Open Access News

On Oct. 6, the millionth scholarly journal article was made freely available to users worldwide by publishers hosted by HighWire Press, a division of the Stanford University Libraries and Academic Information Resources. HighWire is the largest archive of free, full-text, peer-reviewed research literature, and the million-article milestone culminates a decade of collaboration among scholarly publishers, libraries and the research community for the common good. "Stanford started HighWire in 1995 with two aims: to help nonprofit and responsible scholarly publishers compete as publishing entities in the Internet age, and to improve access to scholarly information," said Michael A. Keller, university librarian and publisher of HighWire Press. "A million free full-text articles on our servers comprise a strong validation of this effort and testimony of the importance of responsible, not-for-profit, scholarly publishers in the information economy." As the online host for more than 800 scholarly journals, HighWire Press has championed free access to both archival and recent journal articles for scholars and the public alike since its founding. The publishers of more than 230 journals have made back issues freely available. Most of these journals make their content free on a rolling one-year basis or sooner; some allow articles to be viewed immediately on publication....

Access to journal articles that report research results has been a controversial topic in recent years. Debate has focused in part on changes in the commercial publishing industry, including consolidation of producers, proliferation of journals and large subscription cost increases for institutions. Scholars, librarians and funders of research have raised concerns that institutional subscriptions have grown too expensive overall, resulting in subscription cancellations and inadequate access to the results of research for scholars worldwide. Among them are advocates of the open access movement, who favor alternative business models for publishing research funded by public agencies. Some scientists have called for an overhaul of scholarly publishing with so-called "author-pays" systems, which other scientists and librarians fear may destroy the financial basis for branded, reputable, edited and authoritative journals published by scholarly societies. "The million articles in the HighWire Free Back Issues Program demonstrate that there is a third way between the extremes of prohibitively expensive publication and immediate, unmediated posting of content direct to the open web," said John Sack, director of HighWire Press. "New business models will likely emerge but must be seriously tested over time, not only evangelized, before we can accept as demonstrated fact that they meet the needs of research and society. We and the publishers we support are testing new models continuously; this experimentation includes open-access journals, 'open choice' decisions by individual authors, author manuscript publishing, free access to developing countries and to patients, as well as other models that address access problems and take advantage of the opportunities that the new technology allows."

(PS: Some HighWire content is free online and some isn't. The press supports the access policies adopted by its participating journals. Therefore, it's true that HighWire is a third way between no-OA publishers and all-OA publishers. However, it's misleading to say in the same context that HighWire is "a third way between the extremes of prohibitively expensive publication and immediate, unmediated posting of content direct to the open web." That gives the false impression that OA is all about "unmediated posting of content direct to the open web" --i.e. that OA journals are not peer reviewed or that OA advocates recommend bypassing peer review. OA is not about bypassing peer review. It's about the free online dissemination of peer-reviewed research.)