publish them that way (in addition to the non-exclusive license to publish that is normal for the Bulletin), and the authors all said yes. Sometimes changing free to open is that simple....

April 1 - Comment - Like - Share

Kubke, Egon Willighagen, OMG 404 Joe and 5 other people liked this

Thanks, authors! Link to issue is here: http://asis.org/bulletin.html - Heather Piwowar

(of course the Bulletin isn't really set up to clearly mark the papers as CC-BY, and I didn't have time to lobby for inclusion of the image etc so unless people read my intro they won't know... but hey it is a step :) ) - Heather Piwowar

Heather Piwowar

In which I stop pulling punches with H Morrison (comments): https://plus.google.com/u...

March 13 - Comment - Like - Share

Kubke, Björn Brembs, Bill Hooker and 13 other people liked this

you go, girl - Meg V. Meg

38 more comments

So her arguments not really making sense isn't just my reading comprehension problem? Good to know. - kendrak

Why is she being a jerk when you're essentially on the same team? - Christina Pikas from iPhone

she's not the only one who does that, PETER MURRAY-RUST and MICHAEL EISEN and STEVAN HARNAD and LI'L RICKY POYNDER. (There, see, they've got ME doing it.) - RepoRat

She picked her preferred solution to OA, NC-SA licenses, and now uses any argument going - no matter how illogical or weak - to support this chosen solution and criticise CC-BY. At least she doesn't post boilerplate responses, yet. - Matt Hodgkinson

I've had Christina's question in mind for a while, and I think RR has the answer of sorts (and maybe add Bremb to that list). In Morrison's case, part of me hears a need to be The Authority on OA (with a doctorate on the subject and all). I suspect SK does less harm to OA than its "OA BUT ONLY ON MY TERMS!" advocates. Heather P, good to see you in the Suber camp (as I interpret the route you're taking). - Walt Crawford

The OA movement does seem to attract a fair bit of almost religious zeal on the part of some of its adherents. I think they all want to be pope of OA. Locking them in the Sistine Chapel and maybe losing the key doesn't seem like a bad idea. - John Dupuis

And the whole "nobody can charge for anything ever" isn't part of my definition of OA. - John Dupuis

it feels very empowering to call a trolling comment a trolling comment. I should do this more often. - Heather Piwowar

John: That last one is particularly interesting. Peter S. and others (e.g., Walt C) have noted for years that it would be both appropriate and interesting for a Gold OA journal to make all refereed articles free and charge for (a) print subscriptions, (b) non-refereed editorial material. I believe Science, for example, would do very well with such a structure. And be in the letter & spirit of OA. - Walt Crawford

Yup, BMJ has this model I believe. I do think it is a bit too bad... there is lots of great stuff in the magazine section that it would be better if the whole wide world could read.... but people gotta charge for something and the moral/research-progress arguments for magazine content being OA just aren't as strong. (fwiw this is why I was willing to write non-OA content for Nature's magazine section) - Heather Piwowar

Absolutely. The idea that only a very small number of business models are "pure" is counter productive, especially for non-scholarly content. (ie: http://scienceblogs.com/confess...) - John Dupuis

Walt, I forgot to mention: yup, I am in the Suber camp on pretty much everything. If I ever find myself not in the Suber camp I reevaluate my position because I am likely wrong :) - Heather Piwowar

You folks are giving me so many good ideas for fresh material for my late-April OA precon (if enough people sign up for it). Keep it coming. (Sorry: Mild threadjack.) - Walt Crawford

+1 Heather. - John Dupuis

HM's comments are head-scratching, that's to be sure. It's like she's arguing that if Elsevier made its content CC-BY and then someone else developed a fee-based commercial product around that content that somehow the original OA content is thereafter compromised or less useful or no longer OA. Am I reading her totally wrong? - John Dupuis

It's like how some people think gay marriage rights somehow affect the sanctity or validity of existing straight marriages. - John Dupuis

I think you're reading her right, which is wildly frustrating. - Walt Crawford

I lost interest in HM when she emailed me this last year:- We chat a lot in public - you are an awesome advocate of open access, if I haven't said so before - but of course I know very little about you. How are you doing? Where are you in your studies? I am assuming that the reason you chose this line of research is because of your brother? I hope that this is not a sore point. Why am I... more... - Graham Steel

