Open Access News

Gavin Baker will be blogging on open education and open access at Terra Incognita, the online education blog at Penn State University. 

Gavin will write about linkages between open access journal literature and open educational resources, arguing that free education needs free scholarship.

PS:  Gavin is sharp on these issues.  I’ll be tuning in.

Abstract:   This article statistically analyzes how the citation impact of articles deposited in the Condensed Matter section of the preprint server ArXiv (hosted by Cornell University), and subsequently published in a scientific journal, compares to that of articles in the same journal that were not deposited in the archive. Its principal aim is to further illustrate and roughly estimate the effect of two factors, “early view” and “quality bias,” on differences in citation impact between these two sets of papers, using citation data from Thomson Scientific's Web of Science. It presents estimates for a number of journals in the field of condensed matter physics. To discriminate between an “open access” effect and an early view effect, longitudinal citation data were analyzed covering a time period as long as 7 years. Quality bias was measured by calculating ArXiv citation impact differentials at the level of individual authors publishing in a journal, taking into account coauthorship. The analysis provided evidence of a strong quality bias and early view effect. Correcting for these effects, there is in a sample of six condensed matter physics journals studied in detail no sign of a general “open access advantage” of papers deposited in ArXiv. The study does provide evidence that ArXiv accelerates citation due to the fact that ArXiv makes papers available earlier rather than makes them freely available. 

PS:  I blogged the preprint of this article on November 15, 2006.

Peter Murray-Rust, PRISM: Open Letter to Cambridge University Press, A Scientist and the Web, September 1, 2007.  Excerpt:

I have sent the following letter to the Chief Executive of Cambridge University Press requesting factual information about the involvement of CUP in PRISM, and have asked that I can publish the reply on this blog Open Letter to Stephen Bourne, Chief Executive Cambridge University Press

Dear Stephen Bourne,

I am writing as an individual member of staff in [Cambridge] University (heavily engaged in developing new approaches to scientific scholarly publishing) to ask about CUP’s involvement with the recently launched PRISM initiative from the AAP. This initiative is an undisguised coalition to discredit Open Access publishing and its launch a few days ago has generated universal dismay and anger in many quarters including several outside mainstream publishing. The press release was reported in full by Peter Suber on his Open Access News blog where he has objectively answered and dismissed the basis of PRISM and its methods. As an example of the language of PRISM it implies that publishing in Open Access journals (as I do on occasions) is “junk science”. There is much more from PRISM which is both deliberately factually incorrect and misleading and I cannot see how a reputable scholarly organisation such as CUP could be associated with it. Indeed at least one similar publisher (Rockefeller University Press) writes:

“I am writing to request that a disclaimer be placed on the PRISM website indicating that the views presented on the site do not necessarily reflect those of all members of the AAP. We at the Rockefeller University Press strongly disagree with the spin that has been placed on the issue of open access by PRISM.” [rest of letter omitted here]

The purpose of my letter is simply to request factual information from CUP about its involvement with PRISM. Since PRISM itself has not reacted to any of the recent comment I can simply speculate that not all members of the AAP (perhaps including yourselves) were consulted before PRISM made its press release and new site. In particular it is unclear whether PRISM is de facto composed of all the members of the AAP or whether it uses their unsought goodwill to reinforce the apparent strength of the PRISM organization.

This mail is an Open Letter (posted on my blog) and I would intend to publish your reply in toto and unedited since your position (and those of similar publishers) is of great public interest. If there is anything you would not wish to be published, please indicate. Alternatively you may leave a comment on the blog itself. (My blog itself, though strongly advocating Open Access and particularly Open Data, attempts to be fair and accurate).

Comment.  These are fair questions well put.  I hope other researchers will send similar letters to their own university presses and to the publishers where they have submitted work and built up a relationship, at least when these publishers are members of AAP or (especially) members of AAP’s Professional/Scholarly Publishing division.  I suspect that AAP/PSP did not consult its members before launching PRISM.  But in any case the members should know that the launch of PRISM tarnishes them, alienates authors, readers, and referees, and, if successful, will only harm science by entrenching rather than removing access barriers to the results of publicly-funded research.

Stevan Harnad, Primer on Peer Review, Payment and Publishing, Open Access Archivangelism, August 31, 2007.  Excerpt:

As there is a concerted disinformation campaign now underway on the part of some (but not all) members of the Association of American Publishers (AAP), faithfully following the high-priced pit-bull script that AAP purchased from corporate image trouble-shooter Eric Dezenhall in January 2007 for the express purpose of combatting Open Access, I would like to bring some simple home truths to the attention of all interested parties (for free):

(1) Peer-Reviewed Journal-Article Authors Give Journals Their Articles for Free: No Royalties. The authors of peer-reviewed journal articles, unlike all other authors, donate their articles to journal publishers for free, allowing the publisher to sell their articles for a (subscription) fee that goes exclusively to the publisher: Not a penny of royalty revenue, salaries or fees is sought or received by these authors (or their funders, or their employers) out of the total income that their publishers earn from selling their articles. This is not "work for hire." ...

