1/7 giugno 2018 • Numero 1258

/sommario

  • Friends of the Traffickers Italy’s Anti-Mafia Directorate and the “Dirty Campaign” to Criminalize Migration

    Afana Dieudonne often says that he is not a superhero. That’s Dieudonne’s way of saying he’s done things he’s not proud of — just like anyone in his situation would, he says, in order to survive. From his home in Cameroon to Tunisia by air, then by car and foot into the desert, across the border into Libya, and onto a rubber boat in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, Dieudonne has done a lot of surviving.

    In Libya, Dieudonne remembers when the smugglers managing the safe house would ask him for favors. Dieudonne spoke a little English and didn’t want trouble. He said the smugglers were often high and always armed. Sometimes, when asked, Dieudonne would distribute food and water among the other migrants. Other times, he would inform on those who didn’t follow orders. He remembers the traffickers forcing him to inflict violence on his peers. It was either them or him, he reasoned.

    On September 30, 2014, the smugglers pushed Dieudonne and 91 others out to sea aboard a rubber boat. Buzzing through the pitch-black night, the group watched lights on the Libyan coast fade into darkness. After a day at sea, the overcrowded dinghy began taking on water. Its passengers were rescued by an NGO vessel and transferred to an Italian coast guard ship, where officers picked Dieudonne out of a crowd and led him into a room for questioning.

    At first, Dieudonne remembers the questioning to be quick, almost routine. His name, his age, his nationality. And then the questions turned: The officers said they wanted to know how the trafficking worked in Libya so they could arrest the people involved. They wanted to know who had driven the rubber boat and who had held the navigation compass.

    “So I explained everything to them, and I also showed who the ‘captain’ was — captain in quotes, because there is no captain,” said Dieudonne. The real traffickers stay in Libya, he added. “Even those who find themselves to be captains, they don’t do it by choice.”

    For the smugglers, Dieudonne explained, “we are the customers, and we are the goods.”

    For years, efforts by the Italian government and the European Union to address migration in the central Mediterranean have focused on the people in Libya — interchangeably called facilitators, smugglers, traffickers, or militia members, depending on which agency you’re speaking to — whose livelihoods come from helping others cross irregularly into Europe. People pay them a fare to organize a journey so dangerous it has taken tens of thousands of lives.

    The European effort to dismantle these smuggling networks has been driven by an unlikely actor: the Italian anti-mafia and anti-terrorism directorate, a niche police office in Rome that gained respect in the 1990s and early 2000s for dismantling large parts of the Mafia in Sicily and elsewhere in Italy. According to previously unpublished internal documents, the office — called the Direzione nazionale antimafia e antiterrorismo, or DNAA, in Italian — took a front-and-center role in the management of Europe’s southern sea borders, in direct coordination with the EU border agency Frontex and European military missions operating off the Libyan coast.

    In 2013, under the leadership of a longtime anti-mafia prosecutor named Franco Roberti, the directorate pioneered a strategy that was unique — or at least new for the border officers involved. They would start handling irregular migration to Europe like they had handled the mob. The approach would allow Italian and European police, coast guard agencies, and navies, obliged by international law to rescue stranded refugees at sea, to at least get some arrests and convictions along the way.

    The idea was to arrest low-level operators and use coercion and plea deals to get them to flip on their superiors. That way, the reasoning went, police investigators could work their way up the food chain and eventually dismantle the smuggling rings in Libya. With every boat that disembarked in Italy, police would make a handful of arrests. Anybody found to have played an active role during the crossing, from piloting to holding a compass to distributing water or bailing out a leak, could be arrested under a new legal directive written by Roberti’s anti-mafia directorate. Charges ranged from simple smuggling to transnational criminal conspiracy and — if people asphyxiated below deck or drowned when a boat capsized — even murder. Judicial sources estimate the number of people arrested since 2013 to be in the thousands.

    For the police, prosecutors, and politicians involved, the arrests were an important domestic political win. At the time, public opinion in Italy was turning against migration, and the mugshots of alleged smugglers regularly held space on front pages throughout the country.

    But according to the minutes of closed-door conversations among some of the very same actors directing these cases, which were obtained by The Intercept under Italy’s freedom of information law, most anti-mafia prosecutions only focused on low-level boat drivers, often migrants who had themselves paid for the trip across. Few, if any, smuggling bosses were ever convicted. Documents of over a dozen trials reviewed by The Intercept show prosecutions built on hasty investigations and coercive interrogations.

    In the years that followed, the anti-mafia directorate went to great lengths to keep the arrests coming. According to the internal documents, the office coordinated a series of criminal investigations into the civilian rescue NGOs working to save lives in the Mediterranean, accusing them of hampering police work. It also oversaw efforts to create and train a new coast guard in Libya, with full knowledge that some coast guard officers were colluding with the same smuggling networks that Italian and European leaders were supposed to be fighting.

    Since its inception, the anti-mafia directorate has wielded unparalleled investigative tools and served as a bridge between politicians and the courts. The documents reveal in meticulous detail how the agency, alongside Italian and European officials, capitalized on those powers to crack down on alleged smugglers, most of whom they knew to be desperate people fleeing poverty and violence with limited resources to defend themselves in court.

    Tragedy and Opportunity

    The anti-mafia directorate was born in the early 1990s after a decade of escalating Mafia violence. By then, hundreds of prosecutors, politicians, journalists, and police officers had been shot, blown up, or kidnapped, and many more extorted by organized crime families operating in Italy and beyond.

    In Palermo, the Sicilian capital, prosecutor Giovanni Falcone was a rising star in the Italian judiciary. Falcone had won unprecedented success with an approach to organized crime based on tracking financial flows, seizing assets, and centralizing evidence gathered by prosecutor’s offices across the island.

    But as the Mafia expanded its reach into the rest of Europe, Falcone’s work proved insufficient.

    In September 1990, a Mafia commando drove from Germany to Sicily to gun down a 37-year-old judge. Weeks later, at a police checkpoint in Naples, the Sicilian driver of a truck loaded with weapons, explosives, and drugs was found to be a resident of Germany. A month after the arrests, Falcone traveled to Germany to establish an information-sharing mechanism with authorities there. He brought along a younger colleague from Naples, Franco Roberti.

    “We faced a stone wall,” recalled Roberti, still bitter three decades later. He spoke to us outside a cafe in a plum neighborhood in Naples. Seventy-three years old and speaking with the rasp of a lifelong smoker, Roberti described Italy’s Mafia problem in blunt language. He bemoaned a lack of international cooperation that, he said, continues to this day. “They claimed that there was no need to investigate there,” Roberti said, “that it was up to us to investigate Italians in Germany who were occasional mafiosi.”

    As the prosecutors traveled back to Italy empty-handed, Roberti remembers Falcone telling him that they needed “a centralized national organ able to speak directly to foreign judicial authorities and coordinate investigations in Italy.”

    “That is how the idea of the anti-mafia directorate was born,” Roberti said. The two began building what would become Italy’s first national anti-mafia force.

    At the time, there was tough resistance to the project. Critics argued that Falcone and Roberti were creating “super-prosecutors” who would wield outsize powers over the courts, while also being subject to political pressures from the government in Rome. It was, they argued, a marriage of police and the judiciary, political interests and supposedly apolitical courts — convenient for getting Mafia convictions but dangerous for Italian democracy.

    Still, in January 1992, the project was approved in Parliament. But Falcone would never get to lead it: Months later, a bomb set by the Mafia killed him, his wife, and the three agents escorting them. The attack put to rest any remaining criticism of Falcone’s plan.

    The anti-mafia directorate went on to become one of Italy’s most important institutions, the national authority over all matters concerning organized crime and the agency responsible for partially freeing the country from its century-old crucible. In the decades after Falcone’s death, the directorate did what many in Italy thought impossible, dismantling large parts of the five main Italian crime families and almost halving the Mafia-related murder rate.

    And yet, by the time Roberti took control in 2013, it had been years since the last high-profile Mafia prosecution, and the organization’s influence was waning. At the same time, Italy was facing unprecedented numbers of migrants arriving by boat. Roberti had an idea: The anti-mafia directorate would start working on what he saw as a different kind of mafia. The organization set its sights on Libya.

    “We thought we had to do something more coordinated to combat this trafficking,” Roberti remembered, “so I put everyone around a table.”

    “The main objective was to save lives, seize ships, and capture smugglers,” Roberti said. “Which we did.”

    Our Sea

    Dieudonne made it to the Libyan port city of Zuwara in August 2014. One more step across the Mediterranean, and he’d be in Europe. The smugglers he paid to get him across the sea took all of his possessions and put him in an abandoned building that served as a safe house to wait for his turn.

    Dieudonne told his story from a small office in Bari, Italy, where he runs a cooperative that helps recent arrivals access local education. Dieudonne is fiery and charismatic. He is constantly moving: speaking, texting, calling, gesticulating. Every time he makes a point, he raps his knuckles on the table in a one-two pattern. Dieudonne insisted that we publish his real name. Others who made the journey more recently — still pending decisions on their residence permits or refugee status — were less willing to speak openly.

    Dieudonne remembers the safe house in Zuwara as a string of constant violence. The smugglers would come once a day to leave food. Every day, they would ask who hadn’t followed their orders. Those inside the abandoned building knew they were less likely to be discovered by police or rival smugglers, but at the same time, they were not free to leave.

    “They’ve put a guy in the refrigerator in front of all of us, to show how the next one who misbehaves will be treated,” Dieudonne remembered, indignant. He witnessed torture, shootings, rape. “The first time you see it, it hurts you. The second time it hurts you less. The third time,” he said with a shrug, “it becomes normal. Because that’s the only way to survive.”

    “That’s why arresting the person who pilots a boat and treating them like a trafficker makes me laugh,” Dieudonne said. Others who have made the journey to Italy report having been forced to drive at gunpoint. “You only do it to be sure you don’t die there,” he said.

    Two years after the fall of Muammar Gaddafi’s government, much of Libya’s northwest coast had become a staging ground for smugglers who organized sea crossings to Europe in large wooden fishing boats. When those ships — overcrowded, underpowered, and piloted by amateurs — inevitably capsized, the deaths were counted by the hundreds.

    In October 2013, two shipwrecks off the coast of the Italian island of Lampedusa took over 400 lives, sparking public outcry across Europe. In response, the Italian state mobilized two plans, one public and the other private.

    “There was a big shock when the Lampedusa tragedy happened,” remembered Italian Sen. Emma Bonino, then the country’s foreign minister. The prime minister “called an emergency meeting, and we decided to immediately launch this rescue program,” Bonino said. “Someone wanted to call the program ‘safe seas.’ I said no, not safe, because it’s sure we’ll have other tragedies. So let’s call it Mare Nostrum.”

    Mare Nostrum — “our sea” in Latin — was a rescue mission in international waters off the coast of Libya that ran for one year and rescued more than 150,000 people. The operation also brought Italian ships, airplanes, and submarines closer than ever to Libyan shores. Roberti, just two months into his job as head of the anti-mafia directorate, saw an opportunity to extend the country’s judicial reach and inflict a lethal blow to smuggling rings in Libya.

    Five days after the start of Mare Nostrum, Roberti launched the private plan: a series of coordination meetings among the highest echelons of the Italian police, navy, coast guard, and judiciary. Under Roberti, these meetings would run for four years and eventually involve representatives from Frontex, Europol, an EU military operation, and even Libya.

    The minutes of five of these meetings, which were presented by Roberti in a committee of the Italian Parliament and obtained by The Intercept, give an unprecedented behind-the-scenes look at the events on Europe’s southern borders since the Lampedusa shipwrecks.

    In the first meeting, held in October 2013, Roberti told participants that the anti-mafia offices in the Sicilian city of Catania had developed an innovative way to deal with migrant smuggling. By treating Libyan smugglers like they had treated the Italian Mafia, prosecutors could claim jurisdiction over international waters far beyond Italy’s borders. That, Roberti said, meant they could lawfully board and seize vessels on the high seas, conduct investigations there, and use the evidence in court.

    The Italian authorities have long recognized that, per international maritime law, they are obligated to rescue people fleeing Libya on overcrowded boats and transport them to a place of safety. As the number of people attempting the crossing increased, many Italian prosecutors and coast guard officials came to believe that smugglers were relying on these rescues to make their business model work; therefore, the anti-mafia reasoning went, anyone who acted as crew or made a distress call on a boat carrying migrants could be considered complicit in Libyan trafficking and subject to Italian jurisdiction. This new approach drew heavily from legal doctrines developed in the United States during the 1980s aimed at stopping drug smuggling.

    European leaders were scrambling to find a solution to what they saw as a looming migration crisis. Italian officials thought they had the answer and publicly justified their decisions as a way to prevent future drownings.

    But according to the minutes of the 2013 anti-mafia meeting, the new strategy predated the Lampedusa shipwrecks by at least a week. Sicilian prosecutors had already written the plan to crack down on migration across the Mediterranean but lacked both the tools and public will to put it into action. Following the Lampedusa tragedy and the creation of Mare Nostrum, they suddenly had both.

