Alexandra Ketterer

Google Scholar, die Suchmaschine für wissenschaftliche Texte, verfügt
über eine neue Funktion. Diese soll bei der Suche nach Open
Access-Publikationen unterstützen. Was das Feature kann, wie es in der
Wissenschaft ankommt und welche Alternativen es gibt, das hat Alexandra
Ketterer recherchiert.[]{#more-30884}

In der Pandemie ist der Ruf nach freiem Wissen lauter geworden: „Die
gegenwärtige Krise zeigt die Dringlichkeit, den Informationsaustausch
durch Open Science zu verstärken", erklärte kürzlich Audrey Azoulay,
[Generaldirektorin der
UNESCO](https://en.unesco.org/news/unesco-mobilizes-122-countries-promote-open-science-and-reinforced-cooperation-face-covid-19),
gegenüber den für die Wissenschaft zuständigen Ministerien aus der
ganzen Welt.

Auch Unternehmen wie Google wollen den öffentlichen Zugang zu Forschung
fördern: Mitte März 2021 stellte Google Scholar dafür eine neue Funktion
vor. Das neue [Public-Access-Feature
trackt](https://scholar.googleblog.com/2021/03/track-and-manage-your-public-access.html),
ob Forschungsarbeiten, die unter ein Public Access-Mandat von
Förderorganisationen fallen, frei verfügbar sind. Beispielsweise zeigt
das [Profil von Christian
Drosten](https://scholar.google.de/citations?user=tOoiTq4AAAAJ&hl=de)
166 unter Public-Access-Mandat veröffentlichte Artikel an. Davon sind
161 grün markiert und fünf in grellem Rot.

::: {#attachment_30898 .wp-caption .alignnone style="width: 500px"}
![](https://irights.info/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Screenshot_Drosten_markiert-490x228.png){.wp-image-30898
.size-content aria-describedby="caption-attachment-30898" loading="lazy"
width="490" height="228"
srcset="https://irights.info/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Screenshot_Drosten_markiert-490x228.png 490w, https://irights.info/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Screenshot_Drosten_markiert-300x140.png 300w, https://irights.info/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Screenshot_Drosten_markiert-900x419.png 900w, https://irights.info/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Screenshot_Drosten_markiert-768x357.png 768w, https://irights.info/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Screenshot_Drosten_markiert-225x105.png 225w, https://irights.info/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Screenshot_Drosten_markiert-150x70.png 150w, https://irights.info/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Screenshot_Drosten_markiert-1320x614.png 1320w, https://irights.info/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Screenshot_Drosten_markiert.png 1438w"
sizes="(max-width: 490px) 100vw, 490px"}

Screenshot: [Christian Drostens Profil bei Google
Scholar](https://scholar.google.ch/citations?user=tOoiTq4AAAAJ&hl=de&oi=ao),
Bearbeitung iRights.info.
:::

::: {#attachment_30894 .wp-caption .alignnone style="width: 475px"}
![](https://irights.info/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Screenshot_Google_Scholar.png){.wp-image-30894
.size-full aria-describedby="caption-attachment-30894" loading="lazy"
width="465" height="222"
srcset="https://irights.info/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Screenshot_Google_Scholar.png 465w, https://irights.info/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Screenshot_Google_Scholar-300x143.png 300w, https://irights.info/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Screenshot_Google_Scholar-225x107.png 225w, https://irights.info/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Screenshot_Google_Scholar-150x72.png 150w"
sizes="(max-width: 465px) 100vw, 465px"}

Screenshot: [Christian Drostens Profil bei Google
Scholar](https://scholar.google.ch/citations?user=tOoiTq4AAAAJ&hl=de&oi=ao),
Detail.
:::

„Wie eine Art To-do-Liste für die Wissenschaftler und
Wissenschaftlerinnen" beschreibt die freiberufliche Wissenschaftlerin
Kathrin Ganz ihren ersten Eindruck. „Damit sehen die Autor\*innen: Diese
Publikation habe ich noch nicht frei verfügbar gemacht, darum sollte ich
mich mal kümmern."

