Is Open Access (OA) publishing an unstoppable force? Does it face immovable objects in the shape of publication costs, quality control and copyright? The Third London Open Research Conference on 11 June, organised by SHERPA-LEAP provided a forum for lively debate from several viewpoints.
Around 70 delegates gathered at the Brunei Gallery Lecture Theatre....OA proponents included representatives from Research Councils UK (RCUK) and the consultancy Key Perspectives. Non-OA publishers were represented by the Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers (ALPSP)....
OA publication makes research available without access barriers or subscription costs. BioMedCentral and others have shown that it can be a strong publishing business model, and resources such as the Directory of Open Access Journals help researchers keep track of the ~2,500 publications available. Research is also archived pre- or post-publication in online repositories such as PubMed Central....
Frank Scholze of the University of Stuttgart illustrated how the coordination of repositories and online OA journals allows individual researcher profiles to develop. Individual researcher rankings, based on personal citation rates and even readership, are made possible by searches of OA journals and repositories....
In his critical presentation, Nick Evans, Chief Operating Officer of the ALPSP, likened OA to a ‘shark’. Journal subscriptions are a major source of income for learned societies, Evans argued, and removing this will damage research, bursaries and conferences currently funded by the societies.
Small publishers are certainly threatened by OA, but are there ways to adapt to the changes? Some, including the BMJ, have adopted a mixed approach, requiring subscriptions for editorial content, while research articles are free. Others are diversifying into special features such as podcasts for subscribers.
Many delegates were concerned that OA will compromise quality by allowing ‘self-publication’ and inadequate review. The high citation rates and increasing impact factors of OA journals such as those of PLoS belie perceived quality issues, countered Dr Swan, as do the acceptance standards set by many OA repositories....
National, international and inter-agency policy will affect the progress of OA over the next few years. The Budapest Initiative (2002) and Berlin Declaration on OA followed the Lisbon Agenda (2000), and the European Commission is currently considering a mandatory OA self-archiving proposal. Speaking for RCUK, which now has a mandatory policy on OA, Dr Astrid Wissenburg commented that policies such as six month embargoes on OA publishing may be hampering progress. She added that a lag of three to four years could be expected before new policies take effect....
[O]ne researcher said when confronted with the copyright risks of OA: “My problem isn’t plagiarism, it’s obscurity!”
Posted by
Peter Suber at 7/06/2007 03:05:00 PM.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
I recommend the OA tracking project (OATP) as the best way to stay on top of new OA developments. You can read the OATP feed on a blog-like web page or subscribe to it by RSS, email, or Twitter. You can also help build the feed by tagging new developments you encounter.
