Open Access News

News from the open access movement


Saturday, January 27, 2007

More on the AAP PR campaign

David Biello, Open Access to Science Under Attack, Scientific American, January 26, 2007.  Excerpt:

The battle over public access to scientific literature stretches back to the late 1990s when Nobel Prize winner Harold Varmus began plans for PubMed Central --a repository for all research resulting from National Institutes of Health (NIH) funding-- and, a few years later, launched the Public Library of Science (PLoS). These easily accessible journals and repositories have struck fear into the hearts of traditional publishers, who have enlisted the "pit bull" of public relations to fight back, reports news@nature.

The Professional and Scholarly Publishing Division of the Association of American Publishers hired Eric Dezenhall, head of Dezenhall Resources, a PR firm that specializes in "high stakes communications and marketplace defense," to address some of its members this past summer and potentially craft a media strategy. Dezenhall declined to comment for this article....

[A]ccording to Dezenhall's suggestions in a memo, the publishers should "develop simple messages (e.g., Public access equals government censorship; Scientific journals preserve the quality/pedigree of science; government seeking to nationalize science and be a publisher) for use by Coalition members." In addition, Dezenhall suggests "bypassing mass 'consumer' audiences in favor of reaching a more elite group of decision makers," including journalists and regulators. This tack is necessary, he writes, because: "it's hard to fight an adversary that manages to be both elusive and in possession of a better message: Free information." ...

Of course, open access does not mean no peer review...."Open access journals are peer-reviewed to the same standards," notes Mark Patterson, PLoS's director of publishing....

The American Association of Publishers declined to comment on Dezenhall's advice, but said in a statement: "Some commentators have expressed surprise that the publishing industry is making its case about an important issue that could affect the future of research and science. We believe it's important to be clear about serious unintended consequences of government mandated open access. ... Legislation that would undermine the quality, sustainability and independence of science would have consequences on all those who rely on sound science."

[T]he ACS [American Chemical Society] paid lobbying firm Hicks Partners LLC at least $100,000 in 2005 to try to persuade congressional members, NIH, and the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) that a "PubChem Project" would be a bad idea, according to public lobbying disclosures....

Of the as many as 65,000 articles derived from NIH funded research, only 10,000 or so are available at PubMed Central. "We have authors sending in 4 percent of articles," Dr. Neil Thakur, Ruiz Bravo's special assistant. "An additional 10 to 12 percent are submitted by publications." 

"Having been at a research institution, if something is not mandatory for me and I'm a scientist and I'm focused on the science, then doing something like this is not something that I am going to pay attention to," Ruiz Bravo adds. "We could go to a mandatory policy with a six month deadline. We've been considering that."

The open access movement is not confined to the U.S., of course. The Wellcome Trust in the U.K. has begun providing funds to its researchers explicitly to cover the costs of publishing in open access journals [PS:  and mandates OA archiving for Wellcome-funded research]....

This open access groundswell...seemingly threatens traditional publishers...."If you are published in a journal that publishes every other month or quarterly and there is mandatory open access in six months, then, as a librarian, you are going to cancel it," notes Martin Frank, executive director of the American Physiological Society (APS), which publishes 14 journals, including the American Journal of Physiology since 1898. "We consider ourselves a delayed open access journal....I agree with public access, but it doesn't have to be immediate," he adds. "If it's immediate, it has to be paid for." ...

Regardless of the "attack dogs" hired by traditional publishers to craft their message, public access advocates remain undeterred. "We've got the technology to make this happen with the internet. The only thing that's holding it back is this adherence to an old business model, which made sense in the world of print, but no longer makes sense," PLoS's Patterson says. "It's great for authors: anyone with an interest in their work can access it."

"There are some folks who feel very threatened by PubMed Central," NIH's Ruiz Bravo adds. "We really are committed to having an archive. We will do everything we can to make this a successful endeavor....Change is in the wind, and change is hard," she continues. "I think this is inevitable."

Update. Biello talks about OA and the AAP campaign on a January 31 podcast from Scientific American.