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Who Will Pay For Open Access?
babble123 writes "IEEE is thinking about providing everyone with free access to its publication database (which has saved many a grad student from a trip to the library). The problem is, where will they get the money to fund the journals if not from subscriptions? In this article, they discuss one proposed alternative, 'author-pays,' but they certainly aren't enthusiastic about it, and I don't blame them. And yet, the money has to come from somewhere. Any better ideas?"
This question is hardly unique to the IEEE, all of science publication has been wrestling with these issues for about the last ten years in earnest (esp. since the widespread adoption of the net with viable mechanisms for scientific content delivery (html sucks for equations, but things like pdf make for easy distribution and consumption of papers and paper-like content)). Unfortunately, no good answers have been arrived at that I'm aware of. The professionals in the field want to publish in prestigous journals for their reputations, journals become prestigous in part through extensive peer-review processes and widespread publication, and all that takes time/staff/money. There have been some efforts and opening this process up, spurred by the high costs of institutional subscriptions (like, 20k+ USD per year for some of the chemistry journals I follow :P), but as yet I'm unaware of much adoption because, as mentioned above, an article in "foo.org" is not held in the same weight as one in, say, JACS. It's sort of a self-perpetuating cycle driven by social factors that will be very difficult to fix with technology (esp. given how very set in their ways most of the scientific community is... and I say this as a scientist).
News for Geeks in Austin, TX
Positive and negative feedback needs to come from the output end to get useful results. Feed-forward from the input just creates instability. Early rocket pioneers found that out, which is why Goddard had an engine at the top, and von Braun had to develop complex gyro control systems.
There is an existing model for making access more open while preserving the useful feedback from readers - public libraries. Money goes from the state to authors based on demand for the books.
Imagine the public library which would result from the authors paying for inclusion. Come to think of it we are back to my doormat. I need to go throw away the junk mail and local politician's drivel now so I can open the door to get out to buy some coffee. Anyone have a shovel?
_O_
.|< The named which can be named is not the true named
In my humble opinion, they don't need to open up their library to everyone. Sure, it is useful, but it is mostly useful for a certain technical and professional crowd. This is not a library that the majority of the public will care about. Those for whom this library is relevant should afford to pay their IEEE membership costs, as $250 p/a is not much compared to many other disciplines and professions. Those in Academia such as students can use their Academic libraries; the IEEE does not need to subsidize Academic institutions and education.
Because we aren't talking about magazines, but journals. Magazines are high circulation, low content. Journals are the reverse. A company might want to get their name in front of the eyes of the 50 top nuclear phycists in the world, but if they do they would be better off picking up the phone or writing personal letters than trying to create a half page add to describe why their superconducting filament is the best for bulding accelerators.
The mass audience for journals is postgraduate students, but they have no money to speak of, and anyway there are already enough places to advertise beer.
_O_
.|< The named which can be named is not the true named
Dear IEEE,
Please don't look to advertising.
Thanks,
A random IEEE member.
---
IEEE has a reputation of impartiality. If they do open their doors to ad revenue their integrity will be questioned. The last thing we need is corporate sponsored standards and reference material which shut out competitors and amateurs.
Even if they do stay impartial, they will be questioned and it will lead to a whole quagmire of politics. It is inevitable.
I know this comment doesn't help much, but I had to say it. I commend the IEEE for trying to make reference material avilable free, but please think about this. Anyway, I don't think IEEE will read this, so bleh.
StrayByte.Net
T'is more expensive than you think. While costs (espceially for distribution) have gone down dramatically since the advent of the internet its still high.
I have done this for years now (on the organisatory side, albeit more for conferences) and the editing and proofreading is quite expensive.
Problem is that many authors ignore or do not use the formats provided. They use whatever they want, whenever they want and tell you to fly to hell. Some of them refuse to give you an unencrypted PDF and then whine that the things is not searchable on a CD.
Publishing is cheap, high-quality publishing is not. Journals are expensive to produce and conferences, while funded by the attencance fees, usually make a loss in my experience. Publication costs are a large part of that.
And before everyone whines that the researchers work and review almost for free, this is not the main problem. The researchers usually like to review the papers since it is in fields that interest then and reading new papers. You do not get paid for reading that Perl book you wanted to read either, geeks do it for the pleasure of it.
The main work comes from simple things like secretaries and organisation. Despite the typical Slashdot whine that middlemen are useless and should be eliminated they still do a lot of good work, especially in keeping up standards.