Die Suchmaschine ermutigt die Autor\*innen, die rot markierten Artikel
in Repositorien oder auf die eigene Google Drive Ablage hochzuladen.

## Google und Open Access: Wie (gut) geht das zusammen?

Was will Google mit so einem Feature? „Wir dachten, dass Autoren den
Überblick behalten und wissen wollen, was von ihnen erwartet wird",
sagte Anurag Acharya, Mitgründer von Google Scholar, [gegenüber dem
Magazin Nature](https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-00873-8).
Weiter wolle man transparenter machen, was wirklich Teil des
Publikationsprozesses ist.

Ross Mounce, Open Access-Direktor bei der NGO Arcadia Fund, ist etwas
zurückhaltender: „Das Tool bietet keinen Open Access per se", stellt er
gegenüber [Research Professional
News](https://www.researchprofessionalnews.com/rr-news-world-2021-3-google-scholar-s-open-access-move-sends-a-powerful-message/)
klar. Denn darunter verstehe man die Gewährleistung der
uneingeschränkten Wiederverwendung von Inhalten, also eine Verfügbarkeit
mit Lizenz zur freien Nutzung und Vervielfältigung.

„Aber", so Mounce weiter, das Feature von Google Scholar „erhöht den
öffentlichen Zugang zu Wissen." Es könne die Open-Access-Bewegung
fördern, indem es kostenpflichtige Zeitschriftenabonnements „weiter
entwertet".

### Die Verfügbarkeit des Artikels wird mit Mandaten abgeglichen -- eine potentielle Fehlerquelle {#die-verfügbarkeit-des-artikels-wird-mit-mandaten-abgeglichen-eine-potentielle-fehlerquelle}

Auch in der Forschung selbst ist man offenbar noch nicht ganz überzeugt:
Der Wissenschaftler Michael Schatz beschreibt das Feature auf Twitter
als
[„Wall-of-Shame"](https://twitter.com/mike_schatz/status/1375312960256630787).
Laut vielen weiteren Erfahrungsberichten ist das Tool fehleranfällig: Es
macht falsche Angaben zur Verfügbarkeit oder weist ältere Artikel
falschen neuen Fördermandaten zu.

Der Grund: Das Feature beruht auch auf nutzergenerierten Daten -- es
liegt also an den Wissenschaftler\*innen selbst, falsche Angaben zu
korrigieren.

::: {#attachment_30891 .wp-caption .alignnone style="width: 500px"}
![](https://irights.info/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Screenshot_Google_Scholar_Mandate-490x258.png){.wp-image-30891
.size-content aria-describedby="caption-attachment-30891" loading="lazy"
width="490" height="258"
srcset="https://irights.info/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Screenshot_Google_Scholar_Mandate-490x258.png 490w, https://irights.info/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Screenshot_Google_Scholar_Mandate-300x158.png 300w, https://irights.info/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Screenshot_Google_Scholar_Mandate-225x118.png 225w, https://irights.info/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Screenshot_Google_Scholar_Mandate-150x79.png 150w, https://irights.info/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Screenshot_Google_Scholar_Mandate.png 696w"
sizes="(max-width: 490px) 100vw, 490px"}

Screenshot: Google Scholar ([Google
Blog](https://scholar.googleblog.com/2021/03/track-and-manage-your-public-access.html)).
:::

Google Scholar analysiert, welche Förderorganisationen als
Unterstützer\*innen einer Forschungsarbeit genannt werden. Die
Suchalgorithmen durchsuchen den publizierten Volltext nach
Formulierungen wie „gefördert von" oder „finanziert von". Die
Verfügbarkeit des Artikels wird dann mit den Mandaten der Förderung
abgeglichen. Das Ergebnis landet auf dem Google Scholar-Profil.

Irene Barbers hält das für ein fehleranfälliges Auswahlkriterium. Sie
ist interne Projektleiterin des Projekts [Open Access
Monitor](https://open-access-monitor.de/#/) Deutschland am
Forschungszentrum Jülich. All ihre wissenschaftlichen Beiträge sind mit
Open Access-Lizenzen in Repositorien oder in Open Access-Zeitschriften
erschienen.

