Libraries Defend Open Access

aisaac writes "Earlier this year an article in Nature (PDF, subscription required) exposed publishers' plans to equate public access to federally funded research with government censorship and the destruction of peer review. In an open letter last month, Rockefeller University Press castigated the publishers' sock-puppet outfit, PRISM, for using distorting rhetoric in a coordinated PR attack on open access. Now the Association of Research Libraries has released an Issue Brief addressing this PR campaign in more detail. The Issue Brief exposes some of the distortions used to persuade key policy makers that recent gains made by open access scientific publishing pose a danger to peer reviewed scientific research, free markets, and possibly the future of western civilization. As an example of what the publishers backing PRISM hate, consider the wonderfully successful grants policy of the National Institutes of Health, which requires papers based on grant-funded research to be published in PubMed Central."

Comments

say what?

[Doppler00]

Is it just me, or am I the only one that read that description and have no idea what the issue is or what it's about? Can someone please re-word it?

Re:say what?

[hanssprudel]

Traditional academic publishing works like this:

- Research money (typically from the government, ie your money) is used to fund research and scientists write articles about it.

- Those articles are sent to periodicals (journals) to be published. The journals are corporate, and carry different amounts of prestige. For a researcher, getting papers in prestigious journals is extremely important, so they send them off willingly, and the journals do not pay a dime (in fact, sometimes the researcher has to pay).

- The article gets to sent to an editor at the journal, who is typically a well established senior researcher working for free because being an editor is prestigious (that is, he is working on time paid for by your money).

- The editor chooses researchers to do "peer review" on the article, that is anonymously write judge its merit. These peer reviewers work for free.

- If the article is accepted, the researcher is very happy, and gleefully signs over the copyright on the article he has written (which you paid for) to the corporate publisher.

- The corporate publisher, which now owns the article, won't let anybody access it unless they pay for a subscription to the journal. Large universities typically pay millions of dollars a year (again, largely your money) for journal subscriptions.

So to recap: researchers write the article for free (or pay), editors work for free, reviewers work for free, the publishers get the copyright and loads of money. In some fields you are even expected to typeset the article yourself, leaving the publisher only with the arduous task of visiting the bank to check on its ever increasing balance, and laughing at the sucker who finances all this (you). Because there is prestige in publishing in the "right" journal, and the money being spent doesn't belong to the people spending it, there is no market pressure to drive the prices down nor to make the system more sane. A number of companies, notably Elsevier, Wiley, and Springer, make incredible amounts of money off this.

Lately, however, something has finally started happening. The open access movement has been started to try to make scientific work freely available on the Internet, through open journals (like PLoS) and through researchers retaining copyright so they can put their articles on their own homepages and on sites like arXiv and aforementioned PubMed Central. This movement has gained a lot of momentum, and what is just starting to happen is that the people holding the pursestrap (like the National Institue of Health) want to start requiring that research they pay for published open access. Obviously, the publishers will do anything not to lose their sweet gig, hence the lobbyists all over capitol hill screaming censorship and government interference (both of which are completely ridiculous - I'm as libertarian as the next guy, but if the government pays for the science, it can say where you publish it).

Re:say what?

[Anonymous Coward]

... You clearly don't have any personal experience with the scientific process. The market does not and will not fund the most valuable research for society. The most valuable research for society comes in two types. First there is pure research which leads to profound advancements many years down the line. There is no money to be made from this, so the market would never touch it. Yet everyone involved in science knows that this type of research has the most long-lasting implications.

Second there are aspects of applied research which do not manifest in a product, but instead teach society something. For example, if several studies are conducted to determine whether or not simple vitamins can treat a serious disease, then the result may be a profound and inexpensive treatment. The market, however, will never fund this because the result of the research is not a marketable product.

Suggesting that the market will somehow fund research when most research of value produces no marketable products is naive at best. Instead, society should be funding far more research than it currently is through governmental means, and I wager it will be funding quite a bit more research as the state of society continues to advance.

Re:say what?

[stranger_to_himself]

The current model for the dissemination of scientific research is that scientists send letters and papers to journals, which are then peer assessed by reviewers assigned by the journal and, if they meet a certain standard, are printed. Journals used to be printed and sent to subscribers, and nobody complained that they had to pay to receive a copy of the journal.

