35C3 - Locked up science

35C3 preroll music

Herald angel: And now please welcome our
speaker Claudia.

Applause
Claudia Frick: Thank you. So, hopefully

there will be my slides up there. I see
someone running. Running fast. Laughter

Laughing
OK.

Laughing
Ah.

Here we go.
Phew.

Applause

Yes. So hello everybody and welcome also
from my side to one of the first talks of

this congress. Yeah my name is Claudia
Frick or if you know me from Twitter, my

name is FuzzyLeapfrog. And I'm about to
refresh your memories on scholarly

communication and scientific publishing.
But since this is my first talk at a Chaos

Communication Congress, I'd like to start
with two facts about me so that you know

who is talking to you. So fact number 1. I
am an atmospheric scientist so I have a

PhD in meteorology. Fact number 2. I am
now working as a librarian in the library

of a research center. The most common
reaction I usually get when I say this is:

Why? There are actually several reasons
why I left science and joined the library

world and for the next 30 minutes I'll
talk about one of these reasons. And to be

honest it's the reason I'm most passionate
about. OK, so let's dive into the topic.

And I'll start with a few simple questions
that you can answer just for yourself: Do

you think science helps us - as a society
- to be well-educated and to make rational

and fact-based decisions? Do you think
science helps us to live healthier, longer

and to deal with diseases? Do you think
science helps us to face global challenges

like climate change? If you answered at
least one of these questions with yes,

then you must also think that restricting
the access to scientific results is not

beneficial for our society. Unfortunately,
that's what we are currently doing.

72 percent of scientific publications are
locked up behind paywalls. Which means

that only those with money have access to
science and those who don't have money are

either left behind or they are forced to
go illegal ways. And this is not how it

should be. But how should it be instead?
We should have open access to science and

open access means that everybody in the
world should have access to science

without any financial, technical or legal
barriers. At the end of my talk, I want

you all to know what we can do to tear
down the paywalls in scientific publishing

and to achieve open access to science. But
before we can talk about how we can change

a system like scientific publishing, we
have to understand how it works. So we'll

start with a look on the question what the
most common way of scientific publishing

currently looks like. So for all the non-
scientists in this room or those who

haven't published a scientific publication
so far, let me take you on the roller

coaster journey of scientific publishing.
Imagine yourself to be an atmospheric

scientist, a brilliant atmospheric
scientist, and you spent the past 5 years

of your life in your laboratory and you
made some time consuming experiments. You

ran some complex simulations and after a
lot of sweat and pain and a lot of tears,

you finally found it. You found the
solution to climate change. Yes. And it's

absolutely great that you know how to
reduce greenhouse gases back to a proper

level and how to stop temperatures from
increasing, but the whole scientific

community, everybody in the world should
know about it so that we can realize the

solution and finally stop climate change.
So you have to communicate your research

in order for it to benefit society and
that you can get the Nobel Prize that you

absolutely deserve. So, you write down a
summary of your solution into a manuscript

of let's say 15 pages. But what's next?
How to distribute this manuscript in the

community? Since I am at the Chaos
Communication Congress and we are in the

21st century, I assume that most of you
are currently thinking: Yeah, just put it

on the internet. Yeah. That's not what the
most common way of scientific publishing

looks like. At least not yet. What you
will do instead is that you will either

submit your manuscript to a scientific
conference or to an academic journal.

Which one you will do mainly depends on
your discipline. So if you are for example

a computer scientist, you will most likely
submit your manuscript to a scientific

conference. If you are an atmospheric
scientist, you will most likely submit

your manuscript to an academic journal.
But both publishing processes are nearly

the same, so I will only guide you through
one of them. So since you are an

atmospheric scientist, you now submit your
manuscript about the solution to climate

change to an academic journal. And at this
stage your manuscript is called a

pre-print. And your manuscript fits into the
scope of the journal, therefore in the

next step a process of quality control
starts. This is called peer review. Peers

are other scientists like for example
these two guys. Yeah I know that this is

scary, but these two guys will have a look
at your manuscript - and check whether

everything you did and wrote is valid and
scientifically correct. Because maybe you

only think you've found the solution to
climate change, but in reality you made a

really awful mistake already on page one.
But that's not what happens to you,

because you're brilliant and your solution
is perfect. So these two guys only have

some minor corrections and comments and
you integrate them into your manuscript

and resubmit this new version to the
Journal. And now you are lucky. Because

the Journal then says: Yeah okay, with
these changes we'll accept your manuscript

for publication. And at this stage your
manuscript is called the post-print.

