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Follow the golden-green road! A short survey of open access issues

This article explores the moral and practical appeal of open access journals, the increasing respectability of OA, support from major funders, OA institutional repositories, the cost of OA publishing, and various caveats and concerns surrounding OA. It also discusses the impact of OA on learned societies and the confusion surrounding hybrid journals and bibliographic metrics.

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Follow the golden-green road! A short survey of open access issues

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  1. Follow the golden-green road! A short survey of open access issues ITM Antwerp, July 4, 2008

  2. Moral appeal of OA • Traditional publication paradox [stereotype]: • Authors mostly paid by ‘the public’ • Reviewers mostly paid by ‘the public’ • Results given freely to the publishers • After repackaging the results are bought back from the publishers by ‘the public’ • The serials crisis is not a myth (see table).But currently masked by open access, big deals, individual document delivery, [USD] – so: is the existing paradigm sustainable?

  3. Practical appeal of OA • Higher visibility – no toll gates • Earlier visibility – no publishing delays, article per article, before the issues are complete • Higher citability (prestige + reward) – selection bias in favour of what is immediately available => Pleasing to readers (libraries), authors, societies => Hybrid formats: direct OA option; early view; faster turnaround of editorial / peer review process; … => Advantages will level out when everyone is OA

  4. Increasing respectability of OA • Proliferation of OA journals from the early 2000s onwards – currently 3500 titles in DOAJ • Soon after indexed by Medline and ISI citation databases (fig.), resulting in Impact Factors: currently 22 titles [starting with] BMC [not including e.g. Malaria Journal], 6 PLoS titles

  5. OA Impact Factors • PLoS: quite high, but not higher than the top general medicine journals:Lancet (28.638) vs PLoS Medicine (12.601);PLoS NTD (?.???) vs. TM&IH (2.466)? • BMC: respectable (range 1.3 => 5.1) but not higher than comparable specialty journalsMalaria Journal (2.473) vs. TM&IH (2.466)

  6. Support from the major funders • USA: NIH aims at mandatory deposit (e.g. PubMed Central) + willingness to pay.But: enfeebled by embargoes + so far voluntary deposit has not been a success) • UK: Wellcome Trust has comparable aims (e.g. UK PubMed Central) + willingness to pay (as 1% of their overall research funding) • UK Government: so far, OA has been countered by the publishers lobby

  7. OA Institutional Repositories (IR) • Comparable pledges on institutional level – Berlin Declaration [but: enforceability??] • It’s ‘their’ research anyway – E.g. TM&IH papers from ITM authors in ITM repository? • Unlike subject repositories (SR - e.g. arXiv) IR are fairly fragmented, strictly affiliation-based, i.e. not a threat to existing journals • In practice even SR don’t seem to have a negative influence on journal subsriptions

  8. OA is not a free lunch • With the transition from print to e-only, a large part of variable volume-based costs may disappear (paper, printer, postage), but most fixed and per paper costs will remain or increase (peer review process, IT investments) – income is still needed • Typical ‘author fees’: 1000 € – 2500 € • But: total publishing costs are estimated at only 1-2% of total research costs

  9. So who pays the bill? • The major funders approve explicitely + are willing to pay the costs themselves – does this also work for the field of tropical medicine? • What about OA-minded universities and institutes? Would partial transfer of library budgets be a solution? [idem] • What to do during the transition phase, when libraries still need increasing acquisitions budgets?

  10. Some caveats • Quality of peer review? Does good editorial practice depend on the business model (if sustainable)? Is this not self-regulatory? • Hidden commercial agenda? • Impact factor calculation and manipulation • Impact of OA journals citing OA journals? • Embargoes as an acceptable compromise? • What about ‘un(der)funded’ research? • Participation from developing countries?

  11. OA and learned societies • Moral appeal: OK • Practical appeal: OK • Impact and prestige: these ultimately depend on the perceived quality of the peer review, which should be self-regulatory and independent from the business model • Condition: guaranteed sustainability • Generate additional income from journal subscriptions? [societies have other aims than publishers; sustainability vs. profit?]

  12. Bibliographic and -metric confusion? • Hybrid journals with e-only contributions.E.g. BMJ short responses vs. Clinical Infectious Diseases full research papers • Printed short version vs. extended online version, with different sets of references (e.g. BMJ) • IR: Publisher PDFs vs. author preprints and postprints, because of publishers refusal

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