Updated November 27, 2012
McGraw Hill, one of the world's top textbook publishers, was just sold for $2.5 billion to Apollo Global Management, according to Inside Higher Ed. Debra Borchardt, in The Street, describes Apollo Global Management as a private equity firm that "gives Wall Street a bad name. And that's saying something".
From Inside Higher Ed: "Waterhouse said that the company would continue to expand in digital education, and that - as a private company - "we won't need to worry about short-term focus and pressures".
Comment: a Wall Street bad apple expanding into higher education is something we should be watching - and take note of the long term focus.
While this announcement is not directly relevant to open access or education, those working in either area should be aware of this and of strategies that could be deployed by a company like this, whether now or in the future.
For example, a company like this could move into open education for the short term, giving away textbooks or courses with a view to out-competing existing higher educational institutions, then charging substantial amounts for their courses later on. This is something to watch for - a company designed to reap profits giving things away may well be strategizing for maximum profits at a later date.
For open access advocates, this development is important because one question we should be asking ourselves is - could be possibly be worse off than with the existing owners of scholarly publisher such as Elsevier? Elsevier, Springer, etc., have their disadvantages for scholarship, but these companies have a long history with the scholarly tradition and changing ownership to companies with experience in the financial industry might make things worse for scholarship.
Aside from outright sales of existing publishers, this is a cautionary tale for those who promote the Creative Commons - Attribution license (CC-BY), which gives third parties commercial rights and comes with no strings requiring reciprocity or ongoing free access. When scholars give away their works with this license, they can be used by companies like this whose strategy might be to outcompete our employers, which threatens the employment of scholars. For this reason, here is my advice:
Faculty and teachers: DO NOT GIVE AWAY YOUR WORK FOR COMMERCIAL RIGHTS. If you are using CC licenses, use Noncommercial.
Update: here is the link to the news release McGraw-Hill to sell education business to Apollo for $2.5 billion from the McGraw-Hill website.
Excerpt: NEW YORK, Nov. 26, 2012 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- The McGraw-Hill Companies
(NYSE: MHP) ("the Company") today announced it has signed a definitive
agreement to sell its McGraw-Hill Education business to investment funds
affiliated with Apollo Global Management, LLC (NYSE: APO) (collectively with its subsidiaries, "Apollo"), for a purchase price of $2.5 billion, subject to certain closing adjustments.
Tuesday, November 27, 2012
Sunday, November 25, 2012
Gross Domestic Clean Water
This is an alternative metric.
Altmetrics - thoughts about the purpose
Should altmetrics take a step back and reconsider what the main purpose /
research question is? I should suggest that what we need is an
alternative to the current power of the impact factor in assessing the
work of scholars. This may or may not involve metrics of any kind. My
suggestion for starters is that we need a system that is not as reliant
on metrics of any kind.
Having said that, some metrics studies that might actually be useful:
- does an emphasis on quantity of publication increase duplication of content and/or reduce quality? With respect to the latter, this is what I have heard from senior experts in scholarly publishing and I think both Brown and Harley touch on this in their reports - at least with respect to books, pushing scholars to publish two books rather than one to get tenure means pressure to publish in less time than it takes to write a good book. So pushing for quantity seems likely to correlate with reduced quality (a hypothesis worth testing?)
One advantage to studying the disadvantages of pushing for quantity is that if the hypothesis (quantity correlates negatively with quality) is correct, then that is evidence that can reduce the workload of scholars - something I expect that scholars are likely to support
Other possibilities:
- scholars might want to know about journals:
- average and range of time from submission to decision
- level of "peer" doing the peer review (grad student? senior professor?)
- extent and quality of contents (this has to be qualitative analysis; sampling makes sense)
Shifting from a print-based scholarly communication system to an open access knowledge commons, while retaining or increasing quality and reducing costs, is possible - but it's not easy. It is worth taking the time to think things through and get at least some stuff right.
Having said that, some metrics studies that might actually be useful:
- does an emphasis on quantity of publication increase duplication of content and/or reduce quality? With respect to the latter, this is what I have heard from senior experts in scholarly publishing and I think both Brown and Harley touch on this in their reports - at least with respect to books, pushing scholars to publish two books rather than one to get tenure means pressure to publish in less time than it takes to write a good book. So pushing for quantity seems likely to correlate with reduced quality (a hypothesis worth testing?)
One advantage to studying the disadvantages of pushing for quantity is that if the hypothesis (quantity correlates negatively with quality) is correct, then that is evidence that can reduce the workload of scholars - something I expect that scholars are likely to support
Other possibilities:
- scholars might want to know about journals:
- average and range of time from submission to decision
- level of "peer" doing the peer review (grad student? senior professor?)
- extent and quality of contents (this has to be qualitative analysis; sampling makes sense)
Shifting from a print-based scholarly communication system to an open access knowledge commons, while retaining or increasing quality and reducing costs, is possible - but it's not easy. It is worth taking the time to think things through and get at least some stuff right.