(2) Peers Review for Free. The peers who review the papers that these authors submit to journals likewise donate their expertise and time for free. Not a penny of compensation for their services is sought or received by the peer reviewers (or their employers) from the journal publisher....The peers' reviewing work and time are funded by salaries from their employers (mostly universities).

(3) Publisher Revenues from Institutional Subscriptions Are Currently Paying the Full Cost of Managing the Peer Review, Several Times Over. The cost of managing the peer review process is recovered by the journal publisher out of a small portion of the income earned from selling subscriptions to the paper and online edition of the journal (mostly to authors' institutions)....

These authors, however (who are also the peers, as well as the users, and whose progress and careers depend on the uptake of their research by other author/researchers) have never been satisfied with leaving their research accessible only to those users whose institutions could afford subscription access to the journal in which it was published. In the paper era, if a would-be user lacked subscription access, they would write to the author to request a reprint, which the author would then mail to the requester, at the author's own expense.

Then email made it faster and cheaper to send eprints to requesters by email. And finally the web made it possible to self-archive the eprint in the author's institutional repository....

But this is not what the anti-OA lobbying is about, because the proposed and adopted funder and university Green OA mandates can allow access embargoes....

The anti-OA lobbying is instead based on the remarkable (and alarming) claim that OA mandates will destroy peer review, and thereby scientific quality.

But just a little reflection should make not only the falsity but the self-servingness of this claim completely transparent:

(4) If Institutional Subscriptions Are Ever Cancelled, Peer Review Management Costs Will Be Paid Out of the Institutional Subscription Cancellation Savings. If and when institutional subscriptions were ever cancelled unsustainably as a consequence of Green OA, the cost of peer review could easily be paid for directly by institutions, on behalf of their employees, per paper submitted, out of just a fraction of the very same funds they have saved from their institutional subscription cancellations. All access and archiving would then be provided by the network of institutional OA repositories instead of the publisher, who would only provide the peer review. This is called "OA publishing" or "Gold OA." ...

Hence what the anti-OA lobby is actually worrying about is the loss of their subscription revenues, not the loss of peer review....

This is not about peer review at all, but about an industry trying to resist adapting to technological developments in the online era merely in order to maximize its own interests, at the expense of the public interest.

PS:  All of this is true and important.  For my own take on the same issues, see the lead article in the September issue of SOAN, to mail in two days.

Australia’s National Scholarly Communications Forum (NSCF) has released a report on its meeting, Improving Access to Australian Publicly Funded Research (Canberra, Australia, July 16, 2007).  (Thanks to Colin Steele.)  From the summary:

NSCF Speakers and participants emphasised, while acknowledging significant progress to date, the need for an increased openness of access to publicly funded research findings, (notably in research data and publications). Maximising the economic and social benefits of research and enabling innovation, depends upon the effective distribution of research outputs.

Policy-frameworks and focussed research are needed, however, to progress beyond a simple advocacy of accessibility. There is a need to focus strategically on the full life cycle of scholarly communications (Houghton Report 2006). The benefits of increased access to Australia’s wide variety of research outputs can only be realised through structured and widely understood policies, practices and support systems.

A key issue to be addressed is examination of the issues arising in the Australian settings of embedding the cost of disseminating research outputs within the total cost of the research process. Further research is required, in this context, on the impact on traditional publishing models of ‘open’ initiatives.

Institutional policies and practices are largely out of step with, or ignorant of, the potential of wider accessibility frameworks. Institutions need to build curation of their scholarly publications and research data into information strategies to enable their research to be disseminated for the greatest possible impact.

Attention also needs to be paid within universities to make open access alternatives effective and easy to understand and use for authors. A crucial issue in this context is an understanding of intellectual property and copyright issues and implementation of coherent and supportive policies.

Increasing involvement with the academic community at the individual and disciplinary level is essential. Researchers need to be aware of the opportunities offered by new scholarly commun ication frameworks.

Research evaluation and funding conditions are primary points of leverage. There is need to ensure the RQF, and other evaluative measures, support and encourage, rather than hinder, more open research communication.

A  ‘joined up’ and systematic national approach to facilitate cultural and institutional change should be enacted.  National and organisational incentives, including tailored disciplinary advocacy programmes, need to be developed. Projects such as the Dutch Cream of Science initiative should be considered in Australia. Open Scholarship Australia or AusOpen Access would be counterpart titles of overseas nationally focussed initiatives.

