Open Access News

Quoting from Matthew Cockerill: 'In the UK alone, billions of pounds of tax-payers’ money are spent annually on research, so the government might be expected to take a prudent interest in how the resulting journal articles are published, archived and made accessible. Surprisingly, though, copyright to publicly funded research articles is routinely signed over to publishers, who then sell limited, subscription-based access back to the scientific community. The cost of publishing a scientific research article is a tiny fraction of what it costs to do the research in the first place; yet publishers end up controlling access to the findings....A recent UK parliamentary committee report urged the government to help expand access to the results of research. But the government response was cautious and sceptical, and was concerned primarily with defending the interests of the traditional publishing industry. This has been perceived by some as a blow to the "open access" movement, but in fact open access, in the UK at least, has never been stronger....Similarly, open access publishing will not sound the death knell for scientific societies that publish traditional journals. In fact, far-sighted societies, including the National Academy of Sciences in the US, recognise that open access better serves their members' needs and are moving their funding model away from dependence on surpluses from journal publishing. If a scientific society is genuinely serving its members’ needs, there is no reason why such a transition should be problematic.' Matthew Cockerill is technical director and co-founder of BioMed Central.

Quoting from John Enderby: 'There is no reason why current publishing practices, which cover costs through library subscriptions, cannot be adapted and developed to fulfil these open access aims. Many journals, including those of the Royal Society, are already adapting and others will follow suit. The open access movement has put added pressure on journals to examine current practices, and that input is welcome in influencing developments. But this is only part of a more fundamental, long-running approach in which good publishers are responsive to the changing needs of authors, readers and librarians....Learned societies, including the Royal Society, rely on revenues from publishing to fund activities that benefit science, such as funding researchers and undertaking science communication programmes....For wider public access around the world it is possible to maintain free online archives and the Royal Society, along with many others, makes its papers free after 12 months. If the content of papers is of significant public interest it can be made available free of charge on publication.' John Enderby is vice-president of the Royal Society.

The conferees are aware of the draft NIH policy on increasing public access to NIH-funded research. Under this policy, NIH would request investigators to voluntarily submit electronically the final, peer reviewed author's copy of their scientific manuscripts; six months after the publisher's date of publication, NIH would make this copy publicly available through PubMed Central. The policy is intended to help ensure the permanent preservation of NIH-funded research and make it more readily accessible to scientists, physicians, and the public.

The conferees note the comment period for the draft policy ended November 16th; NIH is directed to give full and fair consideration to all comments before publishing its final policy. The conferees request NIH to provide the estimated costs of implementing this policy each year in its annual Justification of Estimates to the House and Senate Appropriations Committees. In addition, the conferees direct NIH to continue to work with the publishers of scientific journals to maintain the integrity of the peer review system."

(PS: Congress has spoken and NIH is cleared to go. NIH may revise the draft text of of its plan in light of the public comments it received. But after that, it can begin to implement the new policy. There were many steps in the process before this one, but this is the step that took us from proposal to approval. Thanks to the House Appropriations Committee and the NIH for getting the ball rolling. Thanks to the members of the House-Senate conference commmittee for resisting the intense lobbying campaign from publishers. And thanks to all of you who sent commments to your Congressional delegation and the NIH.)

Quoting Jennifer McCabe's letter: 'Mr. Ewing goes on to ask: "Who says information must be free?"...I would note that it is our tax money that allows much research to take place. And the fact that scholars must cede all copyright to their intellectual output is unconscionable and antithetical to the educational ideal of discourse and sharing of information. Finally, Mr. Ewing suggests that scholars and librarians simply stop dealing with high-priced journals. This is like suggesting to senior citizens that they just take less medicine since drugs are so expensive....Librarians have chosen instead to support the open-access model. Rather than walking away from high-quality journals, we have chosen to nurture competition among journals, with the hope of forcing publishers to be more reasonable about their prices.'

Quoting Peter Suber's letter: 'John Ewing...writes as if advocates want open access only as a means to reduce journal prices. This is mistaken. We want open access itself. As readers, we want open access because it removes barriers to the literature we need for our research and teaching. As authors, we want it because it gives us a much larger audience....No serious advocate has ever said that open-access literature costs nothing to produce. The central claim has always been that there are better ways to pay the bills than by charging readers and creating access barriers....It's important to remember why high prices for journals are harmful. The primary reason is that they decrease subscriptions and therefore access. Open access gives primary attention to the primary problem, which is access....Let's keep trying to reduce prices using Ewing's methods, among others. But let's not wait for that effort to succeed, and let's not settle for lower access barriers when we could have none at all.'

(PS: What does this mean? In software, "solutions" is ad-speak for "programs" or perhaps "good programs". What does it mean in STM publishing?)

At the same time, Merry Bullock, the Executive Director of the American Psychological Association, published an article about the APA position, What is Open Access? in the Psychological Science Agenda, November 2004. Excerpt, after describing OA and the NIH plan: 'Where does psychology and where does APA fit into the picture? One outcome of such a policy, which would likely expand to cover all federally funded research, not just that funded by NIH, would be to shift who bears the cost of scientific publishing away from publishers and subscribers to authors and funders. Many believe such a shift this would have a host of unintended consequences across science fields on the vitality and quality of science. One consequence would be a decrease in the number of journals, thus reducing the available number of high quality publication outlets. Another is a decrease in the resources available for the editorial and peer review infrastructure. Reducing the value added by the peer review and editorial processes would take away an important piece of the process that ensures rigorous and high quality science. In addition, shifting to an "author pays" model may undermine attempts to increase diversity in science if easier access to scientific publishing requires access to greater financial resources. At present only about a third of published articles in psychological journals report a source of funding. These concerns are articulated in APA's comments on the proposed policy (available here in PDF format).'