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For Academic Publishing, Princeton Goes Open Access By Default
First time accepted submitter crazyvas writes "Princeton University will prevent researchers from giving the copyright of scholarly articles to journal publishers (except if a waiver is requested). The new rule is part of an Open Access policy aimed at broadening the reach of their scholarly work and encouraging publishers to adjust standard contracts that commonly require exclusive copyright as a condition of publication. Universities pay millions of dollars a year for academic journal subscriptions. People without subscriptions are often prevented from reading taxpayer funded research. This is a bold first step in changing the face of how research (especially when taxpayer funded) works in the country, and a step towards weakening the current culture of charging increasingly exorbitant prices to view academic research publications."
I'm currently applying for grad schools - and nothing is more frustrating than finding all of a professor's research "hidden" behind pay-journals... what a step in the right direction.
The first internet-age era step was (at least in physics publishing) 20 years ago: the LANL Preprint Archive, later known as xxx.lanl.gov, now www.arxiv.org
Previous to that there were paper preprints mailed out for decades and decades.
Now other fields have indeed have a harder time getting out from under the thumb of the publishing houses and will indeed need the kick in the rear that Princeton is giving.
That doesn't mean that refereed journals are going away - just that they are not the bleeding edge anymore, I would argue they never were.
This of course applies only to grants that were awarded starting a couple years ago. However renewed grants are subject to this as well, and of course any new grants are automatically subject to this.
Hence contrary to the summary,
People without subscriptions are often prevented from reading taxpayer funded research
Is true for very little current research.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
I've had to sign over the copyright for each of the papers I've published. Fortunately, I'm usually allowed to disseminate my work for educational purposes, so I can post my papers on my personal webpage. However, there are plenty of publications that do not allow this and you've got to fork over the big bucks just to read a single article. While my university has the resources to maintain subscriptions to all the big journals and conference proceedings in my field, plenty of others aren't so lucky.
If other schools follow Princeton, this will certainly level the playing field. Maybe it will get more people interested in research since they won't have to be associated with a major university to read the state of the art.
Researchers and peer reviewers are not paid for their work but academic publishers have said such a business model is required to maintain quality.
The publishers are lying here to protect their cash cow. What maintains quality is the peer review system (which the journals do not pay for). The transfer of copyright to the publisher allows them to hold Universities to ransom - universities cannot function without access to the literature (present and past), and the costs of online access to journals have been spiraling over the past few years at a time when the publishers' actual costs are going down. After all, they don't pay for the research to be carried out, nor do they pay the academic editors or the reviewers, nor do they even need to typeset the document now that everyone submits a machine-readable copy.
For all we know, Princeton may have studied the Wasabi Fire Alarm, years before that chap who got the igNoble for it.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Private academic publishers do extremely little for the exclusive copyright that they demand. Academics write the papers. Other academics peer-review them. Academics volunteer as editors and publicists. In most cases, none of these people are paid by the publisher for their work.
Increasingly, academic publications are digital only, meaning that literally the only service being provided by the publishers is to put the papers on a web site, behind a paywall.
Many academics that I know engage in "civil disobediance" and post their papers publicly anyway. Some publishers (notably the ACM) actually permit this. But most do not.
Princeton on its own won't be enough to change the system, but hopefully a few other big names will follow, and tip the balance.
Definitely time someone with a bit of clout stood up to the scientific publishers. Their business model made a bit of sense in the days when things had to be typeset, printed and distributed, but with modern electronic distribution it is little better than a Mafia-style extortion racket. I'd love to know what they actually do for their money - researchers do the research, write the paper, review the paper and (at least in my field) act as journal editors. And they do these at no cost to the publisher because they are either publically or industrially funded. That the publisher is able to take the copyright and then charge the people who actually funded it to read it, is an ongoing disgrace and (i think) should be an embarrassment to an industry/community which generally prides itself on its open-ness and its "freedom".
As someone working in academia who knows the journal business well and is also a frequent anonymous peer-reviewer for an A-tier journal, I wholeheartedly welcome this decision. The publishers earn insane amounts of money for journals, yet practically all the work is done by unpaid volunteers. It's like a money milking machine and tremendously hinders research -- especially in poorer countries, because research institutions very often cannot pay for all subscriptions and have to make tough choices. At my working place in a not so rich country we cannot get access to many important journals and I frequently have to ask colleagues to send me some manuscript (which is embarasing, to say the least).
Before someone starts ranting about high-risk business, low volumes, they don't really make money etc. let me assure you that the majority of journals require authors to typeset the manuscript themselves, practically never pay for linguistic editing and do no editing in addition to what the voluntary peer-reviewers suggest to the author, and the rest of the typesetting is done as cheaply as possible (e.g. Springer commonly outsources to India -- fine for me, I like Indians and their country). Basically, the publishers do nothing - no proof reading, sometimes they don't even run a spell-checker, and make shitloads of money. One journal article USD $35 -- you get the picture!
and most importantly, paying not the author of the research, nor the institution that financed the author, but some random publisher who did virtually nothing.
The current publishing system really amazes me (and yes I'm an academic). This is wonderful news, I wish more institutions encouraged their researchers to go open access.
While open access journals do encourage the dissemination of ideas, they are by no means without a cost to the researcher who produces the work. While open-access journals may be free to read, they are not free to publish in. On average, open access journals cost around $1500 per article. That's $1500 the researcher has to pay out of their grant and the taxpayer is paying for out of their pocket. While I'm all for open access journals, as a researcher myself, I know how difficult it can be to pay these exorbitant fees from the grant money I was awarded to do research. It comes down to whether or not I want to do an experiment or publish a paper, and I shouldn't have to make that choice. Having the option to publish in a traditional journal frees up much of my research funds for doing what it was intended for: research. These journals have good intentions, but the tax payer is paying for them in the end. Personally, I have very mixed feeling when it comes to open access journals. I publish in them when I can, but if it means sacrificing an experiment, you can bet I'll pay. Until the publication fees drop, I don't see widespread adoption.
I think this is overly cynical. Publishers also handle the peer review process (lining up the reviewers, managing the reviews, etc.), which is hard for just anyone to do. Sure, anyone can publish, but what is the value is doing all that work and putting together a paper if nobody will see it? Do you want to write a thoughtful editorial on foreign policy and have it published in the weekly Penny Saver, or in the Sunday New York Times? Effectively disseminating ideas is not as easy as putting it up on a web site or dumping something into arXiv. I would love to see more authors voting with their feet and publishing in more reasonably priced journals with better access policies, because some of the private journals have outrageous price structures.
The American Institute of Physics has done a lot to address these issues, and I think they lay out their position fairly clearly. The legal issues certainly aren't as black and white as you make them out to be.