Conclusion.  Greater national collaboration and action is required by Government departments, universities, relevant industry sectors and Research Councils to ensure the effective implementation of open innovation and accessibility frameworks.

Also see Arthur Sale’s report of the same meeting (blogged here July 23, 2007).

Bob Ward, We ought to get all findings out fast, Times Higher Education Supplement, August 31, 2007 (accessible only to subscribers).  An argument against the Ingelfinger Rule.  (Thanks to Colin Steele.)  Excerpt:

...Whatever the advantages of preventing disclosure of results before they have undergone peer review, it is less clear what public benefit there is to delaying media coverage of a paper once it has been accepted for publication. Preparing a paper for appearance in a journal once it has cleared peer review depends on the volume of work and the resources available to the publisher. The length of delay also depends on the publisher's schedule, which takes account of marketing priorities. Journals like to publish at regular intervals, with batches of papers of roughly the same size. An article can take longer to appear if it is stuck in a queue.

But another decisive factor is that most journals want to gain publicity for themselves through media coverage of the papers they publish. If an author talks to journalists about his or her paper once it has been accepted but before it has been published, there is a danger that the publication will not receive a credit in any resulting media coverage. And these days, many publishers believe that media coverage increases demand for their products and hence boosts their income.

As a result, there is often a gap of many weeks or months between the date on which a paper is accepted and the date on which the media are able to report its existence. In the case of research that might influence the behaviour of policy-makers, businesses or citizens, this delay might mean that decisions are made without crucial information that would be otherwise available if it were not for the marketing strategy of a journal. In such cases, enforcement of the Ingelfinger rule creates a conflict between the interests of the journal and the public.

It does not have to be this way. Members of the public do not need a paper to be in its final published form before they learn of its contents. Journal papers are often too technical and jargon-laden for a layperson and frequently omit a proper discussion of implications for the public. Journalists really need access only to the authors, and perhaps the manuscript, to prepare a full and accurate report. There must be a case for journals to set aside their marketing interests to promote the public interest by making manuscripts available as soon as they are approved for publication. This would finally loosen the steel grip that Franz Ingelfinger is still applying nearly three decades after his death.

The University of California has released an extensive study of UC faculty, Faculty Attitudes and Behaviors Regarding Scholarly Communication: Survey Findings from the University of California, August 2007.  Also see the executive summary, the survey instrument, and today’s announcement from John Ober, Director of UC’s Office of Scholarly Communication.  From the executive summary:

There is limited but significant use of alternative forms of scholarship, with 21% of faculty having published in open-access journals, and 14% having posted peer-reviewed articles in institutional repositories or disciplinary repositories. Such publishing appears to be seen as supplementing rather than substituting for traditional forms of publication. Furthermore, the large majority of faculty authors readily cede their copyright rights to scholarly societies and to commercial publishers. However, 7% of faculty authors have modified the copyright terms of a publication contract, and 4% have refused to agree to terms and thereby have forgone the opportunity to publish in a significant journal....

Furthermore, UC faculty appear to believe that nearly all published materials eventually appear online through the efforts of publishers or aggregators, and are accessible to almost anyone on the Internet. Such is not the case, however, as many published materials are legally accessible only by subscription or with the explicit author/institutional act of alternative or supplementary dissemination. These misconceptions may well stem from the UC faculty’s access to an unusually rich set of subscriptions and resource-sharing services managed by the University’s libraries....

In May 2006, a special committee of the UC Academic Council proposed that faculty routinely grant to the University a limited, nonexclusive license to place their scholarly publications in a noncommercial, publicly accessible online repository.  Under the proposal, granting this license would be the default situation, but faculty could choose to opt out. Despite full faculty governance review and discussion, the survey revealed that the vast majority of the faculty was unaware of the proposal. Asked to opine, based on a short précis of the proposal, 50% of the respondents expressed [word missing?]; support was tempered by concerns about implementation and impact....

Approximately two-thirds of faculty respondents reported being aware of or knowledgeable about open-access journals and repositories of open-access content. Faculty appear unwilling to undertake activities, such as forcing changes on publishers, that might undermine the viability of the system or threaten their personal success as traditionally evaluated....There is no dominant view about the potential impact of open-access publishing. However, a number of free-form comments highlighted concern that new forms of scholarly communication might come at the expense of existing publishers. For example, with regard to open access, some respondents voiced concern that it would undermine the financial viability of societies or commercial publishers, or that new payment models might simply shift the cost burden from institutions to individual faculty authors....