It's like a car crash, I can't look away. - John Dupuis

That, Graham, may be the most patronising e-mail I have seen! Parsing it as '*I* know OA, leave it to me, you do whatever Sciency stuff it is you do' - Pete #TeamMonique

Yeah, I think you were oaexpertsplained. - John Dupuis

Wow. Just wow. - Walt Crawford

I deliberated on 3 options and in the end, chose not to even bother replying. - Graham Steel

Thanks John. A >>>completely unrelated<<< slowmo car crash video https://www.youtube.com/watch... - Graham Steel

HM is unexplainable. Does she not understand that the source remains oa and freely available no matter what happens to the downstream revisions and mashups? - OMG 404 Joe

Not cool to post private email in public, even when said email is weapons-grade assholery. - Bill Hooker

I'll hold my fire on Stevan Harnad, and PMR just pisses me off every time he shows up these days (what the fuck is with the stuffed animals? is he losing his marbles?). But Eisen and Brembs are very much part of the solution imo; without a few strong voices on the OA side it's too easy for the SKitchers and allies to slide the Overton Window their way. And how is Richard Poynder a problem?? - Bill Hooker

"Not cool to post private email in public" Agreed and won't do so again, Bill. (Have never done so before but I felt it was appropriate in the context of this thread though). - Graham Steel

Eisen doesn't often screw this up, but when he does -- as IMO he did with the reaction to the OSTP memo -- he does it big. Brembs is very, very good at pushing organizationally infeasible Big Plans, which makes me (at least) shut right down when he starts up with his "libraries will save us!" crazytalk. Poynder has openly dissed libraries and librarians, taking his cues there from Harnad and PMR. - RepoRat

@404: I've argued with HM about exactly that. She worries about incentives for the commercial entity doing the enclosing to try to do away with the original, OA, source version. E.g. EvilCo™ Publishers duplicates PubMed Central and then lobbies the US gummint, which is famously and horribly susceptible to such nonsense, to reduce costs by defunding PMC itself. (Not to put words in HM's mouth here, any errors mine etc) (Edit: PubMed Central, not PubMed) - Bill Hooker

@RR -- ah, mine own ox was not directly gored by RP so I missed that. Mea culpa. Eisen is a good sport, you can yell right back at him (I did, over the OSTP memo, and I am but an egg in his HHMI-funded presence). Brembs can also take it as well as dish it, but I understand if you are just tired of pointing out where ugly facts undermine his beautiful theories about libraries and what they can do in the real world. - Bill Hooker

Well, the evil companies did try to shut down pubmed once, for being an anticompetitive use of government money intruding on the private sector. - DJF from Android

Apropos: http://del-fi.org/post... - Bill Hooker

I'll admit that I'm likely deluding myself as to how much of the potential libraries have, they will be able to realize. However, I find the potential is large enough to warrant unrealistic visions and push for them. And besides, my library now does pretty much exactly what I would dream all libraries should be doing, and so is the entire TU Delft, so it can't be totally out of this... more... - Björn Brembs

Plus, I do feel somewhat sad to find myself on a blacklist set up by people who I thought were on the same team as me... :-) - Björn Brembs

Oh hey, there's no blacklist, there's just us arguing. It's all good. - Bill Hooker

@bb I'm quite enjoying the reactions to your recent article -I read a lot of the thoughts on your blog but having them in an article seems to be getting more attention. - Christina Pikas from iPhone

What Bill says. There's no blacklist. Well, there is, but only SK is on it. - Walt Crawford

Bjorn, don't worry you're definitely on my non-black list. I really do appreciate your vision of the role that libraries could play in scholarly communications, even if the path from here to there can be a bit hard to visualize at times. - John Dupuis

Stephen le Francoeur

A great roundup of Google Reader replacements. Phil Bradley's weblog: 20 Alternatives to Google Reader http://philbradley.typepad.com/phil_br...