Google Scholar listet davon 21 in ihrem Profil auf, aber ordnet nur zwei
als „öffentlich zugänglich" ein. In ihren wissenschaftlichen Arbeiten
untersucht sie Fördereinrichtungen und zitiert zum Beispiel die Deutsche
Forschungsgemeinschaft. Diese weist Google darauf hin fälschlicherweise
als Organisation aus, die den Artikel gefördert hat.

### Open Access-Forscher: Community sollte mehr einbezogen werden

Auch in anderen Google Scholar-Profilen bildet das Feature die
Forschungsleistung der Autor\*innen nicht richtig ab, zum Beispiel bei
Sozial- und Geisteswissenschaftler\*innen.

Das liege daran, dass die Publikationskultur eine andere ist als in den
STEM-Fächern, vermutet Kathrin Ganz. Publikationen seien in ihrem
Forschungsfeld weniger eindeutig bestimmten Förderungen zuzuordnen.
Außerdem publiziere man überwiegend in Monografien. Die Methoden, die
Google Scholar verwendet, funktionierten im Bereich der Sozial- und
Geisteswissenschaften nicht, stellt Ganz fest.

Sind manche Public-Access-Publikationen im Google Scholar Profil nicht
aufgezählt, fordert Google die Autor\*innen auf, ihre Verlage auf die
„Inclusion Guidelines" von Google Scholar aufmerksam zu machen. Nur wenn
diese berücksichtigt sind, kann das Indizierungssystem die Publikationen
finden.

Diesen Datenaustausch hält Marcel Wrzesinski, Open Access-Officer am
[Humboldt Institut für Internet und Gesellschaft
Berlin](https://www.hiig.de/marcel-wrzesinski/), erstmal für eine gute
Sache. Die Frage sei aber: Warum muss das einseitig stattfinden? Solche
Standards sollten nach seinem Erachten immer im wechselseitigen
Austausch und unter Einbezug der Communities erarbeitet werden müssen.

Wrzesinski folgert: „Vielleicht ist es nicht der richtige Weg, dass sich
die Förderer und Verlage an den Datenaggregator anpassen, sondern dass
man ins Gespräch darüber kommt, was von wem umsetzbar ist."

Wrzesinski zufolge ist es wichtig und in der Open-Access-Bewegung auch
selbst angelegt, dass Autor\*innen sich mehr mit der Frage des
Publizierens beschäftigen sollten. Seiner Einschätzung nach sollten
allerdings die Autor\*innen nicht zum Mediator zwischen
Funding-Organisationen, Verlagen und Google gemacht werden.

### Repositorien statt Google Drive

Jeroen Bosman und Bianca Kramer von der Universität Utrecht
[kritisieren,](https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1_ny6hxY46M1i2eML3-uzePfmeY7vi3lio9vOp755Fig/edit#slide=id.p)
dass Google Scholar vorschlägt, die nicht verfügbaren Artikel auf Google
Drive hochzuladen. Sie fordern, dass Google die Funktion komplett
zurücknimmt. Auf Google Drive wären die Texte dann zwar für Google
Scholar zugänglich, aber nicht für andere Suchmaschinen.

Und sie geben zu bedenken: Das Public Access-Feature könnte zwar mehr
Aufmerksamkeit auf die Zugänglichkeit von Publikationen lenken und
Autor\*innen dazu anstoßen, den Zugang zu den eigenen Publikationen zu
verbessern. Aber den beiden Wissenschaftler\*innen geht es nicht weit
genug, da es die Lizenzfreigaben nicht abbildet.

Laut Google Scholar ist eine Übersicht über die lizenzfreien
Zugriffsmöglichkeiten auf die Artikel technisch nicht umsetzbar. Nach
Wrzesinski stimmt das nur eingeschränkt. Ein zentrales Arbeitspaket der
Open Access-Community arbeite schon länger an maschinenlesbaren
Lizenzangaben. Damit könnten Suchende bei jedem PDF auslesen, unter
welcher Lizenz es steht. „Man muss es halt wollen", fügt Wrzesinski
hinzu.