Consistently throughout the survey’s free-form comments, faculty indicated that they want to preserve the quality of published works, regardless of the form or venue. Many respondents voiced concerns that new forms of scholarly communication, such as openaccess journals or repositories, might produce a flood of low-quality output. Faculty showed broad and strong loyalty to the current peer-review system as the primary means of ensuring the quality of published works now and in the future, regardless of form or venue....

[In addition to] the lack of faculty knowledge about the potential change in University policy (mentioned above)...respondents were overwhelmingly unaware of eScholarship services, a University-wide set of tools and electronic publishing services for enabling the electronic creation and dissemination of published and unpublished works. This is an interesting contrast to the relative success of eScholarship, as evidenced by the significant quantity, quality, and regularity of contributions and the heavy use that content receives....

Comment.  As I said about an earlier study:  “All the fears or reservations documented by this study can be answered.  But it reminds us that we still have a long way to go in educating authors.  If we distinguish obstacles from objections, this study is all about obstacles, and none of the obstacles amounts to an objection.”  To repeat:  We still have a long way to go in educating authors.

Update. Also see Chris Armbruster's comments comparing the results of this survey with the results of a July 2006 Berkeley survey. "While [the 2006 study] interprets its findings...as indicating that academic values stand in the way of progress, the [new study] interprets its survey results as showing that institutional policies are the primary obstacle."

Update. The survey was conducted by Greenhouse Associates, which has posted five lessons it draws from the survey:

• There is a gap in scholars’ attitudes versus actual behaviors regarding where and how they disseminate their scholarly output. While UC faculty feel that the current scholarly communication systems need to be changed and updated, they generally conform to conventional behavior in their own chosen outlets, favoring traditional print journals over open-access journals or other alternatives. Lesson: Concern does not always translate into immediate changes in behavior.

• The current academic tenure and promotion system, which generally rewards faculty for publishing articles in well-established journals, impedes changes in faculty behavior. UC’s faculty consistently express concern about the existing promotion and tenure system, complain that it is not keeping up to date with new forms of dissemination, and say that the existing reward systems favor traditional publishing forms and venues. Lesson: The apparent advantages of new technology or other innovation do not always win out over established ways of doing business, especially when individual preferences may be subordinate to institutional rules.

• While faculty show interest in learning about dissemination modes occurring across the scholarly community, their awareness of alternative scholarly communication opportunities is generally low. Further, they express varying levels of concern about issues relating to commercial and society publishers, publishing costs, and copyright. Lesson: Where there’s smoke, there’s not necessarily fire. Despite an active dialogue in the press and on blogs about these issues, they are not yet part of the discourse among mainstream academic scholars.

• Despite widespread dissatisfaction with the current scholarly communications system, scholars are concerned about preserving their current publishing outlets, and few faculty members express willingness to engage actively in fomenting change within their academic institutions or academic societies or with commercial publishers. Lesson: Personal reward systems can be a strong factor affecting change.

• Senior faculty may be the most fertile targets for innovation in scholarly communication. Younger faculty, while likely to be more comfortable with new technologies, are less likely to adopt new forms of scholarly communication because tenure and promotion systems drive them to publish in traditional ways. Lesson: Even when a market (e.g., academic scholars) appears homogeneous, analyzing the market to understand different segments, their needs, and behaviors can yield important insights that are critical for fostering change (or marketing products).

Cornell University has revamped and renamed its institutional repository, and is using the occasion to remind faculty of its purpose and benefits.  (The old URL resolves to the new URL.)  From Bill Steele’s August 30 story in the Cornell Chronicle:

Not long ago, wandering into DSpace, Cornell's online digital repository, was like exploring that dusty room in the basement of the town library, full of zoning maps and town council minutes from the early 1900s. There were gems here and there, but you had to know where to look.

Now Cornell librarians have moved everything upstairs, dusted it off, put a new sign on the door and, most importantly, added a lot of new stuff. What once was known as DSpace has become eCommons@Cornell, an expanding repository for Cornell research and scholarship.

"It's important to have a place to capture, preserve and make accessible the digital output of the university," says John Saylor, interim associate university librarian for scholarly communication and collections and chair of the committee that overhauled DSpace.

eCommons can contain images, audio, video and datasets. Researchers and scholars can use the repository to post preprints of journal articles, supporting material associated with published articles, book chapters or anything else they want to make available. If necessary, some material can be posted with limited access. The repository is indexed by major search engines....

Saylor is working toward the mandatory deposit of graduate theses, which is currently optional for students. To date, 605 Cornell theses have been voluntarily deposited in eCommons....

Here are a few more recent comments on PRISM.