    State of Necessity

    In the international waters off the coast of Libya, Dieudonne and 91 others were rescued by a European NGO called Migrant Offshore Aid Station. They spent two days aboard MOAS’s ship before being transferred to an Italian coast guard ship, Nave Dattilo, to be taken to Europe.

    Aboard the Dattilo, coast guard officers asked Dieudonne why he had left his home in Cameroon. He remembers them showing him a photograph of the rubber boat taken from the air. “They asked me who was driving, the roles and everything,” he remembered. “Then they asked me if I could tell him how the trafficking in Libya works, and then, they said, they would give me residence documents.”

    Dieudonne said that he was reluctant to cooperate at first. He didn’t want to accuse any of his peers, but he was also concerned that he could become a suspect. After all, he had helped the driver at points throughout the voyage.

    “I thought that if I didn’t cooperate, they might hurt me,” Dieudonne said. “Not physically hurt, but they could consider me dishonest, like someone who was part of the trafficking.”

    To this day, Dieudonne says he can’t understand why Italy would punish people for fleeing poverty and political violence in West Africa. He rattled off a list of events from the last year alone: draught, famine, corruption, armed gunmen, attacks on schools. “And you try to convict someone for managing to escape that situation?”

    The coast guard ship disembarked in Vibo Valentia, a city in the Italian region of Calabria. During disembarkation, a local police officer explained to a journalist that they had arrested five people. The journalist asked how the police had identified the accused.

    “A lot has been done by the coast guard, who picked [the migrants] up two days ago and managed to spot [the alleged smugglers],” the officer explained. “Then we have witness statements and videos.”

    Cases like these, where arrests are made on the basis of photo or video evidence and statements by witnesses like Dieudonne, are common, said Gigi Modica, a judge in Sicily who has heard many immigration and asylum cases. “It’s usually the same story. They take three or four people, no more. They ask them two questions: who was driving the boat, and who was holding the compass,” Modica explained. “That’s it — they get the names and don’t care about the rest.”

    Modica was one of the first judges in Italy to acquit people charged for driving rubber boats — known as “scafisti,” or boat drivers, in Italian — on the grounds that they had been forced to do so. These “state of necessity” rulings have since become increasingly common. Modica rattled off a list of irregularities he’s seen in such cases: systemic racism, witness statements that migrants later say they didn’t make, interrogations with no translator or lawyer, and in some cases, people who report being encouraged by police to sign documents renouncing their right to apply for asylum.

    “So often these alleged smugglers — scafisti — are normal people who were compelled to pilot a boat by smugglers in Libya,” Modica said.

    Documents of over a dozen trials reviewed by The Intercept show prosecutions largely built on testimony from migrants who are promised a residence permit in exchange for their collaboration. At sea, witnesses are interviewed by the police hours after their rescue, often still in a state of shock after surviving a shipwreck.

    In many cases, identical statements, typos included, are attributed to several witnesses and copied and pasted across different police reports. Sometimes, these reports have been enough to secure decadeslong sentences. Other times, under cross-examination in court, witnesses have contradicted the statements recorded by police or denied giving any testimony at all.

    As early as 2015, attendees of the anti-mafia meetings were discussing problems with these prosecutions. In a meeting that February, Giovanni Salvi, then the prosecutor of Catania, acknowledged that smugglers often abandoned migrant boats in international waters. Still, Italian police were steaming ahead with the prosecutions of those left on board.

    These prosecutions were so important that in some cases, the Italian coast guard decided to delay rescue when boats were in distress in order to “allow for the arrival of institutional ships that can conduct arrests,” a coast guard commander explained at the meeting.

    When asked about the commander’s comments, the Italian coast guard said that “on no occasion” has the agency ever delayed a rescue operation. Delaying rescue for any reason goes against international and Italian law, and according to various human rights lawyers in Europe, could give rise to criminal liability.

    NGOs in the Crosshairs

    Italy canceled Mare Nostrum after one year, citing budget constraints and a lack of European collaboration. In its wake, the EU set up two new operations, one via Frontex and the other a military effort called Operation Sophia. These operations focused not on humanitarian rescue but on border security and people smuggling from Libya. Beginning in 2015, representatives from Frontex and Operation Sophia were included in the anti-mafia directorate meetings, where Italian prosecutors ensured that both abided by the new investigative strategy.

    Key to these investigations were photos from the rescues, like the aerial image that Dieudonne remembers the Italian coast guard showing him, which gave police another way to identify who piloted the boats and helped navigate.

    In the absence of government rescue ships, a fleet of civilian NGO vessels began taking on a large number of rescues in the international waters off the coast of Libya. These ships, while coordinated by the Italian coast guard rescue center in Rome, made evidence-gathering difficult for prosecutors and judicial police. According to the anti-mafia meeting minutes, some NGOs, including MOAS, routinely gave photos to Italian police and Frontex. Others refused, arguing that providing evidence for investigations into the people they saved would undermine their efficacy and neutrality.

    In the years following Mare Nostrum, the NGO fleet would come to account for more than one-third of all rescues in the central Mediterranean, according to estimates by Operation Sophia. A leaked status report from the operation noted that because NGOs did not collect information from rescued migrants for police, “information essential to enhance the understanding of the smuggling business model is not acquired.”

    In a subsequent anti-mafia meeting, six prosecutors echoed this concern. NGO rescues meant that police couldn’t interview migrants at sea, they said, and cases were getting thrown out for lack of evidence. A coast guard admiral explained the importance of conducting interviews just after a rescue, when “a moment of empathy has been established.”

    “It is not possible to carry out this task if the rescue intervention is carried out by ships of the NGOs,” the admiral told the group.

    The NGOs were causing problems for the DNAA strategy. At the meetings, Italian prosecutors and representatives from the coast guard, navy, and Interior Ministry discussed what they could do to rein in the humanitarian organizations. At the same time, various prosecutors were separately fixing their investigative sights on the NGOs themselves.

    In late 2016, an internal report from Frontex — later published in full by The Intercept — accused an NGO vessel of directly receiving migrants from Libyan smugglers, attributing the information to “Italian authorities.” The claim was contradicted by video evidence and the ship’s crew.

    Months later, Carmelo Zuccaro, the prosecutor of Catania, made public that he was investigating rescue NGOs. “Together with Frontex and the navy, we are trying to monitor all these NGOs that have shown that they have great financial resources,” Zuccaro told an Italian newspaper. The claim went viral in Italian and European media. “Friends of the traffickers” and “migrant taxi service” became common slurs used toward humanitarian NGOs by anti-immigration politicians and the Italian far right.

    Zuccaro would eventually walk back his claims, telling a parliamentary committee that he was working off a hypothesis at the time and had no evidence to back it up.

    In an interview with a German newspaper in February 2017, the director of Frontex, Fabrice Leggeri, refrained from explicitly criticizing the work of rescue NGOs but did say they were hampering police investigations in the Mediterranean. As aid organizations assumed a larger percentage of rescues, Leggeri said, “it is becoming more difficult for the European security authorities to find out more about the smuggling networks through interviews with migrants.”

    “That smear campaign was very, very deep,” remembered Bonino, the former foreign minister. Referring to Marco Minniti, Italy’s interior minister at the time, she added, “I was trying to push Minniti not to be so obsessed with people coming, but to make a policy of integration in Italy. But he only focused on Libya and smuggling and criminalizing NGOs with the help of prosecutors.”

    Bonino explained that the action against NGOs was part of a larger plan to change European policy in the central Mediterranean. The first step was the shift away from humanitarian rescue and toward border security and smuggling. The second step “was blaming the NGOs or arresting them, a sort of dirty campaign against them,” she said. “The results of which after so many years have been no convictions, no penalties, no trials.”

    Finally, the third step was to build a new coast guard in Libya to do what the Europeans couldn’t, per international law: intercept people at sea and bring them back to Libya, the country from which they had just fled.

    At first, leaders at Frontex were cautious. “From Frontex’s point of view, we look at Libya with concern; there is no stable state there,” Leggeri said in the 2017 interview. “We are now helping to train 60 officers for a possible future Libyan coast guard. But this is at best a beginning.”

    Bonino saw this effort differently. “They started providing support for their so-called coast guard,” she said, “which were the same traffickers changing coats.”
    Rescued migrants disembarking from a Libyan coast guard ship in the town of Khoms, a town 120 kilometres (75 miles) east of the capital on October 1, 2019.

    Same Uniforms, Same Ships

    Safe on land in Italy, Dieudonne was never called to testify in court. He hopes that none of his peers ended up in prison but said he would gladly testify against the traffickers if called. Aboard the coast guard ship, he remembers, “I gave the police contact information for the traffickers, I gave them names.”

    The smuggling operations in Libya happened out in the open, but Italian police could only go as far as international waters. Leaked documents from Operation Sophia describe years of efforts by European officials to get Libyan police to arrest smugglers. Behind closed doors, top Italian and EU officials admitted that these same smugglers were intertwined with the new Libyan coast guard that Europe was creating and that working with them would likely go against international law.

    As early as 2015, multiple officials at the anti-mafia meetings noted that some smugglers were uncomfortably close to members of the Libyan government. “Militias use the same uniforms and the same ships as the Libyan coast guard that the Italian navy itself is training,” Rear Adm. Enrico Credendino, then in charge of Operation Sophia, said in 2017. The head of the Libyan coast guard and the Libyan minister of defense, both allies of the Italian government, Credendino added, “have close relationships with some militia bosses.”

    One of the Libyan coast guard officers playing both sides was Abd al-Rahman Milad, also known as Bija. In 2019, the Italian newspaper Avvenire revealed that Bija participated in a May 2017 meeting in Sicily, alongside Italian border police and intelligence officials, that was aimed at stemming migration from Libya. A month later, he was condemned by the U.N. Security Council for his role as a top member of a powerful trafficking militia in the coastal town of Zawiya, and for, as the U.N. put it, “sinking migrant boats using firearms.”

    According to leaked documents from Operation Sophia, coast guard officers under Bija’s command were trained by the EU between 2016 and 2018.

    While the Italian government was prosecuting supposed smugglers in Italy, they were also working with people they knew to be smugglers in Libya. Minniti, Italy’s then-interior minister, justified the deals his government was making in Libya by saying that the prospect of mass migration from Africa made him “fear for the well-being of Italian democracy.”

    In one of the 2017 anti-mafia meetings, a representative of the Interior Ministry, Vittorio Pisani, outlined in clear terms a plan that provided for the direct coordination of the new Libyan coast guard. They would create “an operation room in Libya for the exchange of information with the Interior Ministry,” Pisani explained, “mainly on the position of NGO ships and their rescue operations, in order to employ the Libyan coast guard in its national waters.”

    And with that, the third step of the plan was set in motion. At the end of the meeting, Roberti suggested that the group invite representatives from the Libyan police to their next meeting. In an interview with The Intercept, Roberti confirmed that Libyan representatives attended at least two anti-mafia meetings and that he himself met Bija at a meeting in Libya, one month after the U.N. Security Council report was published. The following year, the Security Council committee on Libya sanctioned Bija, freezing his assets and banning him from international travel.

    “We needed to have the participation of Libyan institutions. But they did nothing, because they were taking money from the traffickers,” Roberti told us from the cafe in Naples. “They themselves were the traffickers.”
    A Place of Safety

    Roberti retired from the anti-mafia directorate in 2017. He said that under his leadership, the organization was able to create a basis for handling migration throughout Europe. Still, Roberti admits that his expansion of the DNAA into migration issues has had mixed results. Like his trip to Germany in the ’90s with Giovanni Falcone, Roberti said the anti-mafia strategy faltered because of a lack of collaboration: with the NGOs, with other European governments, and with Libya.

    “On a European level, the cooperation does not work,” Roberti said. Regarding Libya, he added, “We tried — I believe it was right, the agreements [the government] made. But it turned out to be a failure in the end.”

    The DNAA has since expanded its operations. Between 2017 and 2019, the Italian government passed two bills that put the anti-mafia directorate in charge of virtually all illegal immigration matters. Since 2017, five Sicilian prosecutors, all of whom attended at least one anti-mafia coordination meeting, have initiated 15 separate legal proceedings against humanitarian NGO workers. So far there have been no convictions: Three cases have been thrown out in court, and the rest are ongoing.

    Earlier this month, news broke that Sicilian prosecutors had wiretapped journalists and human rights lawyers as part of one of these investigations, listening in on legally protected conversations with sources and clients. The Italian justice ministry has opened an investigation into the incident, which could amount to criminal behavior, according to Italian legal experts. The prosecutor who approved the wiretaps attended at least one DNAA coordination meeting, where investigations against NGOs were discussed at length.

    As the DNAA has extended its reach, key actors from the anti-mafia coordination meetings have risen through the ranks of Italian and European institutions. One prosecutor, Federico Cafiero de Raho, now runs the anti-mafia directorate. Salvi, the former prosecutor of Catania, is the equivalent of Italy’s attorney general. Pisani, the former Interior Ministry representative, is deputy head of the Italian intelligence services. And Roberti is a member of the European Parliament.