Im Bildbereich war dieser Wille offenbar vorhanden: Im vergangenen
Sommer hatte Google bei seiner [Bildersuchmaschine ein Feature
eingeführt](https://irights.info/webschau/google-bildersuche-mit-neuem-lizenz-feature-popsong-rechte-fonds-open-access-zeitschriften-verschwunden/30267),
mit dem sich beispielsweise Creative Commons-lizenziertes Material
leicht finden und nach Lizenzart filtern lässt.

### Forderungen nach mehr Offenheit

Werden Wissenschaftler\*innen die von Google Scholar vorgegebenen
To-do-Listen abarbeiten? Barbers bezweifelt, dass das Tool von der
Wissenschaft angenommen werde: „Als Hilfe würde ich das nicht sehen", so
Barbers. Statt Google Drive zu nutzen, empfiehlt sie, die Arbeiten auf
anerkannten Repositorien oder auf denen der eigenen Institution zu
veröffentlichen.

Um das Feature im Sinne der Open Access-Bewegung zu verbessern, sollte
Google nach Bosman und Kramer den Ratschlag, Artikel in institutionellen
oder fachlichen Repositorien zu hinterlegen, prominenter platzieren.

Weiter wäre es nach ihnen hilfreicher, Informationen zur freien
Zugänglichkeit für alle Publikationen bereitzustellen -- und nicht nur
für solche, die einem Open Access-Mandat eines Geldgebers unterliegen.

Außerdem fordern sie von Google, eine Anwendungsschnittstelle (API) für
den Zugriff auf die Metadaten von Google Scholar zu gewähren und die
Metadaten mit einer
[CC0-Lizenz](https://irights.info/artikel/was-ist-cc0/28750)
freizugeben.

## Offene Alternativen

Dass Google Scholar die gesammelten Metadaten für die Open
Access-Bewegung freigibt, bleibt unwahrscheinlich. Dagegen bieten Open
Source-Initiativen aus der Wissenschaftscommunity transparente
Alternativen an.

Die [Browsererweiterung Unpaywall](https://unpaywall.org/) etwa findet
über den Digital Object Identifier (DOI) heraus, ob ein Artikel auf
legalem Weg frei verfügbar ist. Informationen zu Open Access-Mandaten
bietet die [ROAR Map](https://roarmap.eprints.org/) (*Registry of Open
Access Repository Mandates and Policies*), die nicht nur die Angaben
über Förderorganisationen, sondern auch über Forschungseinrichtungen und
Repositorien bereitstellt.

Eine Möglichkeit, Wissenschaftler\*innen auf den fehlenden Zugang zu
ihren Artikeln hinzuweisen, bietet [Dissem.in.](https://dissem.in/) Das
Tool erkennt Publikationen hinter Bezahlschranken und lädt ihre
Verfasser\*innen dazu ein, sie mit einem Klick in ein offenes
Repositorium hochzuladen. Und
[Shareyourpaper.org](https://shareyourpaper.org/) zeigt auf, wo
Publikationen aufmerksamkeitswirksam veröffentlicht werden können.

::: {#attachment_30892 .wp-caption .alignnone style="width: 500px"}
![](https://irights.info/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Screenshot_Google_Scholar_ROAR-490x237.png){.wp-image-30892
.size-content aria-describedby="caption-attachment-30892" loading="lazy"
width="490" height="237"
srcset="https://irights.info/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Screenshot_Google_Scholar_ROAR-490x237.png 490w, https://irights.info/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Screenshot_Google_Scholar_ROAR-300x145.png 300w, https://irights.info/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Screenshot_Google_Scholar_ROAR-900x436.png 900w, https://irights.info/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Screenshot_Google_Scholar_ROAR-768x372.png 768w, https://irights.info/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Screenshot_Google_Scholar_ROAR-225x109.png 225w, https://irights.info/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Screenshot_Google_Scholar_ROAR-150x73.png 150w, https://irights.info/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Screenshot_Google_Scholar_ROAR-1320x639.png 1320w, https://irights.info/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Screenshot_Google_Scholar_ROAR.png 1435w"
sizes="(max-width: 490px) 100vw, 490px"}

Screenshot: [shareyourpaper.org](https://shareyourpaper.org/).
:::

## Fazit

Das Public Access-Feature von Google Scholar zeigt auf, welche
wissenschaftlichen Texte frei und offen zugänglich sind. Zusätzlich
vergleicht es die Verfügbarkeit der Texte mit den Vorgaben der
Fördermandate. Das funktioniert derzeit noch nicht immer fehlerfrei.