A great roundup of Google Reader replacements. Phil Bradley's weblog: 20 Alternatives to Google Reader http://bit.ly/WJVDdX

March 14 from Advanced Tweets - Comment - Like - Share

Zamms, Graham Steel, Stephen Mack #TeamMomo and 6 other people liked this

not even 24 hours later! - $tephanie•Gardening

2 more comments

Am I the only person who is going to use this opportunity to unhook myself from RSS readers? - Zamms

Zamms: you're not alone. http://edbilodeau.blogspot.com/2013... - Stephen le Francoeur

If I thought of GReader as a "newsreader," I might very well agree with that post. But I don't: For me, it's a blog reader--I get news other ways (including, ahem, the daily paper, even if no longer in print). I'm loathe to give that up. And there's no way on Earth or elsewhere that I'm checking 918 places once a day. Not gonna happen. - Walt Crawford

John Dupuis

RT @researchremix: Awesome: PeerJ computes research $$ saved by choosing @thePeerJ instead of subscription journals. See front page + https://t.co/UkzQ4DLOkQ

March 6 from Twitter - Comment - Like - Share

jtf, Sir Shuping is just sir, Graham Steel and 3 other people liked this

Are any libraries/universities with OA fee budgets keeping track+publicizing their system "savings"? Sounds like a great thing to brag about, and a great way to reinforce that subscription money is, when it comes down to it, research money. - Heather Piwowar

28 more comments

I'm not sure if anyone is really publicizing their numbers but it would be interesting to know. There certainly aren't any real "savings" in the system yet. Paying APCs is an added cost to subscriptions/collections budgets and even when some hybrid journals refund the OA fee, that ends up cost-neutral. As for our subscriptions budgets, if our institutions were able to claw that money... more... - John Dupuis

And I did write about this very question: http://scienceblogs.com/confess... - John Dupuis

could be funders would lower allowable indirects to make sure the money is spent on research. there is leverage. - Heather Piwowar

You could compare the $$ value of APCs with the $$ value not paid on OA articles (green or gold) cited in researchers' reference lists. - Deborah Fitchett

There's a library-internal organizational issue as well that John (wisely) skates over a bit: there's a cadre of librarians whose JOB it is to allocate money for info. Just as they have been (with rare exceptions) signally unwilling to reallocate stuff-buying funds to author-side fee funds, they are not going to welcome the idea that their work is evaporating. So they won't want to hear about purported "savings." (I also agree with John that at this point savings are theoretical, not actual.) - RepoRat

There's one other issue that the OA movement as a whole needs to think harder about: "savings" = "no, really, we're NOT going to pay for journal subscriptions when stuff goes OA." Which is a thing the OA movement has been super-reluctant to say outright. Which I think is kinda disingenuous-verging-on-dishonest of us. - RepoRat

An interesting wrinkle from the Canadian perspective: the pot of money that the library budget comes from is largely provincial government funding + tuition, about 80/20 with variation among the provinces. The lion's share of government research funding would be tricouncil grants (SSHRC, CIHR, NSERC), which are the federal government. - John Dupuis

+1 RR. Though "savings" could also come from "we're way more willing to walk away from journal subscriptions unless they are lowered to a reasonable price" because their unique value is now lower. So partly from fewer journal subscriptions, partly from downward price pressure on subscription prices. - Heather Piwowar

John, thanks, I didn't know that about Canadian library funding. - Heather Piwowar

That being said, it'll be interesting to see what happens as we get past the OA tipping point and closer to the OA event horizon. When and how are we going to recognize that we can start drawing down on journal subscriptions and what is going to happen with that money? - John Dupuis

and what happens to the library and its staff, particularly in science libraries, when the wallet function is diminished? - RepoRat

the fewer papers that are only available by subscription (esp well-funded,correlated with high use, papers) , the worse the "pay per click" and "pay per paper you have access to" numbers are going to look. Publishers have been pushing these because they looked good in Big Deals as I understood it? But as more papers go out of that system, these numbers will start looking worse.... more... - Heather Piwowar

the problem, Heather, is that many of us have incentive NOT to push back, because our jobs depend on the current system. you know what they say about people understanding stuff their jobs depend on... - RepoRat