From Andrew Leonard at Salon:

How the World Works [Leonard’s column at Salon] has been hard on the commercial science publishers for their ham-handed efforts to equate public access to government-funded research with "censorship." So it's only fair to applaud a publisher who thinks that the stance of the American Association of Publishers (AAP) is just as ridiculous as we do.  [Leonard then reprints the public statement from Rockefeller University Press, dissociating iself from PRISM.] 

From Jonathan Eisen at The Tree of Life:

...I think academics and the public need to fight back against this attempt to mislead the public about the issues surrounding Open Access publishing. And one way to fight back is to recommend that the members of AAP drop out or request termination of the PRISM effort. So here is a list (see below for the full list) with links of the members of AAP. If you are involved or have connections to any of these groups, consider writing or calling them and suggesting they reconsider involvement in AAP. Look, for example at all the University presses. If they do not back out of PRISM we should consider launching a boycott of AAP members....

From Steve Mount at On Genes:

...The Association of American Publishers made a mistake by seeking to distort this debate. The AAP web site claims that the organization seeks “To promote intellectual freedom and to oppose all forms of censorship, at home and abroad.” Publishing is inherently about providing information, and it is not a field that naturally attracts people who prefer to win the debate than to find the truth. When the AAP hired this pit bull they were working against their own nature. They goofed. Like Michael Vick, they are free to change their ways. The pit bull can then go work for another client, one who has less to lose by offending those who care about integrity.

Finally, Andrew Walkingshaw has a point-by-point rebuttal to the PRISM page of Myth vs. Fact.

H-Net has posted a list of apparently 20 new OA journals from Revues.org.  Not all are new to this blog, but here’s the entire list just the same:

Revues.org is the Web portal for more than 80 SSH [social science and humanities] online journals, partly or totally available in Open Access. You'll find below links to the newly online available journals on Revues.org....

• Anthropology of food
• Apparences
• Ateliers du LESC
• Cahier de civilisation espagnole contemporaine ...
• Cahiers de recherches médiévales
• Confins
• COnTEXTES. Revue de sociologie de la littérature
• Cybergéo, revue européenne de géographie
• Documents d’archéologie méridionale
• Les dossiers du GRIHL
• e-Spania. Revue électronique d’études hispaniques médiévales
• Féeries
• Géomorphologie : relief, processus, environnement
• Journal des africanistes 
• Métropoles
• Perspectives chinoises/China perspectives (also here) 
• Recherches sur Diderot et sur l’Encyclopédie
• Revue de la régulation. Capitalisme, institutions, pouvoirs
• Semen, revue de sémiolinguistique des textes et discours
• SociologieS

BMC has announced New additions to the Video Author Website.  Excerpt:

The BioMed Central author video website has recently been updated and offers the opportunity to watch and listen to pioneering researchers share their views on open access publishing and their experience of publishing in BioMed Central’s open access journals.

You can now view a video interview with Marcel Hommel, the Editor-in-Chief of Malaria Journal.  Discussing the necessity of Open Access publishing, Professor Hommel emphasises the importance of these publications for researchers in developing countries and the tremendous difference they have on their work. Marcel Hommel is a professor of Tropical Medicine at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine.

The website also features an interview with Michael Ashburner, Professor of Biology in the Department of Genetics, University of Cambridge.  Professor Ashburner discusses in detail the benefits and limitations of Open Access publishing, the major role in plays in developing countries, and contemplates on its future.

Dr. Tony Peatfield, Head of Corporate Governance and Policy at the Medical Research Council (MRC), also appears on the website. In his interview, Dr. Peatfield...explains how the MRC encourages its researchers to publish in Open Access Journals, in order to make the outcome of their research as freely available as possible....

Peter Brantley, Open Education Search, O’Reilly Radar, August 28, 2007.  Excerpt:

The Hewlett Foundation has announced that it is working with the Creative Common's ccLearn division to build a web search portal dedicated to open educational resources, with the assistance of Google. Organizations that sponsor repositories or collections of open educational materials are invited to submit information to CCLearn's OE Search project.

The initiative's goal is to build a comprehensive directory of open educational resources, encouraging their broader discovery and use. There are a large number of open content repositories, but they have been difficult to find in larger, more aggregated search tools, their riches often lost in the forest of commercial or deep web results....

Update. Also see the UNESCO press release, September 3, 2007.