Die Übersicht im Google Scholar-Profil könnte Forscher\*innen ermuntern,
den öffentlichen Zugang ihrer Arbeiten zu überprüfen. Zuträglich für die
Open Access-Bewegung wäre die Funktion allerdings besonders dann, wenn
auch die Lizenzvorgaben mitaufgeführt werden.

The post [Google Scholar: Was das neue Open Access-Feature kann und
welche offenen Alternativen es
gibt](https://irights.info/artikel/google-scholar-was-das-neue-open-access-feature-kann-und-welche-offenen-alternativen-es-gibt/30884){rel="nofollow"}
appeared first on [iRights.info](https://irights.info){rel="nofollow"}.


Google Scholar, die Suchmaschine für wissenschaftliche Texte, verfügt über eine neue Funktion. Diese soll bei der Suche nach Open Access-Publikationen unterstützen. Was das Feature kann, wie es in der Wissenschaft ankommt und welche Alternativen es gibt, das hat Alexandra Ketterer recherchiert.

Google Scholar: Was das neue Open Access-Feature kann und welche offenen Alternativen es gibt

Cameron Neylon

> *And this is the chorus*  
> *This is the chorus*  
> *It goes round and around and gets into your brain*  
> *This is the chorus*  
> *A fabulous chorus*  
> *And thirty seconds from now you're gonna to hear it again*
>
> *[This is the
> Chorus](http://www.rammsteinuk.com/331376 "link to the lyrics")
> -Â *Morris Major and the Minors

The [Association of American
Publishers](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Association_of_American_Publishers "Association of American Publishers"){.zem_slink
target="_blank" rel="wikipedia"} have launched a response to the [OSTP
White House Executive Order on public
access](http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2013/02/22/expanding-public-access-results-federally-funded-research)
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. It is necessary
to bear in mind that this substantially the same group that put together
the [Research Works
Act](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Research_Works_Act "Research Works Act"){.zem_slink
target="_blank" rel="wikipedia"}, a group with a long standing, and in
some cases personal, antipathy to the success of PubMedCentral. 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
proposalÂ *canÂ *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 -- Â just a restatement of already
announced initiatives -- or alternately the publishers involved are
setting themselves up for a potentially hugely expensive failure. Let's
dig a little deeper into this to see where the problems lie.

First the good bits. The proposal is to leverage
[FundRef](http://www.crossref.org/fundref/) to identify federally funded
research papers that will be subject to the Executive Order. FundRef is
a newly announced initiative from
[CrossRef](http://crossref.org "CrossRef"){.zem_slink target="_blank"
rel="homepage"} which will include Funder grant information within the
core metadata that CrossRef collects and can provide to users and will
start to address the issues of data quality and completeness. To the
extent that this is a commitment from a large group of publishers to
support FundRef it is a very useful step forward. Based on the available
funding information the publishers would then signal that these papers
are accessible and this information would be used to populate a
registry. Papers that are in the registry would be made available via
the publisher websites in some manner.

Now the difficulties. You will note two sets of weasel words in the
previous paragraph: "...the available funding information..." and
"...made available via the publisher websites in some manner". The
second is really a problem for the publishers but I think a much bigger
one than they realise. Simply making the version of record available
without restrictions is "easy" but ensuring that access works properly
in the context of a largely paywalled corpus is not as easy as people
tend to think. Nature Publishing Group [have spent years sorting
out](http://phylogenomics.blogspot.co.uk/2011/03/please-help-keep-pressure-on-nature.html)
the fact that every time they do a system update that they remove access
to the genome papers that are supposed to be freely accessible. If
publishers decide they just want to make the final author manuscripts
available then they will have to build up a whole parallel
infrastructure to provide these -- an infrastructure that will look
quite a lot like PubMedCentral in fact, leading to potential duplication
of effort and potential costs. This is probably less of an issue for the
big publishers but for small publishers could become a real issue.

