Six Elsevier physics journals have adopted the Sponsored Articles programme, which allows authors to pay a fee to ensure that their article is available for free on the Elsevier online service ScienceDirect. Only articles that have already been accepted for publication will be offered the sponsored option.
Nick Fowler, director of strategy at Elsevier, is adamant that Sponsored Articles is not a form of open access or a U-turn by the company. Sir Crispin Davis, Elsevier chief executive officer, fully backs the scheme, Fowler said. “Davis is explicitly opposed to the author-pays journal model because if you are an author and you submit an article and I’m editor, who knows I’ll get paid if I accept your article.”
Elsevier is now looking to open up a debate on how the different access models are described. “We believe that Sponsored Articles is an accurate title. Open access is a confusing term that is used to describe four different models,” he said. Fowler believes that using the term OA to describe author pays, delayed open access and open archives is confusing.
The information industry has welcomed Sponsored Articles, but cynically believes it is only a response to the particle physics centre CERN adopting open access. “The timing of the announcement and the subjects they have chosen is too much of a coincidence,” said Fred Friend, JISC scholarly communications consultant. Jan Velterop, director of open access at STM rival Springer, agrees with Friend on CERN, but added: “That Elsevier is experimenting with new models is a good thing.”
Comments.
This article is a bit behind. Elsevier's sponsored-journal program began with six physics journals, but yesterday expanded to 34 journals in a variety of fields including biology, medicine, computer science, and mathematics.
Nick Fowler and Crispin Davis are confusing OA, which is a kind of access, with certain editorial practices designed to prevent author-side fees from corrupting editorial judgment. Elsevier has a good firewall in place to insulate editorial judgment, but so do OA and OA-hybrid journals that faced this problem long before Elsevier. Elsevier is still accepting payments from authors (or author-sponsors), which is exactly what it criticized many OA journals for doing. If the Elsevier sponsored journals are not OA, it's because authors still have to transfer copyright and users still face needless permission barriers, not because Elsevier has a good editorial firewall. Elsevier's attempt to redefine OA journals as those without a good firewall is false, self-serving, and unnecessary.
I have no problem with Elsevier's desire to shun the term "open access" or to use the term "sponsored articles". But "open access" is a kind of access, not a kind of business model or editorial practice. The fact that Elsevier's business model and editorial practice differ from those of some OA journals is not itself a reason to pick a new term even if there are other reasons to do so.
Posted by
Peter Suber at 7/19/2006 07:54:00 AM.
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.
I recommend the OA tracking project (OATP) as the best way to stay on top of new OA developments. You can read the OATP feed on a blog-like web page or subscribe to it by RSS, email, or Twitter. You can also help build the feed by tagging new developments you encounter.