    Cafiero de Raho stands by the investigations and arrests that the anti-mafia directorate has made over the years. He said the coordination meetings were an essential tool for prosecutors and police during difficult times.

    When asked about his specific comments during the meetings — particularly statements that humanitarian NGOs needed to be regulated and multiple admissions that members of the new Libyan coast guard were involved in smuggling activities — Cafiero de Raho said that his remarks should be placed in context, a time when Italy and the EU were working to build a coast guard in a part of Libya that was largely ruled by local militias. He said his ultimate goal was what, in the DNAA coordination meetings, he called the “extrajudicial solution”: attempts to prove the existence of crimes against humanity in Libya so that “the United Nation sends troops to Libya to dismantle migrants camps set up by traffickers … and retake control of that territory.”

    A spokesperson for the EU’s foreign policy arm, which ran Operation Sophia, refused to directly address evidence that leaders of the European military operation knew that parts of the new Libyan coast guard were also involved in smuggling activities, only noting that Bija himself wasn’t trained by the EU. A Frontex spokesperson stated that the agency “was not involved in the selection of officers to be trained.”

    In 2019, the European migration strategy changed again. Now, the vast majority of departures are intercepted by the Libyan coast guard and brought back to Libya. In March of that year, Operation Sophia removed all of its ships from the rescue area and has since focused on using aerial patrols to direct and coordinate the Libyan coast guard. Human rights lawyers in Europe have filed six legal actions against Italy and the EU as a result, calling the practice refoulement by proxy: facilitating the return of migrants to dangerous circumstances in violation of international law.

    Indeed, throughout four years of coordination meetings, Italy and the EU were admitting privately that returning people to Libya would be illegal. “Fundamental human rights violations in Libya make it impossible to push migrants back to the Libyan coast,” Pisani explained in 2015. Two years later, he outlined the beginnings of a plan that would do exactly that.

    The Result of Mere Chance

    Dieudonne knows he was lucky. The line that separates suspect and victim can be entirely up to police officers’ first impressions in the minutes or hours following a rescue. According to police reports used in prosecutions, physical attributes like having “a clearer skin tone” or behavior aboard the ship, including scrutinizing police movements “with strange interest,” were enough to rouse suspicion.

    In a 2019 ruling that acquitted seven alleged smugglers after three years of pretrial detention, judges wrote that “the selection of the suspects on one side, and the witnesses on the other, with the only exception of the driver, has almost been the result of mere chance.”

    Carrying out work for their Libyan captors has cost other migrants in Italy lengthy prison sentences. In September 2019, a 22-year-old Guinean nicknamed Suarez was arrested upon his arrival to Italy. Four witnesses told police he had collaborated with prison guards in Zawiya, at the immigrant detention center managed by the infamous Bija.

    “Suarez was also a prisoner, who then took on a job,” one of the witnesses told the court. Handing out meals or taking care of security is what those who can’t afford to pay their ransom often do in order to get out, explained another. “Unfortunately, you would have to be there to understand the situation,” the first witness said. Suarez was sentenced to 20 years in prison, recently reduced to 12 years on appeal.

    Dieudonne remembered his journey at sea vividly, but with surprising cool. When the boat began taking on water, he tried to help. “One must give help where it is needed.” At his office in Bari, Dieudonne bent over and moved his arms in a low scooping motion, like he was bailing water out of a boat.

    “Should they condemn me too?” he asked. He finds it ironic that it was the Libyans who eventually arrested Bija on human trafficking charges this past October. The Italians and Europeans, he said with a laugh, were too busy working with the corrupt coast guard commander. (In April, Bija was released from prison after a Libyan court absolved him of all charges. He was promoted within the coast guard and put back on the job.)

    Dieudonne thinks often about the people he identified aboard the coast guard ship in the middle of the sea. “I told the police the truth. But if that collaboration ends with the conviction of an innocent person, it’s not good,” he said. “Because I know that person did nothing. On the contrary, he saved our lives by driving that raft.”

    https://theintercept.com/2021/04/30/italy-anti-mafia-migrant-rescue-smuggling

    #Méditerranée #Italie #Libye #ONG #criminalisation_de_la_solidarité #solidarité #secours #mer_Méditerranée #asile #migrations #réfugiés #violence #passeurs #Méditerranée_centrale #anti-mafia #anti-terrorisme #Direzione_nazionale_antimafia_e_antiterrorismo #DNAA #Frontex #Franco_Roberti #justice #politique #Zuwara #torture #viol #Mare_Nostrum #Europol #eaux_internationales #droit_de_la_mer #droit_maritime #juridiction_italienne #arrestations #Gigi_Modica #scafista #scafisti #état_de_nécessité #Giovanni_Salvi #NGO #Operation_Sophia #MOAS #DNA #Carmelo_Zuccaro #Zuccaro #Fabrice_Leggeri #Leggeri #Marco_Minniti #Minniti #campagne #gardes-côtes_libyens #milices #Enrico_Credendino #Abd_al-Rahman_Milad #Bija ##Abdurhaman_al-Milad #Al_Bija #Zawiya #Vittorio_Pisani #Federico_Cafiero_de_Raho #solution_extrajudiciaire #pull-back #refoulement_by_proxy #refoulement #push-back #Suarez

    ping @karine4 @isskein @rhoumour

  • IL «PULL FACTOR» NON ESISTE. Con #SeaWatch3 da 12 giorni al largo di #Lampedusa, terzo aggiornamento. Tra l’1 maggio e il 21 giugno dalla #Libia sono partite almeno 3.926 persone. Con Ong al largo, 62 partenze al giorno. Senza Ong, 76 partenze.

    Se ci limitiamo ai soli giorni di giugno, il dato è ancora più eclatante. Con #SeaWatch3 al largo, dalla #Libia sono partite 52 persone al giorno. Senza Ong, 94 partenze.

    Tra l’1 maggio e il 21 giugno dalla #Libia sono partite almeno 3.962 persone. 431 partite quando le Ong erano al largo delle coste libiche. 3.495 partite senza nessun assetto europeo (pubblicamente) in mare a fare ricerca e soccorso.


    NB: non è che senza Ong in mare si parta di più — sarebbe un pull factor all’incontrario. La differenza tra le partenze al giorno dalla Libia, con o senza Ong, non è significativa. Semplicemente, non c’è alcuna correlazione tra attività Ong in mare e partenze.

    https://twitter.com/emmevilla/status/1142685495526395906

    #Matteo_Villa #pull-factor #facteur_pull #appel_d'air #statistiques #chiffres #fact-checking #2019 #Méditerranée #ONG #asile #migrations #réfugiés #frontières #démonstration #déconstruction #Libye #départs

    ping @isskein

    • "Lampedusa ha superato da tempo la sua capacità d’accoglienza: sull’isola ci sono già i 42 passeggeri della Sea-Watch 3, sbarcati dopo 17 giorni di attraversata, e altri cento arrivati senza creare scalpore. Su di loro il ministro dell’interno Matteo Salvini non ha speso nemmeno una parola. Però quando la Sea-Watch 3 ha fatto rotta verso la costa italiana Salvini ha scatenato il putiferio.
      (...)
      In effetti in Italia continuano ad arrivare i migranti: mille a giugno, più di 2500 all’inizio dell’anno. Certo, sono molti meno rispetto a un paio di anni fa, ma comunque troppi rispetto alle promesse fatte da Salvini agli elettori. Come deve presentare questi numeri? C’è sempre un’invasione da combattere, o si tratta di una cifra relativamente piccola e tollerabile? Nel primo caso avrebbe fallito, nel secondo caso il tema diventerebbe secondario. E forse per Salvini la seconda opzione è perfino peggiore della prima.
      (...)
      Il leader della Lega, infatti, deve assolutamente mantenere il tema dei migranti al centro del dibattito politico italiano, è il suo terreno di battaglia preferito, soprattutto in vista di eventuali elezioni anticipate a settembre. Salvini spera che la Lega si affermi come primo partito d’Italia e aspira a diventare presidente del consiglio. Fino ad allora deve tenere in vita l’immagine dell’uomo che sa imporsi, altrimenti le sue speranze di vittoria sono perdute. Un nuovo nemico, deve aver pensato Salvini, lo farebbe uscire dal vicolo cieco. E quale miglior nemico degli ’aiutanti dei trafficanti’, come spesso ha definito le navi gestite da volontari che salvano i naufraghi in mare? Grazie a loro arriva in Italia un numero irrilevante di profughi, ma sono la controparte perfetta per la sua messinscena. Per questo ha alzato il livello dello scontro con la Sea-Watch 3.

      Source: Hans-Jürgen Schlamp, «Una nemica perfetta», in Internazionale, n°1314, juillet 2019 (original: Der Spiegel), pp.19-20.
      https://www.internazionale.it/sommario/1314
      #Salvini #Carola_Rackete #Rackete #Matteo_Salvini

    • Con #OpenArms ancora al largo e #OceanViking che ha fatto un salvataggio, RECAP.

      Tra l’1 gennaio e il 9 agosto dalla #Libia sono partite almeno 8.551 persone.

      Con Ong al largo, 31 partenze al giorno.
      Senza Ong, 41 partenze al giorno.


      1.624 partite quando le Ong erano al largo delle coste libiche.
      6.927 partite senza nessun assetto europeo a fare ricerca e soccorso.

      https://twitter.com/emmevilla/status/1159814415950241792

    • Sea rescue NGOs : a pull factor of irregular migration?

      The argument that maritime Search and Rescue (SAR) operations act as a ‘pull factor’ of irregular seaborne migration has become commonplace during the Mediterranean ‘refugee crisis’. This claim has frequently been used to criticize humanitarian non-governmental organizations (NGOs) conducting SAR off the coast of Libya, which are considered to provide “an incentive for human smugglers to arrange departures” (Italian Senate 2017: 9). In this policy brief, we scrutinise this argument by examining monthly migratory flows from Libya to Italy between 2014 and October 2019. We find no relationship between the presence of NGOs at sea and the number of migrants leaving Libyan shores. Although more data and further research are needed, the results of our analysis call into question the claim that non-governmental SAR operations are a pull factor of irregular migration across the Mediterranean sea.

      https://cadmus.eui.eu/handle/1814/65024

    • Migrants from Libya not driven by hope of being rescued at sea – study

      No link found between number of Mediterranean crossings and level of NGO rescue ship activity.

      No valid statistical link exists between the likelihood that migrants will be rescued at sea and the number of attempted Mediterranean crossings, a study has found. The findings challenge the widespread claim in Europe that NGO search and rescue activity has been a pull factor for migrants.

      Fear that the NGOs’ missions attract immigrants has been the basis for measures restricting humanitarian ships including requiring them to sign up to codes of conduct or simply blocking them from leaving port.

      It is the first detailed study of NGOs’ proactive search and rescue activity between 2014 and October 2019, but the findings focus most closely on the first nine months of this year, a period when Europe had withdrawn from all search and rescue activity leaving only NGOs or the Libyan guard. The research was undertaken by two Italian researchers, Eugenio Cusumano and Matteo Villa, from the European University Institute (https://cadmus.eui.eu/handle/1814/65024).

      Drawing on official statistics and examining three-day averages, the study showed the numbers rescued depend on the numbers leaving. It found a stronger link this year between the number of migrant crossings and either political stability in Libya or the weather, rather than NGO ships at sea.

      The study found that in 2015, the total number of departures from Libya slightly decreased relative to 2014 even though migrants rescued by NGOs increased from 0.8 to 13% of the total number of people rescued at sea. After July 2017, the number of migrants departing from Libya plummeted even though NGOs had become far and away the largest provider of search and rescue by far.

      It also found that in the 85 days in which the NGOs were present in the search and rescue mission there were no more departures than the 225 days in which there were Libyan patrol boats.

      Instead, the study showed the big decline in crossings in 2017 was linked to the deal struck between the Italian government and various Libyan militia to keep migrants from attempting sea crossings.

      The study looks at figures from the International Organisation for Migration, the UN refugee agency UNHCR and the Italian coastguard.

      Over the five years the humanitarian ships have rescued a total of 115,000 migrants out of 650,000 with an average of 18%. In 2019 alone, at least 1,078 migrants have died or gone missing, according to the UN, while trying to reach safety in Europe.

      While the EU recognises the Libyan coastguard and is also funding and training its work, there is no overall agreement about how asylum seekers should be dealt with in an equitable and EU-wide manner.

      https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/nov/18/migrants-from-libya-not-driven-by-hope-of-being-rescued-at-sea-study

    • ONG en Méditerranée : les secours en mer ne créent pas d’« appel d’air »

      Deux chercheurs italiens contestent, dans une étude parue lundi, la corrélation parfois suggérée par les politiques entre présence des ONG en mer Méditerranée et nombre de départs de bateaux clandestins des côtes libyennes.

