Director's Report: Recent Efforts in Open Access Publishing
James Shedlock, AMLS, Director, j-shedlock@northwestern.edu
From time to time, we like to report to the Northwestern health care community highlights from the world of scientific-technical-medical publishing. The purpose of these reports is to identify how changes in the publishing world affect the Galter Library and its user community.
The latest effort to promote open access publishing was the announcement on March 16, 2004 of the Washington DC Principles for Free Access to Science. Open access (OA) publishing seeks to make all science journal articles free to the public as a means of maximizing the research impact of the articles through broader access. The DC Principles come from a group of not-for-profit medical and scientific societies and publishers representing about 380 journals. The Principles endorse the concept of OA publishing and include such ideas as: maintaining the rigor and trust established by scholarly journals as “reliable filters of information emanating from clinical and laboratory research”; ‘profits’ from publishing scholarly journals support science in general via grants to students, support for conferences and other meetings, advocacy and so on; free access is supported but at the discretion of each society or publisher; a commitment to preservation of online journals; and interest in using information technologies to improve the process of scientific publishing.
Many have lauded the DC Principles as a means of broadening the discussion about OA. Some believe that OA is an either or situation: either your publication is free for all to read or use or it isn’t. The group behind the DC Principles believes they represent a middle option: each publisher needs to decide how much of their content can be released free to the public without damaging their overall business plan for staying viable and competitive in the publishing world.
Others have also criticized the Principles as a defense of the status quo. The issue the DC group seems to address is that there is commercial publishing and then there is us, namely, that while the not-for-profit societies do charge for their journals, they are not in the same league as the larger commercial giants.
Overall, the various librarian associations support the DC Principles. An alliance of leading library associations and public-interest advocacy organizations released a statement that reads in part: “Open access is our goal for scientific and scholarly communication because it facilitates the open discussion needed to accelerate research, share knowledge and enlarge human understanding. The goal is so desirable -- for science itself and researchers, universities, libraries, journals, publishers, learned societies, foundations, governments and citizens -- that any problems we encounter in pursuing it are worth solving. Our organizations stand ready to work toward solutions in cooperation with the signatories of the DC Principles.” (See http://www.arl.org/sparc for more information.)
The impact of these Principles on the Galter Library will be measured over time. OA journals have the potential to impact the library’s budget by saving dollars for other acquisitions. Currently, OA journals allow the library to expand its collections without any negative impact on the budget.
Part of the controversy in the OA movement is the question of who should pay for scholarly publishing. The leading OA journal providers -- Public Library of Science and BioMed Central (BMC) -- ask that authors pay, as much as $1,500 per article published. The group behind the DC Principles suggests this policy works against authors, especially researchers and others who are not well funded by grants, and limits their ability to make their work known to the scientific community. Commercial and not-for-profit publishers and their supporters suggest the status quo of subscription prices is the way to finance scholarly publishing, though many decry the escalating prices for institutional subscriptions.
BMC is trying a different option as a means of finding the right financial model in the fast changing publishing world. Currently, Northwestern University pays a BMC membership to support this OA publisher. The benefit here to Northwestern scholars is that they do not have to pay the BMC author fee of $500 per article. This model was endorsed by the University and Galter Libraries. However, BMC is changing the model where institutional membership will now be based on how many articles are published in BMC online journals by an institution’s authors. From the library perspective, this model is unreasonable. Library budgets have to be based on firm projections of what acquisitions will cost for the coming subscription year. After-the-fact charging, as proposed by BMC, will not succeed in this or any library’s budget process. The Galter Library will reluctantly withdraw its financial support to maintain BMC as an OA publisher. The burden of paying for scientific publishing will then be carried by NU authors writing for BMC online journals.
Despite the appearance that usage of the Internet and the World-Wide Web is free, OA publishing is not free. To create content on the Internet requires time, intellectual effort and technical skill. Time, effort and skills cost money. Someone, or everyone, needs to pay the price associated with scientific publishing and scholarly communication. All parties -- authors, readers, publishers, universities and libraries -- have a stake in the survival and transformation of scholarly journals. The best and most equitable model for financing scholarly publications needs to be worked out. The discussion will certainly continue.
