Open Access News

Nonprofit publishers oppose government mandates for scientific publishing, a press release from the DC Principles Coalition, February 20, 2007.  Excerpt:

A coalition of 75 nonprofit publishers opposes any legislation that would abruptly end a publishing system that has nurtured independent scientific inquiry for generations. One such measure, the Federal Research Public Access Act, introduced in the 109th Congress, would have required all federally funded research to be deposited in an accessible database within six months of acceptance in a scientific journal.  Some open access advocates are pressing for the introduction of a similar measure in the 110 Congress.

In essence, such legislation would impose government-mandated access policies and establish government-controlled repositories for federally funded research published in scientific journals....

“The long tradition of methodical scientific inquiry and information sharing through publication in scholarly journals has helped advance medicine to where it is today,” said Martin Frank of the American Physiological Society and coordinator of the coalition. “We as independent publishers must determine when it is appropriate to make content freely available, and we believe strongly it should not be determined by government mandate.”

The Coalition also reaffirmed its ongoing practice of making millions of scientific journal articles available free of charge, without an additional financial burden on the scientific community or on funding agencies. More than 1.6 million free articles are already available to the public free of charge on HighWire Press....

The Coalition expressed concern that a mandatory timetable for free access to all federally funded research could harm journals, scientists, and ultimately the public. Subscriptions to journals with a high percentage of federally funded research would decline rapidly....

Undermining subscriptions would shift the cost of publication from the publisher who receives subscription revenue to the researcher who receives grants.  Such a shift could:

Divert scarce dollars from research....

Result in only well-funded scientists being able to publish their work....

Reduce the ability of journals to fund peer review....

Harm those scientific societies that rely on income from journals to fund the professional development of scientists....

“By establishing government repositories for federally funded research, taxpayers would be paying for systems that duplicate the online archives already maintained by independent publishers,” Case noted. “The implications of the U.S. government becoming the world’s largest publisher of scientific articles have not been addressed,” she added.

According to Frank, “As not-for-profit publishers, we believe that a free society allows for the co-existence of many publishing models, and we will continue to work closely with our publishing colleagues to set high standards for the scholarly publishing enterprise.”

Comments.  There's nothing new here and I've answered the major arguments many times before. 

1. The long tradition of methodical scientific inquiry and information sharing through publication in scholarly journals has helped advance medicine to where it is today.  Yes, publishers have helped.  But what aspect of traditional journals has helped?  I'd suggest that providing access to knowledge has helped much more than limiting access to paying customers. 
2. We as independent publishers must determine when it is appropriate to make content freely available.  This is key:  scientists who did the research should have no say, and taxpayers who paid for the research should have no say.  Access should be controlled by a group that didn't conduct the research, didn't write it up, and didn't pay for it.
3. The Coalition also reaffirmed its ongoing practice of making millions of scientific journal articles available free of charge.  True and welcome.  The DC Principles publishers all accept some form of delayed OA.  Some DC Principles publishers even use the same embargo period allowed by FRPAA, the legislation they oppose.  For them, it's not the access policy that bothers them but the group deciding the access policy.
4. The Coalition expressed concern that a mandatory timetable for free access to all federally funded research could harm journals.  Yes, it could.  But whenever publishers air this fear they don't point out that the best evidence to date is in physics, which has the highest level and longest history of OA archiving.  In physics, high-volume OA archiving has not harmed journals; it has even led physics publishers to launch their own mirrors of arXiv.  Nor do they point out the publisher-commissioned study finding that high journal prices are a much more significant cause of cancellations than OA archiving.
5. After articulating the assumption that OA archiving will harm journals, the publishers give reasons to fear it, but not reasons to think it's true. 
6. In enumerating their grounds for fear, the publishers bring in two additional unspoken assumptions:  that FRPAA will force TA journals to convert to OA, and that all OA journals charge author-side fees.  FRPAA is about green OA, not gold.  It regulates grantees, not publishers.  If it undermines subscriptions and pressures TA journals to convert to gold, then it free up the money now paid in subscriptions to pay for the OA alternative.  And of course, only a minority of OA journals charge author-side fees.  See my Twelve reminders about FRPAA for more reminders of what the bill really says.
7. By establishing government repositories for federally funded research, taxpayers would be paying for systems that duplicate the online archives already maintained by independent publishers.  Some publishers are providing OA to some content when it's sufficiently old. But this is a far cry from providing OA to virtually all federally-funded research within six months of publication. If publishers are saying that over time their voluntary efforts will approach what FRPAA would mandate, then they have to give up their claim that this will harm journals. They can't have it both ways.
8. We believe that a free society allows for the co-existence of many publishing models.  We agree on what a free society allows.  But that's moot here, since FRPAA doesn't prohibit any publishing models.  The publishers' real quarrel is not with a feared ban on some publishing model but with a thoughtful decision to prefer one access policy to another.  We'd all do well to keep the debate focused on the question whether interests of science and taxpayers would both be better served by OA to publicly-funded research.