Peter Murray-Rust, Open Access to Research Data: surmountable challenges, A Scientist and the Web, August 30, 2007.  Excerpt:

This is the abstract I have submiitted for the Berlin-5 meeting: Berlin 5 Open Access: From Practice to Impact: Consequences of Knowledge Dissemination

Open Access to Research Data: surmountable challenges

Many scientists and organisations have recognised the power and importance of “Data-driven Science” where existing data is a primary resource in scientific research. In some communities (astronomy, particle physics, and some biosciences) this type of work flourishes and the primary challenges are technical - size, complexity, metadata, automation, etc. In many fields however, and almost all multidisciplinary endeavours the major obstacle is finding scattered, heterogeneous data. Many of the data first occur in scholarly publications and, while they can be interpreted and understood in low volume by humans, are poorly presented for re-use by machines. As an example, over 1 million new chemical compounds are published yearly, but are scattered through hundreds or thousands of journals.

In principle this could be solved by robotic indexing and the use of search engines. In chemistry, for example, we have developed text-mining techniques which can recognise as chemicals over 80% of terms in mainstream publications, and identify a similar percentage. Our tools could rapidly index the scientific chemical web and add significant semantic value.

The biggest problem, however, is that many publishers forbid or obstruct this activity. Most chemistry journals are closed and thereby immediately inaccessible to many. Even for subscribers there are usually lengthy licences which are fuzzy and difficult even for experts to interpret. There is an imbedded fear of offending publishers’ conditions either because of breaking copyright (even unintentionally) or being cut off by the publishers machinery (anecdotally very common). Many publishers specifically forbid robotic indexing.

The problem is solved for any “Open Access” publisher that adopts the spirit of the BBB declarations. Taken logically BBB requires that all content can be indexed and downloaded without permission. Unfortunately many publishers use “Open Access” but decorate their web site with additional licence conditions which are logically and ethically incompatible.

The label “Open Access” is a weak tool when describing access to, and re-use of, data. I and others have promoted the term “Open Data” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_data and references therein) to describe the need to consider data as a critical resource which needs political and legal activity. The use of Creative/Science Commons licences is extremely valuable but will need refinement as the principles of Open Access and Open Source do not translate automatically to data.

I shall give demonstrations of Open Data resources and outline some of the issues that the scholarly community must address rapidly if we are not to be impoverished by the “land grabbers” in the digital dataverse. We need a radical rethink of conventional information protection and need to be braver and more outspoken.

Brian Vickery, PRISM Bends the Truth, as well as Light, BioMed Central blog, August 30, 2007.  Vickery is the Deputy Publisher of BioMed Central.  Excerpt:

...Ahead of an upcoming vote in the U.S. Senate that would require open access to all National Institute of Health funded research within 12 months of original publication, lobbyists for traditional publishers fearing change are again engaging in a mudslinging campaign against advocates of all forms of open access....

The press release to launch PRISM uses emotive terms such as “safeguard peer-review,” “scientific integrity,” and “government interference”. The evidence that open access to scientific research does not harm the peer review process, compromise the integrity of research through government censorship, and certainly doesn’t only cater to “junk science,” is so well established that it merits no further defense.

Last year, however, Eric Dezenhall (“PR's pit bull”), advised the AAP “to equate traditional publishing models with peer review,” i.e. to say that peer review, the cornerstone of scientific research, is under attack or prone to deterioration by open access publishers, and that only traditional publishing models can somehow be used to preserve and defend it. It should be noted that peer review is practiced as stringently by open access publishers as it has always been throughout the history of scientific publishing. As a result, impact factors for open access journals continue to increase annually, speaking to the sound nature of the research featured in those publications. BioMed Central’s Malaria Journal, for example, was recently determined by Thomson Scientific to be the number one journal in the field of tropical medicine. This accomplishment would not have been possible without the most disciplined attention to peer review....

The real goal of PRISM seems to be protecting publishers’ perceived entitlement to copyright the research results of authors they publish (a standard practice in traditional scientific publishing) which gives the publisher the right to erect cost barriers in exchange for access to results (otherwise known as a subscription model). These subscription barriers are counter to PRISM’s desire to “share as much scientific and medical information as possible with the entire world.”

PRISM suggests that open access “would jeopardize the financial viability of the journals that conduct peer review, placing the entire scholarly communication process at risk,” because the publisher can no longer recover their costs and make large profits through subscriptions. But the viability of these journals is only possible because the market is broken, and the library community is held over a barrel and forced to funnel vast amounts of money into them through subscriptions.

Under open access, the intellectual property rights rest with the author under a Creative Commons license, the publisher provides a service (submission/tracking systems, peer-review, XML markup/PDF creation, marketing, customer service, distribution and archiving) for which the publisher is paid, and the research output is made freely available.

What PRISM truly represents is an entrenched industry still attempting to hold at bay the disruptive effect of 21st Century communications. In the same way that the music industry was forced to adapt to iTunes, and cinema and television had no choice but to use sites like YouTube to their advantage, so will the scientific publishing industry have to eventually determine a way to use today’s technology to its advantage. Anything less than a commitment to this principle is to the detriment of scientific discovery and the global public, which stands to benefit enormously from greater access to publicly-funded research.