Now journals can put papers online for their subscribers instead of printing, which makes people wonder exactly what the publishers are doing for the money they expect to get. They don't write the articles or pay the authors, and they don't review them or pay the reviewers (I write and review pretty regularly). But this remains the only accepted way to release your research, to appear in a well respected journal. The journals are now trading purely on reputations they have aquired for the standards of the work they accept.

Public Library of Science, as I understand it, is an online repository of research that is open to everybody. There are also several PLoS journals, that appear online and for free and perform most of the functions of the old paper journals and their online equivilants. PLoS is also gaining a good reputation for quality.

Traditional publishers are in trouble because of this, and will inevitably make some rather desperate arguments to preserve their business models, hence the article.

Re:say what?

[aurispector]

Bell Labs doesn't really exist anymore because the visionary guys who ran the likes of Bell, HP, etc., have been replaced by corporate greedhead drones who diligently "enhance shareholder value" by offshoring anything that isn't nailed down.

New milennium capitalism uses political means to artificially support a business model and short-circuit free market competition. If you can't win by competing, pay off the political process to rig the rules in your favor.

What is basically happening is that the publishers want to protect their little piles of paper via legislative means. If they actually had something worthwhile, people would pony up for access. In the old days libraries would pay for hard copies because there really was no other way to do it and the prices were fairly reasonable. Individuals might personally subscribe to a relevant journal. Now that there is no reason to actually print hard copies the publishers are fighting tooth and nail to stay in business.

If the government wanted to do something useful, they could set up a framework in which legitimate peer reviewed journals could be published online free of charge.

If we are going to have an information superhighway it shouldn't be a toll road.

ya right

[Adult film producer]

just let the market have it's way and everything will be fine and dandy. Except the only things we'll end up with are cures for erectile dysfunction, manhandled leg syndrome and purple pills that do something truly wonderful but you have to talk to your doctor to find out.

the scholary communications process is broken

[ericleasemorgan]

The scholarly communications process is broken, and it has been this way for at least 15 years. I applaud the efforts of ARL and decry the lies and propaganda articulated by PRISM.

Again, the process is broken, and there are three contributing factors, listed here in no priority order. First, librarians (and libraries) desire to preserve the historical record for future use. This means they (we) desire to collect and organize just about as much of human's intellectual output in order to foster the growth of knowledge. Idealistic, I know, but it is true. Second, scholars (usually university faculty) have the natural desire for promotion and tenure. They want to be recognized by their peers and rewarded for achievements. This is often realized through publishing journal articles in sets of established venues. Third, publishers have the natural desire to earn as much money as possible. This is the nature of capitalism.

This three-fold combination (buy everything for the sake of future generations, published in established venues, and make as much money as possible) has driven the prices of scholarly journals through the roof. For example, just guess how much the average scholarly journal costs per year? If you guessed less than a few thousand dollars, then you were wrong. Twelve issues. Glossy paper. No ads. $3,000/year or more. Just about the worse journal is Brain Research costing close to $15,000/year.

Each of the three groups (librarians, scholars/researchers, and publishers) have the "rights" to do what they are doing, but in the process I sincerely believe the public gets the short end of the stick. Because the journals are licensed (not purchased) from the publishers, a person needs to be a part of the licensee's membership group in order to read the articles. This excluded the general public, researchers from abroad, or people in third-world countries. How are these people suppose to benefit from the research if they can't have access to the content?

Open access publishing is seen as one possible solution to these problems. It is very much akin to open source software. Research something. (Scratch an itch.) Write about it. (Document your software.) Deposit it in an archive and give it away (Make it available for download). Wait for comments. (Support your software.) Repeat, and enjoy the acknowledgement of your peers.

Open access publishing is not the answer to everything just as open source software is not the answer to everything. On the other hand, the public -- who has funded much of the research of scholars through tax-paid grants -- does have the right to access to materials they helped create. PRISM advocates the commercial sector continue to have control over the distribution process. Such a perspective is a disservice to the nature of scholarship and the freedom of access to fundamental knowledge.

--
Eric Lease Morgan
University Libraries of Notre Dame