I know. And I hear you. I just don't know the solution. Is there anyone whose full time job is to increase transparency about journal prices? Could there be a person like that? Could be a uni/SPARC/etc researcher with this as their #1 focus? Who else could it be? Otherwise it is everyone's side project, but the "worthy opponent" is lots o people on publisher side dreaming up waysto spin numbers so they can sell for high prices. - Heather Piwowar

*shrug* at some libraries there are scholarly-communications librarians, but given the prevailing winds, they're often muzzled. they do what they can. - RepoRat

I don't know the history of SPARC, but it seems like librarians pulled together SPARC because they knew full-time, unmuzzled attention was needed on something that would (eventually) benefit everyone, is that right? So could it be a role in SPARC? Maybe a 2 year sloan-funded gig, to start with, to collect this data, consolidate it, maybe ideally start to put it in someone maintainable? feels like there should be a solution. I guess JISC funded is another possibility, but then not as NA relevant. - Heather Piwowar

suggest it to Heather? - RepoRat

yup. Except no. I don't have time, can't spare the focus. Which is everyone's problem. Which is one of the reasons we are where we are. <depressed><running away to go work on the things Im committed to work on while trying to care about fewer things><still depressed> - Heather Piwowar

hang in there. we're making progress. :) - RepoRat

"disingenuous-verging-on-dishonest of us" -- not it! I've been saying for years, in writing, in public, that OA would decimate profit margins in publishing simply by enabling real market competition. I think the tipping point for OA will come when that finally sinks in -- that the subscription model is a protection racket. - Bill Hooker

Nope, you're not it, Bill. :) But I know you know who is. - RepoRat

I think there are people in publishing who understand the potential very clearly and are engaging the battle on two fronts. First via sock puppets like KA who argue against OA. The second front is newer and perhaps riskier for them and that's the Alicia Wise "we love OA because APC dollars are potentially just as juicy as subscription dollars" strategy. No doubt kicked into high gear by that stock analyst report from a year or so ago. - John Dupuis

A thought that occurred to me recently. "Every year, the federal government funds over sixty billion dollars in basic and applied research. Most of this funding is concentrated within 11 departments/agencies (e.g., National Institutes of Health (NIH), National Science Foundation (NSF), and Department of Energy). This research results in a significant number of articles being published... more... - Graham Steel

Based on an "average" APC of say $2000 ¦ 90,000 x $2000 = $180M which equates to 3% of total spend. - Graham Steel

Based on Mike Taylor's recent estimate of $453 http://svpow.com/2012... with an "average" APC of $453 ¦ 90,000 x $453 = $40.77M which equates to 0.6% of total spend. Is my math correct? - Graham Steel

Tell a scientist that 3% -- or for that matter 0.6% -- of a funding agency's budget might be diverted away from directly funding researchers and that scientist will HOOOOOOOWWWWWWWWLLLLLLLLL. I have seen this happen. - RepoRat

Yes RR, I can understand that reaction. Spinning back to earlier parts of this thread, can I throw in http://mcblawg.blogspot.co.uk/2010... from 2010 into the ring. I think I am allowed to say that these workshops explored real cost data analysis of UK Universities flipping to total OA output (Green/Gold was not discussed from memory) and unsubscribing to TA content completely. - Graham Steel

Does anyone have the numbers handy on the total value of the journal subscription market? $4 billion seems to be a number at the top of my brain, but I could be totally wrong. - John Dupuis

Is there a known figure, rather than an estimate, for that total? U.S. academic libraries paid $1.253 billion in 2010 for electronic serials, but that's only a piece of the action. ($1,252,586,887, to be more "precise.") - Walt Crawford

Leslie Carr

Prof Kell recommending “grown up” text mining. I like a man who thinks that computational science isn’t scary and futury. #openaccess

March 6 from Twitter - Comment - Like - Share

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John Dupuis

Around the Web: Updated list of posts about the Aaron Swartz story, in chronological order: http://scienceblogs.com/confess... / @aaronsw #pdftribute

March 3 from Twitter - Comment - Like - Share

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Howard Rheingold

PatientsLikeMe Is Building A Self-Learning Healthcare System - Forbes - http://www.forbes.com/sites...