Because the content is now the final one that
will be later printed in the Journal or

published online since we are in the 21st
century. And now in the last step some

typesetting happens, so your manuscript is
brought into the layout of the journal and

then this fancy publisher's version is
published on the Journal website, from

where everybody in the world can see that
you've found a solution to climate change.

And this is what the most common way of
scientific publishing currently looks

like. Simplified. But I forgot one very
important detail and this is the paywall.

You published closed access. And at this
point I'm sorry, but we have to talk about

money. Because there's a lot of money
changing hands in this process. And the

first occasion money changes its hands has
actually nothing to do at all with the

paywall. Because did you know that you -
the author of the manuscript or your

laboratory - might have to pay money to
the publisher in order for your

publication to get published? Yeah. Maybe
your manuscript was too long and you have

to pay page charges or you included some
colorful figures and you have to pay color

charges. Yes, color charges in the 21st
century. And the second occasion money

changes its hands is at the paywall.
Because there are a lot of scientists out

there that need to know the solution to
climate change and some of them are lucky

- like her - and they work for an
institution that has money and that has a

library. And this library will pay money
to the publisher to grant the scientists

access to your publication. Either by
paying a subscription fee so that they

have access to all publications in the
journal or by just purchasing your single

publication. But there are a lot of
scientists out there that aren't that

lucky. And they won't have access to your
publication. And what about all the non-

scientists in this room that I'm sure also
want to know the solution to climate

change? They won't have access either
unless they are willing to pay. But who

said that we all together didn't already
pay for this publication? Because who

funds you, the brilliant atmospheric
scientist at your laboratory? Who funds

the two guys doing the peer review and who
funds the library that grants other

scientists access? It's us. We all do.
It's tax payers' money. So don't you think

we kind of already paid for this
publication? OK, you might now think: But

hey, there will obviously be money coming
back because authors and people doing peer

review will get paid for their work by the
publisher. No. That doesn't happen in

science. Scientists are doing all of this
work cost-free. For the publisher. OK, but

then you might think: But hey, then they
maybe this is just the business model of

academic publishers. I mean they
definitely have their costs that they need

to cover. So maybe they are just doing
this: Covering their costs and they are

not making so much more money out of it.
Huh. We are currently having three major

academic publishers. They are called
Elsevier, Springer and Wiley. And let's

have a look at the profit margins of at
least Elsevier and Springer. They are 35

and 37 percent. Pure profit. These margins
are even higher than the ones of Google

and Apple. We are all together paying in
every year 7.6 billion euros

for access of popular publications. Seven
point six billion euros per year. And this

has some very weird practical
consequences. Because publishers are

requesting so much public money to get
access to mainly publicly funded

publications, that even those that really
do have money like the Harvard University

can no longer afford them. And when I
learned this, all of this, for the first

time, I only had two options left. Option
number 1. Join the open access movement

and tear down these paywalls. Option
number 2. Become myself an academic

publisher. Yeah my bank account this
morning said I chose option 1. So let's

talk about how we can tear down the
paywalls. There are generally a lot of

approaches we can take. Some of them are
smaller, but persistent, and others are

more massive steps. But who can do
anything about the paywall? Who are the

involved players in scientific publishing?
Well we have the scientists that do most

of the work: they produce the content,
they do the quality control of the content

and they are even the ones that later in
the process mainly consume the content.