      Marine Le Pen, députée française, le 12 juin 2018 : « Derrière le vernis humanitaire, les ONG ont un rôle objectif de complices des mafias de passeurs. […] Accepter que les bateaux de migrants accostent crée un appel d’air irresponsable ! » Christophe Castaner, ministre de l’Intérieur français, le 5 avril 2019 : « Les ONG ont pu se faire complices [des passeurs]. » Matteo Salvini, alors ministre de l’Intérieur italien, le 7 juillet 2019 : « Je n’autorise aucun débarquement à ceux qui se moquent totalement des lois italiennes et aident les passeurs. » Cette rengaine selon laquelle en menant des opérations de recherches et de sauvetages (SAR) en mer Méditerranée les organisations non gouvernementales provoqueraient des départs massifs d’immigrés clandestins vers l’Europe, a la vie dure.

      De SOS Méditerranée à Proactiva Open Arms en passant par SeaWatch, les ONG contestent ce lien – surtout fait par des politiques de droite et d’extrême droite – mais rien ne permettait jusqu’ici de trancher la question d’une éventuelle relation de cause à effet entre présence des ONG en mer et nombre de départs des côtes libyennes. Deux chercheurs ont rendu publique ce lundi une étude, réalisée pour l’European University Institute de Florence (Italie), qui étudie ce phénomène. La conclusion de Matteo Villa et Eugenio Cusumano, qui précisent que les données sont peu nombreuses, est claire : « Notre analyse suggère que les opérations de SAR non gouvernementales n’ont pas de corrélation avec le nombre de migrants quittant la Libye par la mer. »

      En 2015, le nombre de départs de Libye a même un peu baissé par rapport à 2014, alors que la part des ONG dans le nombre total de sauvetages a augmenté, passant de 0,8% des opérations à 13%. Entre janvier et octobre 2019, le nombre de départs par jour était, lui, légèrement supérieur lorsqu’il n’y avait sur la zone pas d’ONG – lesquelles sont soumises à des pressions gouvernementales et peinent à être autorisées à débarquer les rescapés en Europe. « Par contraste, une grosse corrélation existe entre les départs de migrants et les conditions météorologiques sur la côte libyenne, autant qu’avec la très forte instabilité politique en Libye depuis avril 2019 », indiquent les chercheurs.

      https://www.liberation.fr/amphtml/planete/2019/11/18/ong-en-mediterranee-les-secours-en-mer-ne-creent-pas-d-appel-d-air_176409

    • "Non è vero che la presenza delle Ong in mare fa aumentare le partenze dei migranti dalla Libia"

      Due ricercatori italiani firmano per lo European University Institute la prima analisi sui soccorsi in mare dal 2014 al 2019. Il crollo dei viaggi provocato dagli accordi con Tripoli.

      Il «pull factor delle Ong» sui flussi migratori dalla Libia non esiste. L’affermazione che, da tre anni a questa parte è alla base dei provvedimenti che hanno ormai messo all’angolo le navi umanitarie, buona parte delle quali sotto sequestro da mesi, è una favola. A provarlo è il primo studio sistemico, su dati ufficiali dalle agenzie delle Nazioni unite ma anche dalle guardie costiere italiana e libica, firmato da due ricercatori italiani, Eugenio Cusumano e Matteo Villa, per lo European University Institute. La ricerca, che prende in esame, mensilmente, cinque anni di sbarchi in Italia (da ottobre 2014 a ottobre 2019) dimostra che non vi è alcuna relazione tra la presenza nel Mediterraneo delle navi umanitarie e il numero delle partenze dalle coste libiche.

      In questi cinque anni, le navi umanitarie hanno soccorso complessivamente 115.000 migranti su 650.000, con una media del 18 per cento, la più parte nel 2016 e nel 2017 dopo la fine dell’operazione Mare Nostrum. Poi il codice di condotta voluto da Marco Minniti nell’estate 2017 e il decreto sicurezza di Matteo Salvini hanno condizionato pesantemente l’attività delle Ong.

      Il lavoro dei due ricercatori italiani smonta l’assunto secondo il quale più alto è il numero delle persone salvate, più alto è il numero di quelle che partono. Cusumano e Villa rovesciano l’approccio e dimostrano che il numero dei salvati dipende dal numero di coloro che partono. E a sostegno dell’analisi portano due dati: nel 2015, l’anno in cui le Ong dispiegano la flotta in mare aumentando i loro soccorsi dallo 0,8 al 13 per cento, il numero complessivo delle partenze risulta in calo rispetto all’anno precedente. E ancora, nella seconda metà del 2017, nonostante le tante navi umanitarie presenti, il numero degli sbarchi crolla.

      Dunque, è la conclusione della ricerca, ad avere un forte impatto sulle partenze sono stati gli accordi tra Italia e Libia che hanno decisamente portato ad un abbattimento del numero delle imbarcazioni messe in mare. E ancora nel 2019, quando sparite le navi militari, il peso dei soccorsi è rimasto solo sulle navi umanitarie, i due ricercatori hanno rilevato giorno per giorno partenze e salvataggi senza trovare alcune evidenza che negli 85 giorni in cui erano presenti le Ong in zona Sar ci siano state più partenze rispetto ai 225 giorni in cui c’erano solo le motovedette libiche. E con tutta evidenza i giorni con più partenze sono stati quelli di bel tempo o ad aprile in coincidenza con gli attacchi del generale Haftar.

      https://www.repubblica.it/cronaca/2019/11/18/news/migranti_i_dati_di_uno_studio_confermano_non_e_vero_che_la_presenza_delle

    • Das Märchen von den Rettern und vom «Pull-Faktor»

      Die Studie zweier italienischer Migrationsforscher widerlegt das beliebteste Argument rechter NGO-Kritiker.

      Kein anderer Vorwurf wird gegenüber privaten Seenotrettern auf der zentralen Mittelmeerroute häufiger erhoben als jener, sie seien ein «Pull-Faktor». Dass NGO-Schiffe wie die Sea-Watch oder die Open Arms vor der libyschen Küste Migranten aus Gummibooten retten und nach Italien bringen, so die Anschuldigung, verleite Flüchtlinge erst recht zum Aufbruch und trage deshalb dazu bei, die Zahl der Überfahrten zu steigern – und dadurch auch die Zahl der Ertrunkenen.

      Das Argument hat eine unbestreitbare intuitive Plausibilität: Je sicherer jemand sein kann, aus einer riskanten Situation befreit zu werden, desto grösser dürfte seine Bereitschaft sein, das Risiko einzugehen. 2017 schrieb die europäische Küstenwache Frontex, Rettungsaktionen von NGOs trügen dazu bei, dass Schlepperbanden «ihr Ziel mit minimalem Aufwand erreichen», was das «Business-Modell» der Kriminellen stärke.

      Zwei englische Studien aus dem Jahr 2017 kamen indessen zum Schluss, dass es keinen Zusammenhang zwischen der Präsenz von Rettungsschiffen vor der libyschen Küste und der Zahl der Überfahrten gebe. Beide Untersuchungen beruhten jedoch auf geringem Datenmaterial.

      Das Wetter spielt eine Rolle, Rettungsschiffe nicht

      Eine neue Studie gelangt nun zum selben Ergebnis: Der Pull-Faktor ist, um einen Modeausdruck zu verwenden, Fake News. Die italienischen Migrationsforscher Eugenio Cusumano und Matteo Villa haben für das in Fiesole beheimatete Europäische Hochschulinstitut sämtliche verfügbaren internationalen und italienischen Daten zwischen Oktober 2014 und Oktober 2019 auf einen Pull-Effekt untersucht, mit negativem Resultat.

      Laut der italienischen Zeitung «Repubblica» gab es bisher keine so umfassende und systematische Auswertung. Besonders genau untersuchten die Forscher den Zeitraum vom 1. Januar bis zum 27. Oktober 2019. Sie überprüften Tag für Tag, ob private Rettungsschiffe vor den libyschen Küsten unterwegs waren und wie viele Flüchtlingsboote jeweils die Überfahrt versuchten. Auch hier wieder: Keine Korrelation zwischen NGO-Schiffen und angestrebten Überfahrten. Kein Pull-Faktor. Stark sei hingegen die Korrelation mit dem Wetter.

      Obwohl die Autoren weitere Untersuchungen anmahnen, fordern sie, die Seenotretter nicht mehr zu behindern.

      Die Denkschablone vom «Gutmenschen»

      Das dürfte sich als Illusion erweisen, passt doch die Pull-Faktor-These in eine der beliebtesten rechten Denkschablonen: jene vom «Gutmenschentum». Gutmenschen sind demnach Moralisten, die in ihrer Naivität das Gute wollen, nämlich, im Falle der Seenotretter, Menschen vor dem Ertrinken zu bewahren. Die aber das Schlechte bewirken, weil ihretwegen die Zahl der Toten steige. Das Argument lässt sich scheinbar auf das Wertesystem der Kritisierten ein, um sie genau dadurch an ihrer empfindlichsten Stelle zu treffen. Es verkehrt das angeblich Gute in sein Gegenteil, und je intensiver die Gutmenschen nach dieser Logik ihre Ziele verfolgen, desto verheerender das Resultat.

      Um die Anschuldigung zu verschärfen, braucht man bloss den Anteil des angeblich «Gutgemeinten» zu verringern und jenen der kriminellen Energie zu erhöhen. Diese verleite Seenotretter im Namen einer höheren Moral dazu, das Gesetz zu brechen, indem sie etwa widerrechtlich in einen Hafen einlaufen. Oder – eine weitere Verschärfung des Vorwurfs – indem sie direkt mit den Schlepperbanden zusammenarbeiten, womöglich sogar aus finanziellen Interessen.

      Keine Komplizenschaft mit Schleppern

      Trotz intensiver Ermittlungen ist es der italienischen Staatsanwaltschaft bisher nicht gelungen, Beweise für die angebliche Komplizenschaft zwischen NGOs und libyschen Schlepperbanden zu finden. Und noch nie hat die italienische Justiz Seenotretter verurteilt. Stattdessen ist sie – etwa im Fall der Cap Anamur vor zehn Jahren oder diesen Sommer bei der deutschen Kapitänin Carola Rackete – zu Freisprüchen gelangt, aufgrund des internationalen Seerechts, der Genfer Flüchtlingskonventionen sowie verfassungsrechtlicher Bestimmungen. Oder sie hat die Verfahren eingestellt.

      Zwar gibt es noch laufende Prozesse. Schon jetzt aber lässt sich sagen, dass es verlogen ist, wenn NGO-Kritiker auf Recht und Gesetz pochen, um dann unter krasser Missachtung der Unschuldsvermutung und bisheriger Gerichtsurteile sowie aufgrund herbeifantasierter Pull-Effekte irgendwelche haltlosen Anschuldigungen in die Welt zu setzen.

      https://www.tagesanzeiger.ch/ausland/europa/das-maerchen-von-den-rettern-und-vom-pullfaktor/story/10027861

    • New Research Demonstrates that Search and Rescue is Not a Pull Factor

      New research published by the European University Institute suggests that Search and Rescue (SAR) activities in the Mediterranean, especially those carried out by NGOs, are not incentivizing departures of boats from Libyan shores.

      Combining data from UNHCR, IOM and the Italian Coast Guard, the report finds that there is no significant relationship between NGO’s SAR activity and the departures from the Libyan coast between 2014 and 2018. A closer analysis on presence of NGO ships in the first ten months of 2019, where NGOs remained the only actor conducting SAR, similarly concludes that there is no evidence to suggest that departures increased when NGO ships were at sea during the period considered. Instead, the research finds that the agreement between Italy and the Libyan militias from July 2017, weather conditions and violent conflict in Libya in April 2019 had an impact on departures from Libya.

      The research contributes to the critical analysis of the ‘pull factor’ argument used by European governments as a justification to curb SAR efforts. As defined by the authors, the pull factor hypothesis holds that, all else equal, the higher the likelihood that migrants will be rescued at sea and disembarked in Europe, the higher will be the number of attempted crossings.

      The authors call on the need for more data and further research on this issue. They recommend reconsidering government policies disincentivising SAR operations and restoring EU-led missions combining SAR and border enforcement, like Mare Nostrum. They call for effective, lawful and ethically defensible migration governance across the Central Mediterranean.

      https://www.ecre.org/new-research-demonstrates-that-search-and-rescue-is-not-a-pull-factor

    • Lunedì scorso abbiamo pubblicato un paper (https://cadmus.eui.eu/bitstream/handle/1814/65024/PB_2019_22_MPC.pdf?sequence=5&isAllowed=y) che dimostra che la presenza delle navi Ong non spinge i migranti a partire di più dalla Libia.

      Poi sono arrivate tre Ong, e sono partiti in centinaia.

      «Pull factor»? No.

      Un thread.

      Una cosa vera: negli ultimi giorni dalla Libia sono partiti in tanti, tantissimi.

      Era dal 2 novembre che non si registrava alcuna partenza dalle coste libiche.

      Poi, tra il 19 e il 23 novembre, sono partite quasi 1.200 persone.

      Come vi ho già raccontato, la ripresa delle partenze era nuovamente collegata a un miglioramento delle condizioni atmosferiche.

      Però la presenza delle Ong permette di mettere alla prova il nostro modello.

      Cosa che ho fatto.

      Cosa ho scoperto?

      Primo: le condizioni atmosferiche restano fondamentali.

      Come potete vedere dalle curve qui sotto, conta più il vento della temperatura.

