MIT To Make All Faculty Publications Open Access

Death Metal writes with this excerpt from Ars Technica: "If there were any doubt that open access publishing was setting off a bit of a power struggle, a decision made last week by the MIT faculty should put it to rest. Although most commercial academic publishers require that the authors of the works they publish sign all copyrights over to the journal, Congress recently mandated that all researchers funded by the National Institutes of Health retain the right to freely distribute their works one year after publication (several foundations have similar requirements). Since then, some publishers started fighting the trend, and a few members of Congress are reconsidering the mandate. Now, in a move that will undoubtedly redraw the battle lines, the faculty of MIT have unanimously voted to make any publications they produce open access."

Comments

Thank you!

[Hatta]

This should put to rest any concerns that closed access journals protect the interests of the authors.

Re:Thank you!

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Hey, what about authors that have an interest in surrendering their copyright, paying page fees, being threatened if they dare post a copy of their own paper on their website, and doing peer review for free for for-profit journals?

What about them, huh? Are they not people too?

Finally

[Vornzog]

This is a major blow to an industry with an outdated business model. Scientific publication is starting to move beyond the need for the middleman, and I am extremely glad to see it happen.

That said, the major publishers will scramble to try and patch this hole in the business model, and they will probably make the overall situation worse before it really starts to improve.

Oh well. Got to start that process at some point. Go MIT.

Re:Finally

[Samschnooks]

This is a major blow to an industry with an outdated business model. Scientific publication is starting to move beyond the need for the middleman, and I am extremely glad to see it happen.

That said, the major publishers will scramble to try and patch this hole in the business model, and they will probably make the overall situation worse before it really starts to improve.

Oh well. Got to start that process at some point. Go MIT.

Nothing personal to you, sir or madame. I see "outdated business model" time and time again on Slashdot as an euphemism for basically saying "not offering something for free".

First of all, business models do not become outdated. They may become worthless because someone has started doing business another way that eliminates one from making money from their current way of doing business. For example, in the beginning of the Internets, folks were charging for content. Then, someone had the brilliant idea that they don't have to charge and they'll have advertising. Thereby making most sites who charged the consumer for the content "outdated" and thereby making everyone else lose money. Then again, tell that to these guys

Now consider this, many folks are becoming independent contractors and doing crafts and whatnot at home to make a living - just like the pre-19th century factory system. Outdated indeed.

There's no such thing as an outdated business model. MIT is financing these publications by other means, that's all. Also, exactly how much does it really cost to publish this stuff online? The authors aren't paid. What are the costs associated? I don't think this is such a sacrifice for MIT or any other institution that does this.

Re:Finally

[godrik]

I do not agree in this case. The model is clearly outdated (in the sens not good for today). It had meaning before when there was no Internet. Accessing articles was expensive because you had to print journal issues.

Today, we no longer use paper version but mainly electronic one. So the only thing the publisher provides is an electronic access to publications. But, universities and laboratories can do that them self.

So why are we still using "private" journals? The only reasonable answer is : reputation. A journal such as Nature or Transaction on computers are well known. It is know that the editorial board only select top quality papers. But, one should recall that the editorial board IS NOT the journal itself but professors and researchers spread all over the world which do the job for free.

Why not switch to per university (but peer reviewed) publication without the editors ?

We could take the editorial board of a good journal and make an independent journal. The problem is research evaluation. It is currently done through crappy index such as the impact factor. A new publication method will badly perform according to this index and thus research will be badly evaluated.

You need to be a prestigious university to say : "we do not want this model anymore". And that is what the MIT is doing which is great.

PS: The publishers currently propose some minor correction to fit into a given format or to check for grammatical errors. This could be done by universities too. (or research lab, or independant foundation...)

Too f&*(ing right !

[OneSmartFellow]

It's about time that publicly funded research make it back into the public domain. I'm sick and tired of my tax money going to enriching institutions of higher learning, and big Pharma (and other corporations) and seeing nothing in return but more generally useless, largely unnecessary, and unjustifiably expensive drugs, not to mention huge salaries.

Re:Good arguments against open access?

[JoshuaZ]

Running journals costs a lot of money and a lot of peoples time. You need editors to go over papers and to submit them to referees. Then you need editors to harass referees who aren't reviewing things in a timely fashion. Then you need editors to work with authors to make sure that everything in the paper is presented well. This is a lot of time and aggravation. If you aren't paying people to do this (as you get with a journal that is subscription) you either need to a) have a pay for review cost which creates a serious barrier for authors who are amateurs or are from schools with less funding or b) get volunteers to do thankless, time-consuming work, which is hard to do (working as an editor isn't something that helps get tenure that much). So yes, there are definite advantages to the closed source model.

Re:Good arguments against open access?

[dkleinsc]

I'd buy point (a) if there wasn't a practice of journals charging authors for the ability to publish (which they pay in order to continue to have a career). I'd agree with point (b) if the peer reviewers were paid. There may be advantages to the closed source model, but neither of those are it.

medical is worst culprit

[peter303]

Computer and engineering journals are fairly receptive to open publication. However, the medical journal industry is viciously protective. Pre-publication of articles threatens rejection and potential loss of priority rights. A lot of this is due to biotech which seeks to keep new technology hidden as long as possible. A number of people with fatal illness have complained to congressmen about the difficulty of accessing research on their diseases.

Re:Hats of for MIT

[frosty_tsm]

As opposed to the comp sci major unwashed stereotype? :-)

My experience has been that there are different tiers. Schools within a given tier are going to have comparable program quality (but one's style might match you better). Generally speaking, going to any school within the top 50 or 100 for a field will result in a good education. Also, some schools are higher in their ranks because of their research. However, graduate students benefit from this far more than undergrad students do.

I will say this, though. Being in the real world with a lot less college debt is nice.

Re:This is going to hurt smaller research groups a

[langelgjm]

I'm quite happy with the current system, warts and all -- we pay the journals to do the insanely laborious task of filtering through all the submissions and providing us with a reasonable subset that represent (with some measurement error) the most salient works.

Do you? Or do you pay journal to organize unpaid reviewers to determine the quality of submissions, and to cover the cost of distribution? Because I thought that most reviewers and editors don't get paid.

The point is that now distribution costs can be close to nil, but subscription prices keep increasing. I don't see why an open-access journal that was not affiliated with a commercial publisher could not accomplish the same thing, and maintain the quality of articles. The "imprimatur" will simply no longer come courtesy of a commercial publisher - the brand name, e.g., "Well-Respected Journal of X" can persist. After all, it is not the publisher that provides the quality, but the editors and reviewers.