Then we have the funders that provide the
money, we have the libraries that grant

access and we have the publishers that
publish the academic journals. Since I

assume that we are not having so many
funders and publishers in here and I don't

think that the number of librarians is
higher than - 10, I'd like to focus on

what scientists can do to tear down the
paywall. But I will also have a look on

what we can achieve if the first three
players work together. But, let's start

small, with you - the brilliant
atmospheric scientist. So you just

published your solution to climate change
like this. And you just realized: Damn. I

published behind the paywall. And a lot of
scientists won't have access to my

publication. And usually that's not what
scientists want. Because most scientists I

know want their publications to be read,
to be spread, to be cited and to be

discussed as widely as possible. And the
paywall prevents this. So you might now

wonder whether there's anything you can do
about the paywall when you publish like

this. Yes, you can do something about it.
The first option you have is brought to

you by the publisher. The publisher offers
you the possibility to remove the paywall

just in front of your single publication
while all other publications in the

journal remain behind the paywall. This is
called hybrid open access. And what does

the publisher want to remove the paywall
in front of your publication?

Audience: Money!
Claudia: Yeah, it's even more money.

Yeah, I do not recommend this. Is there

anything - anything - you can do about
this publication without paying even more

money to the publisher? I mean: it's your
publication; it's your work that you've

done. Can't you just take it from the
journal website and put it on the

internet? This is called a secondary
publication and there are places for this.

They are called arXiv, institutional
repositories, or even the commercial web

site ResearchGate. Can't you just upload
your manuscript there and make it

available via so-called green open access?
The answer to this question is:

it depends. Because what happened when you
decided to publish behind the paywall is

that you signed a so-called copyright
transfer agreement and it is what it

literally says: you signed away the
copyright of your work to the publisher.

Yeah. Laughter So if you want to re-
publish your manuscript somewhere else,

you have to check whether this is okay for
the copyright owner; that is, the

publisher. But hey, some good news here.
Most publishers will allow at least some

form of re-publication. But this is where
it gets really really tricky, because

publishers are having some very specific
and very restrictive conditions on this.

So, you cannot just publish any version of
your manuscript. Maybe you can only

publish the pre-print. That is the version
of your manuscript without all the changes

that came in during peer review. So it's
not the content that you finally

published. And they have some very
specific conditions on where you can

publish. Maybe you can only do it on your
personal website, but not on the one of

your university. And then they have some
very specific ideas on when you can

re-publish, because you cannot just do it
right away most of the times. You have to

wait an embargo period of 6 months, 12
months or even 4 years and 4 years is kind

of a long time to wait for a solution to
climate change. And these conditions. They

do not only vary by publisher, they vary
by journal, so you really have to check

for each single of your publication what
you are allowed to do and what not. And I

totally get it - that's not easy. That's
confusing. It's time-consuming and believe

me, it's absolutely no fun at all. But if
you are ever struggling with this as a

scientist, I have a very simple and
convenient advice for you and it is to

just ask your librarian. Because that's
our business and I'm absolutely sure that

even in your library there's at least one
librarian that has specialized on

copyright and can do this for you. But
wouldn't it be so much easier if you could

just do whatever the hell you want to do
with your publication? If you could just

keep the copyright right away? Yes, it
would be. And it's possible. So maybe the

next time you publish a solution to a
global challenge, publish it gold open

access. This means that you will publish
in a so-called open access journal. These

journals do not have any paywall at all
and all publications in there are

published under a Creative Commons
license, so you will keep the copyright of

your work. How do these journals work?
Well let's get back to closed access. What

open access journals obviously do is that
they remove the paywall, which means that

libraries don't have to pay money to the
publisher to grant their scientists

access. And what also happens is that you
are no longer asked to pay color charges,

but you have to pay an article processing
charge, or your laboratory. But since

libraries are saving a lot of money by not
paying for access to these journals, most

German libraries for example will cover
these costs for you. But it can be even

better. Because there are a lot of open
access journals out there that do not even

charge an article processing charge. This
is called platinum open access. And these

journals do not ask for money from anyone;
neither for reading nor for publishing.

But how do these journals even survive,
because they are not making any profit?

Well we know that scientists are already
doing most of the work in this process.