      Messe insieme, le due variabili sono ancora più forti: con tanto vento e temperature in discesa, non parte nessuno.

      Secondo: le Ong continuano a non essere «pull factor».

      L’effetto della presenza in mare delle Ong resta non significativo.

      Inoltre, il risultato non si discosta per nulla dai risultati ottenuti con i dati del nostro paper, che si fermavano a fine ottobre.

      Terzo: ma quindi con il governo Conte II riprendono le partenze?

      Pare di no.

      A parità di altri fattori, meteo incluso, le partenze dalla Libia dopo il cambio di governo sono (a oggi) statisticamente indistinguibili dal periodo del Conte I.

      CONCLUSIONE.

      Quando qualcuno vi mostra una piccola fetta di realtà (alte partenze di migranti con Ong in mare), sta oscurando tutto ciò che succede quando non guardate.

      Per questo i dati e i modelli sono così importanti: rimettono in riga il nostro sguardo strabico.

      https://twitter.com/emmevilla/status/1198935231857909760

    • Policy Brief (EUI) | Les secours en mer des ONG constituent-ils un facteur attractif pour les migrations irrégulières ?

      L’argument selon lequel les ONG qui pratiquent les sauvetages en mer Méditerranée constitueraient un facteur attractif pour les migrations irrégulières fait partie depuis 2015 d’une rhétorique communément admise. Elle a servi à délégitimer les missions de secours en mer au large de la Libye qui soi-disant encourageraient les passeurs à organiser des départs. Pour cet article, les auteurs ont étudié les flux migratoires entre la Libye et l’Italie entre 2014 et octobre 2019. Aucun lien de cause a effet n’a pu être identifié entre les départs de la côte libyenne et la présence de navires de sauvetage des ONG. Bien que d’autres recherches doivent être encore menées, cette étude remet en question le fait que la présence de bateau de sauvetage puisse constituer un facteur attractif.

      La recherche menée par Eugenio Cusumano (Migration Policy Center, EUI) et Matteo Villa (Instituto per gli Studi di Politica Internazionale, ISPI) intitulée ” Sea Rescue NGOs : a Pull Factor of Irregular Migration” a été publiée en anglais en novembre 2019. Elle est entièrement disponible sur le site de l’institut European University Institute (EUI) ou en cliquant sur l’image ci-dessus.

      Le journal Libération du 18 novembre 2019 lui a consacré un article ” ONG en Méditerannée : les secours en mer ne créent pas d’”appel d’air”” rédigé par Kim Hulot-Guiot.

      Nous proposons ci-dessous un bref résumé des principales conclusions des deux chercheurs :

      En 2013, en réponse aux nombreuses disparitions lors des traversées de la mer Méditerranée, l’Union européenne avait mis en place l’opération Mare Nostrum habilitant ainsi des garde-côtes à sauver des personnes migrantes dans la zone internationale au large des côtes libyennes. Une année plus tard cette opération fut suspendue par crainte que cela ait contribué à augmenter le nombre de tentatives de traversée de la Méditerranée centrale. Les missions suivante Triton, Themis ou Eunafovor n’ont presque plus effectué de sauvetage en mer. Ce manque a été comblé par des navires d’ONG qui ont assisté plus de 115’000 migrants entre 2014 et octobre 2019.

      Ce tableau issu de l’article montre l’évolution du nombre enregistré de personnes disparues en Méditerranée (centrale, est et ouest) entre 2014-2019 :

      En 2017, l’Italie a développé une nouvelle approche de cette question. Elle a conclu un accord avec les garde-côtes libyens pour qu’ils réduisent le nombre de départ depuis leurs côtes. De plus, l’Italie a progressivement fermé ses ports aux navires de sauvetage des ONG et entrepris la confiscation progressive de navires qui auraient enfreint ses interdictions. Ce procédé a eu comme conséquence de faire diminuer le nombre de navire de sauvetage d’ONG en mer Méditerranée. Le nouveau gouvernement italien n’a pas infléchi les règles et la rencontre européenne de Valletta en septembre 2019 suggérait encore entre les lignes que la présence des navires de sauvetage des ONG pourrait être responsable des départs continus de personnes migrantes depuis la Libye.

      En réalité, peu de recherches empiriques détaillent ce lien. Cette étude est une volonté d’y pallier. Elle utilise des indices statistiques qui permettent de mettre en corrélation les départs non-contrôlés des côtes libyennes et les activités de sauvetage au large de ces côtes par les ONG. Elle conclue à un manque de lien significatif entre ces deux facteurs :

      En 2015, le nombre total de départ depuis la Libye a légèrement baissé en comparaison à 2014 bien que les nombre de personnes sauvées par des ONG ait augmenté de 0.8 à 13% du nombre total de personnes sauvées dans cette zone ; après juillet 2017, le nombre de migrants quittant la Libye a diminué même si les ONG sont devenues les plus importantes actrices des sauvetages en mer. Cela suggère que l’accord passé entre les milices libyennes et l’Italie conclut en juillet 2017 a un impact beaucoup plus grand pour réduire les départs que les activités menées par les bateaux des ONG.

      Vu le manque de données disponibles, de telles recherches devraient continuer d’être entreprises. Néanmoins les premiers résultats significatifs servent à éclairer le débat politique. En ce sens, les auteurs suggèrent des recommandations :

      Le fait que la présence des ONG constitue un facteur attractif pour le départ des migrants à partir des côtes libyennes pour se rendre en Italie est ici infirmé. Par conséquent, les restrictions législatives portées aux opérations de sauvetage en mer par ces ONG a conduit à une augmentation des morts lors de ces traversées sans réduire significativement les départs. Ces décisions devraient donc être reconsidérées.
      Le retrait de cette zone des forces armées européennes en secours aux migrants a été décidé sur des présupposés hasardeux. S’il est clair que les ONG ne constituent par un attrait aux départs irréguliers des côtes libyennes, les navires militaires européens ne le constitueraient pas non plus, mais pourraient bien au contraire sauver des vies et détecter des arrivées non détectées. Il serait donc important de redéployer ces forces en Méditerranée.
      Les mesures visant à empêcher les migrations dans les pays de transit ou de départ ont un impact beaucoup plus grand sur les processus migratoires que la présence des navires de sauvetages en mer des ONG. Néanmoins, ce processus d’externalisation de la gestion des migrations est très problématique vu les conditions de vie et détention dont souffrent les personnes migrantes en Libye. Il faudrait donc réussir à combattre le trafique d’être humains sur la terre tout en réduisant les facteurs attractifs d’immigration et en améliorant les conditions de vie et les possibilités de protection en Libye.

      https://asile.ch/2019/11/25/policy-brief-eui-les-secours-en-mer-des-ong-constituent-ils-un-facteur-attract

    • Ammiraglio #Giuseppe_De_Giorgi:

      “Il dato più interessante, sottolinea De Giorgi, è che con la chiusura di Mare Nostrum gli sbarchi non sono affatto diminuiti, anzi sono aumentati. E di molto. Basta un dato a smontare le accuse mosse dai teorici dell’equazione ‘più soccorsi uguale più sbarchi’. Nel novembre del 2013, in piena Mare Nostrum, erano arrivati in Italia 1883 migranti. Nel novembre dell’anno successivo, cioè subito dopo la conclusione dell’operazione, sono stati registrati 9134 arrivi, con un aumento netto del 485 per cento.
      ‘Di questi,’ continua l’ammiraglio, ‘3810 migranti sono stati soccorsi dalla Marina e sottoposti a controllo sanitario prima dello sbarco. I restanti 5324 sono arrivati direttamente sul territorio nazionale senza controllo sanitario. Di questi ultimi, infatti, 1534 sono stati intercettati e soccorsi dalla Capitaneria di porto e 2273 da mercantili commerciali non attrezzati per quel tipo di attività, ma obbligati dal diritto del mare a intervenire.’
      Insomma, gli sbarchi continuano, ma in maniera più caotica e disordinata. La frontiera è di nuovo arretrata: da acquatica è tornata a essere terrestre e a coincidere con le coste italiane.”

      (Alessandro Leogrande, La frontiera, 2017 : pp. 186-187)

  • State land grabs fuel Sudan’s crisis

    Al-Noor Othman, a farmer in Sudan’s South Kordofan province, was hoping for a good harvest. He had bills to pay.

    His father needed glaucoma surgery on his left eye and he was saving up for his wedding.

    But there would be no harvest that season. “One cloudy morning [in 2008], I saw some people dividing our farm, claiming that we have not paid the fees of the ownership renewal — even though we inherited the land; we used to live in a part of it and farm the other area. But overnight we became homeless,” Othman told Ayin.

    The Othmans were one of 500 families forced to leave their land to make way for the #Habilla_Agricultural_Project, east of #Dilling city. He felt helpless — until he became a rebel.

    Othman joined an armed movement operating from the #South_Kordofan and #Blue_Nile states, to protect his land from further #pillage.

    Sudan is one of the “leading” countries in which authorities confiscate land from citizens, according to the World Bank. Between 2004 and 2013, roughly four million hectares of land was redistributed to local and foreign investors.

    https://mg.co.za/article/2018-05-04-00-state-land-grabs-fuel-sudans-crisis
    #accaparement_de_terres #terres #Soudan #propriété #confiscation #résistance #Sudan_People’s_Liberation_Movement #SPLM

    cc @odilon

    Article traduit en italien par le journal Internazionale (https://www.internazionale.it/sommario), mais pas disponible sur leur site internet.
    Une page a été mise sur twitter par @francofontana43 :

  • La science à portée de tous !

    #Jean-Claude_Marcourt poursuit la mise en place du #décret « Open Access » en Fédération #Wallonie-Bruxelles.

    Sur proposition de Jean-Claude MARCOURT, Vice-Président du Gouvernement et Ministre de l’enseignement supérieur et de la Recherche, le Gouvernement de la Fédération Wallonie-Bruxelles adopte, en dernière lecture, le projet de décret « Open Access », un texte fondateur visant l’établissement d’une politique de libre accès aux #publications_scientifiques.

    Le projet de décret vise clairement à intégrer les institutions de recherche et d’enseignement supérieur de la Fédération dans le mouvement de la « #science_ouverte » , c’est-à-dire un ensemble de pratiques de la recherche scientifique basées sur l’utilisation des outils de l’Internet ; archivage numérique, copie déverouillée sur le web, etc. Le décret « Open Access » et, in fine, l’#accès_libre aux résultats de la recherche ayant bénéficié d’un #financement_public, en est le premier pilier.

    Le texte voté par le gouvernement de ce mercredi 28 février 2018 est le fruit d’un dialogue constructif instauré avec l’ensemble des acteurs, que ce soit le milieu scientifique et académique ou encore les éditeurs belges. Des balises ont été adoptées afin de répondre aux préoccupations principales exprimées par ces derniers comme, par exemple, la limitation du champ d’application du décret aux articles scientifiques paraissant dans les périodiques et non aux ouvrages édités.

    Le Ministre MARCOURT tient à préciser : « La Fédération adopte un texte fondateur qui place les institutions de recherche et d’enseignement supérieur dans le peloton de tête des institutions mondiales actives dans la « science ouverte ». Et d’ajouter : « La Wallonie et Bruxelles s’engagent ainsi aux côtés d’acteurs de renommée mondiale tels que l’Université d’Harvard ou encore les universités Suisse telles que Zurich, Lausanne ou encore Genève . En favorisant le partage des résultats de la recherche ayant fait l’objet d’un financement public, le décret « Open Access » permet la libre circulation du savoir, la promotion de la science et de l’innovation ».

    Concrètement, le décret prévoit que les chercheurs déposent dans une archive numérique institutionnelle leurs publications scientifiques issues de leurs recherches réalisées sur fonds publics et recommande que lors de l’évaluation des publications, de prendre exclusivement en considération, les listes générées à partir de ces archives numériques institutionnelles.

    Pour conclure, le Ministre tient à rappeler que le décret Open Access renforce la visibilité des chercheurs, de leurs travaux et des institutions d’enseignement supérieur. « Le fruit de la recherche émanant de la Fédération Wallonie Bruxelles devient accessible partout dans le monde et, plus spécifiquement, auprès des chercheurs dont les institutions ne pouvaient jusqu’ici se permettre d’acheter ces publications scientifiques. » se réjouit le Ministre. « C’est une avancée sociétale fondamentale ».

    https://marcourt.cfwb.be/la-science-a-portee-de-tous
    #open_access #savoir #université #recherche #Belgique #édition_scientifique #résistance

    –-

    ajouté à la métaliste sur l’éditions scientifique :
    https://seenthis.net/messages/1036396

    • L’Open Access adopté par le Gouvernement de la Fédération Wallonie-Bruxelles

      Ce mercredi 28 février, le Gouvernement de la Fédération Wallonie-Bruxelles a adopté en dernière lecture le projet de décret "Open Access" porté par le Ministre de l’Enseignement supérieur et de la Recherche, Jean-Claude Marcourt.

      Le texte du décret stipule que tous les articles scientifiques subventionnés par des fonds publics devront être déposés dans un répertoire institutionnel (aussi appelé « archive ouverte »). Les insitutions devront également utiliser exclusivement les listes de publications provenant de ces répertoires pour l’évaluation des chercheurs.

