Open Access News

(PS: It's true that Google's ambitious digitization plan was one reason cited by Oxford University Press and the Mellon Foundation for cancelling Project Torch, which would have digitized backlist scholarly monographs. But in measuring Google's overall effect on other initiatives, remember that the same ambitious plan has stimulated France to launch a large digitization project of its own and to call on Germany, Spain, and Russia to join it.)

(PS: A few quick responses. (1) OA is certainly possible without an "author pays" funding model. All OA archives and a majority of OA journals provide OA without charging an author-side fee. (2) Aronson is right to ask that the debate turn primarily on the benefit to science and society. What's remarkable is his unargued claim that the current subscription-based system is "better", presumably by this criterion, even though journal prices are rising four times faster than inflation and major research universities have called the subscription system "incontrovertibly unsustainable". (3) No one says that we should "uncritically" accept OA, including Schroter et al. As Aronson himself acknowledges, they examine evidence and call for more evidence. (4) HINARI, AGORA, and similar programs only improve access for developing countries. (5) The NIH policy does not require public access. (6) Aronson assumes that only readers are advantaged by publication and hence that only readers should pay for it. But authors are also advantaged by publication, especially by OA which demonstrably increases an author's citation impact.)

[Day] My position [at NSF] was, if you're going to use public funds, then the public ought to benefit. And the way the public benefits is if they can talk to each other. You see, if we hadn't done that, you wouldn't have much of the national network that we have today.

[Searcher] This reminds me of today's Open Access argument.

[Day] I’ve heard about that, but I don't know very much about it.

[Searcher] Major funding for scientific research comes from the government. University researchers who are awarded government funds publish in journals that are owned by for-profit publishers, for which libraries and individuals have to pay thousands of dollars for subscriptions or the purchase of individual articles. Many say now that if the government is funding so much of this research, the findings should be available to the public for free, or for very little money, because tax dollars are supporting the activity.

[Day] I think that probably makes sense. Commercial publishers will make money regardless. I guarantee you they're not going out of business. They've taken advantage of that in the past, for some of the things that they charge. If the public didn't provide the funds for them to publish, a lot of research would not get published.

(PS: What's the OA connection? The more we can automate the generation of metadata, the more we can simplify and shorten the process of depositing eprints in OA repositories.)

(PS: Letter to the editor: If the article attributes the problem to skyrocketing journal prices, then the title shouldn't attribute the problem to inadequate library budgets.)

(PS: The Murali study shows that online access (free or priced) increases impact. But if online access to priced articles has this effect, then online access to free articles should have it a fortiori.)

(PS: Three quick replies. (1) It's very misleading to say that OA journals shift costs to "authors" when they usually shift costs to author-sponsors such as employers or funding agencies. (2) Donors should consider supporting OA archives as well as OA journals. They are less expensive than OA journals and easily scale up to handle the research output of an institution or country. (3) The question isn't whether Africa, for example, can "become competitive" with regions that have a "head start" in ICT's, but whether OA archives and OA journals are more affordable and more effective than the current subscription system at accelerating research and bringing about all the benefits of research, including economic development. For some issues, it makes sense to compare Africa with other regions, but for this issue we have to compare OA with non-OA.)

Update. I just got a copy of the text. Here's an excerpt: 'The spirit of open access is something Stem Cells has fostered for some time. The journal already offers every published paper to all readers online after 1 year --the same time frame that the NIH policy specifies for submission of NIH-supported research articles that have been accepted to peer-reviewed journals. And coming soon there's even better, faster news on the journal's horizon: Stem Cells EXPRESS. With this new feature, Stem Cells will present online --within 2 weeks of acceptance-- all manuscripts accepted for publication as Rapid Communications. To be sure, these will not be copy-edited, final versions; but they will be searchable in Medline and citable, and they will be posted and accessible to subscribers far earlier than their corrected, edited, proofread versions....And beyond Rapid Communications, we plan to gradually expand the online "ahead-of-print" publication of accepted manuscripts to include every manuscript we accept.'

(PS: Just to be clear: The new policy is not OA. Access to Rapid Communications is still limited to subscribers. Moreover, the 12 month embargo is tolerated but not encouraged by the NIH, which "strongly encourages" free online access "as soon as possible after publcation".)