And some of them decided to just do the
rest of the work, too. Yes, there are

scientists out there running their own
academic journals. Several of them joined

forces with their libraries to have a
powerful and experienced infrastructure in

the background and together scientists and
librarians are providing this non-for-

profit service for science in the hands of
scientists, without any commercial

interests. So this is already an example
of what we can achieve. If we are no

longer only focusing on you, the single
scientist and your single publication, but

if we look at what we can achieve if we
work together and join our forces. And

there are a lot of more examples out there
for this. I listed a few over here. And

for the rest of the talk I'd like to focus
on one of them. Mainly because it's a

German project and it got some recent
attention. And this is Project DEAL.

Project DEAL is commissioned by the
Alliance of Science Organizations in

Germany and is driven by scientists and
librarians together. And what they want to

achieve is a major step forward to open
access with our three already known major

academic publishers. And project DEAL
wants to achieve this by implementing so-

called nationwide consortium agreements.
But what is a nationwide consortium

agreement and what can it do about open
access? These agreements consist of two

components. They are so-called publish and
read deals. And the first component is the

Read component. And it means that all
participating institutions, universities

will have access to all journal
publications of the publisher, when

there's a deal. And the publish component
means that all publications with a

corresponding author from one of these
participating institutions and

universities, will be published Open
Access with this publisher. And both of

these components are covered with one
single and one reasonable fee. So for

example if your university would be part
of such a deal with Elsevier you would

have access to all Elsevier publications
and all your publications would be

published Open Access with Elsevier. This
would mean that there would be up to 16500

publications published every year Open
Access under such a deal. And this is what

project DEAL wants to achieve. So these
are the goals. But how is Project DEAL

progressing? There are currently ongoing
negotiations with Wiley and Springer. So

there are two parties the publisher and
Project DEAL sitting together at one table

and having a major common understanding
about the future of scientific publishing

and about what the basic conditions of
such a deal should be and they are now

discussing the details. The picture
becomes quite different if we look at

Elsevier. Because there seem to be right
away a major disagreement about the basic

conditions of such a deal should have and
on what a reasonable fee is. So after a

long time, years of negotiating and no
real progress, what happened is that

Project DEAL, so scientists and librarians,
currently suspended the negotiations with

Elsevier. And this is something new. And
it's definitely something big. And I can

tell you that the world is watching
Project DEAL and Germany. And this is

where the power of joining forces really
shows up. Because scientists and

librarians are really emphasizing the need
for such a deal to Elsevier. For example,

scientists stop to offer their cost-free
work to Elsevier. So they are no longer

publishing with Elsevier or doing the peer
review. If you are one of them or will be

one of them after this talk please let
your library know, because we collect this

information to make sure that Elsevier
knows. And libraries, well they just

cancel their subscriptions to Elsevier
journals. Yes. There are currently 200

German institutions without subscription
access to Elsevier publications and there

will be even more next year. The Max
Planck Society canceled the contract to

the end of this year. So these are a lot
of scientists without access to Elsevier

publications. And it's a lot of saved
money. And what happened after we got cut

off from Elsevier publications six month
ago? Well, the world of science didn't

break down, neither did the world of
libraries. What happens is that scientists

use alternative ways to get access. And
libraries support these alternative ways.

I listed a few of the legal alternatives
up here. But speaking of legal, some of

you might now wonder or wonder through the
entire talk: Why should we even care about

subscriptions? Why should we pay for
access to publishers or use alternative

ways that are legal because Sci-Hub. Sci-
Hub is basically ThePirateBay of

science, so you can get nearly any
scientific publication there. And I would

like to forward the question on why we
should pay for access if we have Sci-Hub

directly to the publishers. But I think
that they already know the answer. Because

they do what industries do that face
piracy. They took legal action and filed a

lawsuit. They requested that Internet
service providers to block Sci-Hub, but

you know Don't mess with the Internet.
Laughing

Applause

So dear Publishers, let me put it this way:

as long as you publishers hold on to
paywalls there will be piracy, no matter

what. And even worse as long as you hold
on to paywalls there will be people,

scientists and librarians, building
alternative ways of scientific publishing

without you. And the only way to stop this
is to tear down the paywalls. And to you,

the brilliant atmospheric scientist and
all the other brilliant scientists in this

room, please provide open access to your
publications and support open access in

any way that you like or that you can. And
if you have any questions or concerns or

any ideas I can only encourage you to talk
to your librarian. Because, if we work

together, if we join our forces, I think
that we can finally unlock science.