      À l’Université de Liège, cette politique existe déjà depuis presque 10 ans et est mise en place via le répertoire ORBi.

      https://lib.uliege.be/en/news/l-open-access-adopte-par-le-gouvernement-de-la-federation-wallonie-bruxel

    • Attention :

      « La Wallonie et Bruxelles s’engagent ainsi aux côtés d’acteurs de renommée mondiale tels que l’Université d’Harvard ou encore les universités Suisse telles que Zurich, Lausanne ou encore Genève .

      En #Suisse, c’est le #golden_open_access qui est visé... ce qui n’est pas exactement dans la logique d’un accès gratuit aux résultats de recherche... mais c’est une manière de plus d’enrichir les éditeurs scientifiques prédateurs :
      https://seenthis.net/messages/651822
      #FNS

    • La #voie_verte

      La voie verte ou green open access est la voie de l’auto-archivage ou dépôt par l’auteur dans une #archive_ouverte.

      Une archive ouverte est un réservoir où sont déposées des publications issues de la recherche scientifique et de l’enseignement dont l’accès est libre et gratuit. Elle peut être institutionnelle (ex. OATAO de l’ Université de Toulouse), régionale (ex. OpenAIRE pour l’Europe), nationale (HAL pour la France) ou disciplinaire (ex. arXiv en Physique, RePEC en Economie).


      http://openaccess.couperin.org/la-voie-verte-2
      #green_open_access #archives_ouvertes #post-print #pre-print

    • ‘Big Deal’ Cancellations Gain Momentum

      An increasing number of universities are ending, or threatening to end, bundled journal subscriptions with major publishers.

      Florida State University recently announced plans to cancel its “big deal” with Elsevier, but it is far from the first university to do so.

      In recent years, there has been an uptick in the number of reports of libraries dropping their bundled journal deals with big publishers, which can cost upward of $1 million annually.

      Rather than subscribing to a large volume of journals in a publisher’s collection, often at a substantial discount off the individual list price, some institutions are choosing to pay only for the journals they determine they need the most.

      Rick Anderson, associate dean for collections and scholarly communications at the Marriott Library at the University of Utah, said that more cancellations are likely, but “how big the snowball is going to get” is an unanswered question.

      “Will big-deal cancellations continue to bubble along at a slow but steady pace? Will they peter out altogether as libraries and publishers work out new terms that allow the libraries to renew? Will more and more libraries cancel their big deals until publishers finally abandon them?” asked Anderson. “It’s impossible to say at this point; I think all three of those scenarios are possible, though I think the first two are more likely than the third.”

      Last year, Anderson published an article at The Scholarly Kitchen looking at big-deal cancellations by North American libraries. He identified 24 libraries that had canceled big deals, another four libraries that canceled but later resubscribed, and three libraries that announced cancellations but didn’t follow through.

      Also last year, #SPARC, an advocacy group for open access and open education, launched a resource tracking big-deal cancellations worldwide. Greg Tananbaum, a senior consultant at SPARC, said that there is a “growing momentum” toward cancellations.

      According to data from SPARC (which may not be comprehensive, said Tananbaum), in 2016 five U.S. and Canadian institutions announced cancellations with big publishers such as Springer Nature, Wiley, Taylor & Francis and Elsevier. In 2017, seven more North American institutions said they planned to cancel their big deals, including the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Kansas State University, among others.

      Motivation for Cancellation

      Both Tananbaum and Anderson agree that one factor driving cancellations of big deals is that library budgets are not growing at the same rate as the cost of subscriptions. Given budget restrictions, “there’s just a reality that tough choices have to be made,” said Tananbaum. He added that in each of the cases documented in the SPARC tracking resource, the institutions ran “meticulous assessments” to determine the value of their current arrangements, and found that “the value was not positive.” Typically a bundled deal would allow an institution to subscribe to a couple of thousand titles for the same list price as a few hundred individual subscriptions.

      “What makes the big deal unsustainable isn’t the structure of the model, but the fact that it absorbs so much of a library’s materials budget, and the price rises steadily from year to year,” said Anderson. “That dynamic leads to an inevitable breaking point, at which the library can no longer afford to pay for it — or is forced to cancel other, equally desirable (or more desirable) subscriptions in order to keep paying for it.”

      Another factor driving cancellations is a desire among some librarians to “stick it to the publishers,” said Anderson. “There is a truly remarkable level of anger that many librarians feel towards the publishers who sell subscriptions under the big-deal model,” he said. “This makes the prospect of canceling a big deal very attractive at a political level.”

      Librarians are able to consider canceling big deals because it doesn’t mean going “cold turkey” anymore, said Tananbaum. Interlibrary loan systems can return a journal article in less than 24 hours at relatively low cost to the library, and many articles are available in open-access format for free, with tools like Unpaywall making them easy to find. If a researcher needs a paywalled paper instantly, they can still access that content, without a subscription, for around $30.

      Though it is talked about less, the ease of accessing copyrighted papers though sites such as Sci-Hub and ResearchGate have also emboldened librarians, said Joseph Esposito, senior partner at publishing consultancy Clarke & Esposito.

      Hard-Core Negotiating

      In 2015, the Université de Montréal combined usage and citations data with the results of an extensive survey of faculty and students to determine that 5,893 titles were essential to research needs at the university — accounting for 12 percent of the institution’s total subscriptions, and around a third of all titles included in big deals.

      A similar analysis has since been performed by 28 university libraries in Canada, with some “truly considering unbundling or exiting consortium negotiations to get better deals,” said Stéphanie Gagnon, director of collections at Université de Montréal.

      Gagnon and her colleague Richard Dumont, university librarian at Montréal, said that unbundling big deals was a “last resort” strategy for the institution. The institution will first offer what it considers to be a “fair price” based on the needs of the community and the publishers’ pricing, said Dumont.

      This approach “seems reasonable,” said Dumont, since four major publishers have accepted the institution’s offers — Wiley, SAGE, Elsevier and Cambridge University Press. Currently, the institution has two big deals unbundled: Springer Nature (2,116 titles canceled) and Taylor & Francis (2,231 titles canceled).

      The Taylor & Francis big deal cost Montréal around half a million U.S. dollars per year for over 2,400 titles. Per title, the average cost was around $200. But Montréal calculated that only 253 titles were being used regularly, meaning the “real” cost was closer to $2,000 per title, said Gagnon. By unbundling this deal and the Springer Nature deal, and by renegotiating all big-deal subscriptions, the institution saves over $770,000 annually, said Gagnon.

      Gagnon said she did not think teaching or research has been hindered by the cancellations, since the big deals that were unbundled did not contribute greatly to the needs of the community. Researchers can still access paywalled content they don’t have immediate access to through the interlibrary loan system. “Content is still available, with some hours’ delay,” said Gagnon.

      Value for Money

      Unlike Montréal, some institutions that have canceled big deals have not ended up saving much money, or negotiating a better deal. Brock University in Ontario, for example, canceled its big deal with Wiley in 2015, only to return a year later for the same price.

      Ian Gibson, acting head of collections services at Brock, said the Wiley cancellation was prompted by a “perfect storm” of a weak Canadian dollar and a library budget that was not increasing in line with subscription costs. “The institution had no extra funds to buffer the FX crisis, and the hole in our budget was so big that only canceling Wiley or Elsevier would fill it,” said Gibson.

      The institution looked into purchasing back just the most essential titles from Wiley, and found “there was no way to do it for less than we were paying for the big deal.” Gibson said that the university upped the library budget soon after, “and we jumped back into the Wiley deal through our consortium, and the pricing was as if we had never left.”

      “Although the overall dollar cost for a big deal is typically enormous, the package usually includes so much content that the per-journal cost is quite low and would be dramatically higher on a per-journal basis if the titles were acquired as individual subscriptions,” said Anderson. Limiting titles, of course, also means that not everyone will get immediate access to the content they want. “This is probably the primary reason so many libraries (mine included) have held on to their big deals as long as they have.”

      Getting Faculty on Board

      At Montréal, the library worked hard to get faculty and student support before making any cancellations, said Gagnon. “We put in a lot of energy to explain, convince, answer and demonstrate to our staff and to the community what we were doing,” said Gagnon. The library built a website, published press releases and organized meetings. “It was a really global community project,” she said.

      Perhaps one of the most surprising aspects of Florida State University’s pending cancellation of its big deal with Elsevier is that the Faculty Senate approved it, despite concerns that they would not be able to access journals as freely as they do now.

      “The one question I keep getting asked is, ‘How did you get your faculty to agree to it?’” said Roy Ziegler, associate dean for collections and access at Florida State University. It hasn’t been an easy process, but outreach efforts have helped faculty to understand why this route is necessary. “Our faculty are willing to roll with it for now,” he said. “We don’t think our new model will do harm, but it will force faculty to change their behavior slightly — there’s a re-education piece.”

      FSU will offer unmediated, instant access to content that is not subscribed to for faculty and graduate students at a cost of around $30 to the library, but will encourage them to access materials through the slower interlibrary loan system as much as possible. Undergraduate students will only have the option to go the slower (cheaper) route. Avoiding duplicated instant-access purchases will be a key factor in keeping costs down, said Ziegler.

      By pulling out of its statewide agreement with Elsevier, FSU will lose access to Elsevier’s Freedom Collection — a system by which institutions have access to all nonsubscribed journal content at a significantly reduced rate. Ziegler said that FSU does “have an offer on the table right now” from Elsevier, but it’s not what they wanted. “If that offer gets better, we could stay in,” he said. FSU’s current deal with Elsevier costs around $1.8 million annually — 22 percent of the library’s total materials budget.

      In an emailed statement, Elsevier said that the Freedom Collection is “still preferred by the vast majority of our customers who want the best value we can provide, but some customers want more purchasing options, and for them we’re happy to provide such flexibility.” The statement continued, “We generally see more new Freedom Collection customers than those who move to title by title, but there’s no particular trend over time.”

      Taylor & Francis, Wiley, SAGE and Springer Nature declined to comment for this article.

      A Shortsighted Decision?

      Kent Anderson, CEO of publishing data analytics company RedLink, and former president of the Society for Scholarly Publishing, said that institutions that cancel big deals are making a “selfish” and shortsighted decision, an issue he also wrote about in a recent article for The Scholarly Kitchen. He compared canceling a big deal to canceling a newspaper subscription; journalists lose their jobs, local media collapses and soon no one knows what’s happening inside government.

      Canceling big deals means that down the road, publishers won’t be able to keep up with the volume of research that is being produced, he said. He warned that if libraries and publishers continued to be “at loggerheads against each other,” they would ultimately alienate the researchers they are both trying to serve.

      A loss of diversity in the publishing ecosystem concerns Kent Anderson. The survival of journals from smaller scholarly societies depends on their inclusion in big deals, he said. As the choice of publications to publish in gets “fewer and worse,” time to publication will get longer.

      While many libraries say they are forced to cancel big deals because of budget constraints, Kent Anderson points out that library budgets are often just a tiny fraction of an institution’s total budget, suggesting that the money could be better allocated to prioritize these resources.

      But Rick Anderson, of the University of Utah, said that suggesting the root of the issue is a funding problem, rather than a pricing problem, “feels a little bit like the bully on the playground taking our lunch money and then saying, ‘Hey, I’m not the problem, your mom needs to give you more lunch money.’”

      https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2018/05/08/more-institutions-consider-ending-their-big-deals-publishers

    • Le #business des publications scientifiques
      VRS n° 412 - Printemps 2018

      « Un pays qui exporte sa matière première à bas prix, et réimporte le produit fini au prix le plus fort, est dans une logique de sous-développement. C’est cette logique qui prévaut dans l’édition scientifique internationale. (…) Jusqu’à maintenant, l’édition scientifique électronique reproduit en grande partie les schémas archaïques de production, parce qu’elle émane des éditeurs scientifiques commerciaux… », écrivait Anne Dujol en 1996. « Il y a fort à parier que, dans un très proche avenir, de nombreux auteurs s’affranchiront des contraintes actuelles de la publication d’articles scientifiques et ‘publieront’ électroniquement les résultats de leurs travaux, » poursuivait-elle.

      Hélas, elle sous-estimait la puissance et l’« agilité » des éditeurs mondialisés qui tiennent ce qui est devenu un des business les plus lucratifs au monde. Et elle surestimait la compréhension des enjeux de la part des scientifiques et de leur bureaucratie, dans un monde où, comme à la chasse, la publication est devenue une performance où le/la scientifique exhibe ses trophées.

      L’inflation des publications est telle que les bibliographies, bien souvent stéréotypées, résultent davantage de la collecte de résumés que de discussions scientifiques. On écrit mais on ne lit pas ; et la critique des résultats, les vérifications, le dialogue s’en ressentent.

      Peut-être plus grave encore, les scientifiques leur ayant délégué l’évaluation de leurs travaux en leur décernant le label « d’excellence » (« où publies-tu » plutôt que « que publies-tu »), les revues – et donc les éditeurs qui les possèdent – ont acquis un pouvoir exorbitant sur la politique scientifique des institutions, voire des Etats.

