On November 4, the International Association of Scientific, Technical, and Medical Publishers issued a statement on open access. The group includes all the major commercial publishers of scientific journals, such as Elsevier, Wiley, Springer, Kluwer, and Blackwell. The statement affirms that "broadening and ensuring continuity of information access for researchers, scholars, and practitioners is a critical mission for all publishers" and that "[a]s publishers of science, we naturally look forward to any new experiments in our field." So far, so good. But it argues that "[s]cientific research has never been more accessible than it is today," as if high-priced accessibility answered the need for access, and as if wider access (of any kind) were a reason to stop short of open access. But here's the key passage:
Abandoning the diversity of proven publishing models in favour of a single, untested model could have disastrous consequences for the scientific research community. It could seriously jeopardize the flow of information today, as well as continuity of the archival record of scientific progress that is so important to our society tomorrow.
It is the competitive and well-functioning market, and not governments, that must choose which business models and which publishers are best equipped to stay apace of the ever-increasing demand for information exchange.
A few quick replies. (1) It's wishful thinking to call the open-access model "untested". OA archiving has been phenomenally successful for over a decade, longer than the web itself has existed, and OA journals are nearly as old. It is being tested around the world right now in every discipline. (2) The current "proven" publishing model has been proven to be dysfunctional. It is based on unsustainable price increases that have outpaced the rate of inflation for over thirty years, and has made the STM publishers more resented by their customers, the academic libraries, than nearly any other vendors of any other product. (3) It is the current, unaffordable, unsustainable model that "could seriously jeopardize the flow of information today", and that already limits the exchange of information on which research depends. (4) The statement draws a false contrast between competitive markets and government action. The scholarly journal "market" is already permeated by government involvement, since it is based in large part on tax deductions for universities and their libraries and government grants for research.
Posted by
Peter Suber at 11/08/2003 07:37:00 PM.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
