Conflicts

From Peter Suber
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What I do and try to do

  • I work full-time to foster the growth of open access to research. I implement it, I consult about it, I write and speak about it, and I take public positions about it. I'm paid for many but not all of these activities.
    • I try to say only what I believe and what I can defend. To misrepresent my own position could be dishonest or merely careless. I try not to be dishonest (an ethical matter) or careless (a professional matter). Apart from the risk of ethical or professional lapses, it's embarrassing to say something that a truthful person would have to retract, when challenged, and even more embarrassing not to retract it. I also try to avoid this kind of embarrassment. Hence, I have a mix of ethical and prudential reasons not to misrepresent my own views for financial gain or other kinds of benefit.
    • My positions and arguments shift according to what I learn, and I try to learn from as many sources as I can. But I try not to let my positions and arguments shift according to my financial interests, including my interest in pleasing the institutions that fund me, or that have funded me in the past. While I try to avoid misrepresenting my own position, or bending it for gain, I may not always succeed. I realize that if I don't succeed, then I might not even notice it.
    • Moreover, even when I do succeed at this, there's a reason to disclose my potential conflicts of interest anyway. Potential conflicts (like salaries or grants) are not reasons to curb my advocacy, stop speaking my mind, or stop recommending what I honestly believe is worth recommending -- especially when I've deliberately taken jobs that encourage or require me to take public positions on open access. Potential conflicts are reasons for disclosure, so that readers can decide for themselves how to weigh my arguments.

How I'm paid

  • I have a salary from Harvard University, to run the Office for Scholarly Communication.
    • I publicly defended Harvard's OA practices before I had any financial support from Harvard, starting in 2009. But I continued to do so after 2009, when I got a paid fellowship from Harvard, and after 2013 when first got a salary from Harvard. Indeed, I continue to defend Harvard's OA practices today.
    • I don't defend all of Harvard's practices in this area (academic publishing, copyright), and feel no pressure to do so
    • I don't directly raise money for Harvard. But I once spoke at a meeting of the Harvard Alumni Association, and one purpose evident to all was to keep alumni happy and willing to give. When I do my job well, it might have a similar effect of helping Harvard raise money. I've talked directly with a few donors interested in giving to my unit within Harvard. But I limit myself to describing what we do and why I think it's important. I never make the ask. I'm not paid to talk with these potential donors; when they give (and some have) my salary does not go up; when don't give (and some haven't) my salary does not go down.
  • I've written a few books that earn royalties.
    • Paradox of Self-Amendment (Peter Lang, 1990) never paid royalties. Lang wanted me to pay a subvention, but I refused and it published the book anyway. When the book went out of print in 1997, I made the full text open access.
    • The Case of the Speluncean Explorers: Nine New Opinions (Routledge, 1998) is still in print and still earning royalties. It's my only book (and I believe, my only work of scholarship) that is not yet open access. I've asked Routledge to make it open, but it has refused.
    • Open Access (MIT Press, 2012) still pays royalties. MIT made it open access one year after publication, under a CC-BY-NC license, and still sells a paperback edition. I asked for immediate open access, and a CC-BY license, but accepted this compromise with the press.
      • While open access and print sales are compatible, and sometimes the former stimulate the latter, in my case the open-access edition reduced sales and reduced my royalties.
      • I received a $2,000 advance for this book. I didn't ask for an advance, and didn't know that I'd receive until I'd already written and submitted the manuscript. I haven't received an advance for any other book.
      • At least three schools once gave away copies of the paperback edition of this book to all new members of their faculty; one was the Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences (not my decision). In the Harvard case, I learned the number of copies bought and given away for this purpose, calculated the royalties on those copies, and donated that amount to Creative Commons.
      • I was once criticized for accepting an advance for this book, and for not choosing a different publisher that would have allowed immediate open access -- essentially, criticized for a conflict of interest. I responded. I won't recap the to-and-fro here, but I link to it so that you can judge it for yourselves. (BTW, I don't believe I've ever been criticized for a conflict of interest on any other occasion.)
    • Knowledge Unbound (MIT Press, 2016) is too new to pay royalties, but it will probably pay some. MIT made the book open acccess from birth, under a CC-BY license.
  • Of course scholarly articles earn no royalties. Hence, I see no conflicts in my articles about open access or those about philosophy.
    • In fact it was the realization that scholarly articles earned no royalties, as a youngish scholar, that made me understand the logic of open access for scholarly articles for the first time.

