RE: Open Access Initiative From The Company Of Biologists

["David Goodman" <David.Goodman@liu.edu>]

I believe the Highwire hypothesis, adhered to by this publisher, is that
the relatively small group of active researchers will want and demand
access as soon as possible; the undergraduates writing term papers will
not. Choosing whether 3 or 6 or 12 months is guesswork, of course.

I think most authors who think their material important, rather than
published merely for reasons of duty or tenure, would want their material
available as soon after publication as possible, and freely available too.
Thus even such commendable measures as this, and such policies as
Highwire's, are at best temporary expedients.

The COB quite appropriately announced this as an experiment, and I think
that's the way to see it. I hope they will not consider the data they will
get next year as an internal secret like so many publishers do, and make
the information freely available for the benefit of us all.

The time will soon come when such elaborate experiments are no longer
necessary, and freely available rapid publication becomes a matter of
course for all journals. Personally, I hypothesize that they will find
they have been showing excessive caution, considering the quality of their
journals--but consider the many publishers who still take no steps
whatsoever.

As an historical footnote, in the print era, this 3 or 6 month period was
seen as a demand peak when the articles were indexed by Chemical abstracts
(or Biological abstracts or Index medicus, etc.) At that time, there was
considerable discussion among librarians about whether it was better to
delay binding for a full year or more, in order not to have the issues at
the binders right at the time the abstracts appeared. I well remember
continually trying to get binding done quickly enough that the bound
volumes could be back before that point, typicaly 4 to 6 months after
publication for the major journals, while still not removing them from the
shelf the moment it came in, before those who checked each issue could
read it.  This is, fortunately, a no longer necessary art.

Dr. David Goodman
Associate Professor
Palmer School of Library and Information Science
Long Island University
dgoodman@liu.edu