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

[Andrew Myers]

The reasoning behind point #1 is "If someone doesn't think the 
government should pass a law prohibiting X, then they support X." To be 
blunt, this is a fallacy.

It would be interesting to see the numbers on point #3. One should keep 
in mind that various publishers, including ACM, have been cutting 
one-time deals to reduce open access article processing fees. as they 
explore the Open Access options. Consequently, the charges for any one 
conference/journal/SIG may not be representative.

Since Arxiv is currently largely supported by Cornell University along 
with the Simons Foundation, I appreciate the callout. But its costs are 
also increasing dramatically. Further, ACM does many positive things 
beyond archiving articles.

-- Andrew

Gabriel Scherer wrote on 12/22/19 12:52 PM:
> Dear Andrew (and list),
>
>     I believe open access is a goal for ACM
>
>
> This is what the ACM says, but this is not their actions suggest. Some 
> examples:
>
> 1. They signed this letter. (They defend their choice in 
> https://www.acm.org/about-acm/opposition-to-zero-embargo-mandate )
>
> 2. Events affiliated with an ACM conference, such as a workshop, are 
> not allowed to publish their proceedings as (fair) open-access if they 
> wish to, for example by publishing in ETCS or LiPICS. (I know from my 
> experience with the ML and OCaml workshops that ACM people check this 
> and enforce this rule.)
>
> 3. According to private communication with ETAPS organizers, the Gold 
> Open Access deal offered by Springer costs *less* per paper for ETAPS 
> than the Open Access model that SIGPLAN generously funds for PACMPL. 
> If you're doing worse than Springer at Open Access, you are probably 
> not trying very hard.
>
>     I hope we can agree that publishers do provide some value in
>     supporting the scientific process, for example by maintaining
>     archives of publications for decades and across formats.
>
>
> According to LiPICS (the fair Open Access publishing arm of Schloss 
> Dagstuhl), their edition/typesetting work costs 60€ per article ( 
> https://www.dagstuhl.de/en/publications/lipics/processing-charge/ ). 
> (In any case, ACM outsources their edition work on proceedings to 
> external companies, that if I understand correctly are budgeted as 
> part of the conference organization, so not paid by ACM itself.)
>
> According to arXiv, their long-term archival platform costs <$7 per 
> article ( https://arxiv.org/help/support/whitepaper#21-budget ).
>
> On Sun, Dec 22, 2019 at 3:46 PM Andrew Myers <andru at cs.cornell.edu 
> <mailto:andru at cs.cornell.edu>> wrote:
>
>     It feels a bit facile to bash the ACM for signing onto this
>     letter. The letter does not mean that they oppose making
>     publications freely available; in fact, I believe open access is a
>     goal for ACM. The letter means that they oppose having the
>     government *mandate* that all scientific publishers operate in
>     this way. Exactly what the right funding model is for scientific
>     publications is still up in the air. Should the government spend
>     taxes enforcing rules whose implications we
>     do not fully understand? I think not.
>
>     The discussions I have seen about this topic seem to focus on the
>     costs to readers and authors while completely ignoring the
>     economics of publishing. I hope we can agree that publishers do
>     provide some value in supporting the scientific process, for
>     example by maintaining archives of publications for decades and
>     across formats. That value can only be delivered if ACM et al.
>     have money. Where are they supposed to get it? The old model of
>     libraries paying ACM subscriptions is dying and is incompatible
>     with open access. Corporate charity is unreliable and
>     insufficient. The only other player with an incentive to provide
>     money is the authors. My understanding is that the economics are
>     forcing ACM to go in that direction.
>
>     I believe ACM Is trying to be a good actor here, unlike publishers
>     that double-dip by extracting money from both the authors
>     (publication fees) and the readers (subscription fees); those
>     publishers are doing very well financially and generating
>     well-earned resentment. My understanding is that ACM does not want
>     to double-dip. Instead, the idea is that authors at institutions
>     with ACM subscriptions will pay lower or no fees for publications.
>     That should keep the total cost to institutions under control and
>     hopefully approximately cost-neutral. And note that the open
>     access fees charged to other authors are still much lower than the
>     author fees charged by other publishers. The journal Nature
>     charges authors $2000, for example, and it is not the high end.
>
>     Best,
>
>     Andrew Myers
>
>     Gabriel Scherer wrote on 12/21/19 6:01 AM:
>>     [ The Types Forum,
>>     http://lists.seas.upenn.edu/mailman/listinfo/types-list ]
>>
>>     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> <mailto: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
>>>
>>>     ------------------------------------------------------------------
>>>     Computer Science Professor
>>>                  (on leave at INRIA from IRIF/University Paris Diderot)
>>>
>>>     Director
>>>     Software Heritage https://www.softwareheritage.org
>>>     INRIA
>>>     Bureau C328                  E-mail : roberto at dicosmo.org
>>>     <mailto:roberto at dicosmo.org>
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