Slashdot Mirror
Free/Open-Access Academic Journals Growing
An anonymous reader writes "Wired News reports on the growing number of free/open-access academic journals. The Directory of Open Access Journals lists 1527 journals. The Public Library of Science (PLoS) is launching three new open-access journals this year: PLoS Computational Biology, PLoS Genetics and PLoS Pathogens. The National Institutes of Health's (NIH) Public Access Policy is also part of the movement. The traditional academic journals aren't happy, saying that it's unethical to accept money for publishing. But the traditional journals face their own ethical dilemmas by accepting money from advertisers."
It's unethical to accept money for publishing? As opposed to what, not being published at all?
If your knowledge isn't shared, what's the point of research? And if traditional academic journals won't publish your research because of a simple lack of space, why shouldn't you seek alternative outlets?
It seems to me that this is a wonderful thing. Persistent knowledge--that's the key to human intellectual evolution, and what makes us so much smarter than those other dumb monkeys. Anything that facilitates this process will only make us collectively smarter.
I never understood the economics of peer-reviewed scientific journals. The authors don't get any money and are usually tech-savvy enough to produce well-formatted papers. The peer-reviewers (at least when I peer reviewed) didn't get any money. And being an editor is an academic feather in your cap. So the cost of content and the cost of reviewing the content is close to zero. But some journals cost individuals and especially the institutions a large amount of money. In this day of electronic typesetting and distribution, does it make any sense?
Take the New England Journal of Medicine. It's about $150 for an individual subscription and ranges from $1000 to $17,000 for institutions depending on the size. This is for a publication that doesn't pay authors, and in fact can make authors bend over backwards. No wonder all sorts of publication models are being explored.
Paying such money to publish your research? This is just outrageous. Why don't these people just set up online preprint archive, free of charge, available to anyone, like high-energy physicists did in the early '90. Now, 15 years later, this archive is practicaly the only "journal" that active high-energy physicists read. You should use taxpayers money for research and not for paying rediculous sums to some publishers, who will then disseminate your results far worse than a free web service.
The advertising is, by far, not the biggest ethical problem, but that the articles remain copyright of the publisher and a traditional publisher typically will not give out copies of the article for free. So if you are not part of an institution that subscribes to the article, it can be quite costly for you to gain access to an article. Sure, you can find it on Google or Pubmed, but you cannot read it unless you pay.
This is not a good thing - if you don't have the money or are not part of an institution, you can't access information. And this just because the publisher wants to make a buck. Information should be free if the party who generated it wish so.
The problem that the open access journals face today is that of credibility. My boss doesn't want me to publish in an open access journal because that would not, in his opinion, be as good a credit for the group as would be publishing in a respected journal. It is not yet widely understood that easy access to an article correlates positively with publicity. When I do my reading, I do not care at all in which journal the article appeared. But the fact is that there are still people who do.
Currently the vast majority of academic journals are controlled by a cartel of a few publishers, which thrive by charging very high prices to research libraries (thousands of dollars a year for subscriptions to a few hundred journal pages)--for example, Kluwer alone controls hundreds of journals. These same publishers enjoy the cooperation of the best scientists who edit and peer-review the journals without any compensation for their many hours of work.
Preeminent scientific journals are essentially brand names (think "Nike" or "Adidas") and other than marketing cache offer nothing to the scientific community.
The situation is unbearable especially in poorer countries where research libraries cannot afford the subscription prices to the best journals. My university is now in the process of difficult subscription cuts due to a lack of library budget.
All that is need for "open access" journals is the cooperation of the leaders of the scientific community for the benefit of all.
The inevitable replacement of current journals by "open-access" journals is the legacy of open source in general. It's very interesting to see the influence of open-source ideas in areas outside of software development.
From the PLoS FAQ:
What if I can't afford publication charges?
We realize that not everyone who does research can afford to pay publication charges through their grants. PLoS waives those fees, no questions asked, for anyone who can't pay. Our editors and peer reviewers have no knowledge of who can pay, so papers are accepted only on their merit. Authors may also qualify for discounts on publication charges via their institution or a funded program; see our institutional members page for more information.
I work for one of the largest scientific publishers, yup we have over 1000 academic journals, and as ever the story is not as simple as it might seem at first.
.
We are not simply robber barons that leech profit off the back of the honest hard working scientist. I think one ought to understand that we truly believe that we can offer services that are worth the costs, and that we help to increase the base value of scientific literature.
The publishing model that is currently in place has been around for a long time. I.e. where scientists submit for publication in a peer reviewed journal, the running costs of which are boune by a publishing house. In some cases this model has been around for over 150 years. Instant access via the internet is still a young technology in comparison. As publishers we know things are going to change redically, but naturally we take a conservative view. Free open source publishing is an attractive idea, but it has to generate revenue in order to cover maintencece costs. While the curret closed source system continues to generate revenue, since histroically this is the model we as publihsers know how to work with, it is a model that will stay around.
What is it that we can offer?
Well, the main thing is publishing of scientific content. Yes, for some people making their own servers and files is a snip, but most scientists are far too busy chasing funding money (which is where ultimatly most of the publication costs are coverd from), doing research, teaching classes. It simply does not make sense for scientists to be publihsers too. Their time is more valuable when spent doing science!
We offer secure archiving, back compatability (making pre-digital issues available to the community), we offer distribution, help with language conversion, we offer content in a form that allows people to data mine the papers.
The poeple I work with love science, I love talking to scientists about their work. Bringing a book into the world is kind of cool too. High costs are due to low unit sales, thats just the econimics of the thing.
The principle goal of a publisher is, of course, to turn a profit, but to do so whilst offering a service. We believe in what we do.
There are many many other issues to think about too, the low number of papers that get cited, data glut and the role a publisher can play in helping to provide meta-sorting/pre-screening. Quality control/peer review, etc, etc
Anyhoo, I got to get back to making books!