**Bad for the agencies**

But its the first set of weasel words that are the most problematic. The
whole of CHORUS seems to be based on assumption that the FundRef
information will be both accurate and complete. Anyone who has dealt
with funding information inside publication workflows knows this is far
from true. Comparison of funder information pulled from different
sourcesÂ can give nearly disjunctÂ sets. And we know that authors are
terrible at giving the correct grant codes when they can bothered
including them at all. The Executive Order and FASTR put the agencies on
the hook to report on success, compliance, and the re-use of published
content. It is the agencies who get good information in the long term on
the outputs of projects they fund -- information that is often at odds
with what is reported in the acknowledgement sections of papers.

Put this issue of data quality alongside the fact that the agencies will
be relying on precisely those organisations that have worked to prevent,
limit, and where that failed slow down the widening of public access and
we have a serious problem of mismatched incentives. For the publishers
there is direct incentive to fail to solve the data quality issue at the
front end -- it lets them make less papers available. The agencies are
not in a position to force this issue at paper submission because their
data isn't complete until the grant finally reports. The NIH already has
high compliance and an operating system, precisely because they couple
grant reports to deposition. Other agencies will struggle to catch up
using CHORUS and will deliver very poor compliance based on their own
data. This is not a criticism of FundRef incidentally. FundRef is a
necessary and well designed part of the effort to solve this problem in
the longer term -- but it is going to take years for the necessary
systems changes to work their way through and there a big changes
required to submission and editorial management systems to make this
work well. And this brings us to the problems for publishers.

**Bad for the publishers**

If the agencies agree to adopt CHORUS they will do so with these issues
very clear in their minds. The Office of Management and Budget oversight
means that agencies have to report very closely on cost-benefit analyses
for new projects. This alongside the issues with incentive misalignment,
and just plain lack of trust, means that the agencies will do two
things: they will insist that the costs are firewalled onto the
publisher side, and they will put strong requirements on compliance
levels and completeness. If I were an agency negotiator I would place a
compliance requirement of 60% on CHORUS in year one rising to 75% and
90% in years two and three and stipulate that that compliance will be
measured against final grant reports on an ongoing basis. Where
compliance didn't meet the requirements the penalty would be for all the
relevant papers from that publisher to be placed in PubMedCentral at the
publisher's expense. Even if they're not this tough they are certainly
going to demand that the registry be updated to include all the papers
that got missed at the publisher's expense necessitating an on-going
manual grind of metadata update, paper corrections, index notifications.
Bear in mind that if we generously assume that 50% of submitted papers
have good grant metadata and the US agencies contribute to around 25% of
all global publications that this means around 10% of theÂ *entire*
corpus will need to be updated year on year, probably through a process
of semi-automated and manual reconciliation. If you've worked with
agency data then you know its generally messy and difficult to manage --
this is being worked on by building shared repositories and data systems
that leverage a lot of the tooling provided by PubMed and PubMedCentral.

Alternately this could be a "triggering event" meaning that content
would become available in the archives like CLOCKSS and PORTICO because
access wasn't properly provided. Putting aside the potential damage to
the publisher brand if this happens, and the fact that it destroys the
central aim of CHORUS -- to control the dissemination path -- this will
also cost money. These archives are not well set up to provide
differential access to triggered content, they release whole journals
when a publisher goes bust. It's likely that a partial trigger would
require specialist repository sites to be set up to serve the content --
again sites that would like an awful lot like PubMedCentral. The process
is likely to lead to significantly more trigger events, requiring these
dark repositories to function more actively as publishers, raising
costs, and requiring them to build up repositories to serve content that
would look an awful lot like...well you get the idea.