Friday, November 23, 2012
CC-BY reflects a small subset of open access. Claims of "emerging consensus" on CC-BY are premature
The Open Access Scholarly Publishers' Association's "Why CC-BY page" http://oaspa.org/why-cc-by/ refers to an "emerging consensus on the adoption of CC-BY". My comment:
Re: CC-BY - emerging consensus. OASPA refers to an "emerging consensus" that CC-BY is the best license for open access. I argue that the evidence suggests that CC-BY is a peripheral phenomenon and very far from consensus.
From Peter Suber's SPARC Open Access Newsletter, June 2012 - in brief only 11% of the journals listed in DOAJ use CC-BY, and outside of full gold OA publishing as illustrated by the journals in DOAJ, the proportion of OA that is CC-BY is lower still.
"Libre OA through repositories has been rare because most repositories are not in a position to demand it or even to authorize it. Hence, you might think that libre OA through journals would be common because all journals are in a position to do both. But unfortunately that would be wrong. The power of journals to demand and authorize libre OA means that libre gold could be common, and should be common. But scandalously, it doesn't mean that libre gold is already common...Only 917 journals in the DOAJ have the SPARC Europe Seal of Approval, which requires CC-BY. That's only 11.8% of the full set".
http://www.doaj.org/?func=sealedJournals
Suber, Peter. SPARC Open Access Newsletter, June 2012 http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/newsletter/06-02-12.htm#libre
Re: CC-BY - emerging consensus. OASPA refers to an "emerging consensus" that CC-BY is the best license for open access. I argue that the evidence suggests that CC-BY is a peripheral phenomenon and very far from consensus.
From Peter Suber's SPARC Open Access Newsletter, June 2012 - in brief only 11% of the journals listed in DOAJ use CC-BY, and outside of full gold OA publishing as illustrated by the journals in DOAJ, the proportion of OA that is CC-BY is lower still.
"Libre OA through repositories has been rare because most repositories are not in a position to demand it or even to authorize it. Hence, you might think that libre OA through journals would be common because all journals are in a position to do both. But unfortunately that would be wrong. The power of journals to demand and authorize libre OA means that libre gold could be common, and should be common. But scandalously, it doesn't mean that libre gold is already common...Only 917 journals in the DOAJ have the SPARC Europe Seal of Approval, which requires CC-BY. That's only 11.8% of the full set".
http://www.doaj.org/?func=sealedJournals
Suber, Peter. SPARC Open Access Newsletter, June 2012 http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/newsletter/06-02-12.htm#libre
Why open access does not need CC-BY: the Human Genome Project example
The Open Access Scholarly Publishers' Association explanation of Why CC-BY http://oaspa.org/why-cc-by/ presents the Human Genome Project as an illustration of why CC-BY is needed for open access. Following is my comment (not yet appearing on the OASPA site, no doubt awaiting moderation).
It is interesting that OASPA's explanation of "why CC-BY" points to the Human Genome Project as an example of why CC-BY is needed. The HGP ran for 13 years, ending in 2003. Creative Commons is looking forward to its 10th birthday in December. In other words, HGP was completed shortly after CC began. This means that HGP is an awesome example of how science can advance rapidly and in the spirit of libre open access, without any need for Creative Commons licensing at all. [emphasis added]
For HGP details see:
http://www.ornl.gov/sci/techresources/Human_Genome/home.shtml
It is interesting that OASPA's explanation of "why CC-BY" points to the Human Genome Project as an example of why CC-BY is needed. The HGP ran for 13 years, ending in 2003. Creative Commons is looking forward to its 10th birthday in December. In other words, HGP was completed shortly after CC began. This means that HGP is an awesome example of how science can advance rapidly and in the spirit of libre open access, without any need for Creative Commons licensing at all. [emphasis added]
For HGP details see:
http://www.ornl.gov/sci/techresources/Human_Genome/home.shtml
Delightful irony: students for free culture adamantly opposed to license used for Lessig's Free Culture
Larry Lessig's book, Free Culture, was the inspiration for the Free Culture movement, released as a paperback as well as a free online book, using the license CC-BY-NC 1.0 (
creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/1.0).
How ironic that Students for Free Culture consider the Noncommercial license to be "proprietary" and incompatible with free culture? http://freeculture.org/blog/2012/08/27/stop-the-inclusion-of-proprietary-licenses-in-creative-commons-4-0/
I wonder how many of them read the free online version - noncommercial license and all?
Thanks very much to Creative Commons for keeping up the fight for free culture; note that after fulsome discussion, CC has elected to retain the noncommercial license in version 4.0, with no change in definition.
How ironic that Students for Free Culture consider the Noncommercial license to be "proprietary" and incompatible with free culture? http://freeculture.org/blog/2012/08/27/stop-the-inclusion-of-proprietary-licenses-in-creative-commons-4-0/
I wonder how many of them read the free online version - noncommercial license and all?
Thanks very much to Creative Commons for keeping up the fight for free culture; note that after fulsome discussion, CC has elected to retain the noncommercial license in version 4.0, with no change in definition.