March 3 from delicious - Comment - Like - Share

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"The answer to this question has become an obsession for data-driven scientist Paul Wicks. The neuropsychologist from the U.K. (and a 2013 TED Fellow) is research director for PatientsLikeMe, a social network that is producing some of the most compelling clinical data the health care industry has ever seen. PatientsLikeMe was launched in 2004 by family members of an architect who had contracted ALS five years earlier at the age of 29. They had raised millions of dollars in a failed effort to find a cure for ALS and also ended up creating a data-sharing patient social network to go with it. Early on they brought Wicks over to Boston from London where he was moderating an ALS patient group and doing neuroimaging research out of King’s College. Wicks ended up being employee number 6 and never left. PatientsLikeMe now has more than 200,000 patients on the platform and is tracking 1,800 diseases. The majority of them have neurological diseases such as ALS, multiple sclerosis and... - Howard Rheingold

Pranab Chatterjee

@etreas Thanks! :-) Glad to be of any assistance! Do you know of the friendfeed group called references wanted? cc: @McDawg

March 3 from Twitter - Comment - Like - Share

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peter murray-rust

The Scholarly Kitchen Challenges me over STM PDFs; I’d like your help - http://blogs.ch.cam.ac.uk/pmr...

March 1 from petermr's blog - Comment - Like - Share

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peter murray-rust

#rds2013: Why academia must look outward; “closed data means people die” - http://blogs.ch.cam.ac.uk/pmr...

February 26 from petermr's blog - Comment - Like - Share

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The pic of Jack is great. - OMG 404 Joe

Indeed. I intended on using http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Z8Q1em... but just before publishing, Jack launched a new website so I opted for the pic he used on the homepage instead. - Graham Steel

Heather Piwowar

RT @hjoseph: New York Times editorial supports #openaccess and asks @whitehouseostp to consider *shorter* embargo period. Amen. http://www.nytimes.com/2013...

February 26 from Twitter - Comment - Like - Share

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Heather Piwowar

So, what would it take for you to respect SK?

February 24 - Comment - Like - Share

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Let's say it keeps all current bloggers, and they keep doing what they are currently doing, but SK publicly acks it needs more diverse voices and then tries hard to go get them and get them posting frequently. Would it, could it, become a place that you go to for, um, heated but interesting scholcomm discussion, or is it burned earth? - Heather Piwowar

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And, while we're at it, in that scenario would *you* blog for them? - Heather Piwowar

I admit I think it's burned earth. No, I would not blog for them under any conceivable circumstance. They are doing incredible damage to academic-librarian support for open access, and as I've been professionally hurt by that, I say the devil take them and all their works. Let no one give them additional credibility, especially not on the criterion "balance." I don't particularly respect my own stance on this; it is what it is. - RepoRat

I would say that even currently not all SK posts are uniformly awful. The main problem is that the worst blogger is also by far the most prolific. Even if just KA stopped blogging there it would make a huge difference. Also, adding one or two bloggers that were even a little on the positive side for OA. - John Dupuis

Useful. "they are doing incredible damage to academic-librarian support for open access" What are they doing right now that does this? Concrete examples will help me. As you may have seen on the twitters, I have put my neck out :P - Heather Piwowar

i keep thinking about starting an anti-SK blog because i fear it might be burned earth at this point. but i also think one place for an honest and genuine discussion, would rock. and agreed with John re: KA. - jambina

John, Let's say KA stays, because that is surely likely. Can there be enough OA bloggers to counter that for you, or is he a poison pill? - Heather Piwowar

It's hard to find documented examples, Heather, because the major harm is giving library water-cooler talk plenty of apparently-credible misinformation with which to play the OA refusenik. - RepoRat

^^^^this - Meg V. Meg

I find KA to be a poison pill. He is teflon. Nothing that people say to counter KA sticks. He counters with something that is different than what people counter with. - OMG 404 Joe

KA and the others at the Skitchen love using fallacies to counter good OA arguments. - OMG 404 Joe

For documented examples, one can find them in the comments. He misdirects the conversation all the time. - OMG 404 Joe

ok, is there any way to counter the apparently-credible misinformation? Let's brainstorm? What if KA-opposites had the chance to offer an "opposing opinion" on his posts? (not quite that, but that idea). Or is he just such a smooth teflon talker that it wouldn't work? - Heather Piwowar

