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

[Gabriel Scherer]

Dear Roberto (and list),

The new ACM Open model is based on the core idea of saving the licensing
revenue of the ACM by shifting costs from their many customers (including
in particular companies) to only the institutions who submit the articles.
They hope that the academic actors that produce the scientific value will
also pay for current ACM expenses. This model is completely incompatible
with having fair Open Access prices for ACM publications; on the contrary,
it would result in a strong total-cost increase for academic entities that
publish in ACM proceedings.

This is frankly explained on the (current version of) the ACM Open
documentation page:
  https://www.acm.org/publications/openaccess#acmopen

> Today, ACM Publications and the ACM Digital Library platform are funded by
> selling "read" or "access" licenses to approximately 2,700 universities,
> government research labs, and corporations from around the world. The
> income generated from the sale of these licenses [...] is approximately
> $20M+ annually
>
The vast majority of [ACM] articles are authored by individuals affiliated
> with ~1,000 institutions, which is roughly 1/3 of the institutions that
> license “access” to the ACM Digital Library. So, the main challenge for ACM
> is how to generate roughly the same income from 1/3 the number of
> institutions over the long term, as ACM transitions from selling
> institutional "access" to an institutional "OA publication" model and more
> and more of the articles published in the ACM DL are published in front of
> the subscription paywall.
>

A transition to fair Open Access practices would require the difficult
decision of giving up on licensing revenue.
The ACM does not seem willing to do it, and cannot be trusted to do it
eventually.


On Fri, Dec 20, 2019 at 7:08 PM Roberto Di Cosmo <roberto at dicosmo.org>
wrote:

> Thanks Gabriel for bringing this to this list: it was indeed shocking to
> see ACM
> (and many other learned societies) in the list of signatories of this
> letter.
>
> The fact that many small learned societies do not feel ready to jump into
> a pure
> open access model right away does not justify their signature on a letter
> containing highly debatable (that's an euphemism) statements like the ones
> you pinpoint.
>
> By a curious coincidence, I got almost at the same time an ACM newlsetter
> (Blue
> Diamond) containing among other announcements, this one:
>
>     ACM OPEN: A New Transformative Model for Open Access Publication
>
>      Over the past year ACM Publications staff have been working
> collaboratively with
>      a group of large research universities in the United States to
> develop an
>      entirely new and innovative model for Open Access publication that
> has the
>      potential to transition ACM into a predominantly Open Access
> publisher over the
>      next decade or sooner.
>
> You can find details of the proposed model at
> https://www.acm.org/publications/openaccess#acmopen
>
> Cheers
>
> --
> Roberto
>
> On Fri, Dec 20, 2019 at 02:53:05PM +0100, Gabriel Scherer 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 payน unreasonable
> > Gold Access author processing charges (APCs)?
> >
> > น: 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.
>
> --
> Roberto Di Cosmo
>
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