Thank you.
Applause

H: Thanks for this amazing talk. OK
everybody you know the rules if you have

questions please line up at the
microphones. There's five of them,

two there, two there and one there in the
corner. And if you are on the stream just

somehow asked the question I'm not really
aware how it works and then we have

someone here to read the questions out to
be our human interface device. So

please,... microphone number one.
Microphone 1: Thank you for your talk.

I completely agree with your
professional opinion, but

I think the publishers have one major
advantage over the scientists and the

librarian here, which we did not address
yet and I want to ask you this

question.The publishers, they have the
brands, we as scientists need. What I mean

with that is, apart of the quality
assurance scientists did is, we ranked the

journals. We gave them impact factors and
other things. So the journal itself has a

quality number, so for a young scientist,
at least for me, it was really difficult

to publish in a way that gives me the
scientific reputation that I need, without

having access to the highly ranked
journals of the closed source publishers.

So is there a way we can get out of this
deadlock, where we need to publish in these

journals, we do not want to publish in?
C: Yeah we can talk about the impact

factor. I love it. It's real love. It's
absolutely difficult because this is a

self-enforcing system dealing with
reputation. And if you think about it if

all scientists immediately stop to publish
with Elsevier or the reputable journals

and would move to another one that has no
impact factor at all after five or six

years this Journal would have a high
impact factor. But it's true that it's not

that easy to just do it because you want
to come forward with your career and it's

a problem but there's no real solution so
far for this. So Project DEAL is kind of

addressing this idea by remaining with the
major publishers, so this will be the

easiest way out for this problem. Yeah.
H: Do we have an Internet question? Yes?

Can someone turn on the microphone for the
signal angel, please.

Signal Angel: What influence do the
university have on the publishing process

of their scientists? Can a university
force their scientists to publish in a

certain way or with a specific publisher?
C: No it's not that easy. There are

policies that state that you have to
publish open access but most of them do

not define how you can do it, so you can
do green or gold or hybrid whatever you

want but they just say that you have to
publish open access.

H: Microphone number two please.
Microphone 2: Hello. The internet has given

everybody access to their own screaming
platform, how do we avoid the public

sharing of science to be tainted with all
the bad science out there?

C: With what I didn't hear...
M2: Bad science, there's a lot, if you

look at the newspaper, there's a lot of
fake news in them.

C: You should absolutely not remove the
peer review process at the moment out of

this scientific publishing process. So
there should be some quality control but

there are some ideas to change the way
peer review is done. But if you remove it,

yeah, then you have a problem at the
moment.

H: Microphone number three, please.
Microphone 3: Hello, do you have any

statistics about how many Open Access
publications there are compared to I would

say classical Elsevier and stuff or if the
movement is advancing, if it's getting

traction.
C: Yeah I stated the source of the 72% are

closed access publications and there's a
detailed analysis on how many articles are

closed, hybrid, gold, green. I published
the slides already I will tweet them

later.
M3: Thank you.

H: And the signal angel, please.
S: What do you think about the Plan S

initiative?
C: Plan S, for those who don't know: It's

a coalition of research funders in Europe
not the Deutsche Forschungsgemeindschaft,

but all others and they want to have Open
Access immediately so they say when you

work for us, if you're funded by us you
have to publish Open Access and I think

that this is a good approach.
H: Can we get microphone 2 please.

M2: Hi, Could the journals printed by
various universities like solve that issue

which was raised here about having a well-
known brand behind the publications. For

example if you have a university, which is
very famous it can release their own

journal and solve that brand issue.
C: If they release their own journal I

hope it's open access. But I think that
it's in general an illusion to think that

the name of the journal or the publisher
has anything to do with the quality of a

single paper in there. So this linked idea
I think it's kind of broken.