I think he would have to leave for the blog to have any hope of redemption. With him it's several posts a week that, like RR says, just scorch the earth for OA in libraries and really everywhere. Without him and with a few more positive voices, it could be a lively dialogue. I think he just infects the whole blog, setting the tone that surely the others pick up on and echo. I bet if someone actually studied it, someone like RA has probably gotten less OA-positive during his time there. - John Dupuis

Any engagement legitimizes them. - Meg V. Meg

or, as John suggested, the problem is he is just so prolific? What if there were only 2 KA posts a month or something??? - Heather Piwowar

You'd have to have a countering voice with the same perceived gravitas as KA who is also willing to descend into KA's mudpit for a knock-down-drag-'em-out fight. That's gonna be tough. OA's respected voices tend to be too measured to take on the KAs of this world. (Sane toll-access people have the same problem with St-v-n H-rn-d.) - RepoRat

(Also, my April 1 post this year will be SK-themed. Like last year, I may be looking for volunteers to help out at some point...) - John Dupuis

john, lemme know. and now that i think about it, i completely agree with Meg. they get too much airtime. - jambina

Here, Taylor tries to counter his logical fallacies, but they don't seem to stick. He just waves them off, and misdirects the conversation concerning peer review. http://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2013... - OMG 404 Joe

What if we created an Anti-SK group blog? I need another blog like I need a hole in my head. - OMG 404 Joe

Given that KA seems to be big part of the problem, thoughts on what you think SSP should do? Ideally, and something that has a chance of actually happening? :) - Heather Piwowar

... what's SSP's role in all this? you mean, "having been dumbass enough to elect KA their fearless leader?" suffer it out for a year, as I had to do with M-ch--l G-rm-n. - RepoRat

Is the SSP thinking of changing something up? Do they see that KA is caustic or what? - OMG 404 Joe

I go back and forth on whether engaging them just makes it worse by legitimizing them. On the one hand, don't feed the trolls. On the other hand, they already have tons of legitimacy and in many (often very high) places even more than any OA advocate. I would compare them more to creationists. They have decision makers' ears, they are effective at making their points, they actually wins... more... - John Dupuis

Joe: nah, I don't think so. I just said that I didn't want to do a guest blog for them, and a few people are questioning me about why not. Might be an opportunity to suggest some changes, that's all. - Heather Piwowar

But on the third hand, engaging them is completely exhausting and in a lot of ways completely ineffective (like with creationists...) and maybe the better strategy is just to completely go over their heads and try and win the war elsewhere. Like I said, I'm back and forth on this one... - John Dupuis

Do any of the library administrators read the comments to see if there is dissension or discussion that is counter to the SK author? - OMG 404 Joe

Creationists is interesting parallel. Mike Taylor suggested Fox News as parallel. - Heather Piwowar

Anybody that wants the status quo. Any group that doesn't want change to their power or prestige system. Yeah. - OMG 404 Joe

I do not engage creationists either. I do think there is a place for productive conversation, but it's likely not in public, and not with relative strangers. There has to be mutual respect. - Meg V. Meg

Commenting as one who's been identified as an OA independent (P. Suber and myself) or an outright enemy of OA (S. Hnd)...I consider SK to be scorched earth--I can think of no way to legitimize it other than shutting it down entirely. I've given up commenting on SK posts. - Walt Crawford

I also tend to agree that creationism is a pretty reasonable analogy for TSK: it rallies the few remaining supporters, radicalizes them and alienates an otherwise potentially sympathetic majority. Other than creationists, one might also use Todd Akin, Rush Limbaugh or James Inhofe - how many elections have Republicans won since they took center stage? - Björn Brembs

I tend to agree with the others about SK being too far gone to save. And they are losing ground fast - I don't know any library admins at my institution who give any credence to SK (just had a conversation with my Dean about them). And we both lamented the lack of a space to have genuine conversation and dialogue about the issues at play. But KA has really ruined it. Also it's funny that he crows about the viewer logs being high - I think it's analogous to people watching a train wreck! - Sarah from FreshFeed

