Re: Open Access vs. NIH Back Access and Nature's Back-Sliding (fwd)

[Stevan Harnad <harnad@ecs.soton.ac.uk>]

    ** Apologies for Cross-Posting** 

I am forwarding these extremely important and timely data from Dr. Alma
Swan on the long-standing peaceful co-existence between

(1) green journal policies
    http://romeo.eprints.org/stats.php
(2) immediate (non-embargoed!) self-archiving by authors, and 
(3) journal subscription revenues.

This was reported at the Southampton Workshop on Institutional OA
Repositories two weeks ago

    http://www.eprints.org/jan2005/ppts/swan.ppt

and will also be reported at the international meeting on implementing the
Berlin Declaration on OA, likewise to be hosted by Southampton at the end
of this month:

    http://www.eprints.org/berlin3/program.html

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Thu, 3 Feb 2005 15:47:44 -0000
From: Alma Swan <a.swan@TALK21.COM>
To: AMERICAN-SCIENTIST-OPEN-ACCESS-FORUM@LISTSERVER.SIGMAXI.ORG
Subject: Re: Open Access vs. NIH Back Access and Nature's Back-Sliding

In recent days there has been some discussion as to whether NIH's retreat
may in fact be due to a fear of adverse effects on the scholarly
publishing industry if immediate self-archiving were to be mandated by NIH
for its grantholders
(http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/newsletter/02-02-05.htm). And,
certainly, the Nature Publishing Group appears to be changing its policy
on self-archiving. It is not easy to follow NPG's arguments so far because
they are rather complicated, but it appears to be suggesting that it is
aiding Open Access by moving from allowing immediate self-archiving by
authors in their institutional repositories to allowing it only after a
period of six months post-publication of an article. The logic of this is
not at all clear. It would be very helpful if NPG would clearly explain
the causal inferences and its policy but one has to infer that NPG has
apprehensions about a possible adverse effect of self-archiving upon its
business.

Many publishers, particularly some learned societies, share these
apprehensions and that is perfectly understandable if they base their view
of the future on imaginings rather than on actual evidence.

In the case of self-archiving, there is absolutely no need for this sort
of self-terrorising. The experiment has been done and the results are
clear-cut. Fourteen years ago the arXiv was set up (www.arxiv.org). It
houses preprints and postprints in physics, predominantly in the areas of
high-energy physics, condensed matter physics and astrophysics. It is the
norm for researchers in these areas to post their articles either before
or after refereeing to this repository. In 2003, the 421 physics journals
listed in ISI's SCI published a total of 116,723 articles. The arXiv
receives approximately 42,000 articles per annum, meaning that around a
third of all physics research articles appear not only in journals but
ALSO in the arXiv.

Have physics publishers gone to the wall in the last 14 years?  No, and
not only have they continued to survive, they have also continued to
thrive. I have recently asked questions about this of two of the big
learned society publishers in physics, the American Physical Society in
the US and the Institute of Physics Publishing Ltd in the UK. There are
two salient points to note:

1. Neither can identify any loss of subscriptions to the journals that
they publish as a result of the arXiv.

2. Subscription attrition, where it is occurring, is the same in the areas
that match the coverage of the arXiv as it is across any other areas of
physics that these societies publish in.

Both societies, moreover, see actual benefits for their publishing
operations arising from the existence of arXiv. The APS has "cooperated
closely with arXiv including establishing a mirror (jointly with
Brookhaven National Laboratory)... We also revised our copyright statement
to be explicitly in favor of author self-archiving. These efforts
strengthened (rather than weakened) Physical Review D [an APS journal that
covers high-energy physics] ...I would say it is likely we maintained
subscriptions to Physical Review D that we may otherwise have lost if we
hadn't been so pro-arXiv .."

In answer to the question "Does arXiv worry or threaten your business?"
the APS answered: "We don't consider it a threat. We expect to continue to
have a symbiotic relationship with arXiv. As long as peer review is valued
by the community (and it seems to be), we will be doing peer review. While
the APS aspires to open access and is not threatened by arXiv.org, we do
have strong reservations about government requirements for open access."

The Institute of Physics Publishing's response was: "IOPP's experience as
a learned society publisher illustrates the strong synergies and mutual
benefits that currently exist between major peer-reviewed journals, such
as our Classical and Quantum Gravity, and the arXiv e-print server. Both
systems continue to serve the scientific community very effectively.
Journals act as the "brand", setting standards for scientific quality. Our
authors and editors tell us that they value publishing in a peer-reviewed
journal because this continues as an essential requirement for
establishing reputation and authority of the research they publish. Whilst
posting an pre-print or post-print is becoming more of an essential in
some areas of the physics community for immediate and wide dissemination,
we do not see the arXiv or repositories threatening our business."

Publishers who prefer to base their future strategies on experimental data
rather than untested apprehensions may be heartened by these findings.
Institutions that prefer explicitly to help their researchers to
disseminate their research results should provide archives for the
purpose. And researchers who prefer to have their results available to as
many people as possible - WHILE STILL PUBLISHING IN JOURNALS OF THEIR
CHOICE, even if they are subscription-based publications - should get on
with self-archiving their articles.

Alma Swan
__________________________
Alma P Swan, BSc, PhD, MBA
Director
Key Perspectives Ltd
Topsham
Devon
EX3 0EP
United Kingdom