Prisms have a wonderful ability to take in a uniform band and split it into its constituent parts. Let’s hope the increasing criticism over the launch of PRISM does a similar job of fragmenting this coalition, and exposing their true colors.

There’s a good blog discussion taking place about the accessibility of Samir Chopra and Scott Dexter’s new book, Decoding Liberation: The Promise of Free and Open Source Software (Routledge, August 14, 2007).  Understandably, the authors and their audience would like it to be OA or published under some flavor of open license.  The book is neither, although Chopra and Dexter did ask Routledge for an open variation on the standard license and were turned down. 

The discussion started with a blog post by Biella Coleman, announcing the book’s availability.  A growing number of comments on the post (now up to 23) discuss the access and licensing question.  Then separate posts by Chopra and Dexter (one, two) explain what they wanted and what they tried.  At a third blog, ACRLog, a post by Marc Meola launched new discussion yesterday.

Comments 

• I’m sympathetic:  I also have a Routledge book that Routledge will not allow to become OA, even now, nine years after publication.  One year after publication (1999) I got permission to provide OA to the preface and introduction.  Six years after publication (2004), when the OA edition of Lessig’s Code came out and more monograph publishers were experimenting with dual editions, I asked Routledge to try its own experiment and volunteered to let it use my book (thinking it might have difficulty finding a Routledge author willing to put his/her royalties at risk).  But I was turned down again.  One mitigation is that my book has a paperback edition, and so far Chopra and Dexter’s does not. 
• There’s a good reason why the OA movement focuses on literature that “scholars give to the world without expectation of payment” (as the BOAI put it) —in short, journal articles rather than books.  The economics are easier, and the legal prerequisites, in author and/or publisher consent, are easier.  I’m one who would still like to see OA to royalty-producing monographs, and I believe that many authors and publishers can be persuaded that the benefits outweigh the costs.  (Dexter quotes my thoughts on this in one of his posts.)  But it’s important to remember that OA to royalty-producing literature is higher-hanging fruit than OA to royalty-free literature.  It’s also important to remember that book authors have fewer OA options among prestigious publishers than authors of journal articles, and face much longer turn-around times in between submissions if they decide to make the access conditions a deal-breaker. 

Daniel Griffin, Learned Publishing journal to experiment with Open Access trial, Information World Review, August 30, 2007.  Excerpt:

The Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers (ALPSP) is to trial a hybrid Open Access business model on its Learned Publishing title. Dubbed ALPSP Author Choice, contributing authors to the journal will be able to make an online version of their article available for free. However, the authors will face a fee of £1,250 ($2,500) for using the service, for non-members of the ALPSP the cost rises to £1,500 ($3,000).

ALPSP say they are testing a hybrid model to “see if it provides a viable way of sustaining the costs of peer review, editing and other aspects of journal publication,” Learned Publishing already operates a delayed Open Access model which allows free online access of papers after an initial 12-month wait.

Ian Russell, CEO of ALPSP, explained the organisations reasons for this latest move, he said; “Many of the over 350 members of ALPSP are trialling open access business models for their journals. We have always supported the need for serious debate backed by experimentation in order to help determine the effects, both positive and negative, of Open Access.” ...

The trial period will run for 12 months, once that time frame has elapsed the ALPSP Council will review the success of the model as well as the level of current subscription rates.

Adding to Russell’s comments, Sally Morris, Editor-In-Chief of Learned Publishing said, “Our journal carries many articles reflecting the great interest in the topic of Open Access. I am delighted that our publisher feels able to test the water itself, by launching an ‘Open Access choice’ for our own authors. We shall be monitoring author’s responses with close interest.”

Mike Rossner, Executive Director of Rockefeller University Press, has allowed me to distribute this version of a letter he sent the Association of American Publishers (AAP):

To the Association of American Publishers:

I am writing to request that a disclaimer be placed on the PRISM website indicating that the views presented on the site do not necessarily reflect those of all members of the AAP. We at the Rockefeller University Press strongly disagree with the spin that has been placed on the issue of open access by PRISM.

First, the website implies that the NIH (and other funding agencies who mandate release of content after a short delay) are advocating the demise of peer review. Nothing could be further from the truth. These agencies completely understand the need to balance public access to journal content with the necessity for publishers to recoup the costs of peer review. After extended discussions with publishers, these agencies have determined that delayed release of content (none of them are advocating immediate release unless publishers are compensated handsomely for such release) is consistent with the STM subscription business model, in which peer review is a basic tenet.