H: Microphone number one, please.
Microphone 1: I was wondering, why the

publishers move against Sci-Hub, but leave
arXiv.org alone for all these years,

you essentially get the same thing from
both. I know that there are differences in

the details...
C: it's restricted to a specific community

and so it's not for all publications and
it's still about prints and postprints so

it's not the final publisher version but I
think that they didn't because it's a

powerful tool and it's a powerful
community.

H: Could we get the Internet again,
please.

S: Someone in the Internet has heard that
scientists sued the editors asking for a

share of the profit of their work. Did you
get any feedback how this ended?

C: No but that sounds interesting. No,
sorry.

H: Number four, please.
Microphone 4: Historically, journals

provided three aspects for scientists. They
provided logistics like delivery of papers

to whoever wanted to read them, they
provided editors which is like not peer

review, but the editors which are hired by
journals and they provide reputational

engines. Obviously putting PDF online
solves a problem, so logistics is no

longer a problem for a fully decentralized
alternative to the journals. Can we

decentralize others too?
C: I actually didn't hear the question

properly, I'm sorry!
H: Try again.

M4: So journals are providing three
services, they provide..

C: Free services?
M4: Three like number three. They provide

delivery to whoever wants to read them.
They provide reputation engine and they

provide editors - like not peer reviewers
but real editors on salary. We can

decentralize with internet, we can
decentralize delivery. Can we decentralize

editors, can we decentralize reputations?
H: Is there going to be a question at any

point?
C: Yeah I got the question I think. But

did you know that editors are also
scientists? So they are already scientists

doing this work. So I really question the
high value that publishers provide to

science. I think there is some value but
it's not that high as we all thought.

H: Number 2 please.
Microphone 2: Does project DEAL include

any incentives for the scientists to
publish gold open access instead of

hybrid?
C: So if you publish with a publisher that

has a deal with your university that it
will be open access no matter what.

M2: Does it include incentives to publish
in journals that are ONLY open access

instead of mixed open and closed access?
C: No, no, not so far I know.

H: OK, just a quick interjection: Please
remember when you leave, please leave

after the talk. But when you leave please
use the front exit and not the entrance in

the back. Thank you. Could we get another
internet question? OK the internet is out

of questions. That's excellent. Number one
please.

Microphone 1: inaudible limited
advantage to close access journals maybe

it would be a good idea to rethink the
format of the publishing. I don't want to

advertise it, but I think it's a good
example: There is distill.pub, which is a

journal for artificial intelligence at the
moment mostly and they publish it in HTML

because it's the current year and you have
interactive stuff so you can play around

with it and it's really nice.
C: Yeah. I think it would be better if we

wouldn't have only PDFs published from the
journal articles. There should be a other

formats definitely - machine readable.
H: Mic number 2 please for the last

question.
Microphone 2: Like you said your opinion

is at least questionable if what
publishers provide to science and to

society that's worth something or worth
what we think.

I also think this way and if I have a

manuscript now that I don't want to
publish in this way the system. Do you

have any recommendations, maybe any project
or something where I could maybe say

here's my manuscript and then especially
have a solution for the peer review

process that is now facilitated by the
publisher, but the publisher doesn't do

anything he's just facilitating. So how
could I solve this and go around the

publisher in this way?
C: So. I'm not sure whether I get the

question because if you have open access
journals that's also peer review. Yes

there are publishers but if you have
platinum open access this peer review

process organized with the library or
scientists that are running the journal.

So this is already organized. The peer
review process for other sorts of journals

that do not have a paywall.
M2: But could these platinum open access

journals cover all fields of science.
Could i come with my..

H: There are a lot of there. There are a
lot out of there. I can tell you how you

can find them. There is a directory of
open access journals where you can filter

through any subjects and filter for how
much do they cost.

H: And now please thank our speak again!

Applause

35C3 postroll music

subtitles created by c3subtitles.de
in the year 2019. Join, and help us!