      Mais le vent tourne. Les institutions de recherche et d’enseignement supérieur et leurs bibliothèques croisent le fer avec les éditeurs commerciaux. Et les chercheur·e·s commencent à reprendre en main l’édition de leur travail.


      http://www.snesup.fr/article/le-business-des-publications-scientifiques-vrs-ndeg-412-printemps-2018

    • Offensive contre les géants de l’édition scientifique en Europe

      Les conseils de recherche de onze pays européens, dont la France et le Royaume-Uni, prennent les grands moyens pour endiguer la soif de profits des géants de l’édition scientifique, qui siphonnent les budgets des bibliothèques universitaires.

      Ces onze États viennent de dévoiler un plan qui obligera d’ici deux ans leurs chercheurs subventionnés à publier le fruit de leurs travaux sur des plateformes en libre accès. Le but : mettre fin à la domination commerciale des cinq plus grands éditeurs scientifiques, qui font des profits considérables en publiant des articles fournis par les universitaires.

      « Il ne faut pas enfermer la science derrière des murs payants », indique le manifeste du nom de « Plan S » dévoilé la semaine dernière par Science Europe, un regroupement d’organisations européennes vouées à la promotion et au financement de la recherche.

      « Aucune raison ne justifie un modèle d’affaires établi sur des abonnements à des publications scientifiques. À l’ère numérique, le libre accès augmente la portée et la visibilité de la recherche universitaire », précise le document signé par Marc Schiltz, président de Science Europe.

      Outre Paris et Londres, cette offensive est appuyée par les organismes subventionnaires des pays suivants : Suède, Norvège, Pays-Bas, Autriche, Irlande, Luxembourg, Italie, Pologne et Slovénie. Ces États, comme bien d’autres (dont le Québec et le Canada), en ont assez des coûts astronomiques des abonnements aux publications scientifiques comme Nature ou Science.

      Comme Le Devoir l’a rapporté au cours de l’été, les frais d’abonnement aux magazines scientifiques accaparent désormais 73 % des budgets d’acquisition des bibliothèques universitaires. Les cinq grands éditeurs publient à eux seuls plus de la moitié des articles savants dans le monde. Les abonnements à ces magazines coûtent tellement cher que certaines bibliothèques n’ont plus les moyens d’acheter des livres.

      L’offensive des pays européens contre ces tarifs jugés déraisonnables risque de faire mal aux géants de l’édition — notamment les groupes Elsevier, Springer Nature, John Wiley Sons, Taylor Francis et SAGE Publications — qui dominent le marché mondial.

      « Ce ne sera pas la mort demain de ces grands ensembles-là, mais cette campagne s’ajoute aux désabonnements [aux périodiques scientifiques] de beaucoup d’universités en réaction à la hausse des coûts d’abonnement », dit Vincent Larivière, professeur à l’École de bibliothéconomie et des sciences de l’information de l’Université de Montréal (UdeM). Il dirige la Chaire de recherche du Canada sur les transformations de la communication savante.

      Crise mondiale

      Les grandes revues comme Nature sont attrayantes pour les chercheurs. Ces magazines sont prestigieux. Ils sont lus, donc beaucoup cités. Et pour réussir en tant que professeur — être embauché, obtenir une promotion —, il faut être cité par ses pairs. C’est pour ça que les magazines scientifiques peuvent se permettre de facturer une fortune en abonnements aux bibliothèques universitaires.

      Les éditeurs scientifiques obtiennent pourtant leurs articles tout à fait gratuitement : les chercheurs ne sont pas payés par les magazines pour publier leurs travaux. Ça fait partie de leur tâche de professeur. Et les articles sont révisés bénévolement par des pairs. Plus troublant encore, un nombre croissant de revues scientifiques imposent des frais de 3000 $ ou 5000 $, par exemple, aux professeurs qui veulent que leurs articles soient en libre accès.

      Ce modèle d’affaires des revues savantes soulève un tollé partout dans le monde, rappelle Vincent Larivière. Le biologiste Randy Schekman, de l’Université de Californie, a même appelé au boycottage des magazines ayant publié ses travaux qui lui ont valu le prix Nobel. Il a fondé en 2012 son propre journal, eLife, qui publie ses articles en libre accès.

      Aux États-Unis, de puissants organismes comme la Fondation Bill Melinda Gates et les Instituts nationaux de santé (National Institutes of Health) exigent aussi que les recherches scientifiques qu’ils financent soient publiées en libre accès.

      https://www.ledevoir.com/societe/education/536595/offensive-europeenne-contre-les-geants-de-l-edition-scientifique

    • Négociations #SPRINGER : Arrêt de notre abonnement

      La bibliothèque vous avait informé au mois d’avril des négociations difficiles du #consortium_Couperin avec l’éditeur #SpringerNature au sujet des revues #Springer.

      Les #négociations se sont achevées la semaine dernière, et l’ENS de Lyon n’est pas satisfaite des dernières conditions proposées par l’éditeur. La #bibliothèque_Diderot de #Lyon ne renouvèlera donc pas son #abonnement aux revues Springer pour 2018-2020.

      Nous sommes conscients de la difficulté qu’occasionnerait la perte des abonnements aux revues Springer pour 2018.

      Néanmoins, nous conservons sur la plateforme Springer :

      • L’accès jusqu’en 2017 inclus aux 39 titres de notre abonnement historique, selon les termes du contrat précédent, pendant au moins deux ans et sans frais supplémentaires.
      • L’accès aux ressources acquises de manière définitive en Licences Nationales dans le cadre du projet istex : origine à 2014 pour les revues Springer.


      http://www.bibliotheque-diderot.fr/negociations-springer-arret-de-notre-abonnement-365193.kjsp?RH=
      #France

    • Que faut-il faire pour que la science soit plus ouverte ?

      « La France s’engage pour que les résultats de la recherche scientifique soient ouverts à tous, chercheurs, entreprises et citoyens, sans entrave, sans délai, sans payement. »

      La science ouverte est la diffusion sans entrave des publications et des données de la recherche. Elle s’appuie sur l’opportunité que représente la mutation numérique pour développer l’accès ouvert aux publications et -autant que possible- aux données de la recherche.

      https://www.ouvrirlascience.fr

    • #Plan_national_pour_la_science_ouverte : #discours de #Frédérique_Vidal

      Frédérique Vidal est intervenue sur la politique nationale de science ouverte au congrès annuel de la LIgue des Bibliothèques Européennes de Recherche (LIBER), mercredi 4 juillet au LILLIAD Learning center Innovation - Université de Lille à Villeneuve d’Ascq.

      http://www.enseignementsup-recherche.gouv.fr/cid132531/plan-national-pour-la-science-ouverte-discours-de-fre

    • Des #identifiants_ouverts pour la science ouverte

      La quasi-totalité de la production scientifique mondiale est désormais signalée, ou même mieux, rendue disponible sur le web. Des millions d’artefacts (publications, jeux de données, etc.) produits par autant d’auteurs ou de contributeurs affiliés à des centaines de milliers d’organisations sont désormais disponibles en ligne. L’exploitation de cette masse de données nécessite de pouvoir identifier chaque entité, de manière univoque et pérenne, grâce à des systèmes d’identifiants adaptés. De tels systèmes ont été développés au cours des années récentes, mais une partie d’entre eux sont encore en phase de consolidation ou même de développement. De plus, pour répondre aux objectifs de la science ouverte, il est nécessaire de s’assurer que ces #identifiants s’appuient sur une architecture ouverte, documentée, libre et qu’ils sont portés par et pour les communautés scientifiques.
      La présente note d’orientation a pour but de proposer une #action concertée à l’échelon national destinée à améliorer la structuration des identifiants les plus utiles, à accélérer leur adoption par les communautés, et à les rendre plus libres et pérennes afin de rendre l’accès à l’information scientifique plus aisé pour tous les chercheurs et les citoyens.


      https://www.ouvrirlascience.fr/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/2019.06.07-Note-orientation-Identifiants_pour_la_science_ouverte.pdf

      –-------

      Quatre actions distinctes ont été définies et sont menées en parallèle :

      1. « Identifiants de structures et d’organisations »

      2. « Identifiants de personnes »

      3. « Identifiants de publications »

      4. « Identifiants de données et d’objets numériques »

    • L’ANR finance le réseau #CO-OPERAS_IN dans le cadre de son appel à projet Science Ouverte sur les données de la recherche

      Le réseau de collaboration CO-OPERAS IN (#Implementation_Network), coordonné conjointement par la TGIR Huma-Num et l’université de Turin, a déposé une proposition de projet dans le cadre de l’appel à projets ANR science ouverte sur les pratiques de recherche et les données ouvertes. Cette proposition a été retenue et sera pilotée par #OpenEdition, illustrant ainsi la collaboration entre les deux infrastructures françaises.

      CO-OPERAS IN a pour objectif d’organiser et de superviser l’implémentation des données de la recherche en sciences humaines et sociales selon les principes de l’initiative #GO_FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable) dans le cadre du développement de l’infrastructure européenne #OPERAS (Open access in the European research area through scholarly communication). Le projet est financé à hauteur de 100 000 € pour deux ans.

      Des données faciles à trouver, accessibles, interopérables et réutilisables pour la recherche en sciences humaines et sociales (SHS) : c’est l’enjeu de CO-OPERAS IN, qui vise à fédérer les services et les plateformes de communication savante existants et, plus largement, à impliquer la communauté SHS au niveau international.

      Regroupant 45 membres issus de 27 institutions et organismes de recherche européens et internationaux, ce réseau travaillera en étroite collaboration avec les autres réseaux internationaux de GO FAIR impliqués dans la construction du European Open Science Cloud (EOSC). Différents groupes de travail au sein de CO-OPERAS IN ont été définis dans le cadre de la feuille de route du réseau validée par GO FAIR.

      La réunion de lancement de CO-OPERAS IN le 1er juillet dernier a permis de structurer les activités et de débuter la réflexion sur la définition des données selon les disciplines SHS.

      Prochaine étape : le workshop “Defining FAIR in the SSH : issues, cultures and practical implementations” lors de l’Open Science Fair en septembre à Porto, qui permettra aux communautés SHS de définir leur propre feuille de route pour la « FAIRification » de leurs données.

      6 groupes de travail se structurent pour débuter leurs activités :

      - Stratégie
      - Définition des données FAIR en SHS
      - Enquêtes et cartographie
      - Cadre d’application
      - Perspectives de l’écosystème FAIR
      - Communication et formation.

      https://humanum.hypotheses.org/5461

    • Baromètre de la science ouverte : 41 % des publications scientifiques françaises sont en accès ouvert (Plan national pour la science ouverte)

      Le baromètre de la science ouverte est construit à partir de données ouvertes issues d’Unpaywall, base mondiale de métadonnées sur les publications scientifiques qui renseigne sur le statut d’ouverture des publications sur la base d’une méthodologie ouverte.

      Développé dans un premier temps uniquement sur les publications scientifiques, le baromètre propose d’analyser dans le temps, selon les disciplines et les éditeurs, parmi les publications dont au moins un auteur relève d’une affiliation française, la part des publications en accès ouvert, c’est-à-dire mises à disposition librement sur internet. La méthode, le code et les données sont également publiques.

      Dans sa première édition, le BSO montre que 41 % des 133 000 publications scientifiques françaises publiées en 2017 sont en accès ouvert, avec de fortes variations selon les disciplines. Ainsi, en mathématiques, le taux d’accès ouvert atteint 61 % alors qu’il n’est que de 43% en informatique ou encore de 31% en recherche médicale. Une note flash publiée par le ministère de l’Enseignement supérieur, de la Recherche et de l’innovation (MESRI) reprend en détail ces indicateurs ainsi que la méthodologie utilisée.

      https://www.enseignementsup-recherche.gouv.fr/cid146157/barometre-de-la-science-ouverte-41-des-publications-s
      #baromètre

    • Notes du Comité

      La mise en œuvre de la science ouverte nécessite la prise en compte de l’ensemble des processus et activités de recherche dans l’évaluation. Dans ce but, le document liste les types de documents et productions élaborés pendant le cycle de la recherche et leurs modes de diffusion ouverte ainsi que les types d’activités éligibles à une évaluation.

      Types de documents, productions et activités valorisées par la science ouverte et éligibles à une évaluation
      Comité pour la science ouverte, version 1, novembre 2019

      De nombreux acteurs s’accordent à dire que la mise en œuvre de la science ouverte nécessite la prise en compte de l’ensemble des processus et activités de recherche dans l’évaluation. Celle-ci concerne tout autant les publications que les projets de recherche, les personnes, les collectifs ou les institutions, et leurs interactions avec la société. Le Plan national pour la science ouverte souligne en particulier l’importance de prendre en compte une approche qualitative plutôt que quantitative et cite le manifeste de Leiden (Hicks & al., 2015) et la déclaration de San Francisco sur l’évaluation de la recherche (DORA, 2012). Même si des démarches similaires préexistaient au mouvement pour la science ouverte, ce dernier vise à les rendre visible, à les légitimer et à les pérenniser.

