[TYPES] In a letter to the US White House, ACM opposes free distribution of peer-reviewed journal articles

[Jonathan Aldrich]

I agree with Gabriel.  Furthermore, I think we should do something.

Specifically, I think it would be great if we (SIGPLAN/members of
types-list) could coordinate an open letter--which might eventually include
other allied communities within ACM--expressing how problematic it is for
ACM to sign this statement, and how it deeply misrepresents the will of ACM
membership.  We should ask for ACM to (1) disavow the Publishers'
statement, and for them to (2) set open access fees at a rate that reflects
the cost of maintaining and making the works indefinitely available--but at
a rate that does *not* subsidize other "good works" of ACM (that is the
reason for the current high price; the ACM digital library has subsidized
other good but unrelated things for a long time, and ACM sets the price of
open access fees to match the overall "profitability" of the library.  I
strongly support many of those other good things, e.g. helping students
attend conferences, but I do not think "taxing" open access is an
appropriate way to fund them).

I think we should not take the most extreme stances--for example, I
personally agree with Garbriel that there is an ethical problem with closed
access publication models, but I do not think everyone would go that far,
and I think we would be smarter to focus a letter on things that would get
very wide agreement at least within the SIGPLAN/Types community, and
hopefully within ACM at large.  We might then get many signatures, perhaps
enough to send a strong message.  ACM leadership does, after all, work for
its membership--us!

I'd be willing to help draft such a thing, but it would be best to have
SIGPLAN leadership and/or ACM Fellow/Turing Award people on board.  Is
there anyone in that category who could lend support or even take the lead
on something like this?  Feel free to respond privately to me (in which
case I will later post a summary) and/or publicly to the list with further
suggestions.

Best,

Jonathan

On Fri, Dec 20, 2019 at 8:54 AM Gabriel Scherer <gabriel.scherer at gmail.com>
wrote:

> [ The Types Forum, http://lists.seas.upenn.edu/mailman/listinfo/types-list
> ]
>
> Dear types-list and SIGPLAN,
>
> I have long been of the opinion that our scientific publications
> should be Open Access, and that editors should not request more than
> a fair price (cost of publication, which Dasgtuhl estimates at $60
> per article). In particular, I believe that copyright transfer
> agreements, as imposed by most editors including the ACM, is deeply
> unethical: the publishers are not the authors of our scientific
> production and they should not force us to give our copyright to
> them. A non-exclusive publishing agreement should be enough.
>
> Whether or not you agree with this position, you may be interested in
> the content of the following letter to the US White House that
> a coalition of scientific publishers, *including the ACM*, signed and
> support.
>
>
>
> https://presspage-production-content.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/1508/coalitionletteropposinglowerembargoes12.18.2019-581369.pdf
>   press release from the coalition of editors:
>
> https://newsroom.publishers.org/researchers-and-publishers-oppose-immediate-free-distribution-of-peer-reviewed-journal-articles
>
> (This letter was written in the context of a proposed US legislation
> to force more scientists to publish their work in Fair Open Access
> venues. I haven't been able to find a precise link to a discussion of
> this proposed legislation.)
>
> The following parts of the letter co-signed by the ACM are
> particularly juicy:
>
> > [We] have learned that the Administration may be preparing to step
> > into the private marketplace and force the immediate free distribution
> > of journal articles financed and published by organizations in the
> > private sector, including many non-profits. This would effectively
> > nationalize the valuable American intellectual property that we
> > produce and force us to give it away to the rest of the world for
> > free.
>
> > This mandate [...] would make it very difficult for most American
> > publishers to invest in publishing these articles. As a consequence,
> > it would place increased financial responsibility on the government
> > through diverted federal research grant funds or additional monies
> > to underwrite the important value added by publishing. In the coming
> > years, this cost shift would place billions of dollars of new and
> > additional burden on taxpayers.
>
> In my discussion with many of us, I regularly hear that the ACM is
> "not evil" (the SIGPLAN, of course, is pure good!) and that placating
> its weird views (for example, that it really does cost $700 or $900 to
> publish an article as Open Source) is good for our research
> community. It do not see how this argument is compatible with the ACM
> signing this letter.
>
> I believe that many of our activities, which we collectively trained
> ourselves to see as harmless administrative details of our research
> work, are in fact empowering the ACM to make those claims. Should we
> accept to give away our copyright, or pay¹ unreasonable
> Gold Access author processing charges (APCs)?
>
> ¹: The SIGPLAN decision to cover APC costs for PACMPL articles is
> shielding many of us from paying APCs. But many of the smaller
> conferences, symposiums or workshops in our community whose
> proceedings are handled by the ACM are still limited to "pay
> $900" (or "pay $25 per page") as the only Open Access option, with
> copyright transfer as the only free choice, which is effectively
> keeping those proceedings Closed-Access.
>