The Open-access Journal Controversy

Learned Publishing, 2019

Progress to open access (OA) has stalled, with perhaps 20% of new papers 'born-free', and half of all versions of record pay-walled; why? In this paper, I review the last 12 months: librarians showing muscle in negotiations, publishers' Read and Publish deals, and funders determined to force change with initiatives like Plan S. I conclude that these efforts will not work. For example, flipping to supply-side business models, such as article processing charges, simply flips the pay-wall to a 'play-wall' to the disadvantage of authors without financial support. I argue that the focus on OA makes us miss the bigger problem: today's scholarly communications is unaffordable with today's budgets. OA is not the problem, the publishing process is the problem. To solve it, I propose using the principles of digital transformation to reinvent publishing as a two-step process where articles are published first as preprints, and then, journal editors invite authors to submit only papers that 'succeed' to peer review. This would reduce costs significantly, opening a sustainable pathway for scholarly publishing and OA. The catalyst for this change is for the reputation economy to accept preprints as it does articles in minor journals today.

SCIENCE AND PUBLIC POLICY, 2006

References 245 Index 271 viii Contents meant that the online contents of a sizable number of medical journals were suddenly available at no charge to the faculty and students at KEMRI and elsewhere. The program, known as HINARI (the Health InterNetwork Access to Research Initiative), had grown since then to encompass over 2,000 journals in the health field, and it had not been long before the initiative had registered over 1,000 institutions from 101 of the world's less fortunate countries. When I visited in June 2003, the KEMRI library had but one computer for its patrons to use with the Internet, and there was a signup sheet on a clipboard for faculty and students to place their names on to secure some time examining the wealth of literature newly available as a result of the initiative. A local university had recently sent over another six computers, which were still sitting in boxes, in an effort to help KEMRI take advantage of this boon to access the journals it needed. The sudden and radical turning point in the intellectual fortunes of KEMRI's faculty and students spoke to how the Internet was being used in innovative ways to increase access to research. HINARI offered a particular model of open access to medical literature, and it greatly strengthened KEMRI's ability to fulfill its promise as a research and training center. But the introduction of this open access approach to scholarly publishing is also having a public impact that extends well beyond the academic community. Under very different circumstances, the lead piece in the New Yorker's ''Talk of the Town'' for September 15, 2003, took issue with the educational emphasis that the U.S. government was placing on student test scores, with the scores serving as the entire measure of a school's success or failure (Gladwell 2003, 34). In driving this critique home, the item's author, staff writer Malcolm Gladwell, reached out to a study by Robert L. Linn (2003) that challenged the very reliability of the achievement tests the government was relying on. Linn's study had been published two weeks earlier in Educational Policy Analysis Archives, an open access journal from Arizona State University. The journal had not issued a press release for Linn's study, as medical journals do on occasion with breakthrough discoveries, nor had a research summary been issued. Gladwell found the study with Google, in all likelihood, and was able product of a highly talented team of undergraduates and graduate students who have come together in the Public Knowledge Project at the University of British Columbia. The principal piece of software, known as Open Journal Systems, has contributed much to my understanding of online journal processes, economics, indexing, and reading, and figures as such in this book. Additionally, this effort to build robust software that improves the quality of access to journals proved an excellent focal point for discussing the possibilities of open access publishing with researchers, editors, librarians, and publishers in many parts of the world. Open Journal Systems has turned out to be more than a talking point and a test bed for the ideas discussed in this book. It has moved beyond the proof-of-concept stage, with the assistance and encouragement of an international open source community, and is now being used to publish open access journals, as well as some subscription journals around the world, with versions now available in seven languages. Given the interest shown in this open source software, a partnership was formed in early 2005 among the Public Knowledge Project, the Canadian Center for Studies in Publishing at Simon Fraser University, and Simon Fraser University Library to oversee the long-term development of Open Journal Systems, Open Conference Systems, and the PKP Harvester. This book, however, is not about the development of publishing software; it is about the age-old question of access to knowledge. In considering what open access has to offer on that question in this book, this is a work of inquiry and advocacy. Its goal is to inform and inspire a larger debate over the political and moral economy of knowledge that will constitute the future of research. It seeks to elevate the questions currently being raised about how research is published, so that they are seen to shine a greater light on our work as scholars and as citizens of a larger world. And at this historic moment, in this transition in journal publishing from print to digital formats, the model of open access publishing challenges not only traditional methods of publishing scholarly work, but the very presence and place of this knowledge in the world. What, then, of the all-too-obvious irony of publishing a book in print and on sale in bookstores about making online research free for the world? I have published and circulated earlier versions of most of these xiv Introduction Introduction xv I wish to thank to Janice Kreider, Pia Christensen, and Anne White, who provided helpful assistance and thoughtful comments that furthered the work that has gone into this book. Many lessons about online publishing were learned from the Public Knowledge Project software team that worked on Open Journal Systems, led by Kevin Jamieson and including

Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 2013

Fascinating life sciences, 2017

The western journal of emergency medicine, 2008

2019

Open-access (OA) publication was supposed to transform scholarly publishing. As a potentially transformative force, it’s often described in terms I associate more with populism and overthrow than science [3]. And yet despite being around for 25 years, only 15% of articles are published OA [18]. That proportion in firsttier journals of our specialty like Clinical Orthopaedics and Related Research likely is much smaller. So rather than arguing about market share or transformation, it may instead be more productive to ask this simple question: Is OA for you? Of course, whether and how OA publication meets your needs depends critically on who “you” are. In particular, it depends on whether you are mainly a content consumer or a content producer. But even then, it quickly gets complicated. The needs of content consumers may vary widely, since their circumstances are so diverse: Medical librarians, practicing surgeons in developing countries with little infrastructure (beyond perhaps acce...

Academy of Management Learning and Education, 2016

Full bibliographic details must be given when referring to, or quoting from full items including the author's name, the title of the work, publication details where relevant (place, publisher, date), pagination, and for theses or dissertations the awarding institution, the degree type awarded, and the date of the award. If you believe that any material held in the repository infringes copyright law, please contact the

SSRN Electronic Journal, 2018

 We're still failing to deliver open access (OA): around a fifth of new articles will be born free in 2018, roughly the same as in 2017.  Librarians, funders and negotiators are getting tougher with publishers but offsetting, 'Publish and Read', deals based on APCs won't deliver OA for all or solve the serials crisis.  The authors of Budapest, Bethesda and Berlin OA declarations foresaw three changes with the coming of the internet. Flipping to a barrier to publish (APCs) from a barrier to read (subscriptions) wasn't one of them.  By itself, OA won't reduce costs to solve the serials crisis: a digital transformation of scholarly communications based on internet-era principles is needed.  Following the internet-era principle of 'fail-fast', what if papers are first posted as preprints and only if they succeed in gaining attention will editors invite submission to their journal?  In clinging onto traditional journals to advance the careers of the few (authors), OA is delayed for the many (readers): rebuilding the reputation economy to accept preprints could be the catalyst to deliver OA, solve the serials crisis and drive out predatory journals. PREPRINT Green, T: We're still failing to deliver OA and solve the serials crisis: to succeed we need a digital transformation of scholarly communication using internet-era principles. 2 However, while the numbers that matter may not have improved over the past twelve months, the environment has changed.

Scriptorium, 2009

This paper assesses the extent to which the theoretical openness of access to refereed papers in open access journals is being exploited in practice. The internet has brought with it both means to disseminate and access content, and an enhanced expectation that content will generally be readily accessible. This has threatened entrenched for-profit activities, which have long prospered on closed, proprietary approaches to publishing, facilitated by anti-consumer provisions in copyright laws. The ePrints and Open Access (OA) movements have been complemented by the emergence of electronic repositories in which authors can deposit copies of their works. The accessibility of refereed papers published in journals represents a litmus test of the extent to which openness is being achieved in the face of the power of corporations whose business model is dependent on the exploitation of intellectual property (IP). A specification of the requirements for “Unlocking IP” in refereed papers is pr...

Elpub, 2007

This paper draws on the results of recent research into digital publishing in Latin America sponsored by the European Commission's ALFA programme. It outlines the growth in publishing in the region. It aims to stimulate reflection on the impact of a system in which most of the publishing is supported by institutions rather than commercial companies, and considers authors' aspirations for their work to achieve recognition, attitudes towards peer review and other aspects of journal quality, the indexing and availability of full text journals, and the sustainability of institutionally supported publishing. Examples are drawn from publishing in the field of librarianship and information sciences on which the original research project was focused.