Finally there is the big issue -- this puts the costs of improving
funding data collection firmly in the hands of CHORUS publishers and
means it needs to be done extremely rapidly. This work needs to be done,
but it would be much better done through effective global collaboration
between all funders, institutions and publishers. What CHORUS has
effectively done is offer to absorb the full cost of this transition. As
noted above the agencies will firewall their contributions. You can bet
that institutions -- for whom CHORUS will not assist and might hamper
their efforts to ensure the collection of research outputs -- will not
pay for it through increased subscriptions. And publishers who don't
want to engage with CHORUS will be unlikely to contribute. It's also
almost certain that this development process will be rushed and ham
fisted and irritate authors even more than they already are by current
submission systems.

Finally of course a very large proportion of federal money moves through
the NIH. The NIH has a system in place, it works, and they're not about
to adopt something new and unproven, especially given the popularity of
PubMedCentral as demonstrated by the public response to the Research
Works Act. So publishers will have to maintain dual systems anyway --
indeed the most likely outcome of CHORUS will be to make it easier for
authors to deposit works into PubMedCentral, and easier for the NIH to
prod them into doing so raising the compliance rates for the NIH policy
and making them look even better on the annual reports to the White
House, leading ultimately to some sharp questions about why agencies
didn't adopt PMC in the first place.

**Bad for the user**

From the perspective of an Open Access advocate putting access into the
hands of publishers who have actively worked to limit access and
invested vast sums of money in systems to limit and control access seems
a bad idea. But that's a personal perspective -- the publishers in
questions will say they are guiding these audiences to the "right"
version of papers in the best place for them to consume it. But lets
look at the incentives for the different players. The agencies are on
the hook to report on usage and impact of their work. They have the
incentives to insure that whatever systems are in place work well and
provide access well. Subscription publishers? They have a vested
interest in trying to show there is a lack of public interest, in
tweaking embargoes so as to only make things available after interest
has waned, in providing systems that are poorly resourced so page loads
are slow, and in general making the experience as poor as possible.
After all if you need to show you're adding value with your full cost
version, then its really helpful to be in complete control of the free
version so as to cripple it.Â On the plus side it would mean that these
publishers would almost certainly be forced to provide detailed usage
information which would be immensely valuable.

**...which is bad for the publishers...**

The more I think about this, the less it seems to have been thought
through in detail. Is it just a commitment to use FundRef? This would be
a great step but it goes nowhere near even beginning to satisfy the
White House requirements. If its more than that what is it? A registry?
But that requires a crucial piece of metadata, which appears as "Licence
Reference" in the diagram, that is needed to assert things are
available. This hasn't been agreed yet (I should know, I've been
involved in drafting the description). And even when it is no piece of
metadata can make sure access actually happens. Is it a repository that
*would* guarantee access? No -- that's what the CHORUS members hate
above all other things. Is it a firm contractual commitment to making
those articles with agency grant numbers attached available? Not that
I've seen, but even it were it wouldn't address the requirements of
either the Executive Order or FASTR. As noted above, the mandate applies
to all agency funded research, not just those where the authors
remembered to put in all the correct grant numbers.

Is it a commitment to ensuring the global collection of comprehensive
grant information at manuscript submission? With the funding to make it
happen -- and the funding to *ensure*Â the papers become available
-Â and real penalties if it doesn't happen? With provision of
comprehensive usage data for both subscription and freely available
content? This is the only level at which the agencies will bite. And
this is a horrendous and expensive can of worms.

In the UK we have a Victorian infrastructure for delivering water. It
just about works but a huge proportion of the total just leaks out of
the pipes -- its not like we have a shortage of rain but when we have a
"drought" we quickly run into serious problems. The cost of fixing the
pipes? Vastly more than we can afford. What IÂ *think* happened with
CHORUS is what happens with a lot industry wide tech projects. Someone
had a bright idea, and went to each player asking them whether they
could deliver their part of the pipeline. Each player has slightly
overplayed the ease of delivery, and slightly underplayed the leakage
and problems. A few percent here and a few percent there isn't a problem
for each step in isolation -- but along the whole pipeline it adds up to
the point where the whole system simply can't deliver. And delivering
means replacing the whole set of pipes.

 

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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.

Rogue Scholar Beiträge

Google Scholar: Was das neue Open Access-Feature kann und welche offenen Alternativen es gibt

Chapter, Verse, and CHORUS: A first pass critique