Other things I do

  • I consult pro bono on open access. Because I'm not paid for this, I see no conflict of interest. Sometimes this pro bono consulting results in new OA policies or practices. (That's the goal.) But these new policies or practices were always influenced by voices other than mine, and sometimes I do not entirely endorse the results. At least I tried.
    • Sometimes my pro bono consulting is an overload. Sometimes it's grant-supported. In the latter case, grant funds pay me to give time my to organizations asking for my advice.
    • My pro bono consulting for open access is also confidential. There are three reasons why. (1) Many institutions do not want to reveal that they are considering an open-access policy until they have a draft they're ready to defend. (2) Even after an institution adopts a policy, it should be the institution's decision, not mine, whether to reveal my role in advising on language, procedure, and strategy. (3) Some faculty or librarians who consult with me do not officially represent their institutions. While they seek substantive policy advice, they also seek strategic advice on how to persuade colleagues, often higher-ups, to make an unofficial policy initiative into an official one.
  • I sometimes consult for pay. I never charge non-profits to consult. With for-profits, sometimes I charge and sometimes I don't. I started working as a paid consultant more than 15 years ago, after I gave up my salary as a philosophy professor to work full-time on open access. But when I got more consulting requests than I had time to take on, I raised my price until the requests fell to a manageable level. Today I only take about 1-2 of these jobs a year. Each is usually a one-hour phone call. For the past few years, these consultations have always been with investors who want to know whether the stock prices of major, publicly-traded academic publishers will go up or down. I never express an opinion on those future stock prices, and the investors never ask me. I talk about what's happening with OA and academic publishing, and the investors draw their own conclusions. I don't even know what conclusions they draw!
  • I serve on the advisory boards for many organizations (and list them all on my home page). Sometimes I wholeheartedly endorse what these organizations do, and sometimes I don't. Sometimes I agree to join an advisory board when I'm willing to advise, when I think think the organization is willing to hear my advice, when I think it already some good ideas, and when I have time. If the willingness to advise implied a full endorsement, I would accept some but not all of my current advisory positions.
    • When I serve on an advisory board, I do not promote its positions or practices just because I'm a member of the board. Sometimes I promote them because I believe in them. Sometimes I don't promote them at all.
    • When I serve on an advisory board, I do not raise money for the organization, though I will sometimes support its applications for grants.
    • When I serve on an advisory board, I am never paid to do so.
  • Sometimes I make decisions, usually with others, on how Harvard should spend its money, for example, on vendors, publishers, and start-ups seeking support. Sometimes I'm approached by vendors as if I were a decision-maker when I'm not. In no case has someone seeking Harvard's financial support paid me or offered to pay me.
  • I am a non-practicing lawyer. The "non-practicing" part of this means that I don't have clients. Hence I'm never in a position to advocate for a client, and don't need to distinguish that kind of private-interest advocacy from my general work, which I consider public-interest advocacy.
  • I used to do a lot of public speaking in support of open access. Today, for medical reasons, I do much less of it. Sometimes I take honoraria and sometimes I waive them. But even when I take them, I'm never paid to espouse any position but my own.
    • I've often been asked to speak or write about certain topics, but I've never been asked to take a certain position on any topic. People who worry about academic corruption might think that kind of come-on, steering, influence, or bribe is common. But in my experience it's very rare. It's never happened to me or anyone I know. If I were ever asked to take a position other than my own, I would refuse.

Past funding

  • In the past I've had salaries or stipends for my OA work from Yale Law School, the Harvard Law School Library, and the Berkman Center for Internet & Society. I no longer have any of these salaries or stipends from the first two. But I have a new and ongoing arrangement with Berkman. (See below.)
  • In the past I've had grants for my OA work from the Open Society Institute (today, the Open Society Foundations), the Wellcome Trust, and the Arcadia Fund. I've had a grant for my work in philosophy from the National Endowment for the Humanities.
  • Since funders prefer to give grants to non-profit organizations, rather than individuals, I've made arrangements with non-profits to receive these grants on my behalf. I had these arrangements with Public Knowledge, the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC), and the Berkman Center for Internet & Society. I currently have this kind of arrangement with the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society.
  • When I published my newsletter on OA, I had a subsidy from SPARC, and occasional ads from Data Conversion Laboratory. Neither ever suggested what I should or should not say in the newsletter.
  • For 21 years I was a professor of philosophy at Earlham College. When I left in 2003, to work full-time on open access, I was tenured full professor. I'm still an unremunerated "research professor" of philosophy there.

  • Sometimes it's hard for me to tell the difference between OA work for which I'm paid and OA work for which I'm not paid.
    • By analogy, I support some political causes and candidates as an overload, without pay, and much of my motivation to support OA is political in the broadest sense.
    • I feel lucky to be paid to support what I'd want to support without pay, and I've deliberately looked for grants, fellowships, and paying jobs to make this happen. But if I had to say whether a given email or phone call to answer a question, a given F2F meeting to discuss OA, a given blog post, a given letter to an editor, or a given speaking engagement were inside or outside the scope of my paying work, I'd often be at a loss. Fortunately, this has never mattered to those who pay me, and again I feel lucky that this is the case.

Bottom line

  • Although I support OA, and work full-time on it, I receive no direct financial gain from its success. For example, I own no stock or stock options in any OA publisher or service provider. I receive no commissions on my OA work, unless you count the royalties on my books (above).
    • I benefit indirectly because the success of OA, and the success my own contributions to it, increase the odds that I'll get new grants to work on it, and increase the odds that there will be paying jobs (like my current job) to work on it. However, even in these cases, neither my grants nor my salary are tied to the progress of OA. Once a funder has accepted my grant application, the amount doesn't increase or decrease, for example, in proportion to the effectiveness of my work. Once I have a salary, the amount is subject to annual pool increases, and the possibility of regulated bonuses, but doesn't increase in proportion to the effectiveness of my work.
    • I don't have a salary, grant, or any other kind of financial support from any for-profit organization.
    • I'm not expected to raise money for any organization as part of my funding agreement or job description.
  • I hope I've disclosed everything that might affect my positions and arguments. But if you think I haven't, please let me know.



Last revised September 4, 2016.

I was encouraged to write this page by similar pages from Mike Eisen, Lawrence Lessig, and David Weinberger. I hope this practice spreads.