The Harvards, the Have-Nots, and Open Access

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

On Sun, 16 Nov 2003, Troy McClure wrote:

> What is the attitude of the Harvards, Yales, and other prestigious US 
> universitities towards open access? I browsed through the signatures of 
> institutions on boai and found only the MIT on the list...

That's not quite accurate: For example, are 15 signatures from Harvard:
http://www.soros.org/openaccess/search.cfm?q=harvard

But this general question about the Harvards vs. the Have-Nots in relation
to Open Access has come up on many prior threads --
http://makeashorterlink.com/?Y20E25D86 -- and is worth understanding in
some detail:

There are two motivations for open access, from the standpoint of
researchers (and their institutions):

    (ACCESS) The access of would-be users at one's own institution to
    the research output of other institutions

    (IMPACT) The Visibility and impact of one's own institutional research
    output to would-be users at other institutions

Insofar as ACCESS is concerned, the Harvards are certainly sitting
prettier than the Have-Nots (i.e., the institutions with smaller serials
budgets). So if one presents the open-access problem as an *access*
problem, the typical Harvard researcher will respond that he is not aware
of having any access problem! But let us not forget that *most*
researchers are not conscious of an access problem: They have lived with
it for decades, on paper, and are only conscious, if anything, of an
*improvement* in access in the online age (because of online access, and
institutional site-licenses).

It is institutional serials librarians who are conscious of the access
problem, and it is they, historically, who first raised the hew and cry
about it that has now drawn the access problem to the attention of all of
us. And the librarians of course know that although the Harvards are
somewhat better off than the Have-Nots in their institutional access, *no*
institution (or institutional consortium) has remotely enough money to
afford toll access to all or even most of the planet's 24,000 serials:
only to a small and shrinking minority of them.

http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/3016.html
http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/3088.html

But let us set ACCESS aside for a moment and turn to IMPACT, which is the
other side of the same coin, yet far more important: for if *other*
institutions cannot afford access to the journals in which my research
output appears (even though my own institution *can* afford it), it means
that I am losing all of that potential research impact. Here, you will
find that Harvard researchers too are ready to sit up and listen, when you
present them with the empirical facts about the direct causal connection
between access and impact:

http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Temp/self-archiving_files/Slide0005.gif
http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Temp/self-archiving_files/Slide0006.gif
http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Temp/self-archiving_files/Slide0007.gif
http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Temp/self-archiving_files/Slide0011.gif
http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Temp/self-archiving_files/Slide0012.gif
http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Temp/self-archiving_files/Slide0025.gif

Here too, Harvard researchers at first blush feel well-enough served by
the prestigious high-impact journals in which they publish. But no
researcher is UNinterested in enhancing, indeed maximizing, the impact of
their research. That is, after all, the reason they are researchers in the
first place, and why they are all giving away their research articles
rather than selling them for royalty revenue!

There are very few Harvards, and very many Have-Nots. So if the Have-Nots
have an access-denial problem with Harvard research output, the Harvards
have an impact-denial problem with Have-Not research output. (Only the
snottiest of researchers at the Harvards will say they are only interested
in impact from the Harvards! And those are few enough to be safely
discounted in these considerations -- though it is true that they
represent yet another bit of drag on progress toward open access!)

http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Temp/self-archiving_files/Slide0014.gif

> Wouldn't those universities actually lose from open access to knowledge?

Lose what? 

Access to the research output of other institutions? No, they would only
gain.

Impact on the research output of other institutions? Again, no, they would
only gain.

Royalty revenue from the sale of their articles? They never sought or got
any royalty revenue! Their revenue comes from research impact, not from
royalties.

> The most prestigious (US) universities have the biggest budgets and 
> therefore better access to knowledge. Better access to knowledge is 
> attractive to excellent scientists. With open access to knowledge, wouldn't 
> they "lose" as compared to now in the sense that other universities can 
> offer the same access to information? 

You have a rather dim view of the Harvards if you think that their
excellence is merely a reflection of the problems of the Have-Nots in
accessing the serials literature!

The truth is that all research and researchers, at all institutions, gain
-- in both impact and access -- from open access. Universal open access
would not necessarily change the current rank-order of research excellence
among institutions (though it would allow for some corrections!), but it
would increase the overall rate and scope of productivity and progress in
research everywhere.

> Are the prestigious US universities - which are certainly at the
> forefront of scientific research - really supporting open access?

The truth is that so far *no* institution has yet *implemented*
open-access provision to its research output in its actual policy and
practises. There have been only formal petitions, boycott-threats,
statements, manifestos, declarations, and initiatives.

*Individual* researchers have provided open access to their own
output by either publishing their papers in open-access journals or by
self-archiving their toll-access papers in open-access archives. But no
*institution* yet has an official institutional open-access-provision
policy.

But with the growing consciousness of the access/impact problem, and the
two roads to take to solve it -- (1) the "golden" road of publishing one's
research in an open-access journal, if a suitable one exists (c. 600 so
far) and (2) the "green" road of publishing in a suitable toll-access
journal AND self-archiving the paper in one's institutional open-access
archive -- there is reason for optimism.

Berlin has made the formal Declaration:
http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Temp/berlin.htm

Perhaps Norway (perhaps another country, or institution) will be the
first to actually implement it:
http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/3172.html
http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Temp/archpolnew.html
http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue35/harnad/

> Also, those universities are run like businesses (high tuition fees, but 
> investments in property, big football stadiums etc.); would the managers of 
> those universities be willing to give away their results for no financial 
> remuneration?

They all -- Harvards and Have-Nots, without exception -- already do give
away all their refereed research results for no financial remuneration,
and have always done so. Research impact -- which translates into research
funding, overheads, staff, students, prestige, prizes -- is and always was
the coin of the research realm. Don't mix up this special domain with
patents, spin-off companies, courseware, epublishing, and other university
pipe-dreams for cashing in on their "intellectual property." This is
something else, and over and above giving it away, which universities do
already, open-access-provision will be implemented by universities purely
out of self-interest -- once they realize that it is in their own
interests, and how to go about it.

http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/0363.html

Stevan Harnad