Is it worth trying to hasten their demise, or are they doing a fine job doing themselves in? - RepoRat

My science librarian loves SK. Volunteered that fact to me out of the blue last month. "Learn so many interesting things, dig to the bottom of issues..." - Heather Piwowar

and there you go. - RepoRat

I continue to be torn about engaging them. To take the pro side, as with creationists, it's probably not worth debating them on their own terms in their own spaces. On the other hand, as science people have to make the public case that ID (for example) isn't science and directly challenge the truthfulness of the stuff in the Creation Museum, maybe there is a need to directly challenge the truthfulness of the stuff in SK? - John Dupuis

Interesting, from David Crotty: http://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2013... and David Wojick: http://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2013... At first glance, neither particularly inflammatory. - John Dupuis

I actually learned not to (and why) engage creationists when I was an evolutionary biology grad student, from my PI's, so it's definitely not something that all scientists feel is necessary. - Meg V. Meg

On the "aresehole front" if I can put it that way, KA is 12/10, Crotty 5/10. unsure about Wojick: (say 3/10) Allegedly. - Graham Steel

Wojick is a professional anti-scientist, a paid climate change denialist. He's the least credible of the lot. http://www.sourcewatch.org/index... - Bill Hooker

Also, you people are nuts to even be having this discussion. :-) There's nothing worth saving at TSK; even David Crotty, who is worth arguing with, isn't worth arguing with on that site. - Bill Hooker

As to John's point about whether it's a good idea to just ignore them -- if you must engage, do it on your own sites. Never comment at TSK. (I've failed to take my own advice in the past, but I'll do better!) - Bill Hooker

Rajarshi Guha

quite worrisome if you're not 'food-aware'. Makes me happy to spend time cooking http://www.nytimes.com/2013... #nutrition #sugar #processedfood

February 25 from Twitter - Comment - Like - Share

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Probably the same as you, I was brought up on home cooking. (no time to read the whole piece). Having a home-made Chinese chicken curry & egg fried rice for dinner..... - Graham Steel

Heather Piwowar

Twitter convo this morning w Kent Anderson about why I pulled my upcoming guest post from Schol Kitchen. Happy w myself because I think I managed to articulate it well by last tweet: I'm up for being part of the solution, but not in system that doesn't admit it has a problem.

February 24 - Comment - Like - Share

Eric Sizemore, Efe Dekorasyon, jambina and 11 other people liked this

*hugs you* - RepoRat

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well done! - Björn Brembs

Salutes !! - Graham Steel

Wow, what a, well, never mind he might sue me. - John Dupuis

Also I had a similar though not anywhere near as unpleasant twitterr conversation with Rick Anderson yesterday. - John Dupuis

"Prick" - Graham Steel

It's so important for these people to hear that people they respect don't respect the stances they're taking. Thank you, Heather and John. - RepoRat

http://www.efedekorasyon.com - Efe Dekorasyon

Heather Piwowar

Yesterday's next year wasn't full of free US-funded science papers+data+metadata. Today's next year is. #thatsTheWin #OAMonday

February 22 from Twitter - Comment - Like - Share

suelibrarian, Marianne, Graham Steel and 6 other people liked this

dammit now I am crying again - RepoRat

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Get ready to start again: https://twitter.com/wilbank... "Am told the west wing meeting approving the #publicaccess policy took place on January 11, a few hours before Aaron Swartz's death." - John Dupuis

eta: @wilbanks pulled that tweet due to misinformation - Hedgehog

I was thinking about Swartz -- didn't even see the tweet in question. it SUCKS that he did not live to see this. - RepoRat

As Hedgie notes, JW deleted the tweet. - John Dupuis

Christina Pikas

geez head down in work for a few minutes and the world changes #OAMonday

February 22 - Comment - Like - Share

Kirsten, Graham Steel, ellbeecee and 6 other people liked this

awesome, innit? - RepoRat

Go out for lunch with a friend and "Wha?" I was on the SPARC Directors call about eLife 12-12:45 and Heather mentioned that there was "stuff going on" and she might have to step away for a moment...yeah, "stuff going on." - John Dupuis

*chuckling* - RepoRat