RE: Back to basics

[Jan Velterop <velterop@biomedcentral.com>]

Open Access, as a model, is not a binary issue (although I suppose it's
binary for an individual article; either it's open, or it is not); I agree
with Joe. But we could make a good start with applying open access where
it is likely to have most benefits: in the more collaborative and
data-intensive disciplines such as the life and medical sciences and other
'hard' sciences of high societal relevance. The point of Open Access is
that research articles can be used as 'raw material' for any number of
creative developments by innovative people. Open Access is, indeed, only
the beginning.

On the issue of 'corporate welfare', we should see that in perspective.
Society may regard it as a problem that industry benefits from Open
Access, but that problem is separate from the question if Open Access is a
good thing for science and society. Open Access is meant for science. If
industry benefits, too, that's a collateral benefit. I trust we are not
eschewing the benefits of Open Access to all of science and society just
because there are some benefits to corporations. Envy is a bad guide.
Besides, the size of the problem, if it is a problem, is much exaggerated.
Let's not forget that Open Access is meant to apply to primary research
publications and not to all manner of other information services provided
by the publishing industry. When Crispin Davis (Reed Elsevier) testified
to the S&T Committee of the House of Commons, he said that some 25% of
Elsevier's turnover came from industry. This may be true if all turnover
is taken into account, i.e. from MDL, abstracts databases, review
journals, books, et cetera, but it certainly is not true for turnover just
from primary research journals. Only the latter is relevant when a shift
to Open Access takes place. I estimate the industrial revenues in respect
of primary journals to be less than 5%. Something similar applies to the
ACS revenue derived from industry. Open Access wouldn't apply to CAS, for
instance.

The problem of impecunious researchers in the developing world is more of
a real one. But here, too, we need a sense of perspective. Access to
science for those researchers is dismal. That is more of a hurdle to full
participation in the global scientific discourse than not being able to
pay article charges. For the latter there are various possibilities,
ranging from waivers (i.e. hidden subsidies from wealthier researchers),
to direct subventions. The former, lack of access to the relevant
literature, is often the cause of rejection by established journals, due
to obvious hiatuses in knowledge evident in the papers submitted by
researchers from the developing world, however brilliant they may be.
Initiatives like HINARI and AGORA are nice, but do not quite solve that
problem. Their list of eligible countries does not extend to the most
populous and scientifically significant of the developing countries, due
to restrictions imposed by the participating publishers. And the list of
journals reflects the publishers' choice; not the researchers' in
developing countries. Traditional journals, at least the ones published by
the large players in the industry, aren't exactly packed with articles
from the developing world, either. Perhaps we can start a discussion on
this or some dedicated list of how best to help solve the problems the
developing world may have with either mode of publishing, with full
participation in such a discussion from the countries concerned.

Open Access is of course not the panacaea that solves all the world's
ills. It never pretended to, and was never meant to. It seems to me that
those who'd rather like to beat Open Access in any case see its
limitations as a convenient stick. A question of a mote in the Open Access
eye and a beam in the conventional model's own?

Jan Velterop   

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Joseph J. Esposito [mailto:espositoj@worldnet.att.net]
> Sent: 27 April 2004 23:53
> To: liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
> Subject: Re: Back to basics
> 
> I happen to agree with much of Jan's post, so my comments here are not
> intended to serve as a head-on-head debate.
> 
> On the issue of who should pay, the argument that the sponsoring
> institution should shoulder the costs is compelling, except for the
> unhappy problem of what to do with the free riders, those institutions 
> and individuals who read more than they write (and hence with an 
> author-pays model would come out ahead financially).  An extreme example 
> of this would be the huge number of multibillion-dollar chemical 
> companies, who spend millions for the journals and abstracts of the 
> American Chemical Society (which, by the way, is a not-for-profit 
> professional society).  With Open Access, what is free to an impecunious 
> researcher in sub-Saharan Africa is free to the Vice President of 
> Business Development of Eastman Chemical or BASF.  Is this corporate 
> welfare or what?
> 
> As for sustainability, this is one of those proof-is-in-the-pudding
> issues. An OA publication will prove to be sustainable when it sustains
> itself.  No amount of debate beforehand changes that.  Venture 
> capitalists and foundation grants officers have to engage in this kind 
> of debate because it is their business to capitalize the future.  But 
> the rest of us?  Do we really want to suggest that experimentation is a 
> bad thing?  If we can't do experiments in new publishing business 
> models, perhaps we should cease to experiment in particle phyics and 
> cellular biology.  When did the academic community become so stubbornly 
> anti-intellectual?
> 
> But we already have instances of sustainable OA journals, though they 
> have managed to make things work by acting like start-up 
> entrepreneurs:  low overhead, clever financing, the addressing of a new 
> (not an established) market, and so forth.  A favorite example:  Ed 
> Valauskas's FirstMonday (firstmonday.org), an online, peer-reviewed 
> journal on the Internet.  As for quality, Valauskas published Eric 
> Raymond's "The Cathedral and the Bazaar" 
> (http://www.firstmonday.org/issues/issue3_3/raymond/index.html,
> the seminal work on open-source software development and, by 
> extension, the spiritual grandfather of the OA movement.
> 
> Perhaps it is time to stop thinking about OA as a binary issue:  Open
> Access, yes/no.  Rather, we are headed for a pluralistic future, with
> innovations coming about because of the clever and energetic work of
> individuals.  For the Web, iPod, and Google we had a Berners-Lee, a 
> Jobs, and a Brin and Page respectively.  Will the next Doug Englebart 
> please stand up?
> 
> Joe Esposito