And organisation can be a lot. Think about it this way: For a conference with 500 submissions (not particulary large) each paper has, say, 5 reviewers. That's 2500 messages to keep track of and organize right there. And then to sort out the replies. And whining at people to get their work done. Deciding who gets to review what. Informing them. Getting their answers back and getting it to the lead reviewers. And so on. and so on. Lots of this can be done electronically, but lots of it also involves calling people and personal discussions.
Summing up draft paper submission, reviews and revisions and you easily hit 5000 emails for one conference. Someone has to keep track of it or at least keep a eye on things.
Its a lot of expensive effort, trust me.
The dangers of excessive individualism are nothing compared to the oppressiveness of excessive collectivism
"Most journals, in contrast, employ copy editors to clean up the English, make sure that everything is formatted just so, make sure that all the citations are complete and in the correct format, etc."
Har. In my own experience, these "copy editors" have the approximate technical skill level of a McDonald's fry-cook trainee...I know many researchers whose manuscipts have actually had errors introduced by the copy-editing process.
In my own field (computational biology), the vast majority of the thinking work (peer review, subject-matter editing) is done gratis by professors, postdoctoral researchers and graduate students. And when we publish, we pay dearly for the privelege of submitting our manuscripts and figures on a website, waiting several months for comments (from the volunteer reviewers), and signing over our copyrights to the publisher upon acceptance. Then you get to pay dearly to read the article we've written!
Given that most journal access is electronic these days, I think the entire process is a racket, propped up by the notoriously conservative nature of peer-review and scientific reputation. If we could just agree that the mainstream publishers are useless, there'd be no need to support them. But of course, they're not useless (they're the arbiters of scientific quality, for better or worse), and therefore we pay for their "services"....
Let's try not to let fact interfere with our speculation here, OK?
It might seem to the uninitiated that societies like the IEEE are unbiased on the issue of open access, but they are about as biased about open access as Microsoft is about Linux. The fact is, while being "non-profit", these societies (and particularly their staff), make tons of money off journals. There was a a scandal recently when the head of a similar society, the ACS, was shown to be making $750,000/year. Therefore, they spread FUD about open access. They don't care about science; it's the bottom line they care about, and open access threatens those cushy salaries.
The standard myths about open access just aren't true. There aren't people doing worthwhile science that can't afford to publish it. Even in the third world scientists are supported by grants. Author payment is the logical way to fund scientific publication. Heck, the IEEE *itself* charges page fees (basically the same thing) for papers published in its conference proceedings (and then turns around and charges twice!) . And it's not like the authors have to pay out of their own pockets -- just like attending conferences, grants can be used. And it's a trivial part of the grant. Typical grants these days are hundreds of thousands of dollars or even millions. The $1500 needed to publish a paper in PLoS is a trivial cost compared to the cost of doing science (such as equipment, supplies for experiments, and paying grad student and postdoc salaries). What isn't trivial is the millions of dollars a year a typical university has to pay in journal subscriptions to "closed access" journals. The universities win with open access , the public wins (the get to see what their taxes pay for), the scientists win (more people read their papers) . The only losers are the publishers of closed access journals. Boo hoo hoo!
- there is still very important jobs that you need good top-level editors for:
These are all things which could be checked very quickly without any editor by peer reviewers.- Throwing out the complete garbage, crackpottery, etc: seeing if the author exists, is at a real institution, etc.
- - Finding people to peer-review the article. This is not easy; it's often difficult to find 3 or 4 good people in the right sub-field who don't actually have a connection to the work. This means the editor has to understand the article to begin with.
The process of finding independent peer-reviewers could itself be well handled by peer review.- - Dealing with fraud, plagurism, etc. Not easy.
Dealing with fraud, plagiarism is the easy part -- identifying it when it occurs is the hard part and editors are usually not the ones who identify fraud and plagiarism - it's peers who spot almost all such problems.Scroogle
The perception of the journal business as a parasitic racket is bolstered by the phenomenon of authors having to pay per-page charges to get articles published in these very expensive publications. Reminds me of the pharmaceutical industry...
Yes, there is a need for someone, somehow, to finance the organized peer-review and publication of scientific articles. However, I flatly refuse to accept the proposition that $1500/year subscriptions and author-paid page charges are a good way to do this. Free interchange of information is essential to science; academic publishers on the present model, however, are NOT.
The IEEE, based on my reading of the article in the dead-tree newsletter, is worried that they'll be innovated out of the academic publishing business, and they cannot imagine what will supplant it. This is a frankly bizarre attitude for an organization dedicated to technical advancement.
Of course, as an IEEE member, I've seen a great deal of bizarre behavior from IEEE HQ.
"My strength is as the strength of ten men, for I am wired to the eyeballs on espresso."