Open Access: Key Strategic, Technical and Economic Aspects

Citation

McGrath, M. (2007), "Open Access: Key Strategic, Technical and Economic Aspects", Interlending & Document Supply, Vol. 35 No. 4, pp. 230-231. https://doi.org/10.1108/02641610710837554

This splendid overview of Open Access comprises chapters by many well known and authoritative players. Stevan Harnad is often portrayed as the villain by publishers for his advocacy of self archiving. Some argue that this will lead to the destruction of the commercial academic publishing industry. To which some would say “and about time too”. However he makes clear that he sees an intimate connection between journal publishing and self archiving. “Open access self archiving is the self‐archiving of peer‐reviewed journal articles before (preprint) and after (postprint) peer review. …(it) is a supplement (his emphasis) to‐ not a substitute for – publishing in a peer reviewed journal.”. He argues, as always, eloquently for self archiving but fails, as do others to look at the unintended consequence. Commercial publishers will not throw in the towel – there is too much at stake. They will convert to full open access (if Harnad is correct about foregone conclusions) funded by author pays revenue streams. This will do nothing to solve the serial crisis; indeed it will be exacerbated. Publishers will no longer have any organised restraint on their pricing. However with 100 per cent OA the financial burden will be transferred to the funding bodies. Those without access to funding will not get published – an interesting irony in the context of open access for all – and the price of open access will be a significant reduction in research funding (publisher revenues in the STM industry are large (Elsevier alone about €6 billion a year revenue.). Funding of the equivalent OA publishing industry would likely amount to at least half of this figure (see the cost comparisons by Wellcome in their interesting chapter). Perhaps this is a price that society (and the funders) is prepared to pay but it should be made clear that this is the consequence... And then again maybe the journal as a package for research publications will disappear to be replaced by some sort of peer reviewed global repository. The point is that the future is not a sunlit upland of free access to all research literature. It is more likely to be a complex terrain with very variable weather and a lot of people will get wearily wet and tired.

There is also a rather worrying thread that runs through the book that anything not online is not there – or will not be accessed which amounts to the same thing. Put most succinctly by Arthur Sale in his essay – “Searchers will simply not pursue hard‐to discover resources”. Well tell that to the British Library or indeed any other major research library whose seats are full every day all day with searchers for hard to find material. These may not be many high energy physicists amongst them but there are plenty of others. He also suggests that evidence shows that their need for a post print version of an article is low, but does not quote the evidence; unfortunate given the radical implications of such an attitude. The demise of the publishing industry for one. He produces dramatic figures from Australian universities to demonstrate the need for mandatory deposit – whatever is done, 20 per cent voluntary deposit appears to be the maximum obtainable.

Matthew Cockerill of BioMedCentral notes the importance of Google Scholar in providing a channel for access to articles that appear on the web but also its limitation – “Elsevier, which controls more than 20 per cent of the scientific research publishing market, does not allow any of its articles to be indexed by Google. How long will it take for authors to react to this censorship of their material and move to less restrictive publishers?” – interesting times indeed! He comes closest to analysing the dynamic of commercial publishers – describing their profits as “one of its greatest pathologies”. But he fails to nail down – as do all other authors – the central dynamic today of commercial STM publishing; that is the drive to maximise profit – it is not to provide access to research publications and make a living at doing so. If selling arms makes more money then that is what they do – although Elsevier appears to have backed off after sustained opposition from its key market.

A theme that runs throughout the book is that mandation is the only way to ensure the large scale deposition of articles in repositories. This is surely true but it carries the consequence that publishers can, understandably, insist on payment for publication or face an irreversible decline in revenues. These payments are big. The chapter written by Terry and Kiley from the Wellcome Trust estimate £4.8 million and that does not account for the above inflation increases that commercial publishers will undoubtedly levy once this new model is up and running. And will this money lost to research be compensated by a reduction in the pressure in librarians' budgets by other than a token mount? Do not hold your breath. What is more likely is that the financial pressure on librarians will increase – as they must also allocate resources to the development, promotion and maintenance of large scale repositories without a commensurate reduction in subscription prices.

Mary Waltham highlights the resistance of society publishers to open access publishing, citing fears of the loss of subsidy to other activities. One may ask why subscribers should pay for these no doubt laudable activities without having a say in them. The surplus generated is significant – up to 60 per cent and an average of 22 per cent in 2004 for a group of ten societies reviewed. What appears to be the case, as argued by Kurtz and Brody in their chapter, is that open access does heighten the awareness of articles: “Peer‐reviewed journal articles also available as open access receive – on average – double the number of citations.” A powerful incentive for researchers to push publishers towards open access models. Clifford Lynch in a look at the future addresses the problem of the historical literature and opines that “A move to open access may not help much with this retrospective material”. This is a major issue and one not widely recognised. Can it be that commercial publishers will hang onto this part of their dwindling portfolio – it being their sole source of revenue?! Lynch is nothing if not visionary and although the problems he raises made this reviewer at least begin to lose the will to live, his vision is worth quoting – “The opportunities are truly stunning. They point towards entirely new ways to think about the scholarly literature (and the underlying evidence that supports scholarship) as an active, computationally‐enabled representation of knowledge that lives, grows and interacts with its contributors rather than as a passive archive or record.” And so say all of us.

This is an important and useful book; it brings together in 200 pages all the key issues that arise with open access publishing written by key players. My review copy is covered with notes and “hilites” reflecting the wealth of ideas and evidence that has been brought together by the editor. My only serious criticism would be that a critical look at the consequences, unintended or intended of OA publishing is not covered. For example what of those putative authors whose publication fees are not covered by grants of what form or another? This is especially the case for the Humanities and Social Sciences; I suspect that authors in this journal would, generally speaking, not be funded for publication. It is disingenuous of Colin Steele to write that “The author is not intended to pay personally … ” For some yes – for others no. So we have a paradox, that open access actually leads to less openness for some.

And something from a commercial or society publisher would have been useful. But if you want do be up to date in a few hours of reading with a landscape changing trend that now has nearly 2,800 open access scholarly journals – then read this book. Inevitably it is out of date before publication let alone by the time you read it – however it should stimulate you to some DIY updating – using open access resources! For example Colin Steele notes the success of the University of California's eScholarship Repository and its “2,421,218 full text downloads by late January 2006” – I checked my self and by July 2007 these had risen to 5,586,588.