      Ces recommandations du Comité pour la science ouverte s’appuient sur celles de l’Open Science Platform Policy (OSPP) qui fédère les efforts et les stratégies de l’Union Européenne autour de 8 piliers prioritaires dont deux propres aux questions d’évaluation : l’incitation aux pratiques d’ouverture et à leur reconnaissance ; le déploiement d’une nouvelle génération d’indicateurs de la recherche. Dans ces recommandations, destinées à l’ensemble des institutions pilotant des systèmes d’évaluation, nous avons retenu deux dimensions essentielles qui sont au cœur de la science ouverte.

      1/ Le Comité pour la science ouverte encourage la valorisation des bonnes pratiques de science ouverte, en particulier celles qui incitent à la mise à disposition de l’ensemble des types de documents et plus largement de produits de la recherche, incluant mais ne se limitant pas aux données et aux publications. En effet, cette mise à disposition facilitera d’une part la pleine prise en compte de la diversité des contributions individuelles et collectives à la recherche, d’autre part incitera à la prise de connaissance du contenu de ces productions et à leur évaluation qualitative.

      2/ Le Comité pour la science ouverte soutient la reconnaissance de la gamme complète des activités de recherche, dans la pluralité des champs disciplinaires, par opposition à des dispositifs qui seraient uniquement centrés sur les publications scientifiques, voire sur une partie limitée d’entre elles ou sur des indicateurs qui en résultent (McKiernan & al., 2019). De même, il s’agit de renforcer la reconnaissance des nouvelles configurations des formes de savoirs, pluridisciplinaires, et notamment de science citoyenne.

      Pour ce faire, sont distinguées dans ce qui suit :

      17 types de produits et documents ; tableau 1 : « Types de documents et productions élaborés au sein de l’ensemble du cycle de la recherche et leurs modes de diffusion ouverte »,
      12 types d’activités ; tableau 2 : « Types d’activités valorisées par la science ouverte et éligibles à une évaluation ». Les activités du tableau 2 peuvent donner lieu à de la production documentaire, et dans ce cas, elle relève des recommandations du tableau 1.

      Dans le respect des principes légaux et réglementaires encadrant l’ouverture et la diffusion des résultats et données de recherche, nous recommandons de suivre le principe « aussi ouvert que possible, aussi fermé que nécessaire ».

      Les documents et productions visés au tableau 1 ne peuvent être considérés comme pleinement ouverts que s’ils sont rendus publics sous les conditions d’une licence dite libre ou ouverte. En effet, un objet diffusé sans licence est certes consultable par les tiers, ce qui constitue une forme minimale d’ouverture, mais ses modalités de réutilisation ne sont pas connues. Le choix final de la licence appartient à ceux qui rendent publics leur production, dans le respect du décret n° 2017-638 (Premier Ministre, 2017) [1].)).

      Au-delà d’une licence, les dispositifs de publication, d’hébergement et d’archivage des documents et productions ont vocation à se conformer aux critères d’exemplarité, définis par le Comité pour la Science ouverte (2019).

      Le Comité pour la science ouverte recommande à toutes les instances et institutions ayant des activités d’évaluation de discuter, diffuser et d’adapter ces bonnes pratiques à leur contexte. Cela inclut notamment les organismes de financement de la recherche, les instances de publication et d’évaluation. Les communautés et institutions demeurent souveraines dans leurs adaptations de ces recommandations, notamment dans l’agrégation, la qualification et la hiérarchisation des types de productions et documents. Le Comité pour la science ouverte attend une transparence de ces opérations, et notamment la justification des raisons pour lesquelles certaines productions ou activités ne seraient pas pris en compte dans leurs évaluations.
      Contact

      Ce document a vocation à être enrichi et mis à jour. Pour le commenter, écrivez à coso@recherche.gouv.fr
      Bibliographie citée et documents utilisés

      Comité pour la Science ouverte (2019). Critères d’exemplarité en vue de financements par le Fonds national pour la science ouverte via les plateformes, infrastructures et contenus éditoriaux. Disponible sur : https://www.ouvrirlascience.fr/criteres-dexemplarite-financements-fonds-national-science-ouverte

      Commission européenne (2017). Evaluation of Research Careers fully acknowledging Open Science Practices Rewards, incentives and/or recognition for researchers practicing Open Science, 2017. Disponible sur : https://ec.europa.eu/research/openscience/pdf/ospp_rewards_wg03112017.pdf

      DORA (2012). San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment. Disponible sur : https://sfdora.org/read

      HCERES, Guides des produits de la recherche, 2019. Disponible sur : https://www.hceres.fr/fr/guides-des-produits-de-la-recherche-et-activites-de-recherche-0

      Hicks, D., Wouters, P., Waltman, L., de Rijcke, S., & Rafols, I. (2015). The Leiden Manifesto for research metrics. Nature, 520, pp. 429-431. Disponible sur : http://www.leidenmanifesto.org

      McKiernan EC, Schimanski LA, Muñoz Nieves C, Matthias L, Niles MT, Alperin JP. (2019). Use of the Journal Impact Factor in academic review, promotion, and tenure evaluations. PeerJ Preprints DOI : 10.7287/peerj.preprints.27638v2

      Premier Ministre (2017). Décret n° 2017-638 du 27 avril 2017 relatif aux licences de réutilisation à titre gratuit des informations publiques et aux modalités de leur homologation, JORF n°0100 du 28 avril 2017. Disponible sur : https://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/affichTexte.do?cidTexte=JORFTEXT000034502557&categorieLien=id

      Bibliographie indicative pour aller plus loin

      European Commission. (2016). Evaluation of Research Careers fully acknowledging Open Science practices. Disponible sur : https://ec.europa.eu/research/openscience/pdf/os_rewards_wgreport_final.pdf

      Krzton, A. (2019). Support Scholars Who Share : Combating the Mismatch between Openness Policies and Professional Rewards. In ACRL 2019 (pp. 578–586). ACRL. Disponible sur : http://aurora.auburn.edu/handle/11200/49374

      Nichols, D. M., Twidale, M. B., (2017). Metrics for Openness. JASIST 68 (4), 1048–1060.
      Disponible sur : https://researchcommons.waikato.ac.nz/bitstream/handle/10289/10842/nichols-metrics-openness-jasist.pdf

      Turckheim, E. de, Legouy, É. L., & Leclerc, L.-A. (2016). EREFIN Groupe de travail inter-établissements sur l’évaluation de la recherche finalisée. Rapport. Disponible sur : https://prodinra.inra.fr/?locale=fr#!ConsultNotice:352302

      Wynne, R. (2019). Using ORCID to Re-imagine Research Attribution. Disponible sur : https://orcid.org/blog/2019/07/25/using-orcid-re-imagine-research-attribution

      https://www.ouvrirlascience.fr/types-de-documents-productions-et-activites-valorisees-par-la-scienc

    • swissuniversities et Elsevier concluent un accord pilote #Read&Publish

      swissuniversities a conclu un nouvel accord pilote de transformation avec Elsevier pour l’accès à la recherche et la publication en Open Acess en Suisse.

      L’#accord est le résultat de négociations organisées par le #Consortium_des_bibliothèques_universitaires_suisses (#CSAL) et Elsevier, une entreprise d’analyse d’informations spécialisée dans les domaines de la science et de la santé. Yves Flückiger, Président de swissuniversities et chef de l’équipe de négociation, a déclaré : « Nous nous sommes engagés à réaliser l’Open Access complet au plus tard en 2024, et cet accord est une étape importante en vue d’atteindre cet objectif. »

      Par conséquent, toutes les institutions membres de swissuniversities et les autres institutions membres du Consortium CSAL, de même que leurs chercheurs affiliés en Suisse auront un accès continu à Freedom Collection et ScienceDirect, la plate-forme leader d’Elsevier consacrée à la littérature scientifique revue par les pairs. Par le biais de ScienceDirect, les chercheurs affiliés aux institutions membres du Consortium CSAL peuvent accéder à 16 millions de publications provenant de plus de 2500 revues publiées par Elsevier et ses sociétés partenaires. Par ailleurs, ils seront en mesure de publier en Open Access de la majorité des revues gold et hybrid pour atteindre 100% en 2023.

      Il s’agit là d’une étape décisive dans la stratégie Open Access de swissuniversities, qui a pour objectif d’atteindre 100% d’Open Access au plus tard en 2024. Cet accord sur quatre ans conclu par le CSAL est le premier signé avec un éditeur majeur sur le plan national et il va soutenir toutes les institutions académiques et de recherche en Suisse dans leur transition vers l’Open Access.

      Cet accord a été publié et est disponible sur la page d’accueil du Consortium des bibliothèques universitaires suisses : https://consortium.ch/wp_live/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/Elsevier_agreement_2020-2023.pdf

      Vous trouverez plus d’informations au sujet de la portée de l’accord pilote sur www.elsevier.com.

      https://www.swissuniversities.ch/fr/actualite/communiques-de-presse/swissuniversities-et-elsevier-concluent-un-accord-pilote-readpubli

    • « L’argent public doit aller à la recherche, pas aux éditeurs »

      La signature fin mai d’un accord pilote entre swissuniversities et l’éditeur Elsevier marque une nouvelle étape dans la stratégie nationale suisse sur l’open access. Son objectif : que la totalité des publications scientifiques financées par des fonds publics soient en accès libre en 2024

      Le 26 mai, swissuniversities annonçait la signature d’un accord Read & Publish avec l’éditeur Elsevier, valable dès janvier et pour une durée de quatre ans (2020-2023). L’accès aux publications scientifiques est ainsi garanti et les chercheurs et chercheuses de la communauté académique suisse ne paieront plus de frais de publication chez cet éditeur (à l’exception de certains titres). Cet accord est le premier résultat de longues négociations initiées en 2018 avec les principaux éditeurs scientifiques – Elsevier, Springer Nature et Wiley –, dans le cadre de la stratégie nationale suisse sur l’open access.

      Président de swissuniversities, le recteur de l’UNIGE, Yves Flückiger, a mené ces discussions pour la Suisse. Il explique : « Chaque année, les dépenses annuelles pour les abonnements aux revues scientifiques augmentaient de 3% à 5%, sans véritable hausse des prestations. Ce coût n’était plus supportable pour les universités, en Suisse comme ailleurs. Pour mettre fin à cette croissance et pour développer la publication en open access, l’Allemagne s’est très rapidement profilée sur le chemin des négociations, suivie par les pays du nord de l’Europe, puis par la Suisse. »

      Une position dominante à combattre

      La signature de cet accord, longuement négocié avec Elsevier, réjouit le président de swissuniversities : « L’argent public devient rare et il doit être utilisé le plus efficacement possible, pour favoriser la recherche et non pas pour soutenir les éditeurs. Maintenant qu’une impulsion a été donnée avec un premier grand éditeur, les autres vont suivre, ce qui devrait nous mener vers l’open access intégral en 2024. » Un accord avec Springer Nature est d’ailleurs à bout touchant – des points de détail restent encore à régler – et celui avec Wiley devrait être signé cette année encore, promet le négociateur. « Dans ce bras de fer avec les éditeurs, nous étions prêts à ce que les chercheurs et chercheuses suisses soient coupées de l’accès à ces revues pourtant essentielles. C’était un pari risqué, mais il n’y a pas eu de levée de boucliers de la communauté académique. Ma plus grande crainte était qu’une institution décide de négocier individuellement pour garantir ce service à ses membres, mais personne n’a fait cavalier seul. Notre position unanime et soudée a été décisive. L’accord, d’un montant global de 13,8 millions d’euros, couvre la publication, en 2020, de 2850 articles en open access, un nombre qui ne cessera de croître par la suite pour atteindre 100% en 2024 pour toute la communauté académique suisse. Il s’agit maintenant d’encourager les chercheurs et chercheuses qui publient chez Elsevier à le faire en Open Access. »

      Si de nombreux observateurs ont longtemps déploré la position de force détenue par certains grands éditeurs grâce à quelques revues clés dans lesquelles tout le monde souhaite être publié, Yves Flückiger souligne également la responsabilité des universités dans la constitution de ce quasi-monopole. « La manière d’évaluer les dossiers des jeunes chercheurs et chercheuses doit aujourd’hui être revue, explique le recteur. Il faut sortir du côté métrique des facteurs d’impact des revues, en utilisant d’autres dimensions pour évaluer la qualité de la recherche. »

      Négocier à l’échelle européenne

      Par ailleurs, les universités ont beaucoup insisté pour rendre ces accords transparents, un élément qui reste toutefois délicat pour des éditeurs habitués à imposer une clause de confidentialité. Mais le recteur observe de plus en plus d’échanges d’informations entre les consortiums de négociation en Europe. « Si l’on pouvait négocier à l’échelle européenne, la Suisse serait probablement l’un des grands gagnants de l’opération, car les coûts de publication (Article Processing Charges (APC)) ne sont actuellement pas identiques pour chaque pays », précise Yves Flückiger.

      https://www.unige.ch/lejournal/ejournal/ejournal-08/negociations-editeurs