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A Skeptic’s View of Open Access

This article explores the skepticism surrounding open access journals and the challenges they face in terms of their business models, government involvement, and sustainability. It highlights the differences between selective commercial, non-profit, and non-selective archival journals and discusses the viability of open access for each type. The article concludes with potential solutions and a call for realistic cost assessments in scientific publishing.

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A Skeptic’s View of Open Access

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  1. A Skeptic’s View of Open Access Michael Held The Rockefeller University Press UKSG Conference March 30, 2004

  2. UKSG

  3. Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers: “Open Access is one alternative model which might help, but, as yet, there is little factual information about its behavioural or financial effects.” UKSG

  4. The Royal Society: “The Royal Society is in favour of the widest practicable dissemination of science but we believe that the current proposals for Open Access journals (where papers are free online to all) lack a sustainable business model.” UKSG

  5. UKSG

  6. BioMed Central: “…[T]he Government is urged to seek to reverse the traditional publishing models and encourage a competitive Open Access model, which avoids the limitations of the traditional model and delivers the benefits of maximal dissemination and unrestricted use of scientific research literature.” UKSG

  7. Reasons for skepticism • Basic business model • Potential for enhanced government involvement • Human nature • Means and ends • Progress and advancement • Shifting political sands UKSG

  8. Does open access make sense for a journal such as The Journal of Cell Biology? UKSG

  9. Three types of Journals • Selective, commercial (Nature, Cell) • Selective, non-profit (JCB, Science) • Non-selective, archival (some commercial, some BioMedCentral) UKSG

  10. OA works for low cost, high throughput archival journals • Cursory reviewing lowers publication costs • High acceptance rates means that most submissions will yield income UKSG

  11.  OA does not work well at selective journals • High cost of review and pre-production costs (editors, staff) • Costs accrue for all papers whether accepted or not • For the 10-20% of papers that are ultimately published, costs can exceed $8000 per paper for online publication alone UKSG

  12. Why have stable and selective journals? • Journals help prioritize information, however imperfectly • High profile journals may irritate authors, but help readers save time and get a wide range of information • Journals are a focus for scientific communities • Publication process does add value (and does cost money) UKSG

  13. Current PLoS fees are not sustainable without support from foundations or income from archival journals. • Plan to charge only $1500 per paper for a highly selective journal • Exorbitant in house staff costs relative to JCB (JCB has 2 senior editors compared to PloS’ 6) • PloS has never made its financial plan public UKSG

  14. Non-profits like JCB are an important component of scientific publishing, but are ignored in the OA debate • Non-profits comprise only 5% of the total number of journals, but 43 of the top 100 most highly cited journals are non-profits • Run by and serve the scientific community • Non-profit, so can keep subscription/page charge costs low • Release content after (average) 6 month delay for free UKSG

  15. UKSG

  16. Potential Solutions (in an ideal world)? • 1. Archival, less selective journals switch to open access • researchers submit more of best work to non-profit, selective journals that make content free after brief period of time • 2. Research community extends open access to selective journals • Funding agencies must commit more funds dedicated to pay for publishing costs--difficult to carry out world-side; risk of being elitist UKSG

  17. The scientific community must decide for itself how it wants to spend its money and distribute the products of its research. • Those decisions must be based on a realistic appraisal of costs involved in producing journals, not on wishful thinking UKSG

  18. For the present: • Middle ground occupied by selective journals seems the most reasonable: • Free release of all back content (including back archive to vol 1, issue 1 when available) after 6 months • Maintenance of reasonable and flexible online license fees to universities, hospitals, and research institutions. UKSG

  19. Sites of interest for free access to the scientific literature • Washington DC Principles for Free Access to Science: http://www.dcprinciples.org/ • ALPSP Principles of Scholarship-Friendly Journal Publishing Practice’ [PDF]: http://www.alpsp.org/SFPubpress.htm UKSG

  20. Acknowledgements Many thanks to Charles Lowry and WilliamWells for assistance in writing and content UKSG

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