The COS can do a better/smarter fundraising effort than the one they are planning...
Bruce Caron
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The proposed COS fees for preprint services are an invitation to failure.
They are directed at the wrong agents, and create perverse incentives.
If the COS wants to get money back from the people who use these services, they should be asking authors who have their content on the service, not the managers/editors who are already volunteering their time to shepherd the content into the service.
Any reasonable cost-recovery effort would support and applaud preprint efforts that manage to gain the most use. Instead, this would only lead to higher fees charged to people who are already working for free.
What happens when a preprint service cannot pay the fee? Didn’t the COS sign up to be the host of this content in perpetuity (whatever that means)?
Wikipedia does not ask its editors to pay for the service, it asks its users. The editor/governance volunteers for preprint services are the last people who should be tasked to come up with money to support these.
Bruce Caron Wed 6 Mar 2019 2:09PM
I believe that the COS is working out a governance system that can handle these matters with better communication and participation. The need for funding is real. I still think that a major source of funding could be a "pay it forward" request that authors who have added their own work to the service for free (as in beer), can donate the real cost of this to fund other submissions in the future. This service is also a form of deep infrastructure: these articles are meant to be persistently available. Once the COS can show that they are serving the faculty of an institution, perhaps they can request that that institution join as an institutional "member" and recognized as such on the website, with a small annual fee. stuff like that might help.
Tom Narock Thu 7 Mar 2019 2:40PM
Yes, as Bruce said, COS has formed a 6-person governance team to work through better communication and think about joint efforts to raise money rather than each preprint group competing with each other. The thinking is that 6 reps from the 30 preprint systems will be flexible enough to meet regularly, but also able to aggregate feedback from multiple domains. Someone nominated me (still haven't figured out who :) ) so I'll be part of the 6-person team. We're going to meet bi-weekly starting next week. As I understand it, this means that the request for preprint systems to begin paying next year is now on hold. I'll try to confirm that for sure at our meeting. Feel free to post thoughts/concerns here (or email me) and I'll bring them up on our calls. As we start meeting regularly I'll report back here.
Jamie Farquharson Thu 7 Mar 2019 3:05PM
Great, thanks Tom
Victor Venema Thu 7 Mar 2019 4:22PM
Good that that bad idea is on hold.
I have seen an open publishing system with an elegant model: they ask their users for contact information for the library or when that is already know to contact their library to say you would like them to support us or thank them for their support as a happy user.
Leonardo Uieda Thu 7 Mar 2019 5:57PM
Thanks for taking this on, Tom! I'm curious to see what the team comes up with.
Tom Narock Fri 8 Mar 2019 2:39PM
@leonardouieda there's a discussion that started in the Moderation Policy thread that might interest you. Based on this blog post https://www.fromthebottomoftheheap.net/2018/12/20/what-is-wrong-with-software-paper-preprints-at-eartharxiv/ we're thinking about revising the EarthArXiv policy on software papers. I've going to reach out to the blog post author next week. If this is of interest to you let me know
Victor Venema Fri 8 Mar 2019 2:53PM
That is good news.
Also in general I would advocate being more open rather than more closed with respect to types of scientific contributions than traditional journals. That is one of the strengths of repositories and one of its gifts to open science.
Leonardo Uieda Mon 11 Mar 2019 7:26PM
Thanks @tomnarock1! I'm interested. Let me know when you plan to talk to them.
Tom Narock Wed 13 Mar 2019 2:46PM
@leonardouieda I've reached out to Gavin via email. I'll let you know if/when he replies and we can set up a group discussion
brandon · Wed 6 Mar 2019 11:40AM
Are there any updates for this issue?