Second, how can PRISM refer to bias when the government is mandating that ALL papers resulting from research they fund be released to the public after a short delay? The major potential for bias by the government and other funding agencies has already occurred when they decide what research to fund (e.g., stem cell research).

Third, PRISM takes issue with government spending on a repository of papers resulting from government-funded research. The government has been forced into this position by those publishers who refuse to ever release most of their content to the public.

Fourth, PRISM maintains that published papers are private property. Most of the research published by STM publishers only exists because of public funding. No public funding - no research,­ no millions in profit. Publishers thus have an obligation to give some of their private property back to the public, on whose taxes they depend for their very existence.

Finally, we take issue with the title: Partnership for Research Integrity in Science and Medicine. The use of the term "research integrity" is inappropriate in this context. The common use of this term refers to whether the data presented are accurate representations of what was actually observed. In other words, has any misconduct occurred? This is not the primary concern of peer reviewers, who ask whether the data presented support the conclusions drawn. It is thus incorrect to link the term research integrity directly with peer review.

I could go on, but I think you will get the point that we strongly disagree with the tack AAP has taken on this issue. We urge you to put a disclaimer on the PRISM site, to make it clear that your assertions do not represent the views of all of your members.

Comments. 

• Rockefeller University Press is the first AAP-member publisher to publicly dissociate itself from PRISM.  Kudos to Rossner for taking this step.  I hope that other members of AAP, and especially members of AAP’s Professional/Scholarly Publishing division, will speak up.  Even those who share the AAP/PSP’s opposition to government OA policies can call on it to engage in a more honest debate. 
• If PRISM adds the disclaimer to its site, authors, readers, and subscribers will still want to know which publishers, and how many, dissent from the PRISM campaign.  I hope that a disclaimer doesn’t stop others from speaking out.  I’ll keep track of any that do here on OAN.
• Universities and libraries:  your subscription fees are paying for the PRISM campaign.  If you’re not happy about that, please ask other publishers to join Rockefeller. 

OpeningScholarship is a new project at the University of Cape Town, funded by the Shuttleworth Foundation.  From the web site:

The OpeningScholarship project explores the transformative potential of information and communication technologies in the context of the University of Cape Town, one of  South Africa’s leading research universities. Open Education Resources and Open Access digital publication offer wider and more effective dissemination of teaching and learning materials and research results among students and scholars, offering powerful advantages for a developing country. But the potential offered by new technologies reaches even further - the use of Web 2.0 interactive and social networking tools, supported by Open Source developments, are also creating new ways of tackling research, teaching and learning, as well as enhanced possibilities for ensuring that research impacts on the country's crucial development needs....

This year-long project commenced in 2007 and is funded by the Shuttleworth Foundation Interesting aspects from our investigation will be included in our project blog. Eve [Gray] will continue to update her Gray Area blog on Open Access issues in particular.  Ray [Steenkamp] will bookmark ongoing list of interesting Open Educational Resources and Open Access sites.

From Eve Gray’s announcement:

The OpeningScholarship project, with myself as the Strategic Project Director and Cheryl Hodgkinson-Williams as Research Manager, will explore the transformative potential of information and communication technologies in the context of the University of Cape Town, selected for this project as one of South Africa’s leading research universities....

Some of the research questions that we will be asking are:

• How can an institution such as UCT best build collaboration for scholarly communications across the institution?
• What could an ICT system such as that at UCT offer in terms of new and opened up communications in teaching, learning and research?
• How can the ICT systems that are in place help deliver much greater intellectual capacity, allowing the university (and by extension, the country) to rely on its own intellectual capital rather than on imported content? ...
• How can existing projects – both departmental initiatives and donor-funded projects - be coordinated to achieve an effective and collaborative institution-wide scholarly communication system?
• What policies and practices would need to be encouraged if the university is to achieve the maximum impact for its scholarly communications for research, teaching and learning, and outreach?

The intervention will aim to explore the potential of the full range of formal and informal communication strategies available to UCT in the 21st century, from formal scholarly publications to repositories, blogs, wikis, mobile technology, podcasts and video streaming....

Information World Review joins Free Our Data campaign, Free Our Data: the blog, August 28, 2007.  Excerpt:

We’re pleased to welcome our first official partner in the campaign: Information World Review, a VNU publication, has joined the campaign.

In a posting on the IWR blog, IWR’s editor Mark Chillingworth notes that

it would be great if Information World Review and its readers can be part of a campaign to make the information we already own more easily available.

IWR - motto “Information for competitive advantage” - is Europe’s leading newspaper for the information industry, covering both content and information management issues from the perspective of information professionals and managers responsible for intranets, extranets, portals and content management. It is circulated to information professionals, information managers and content managers working in corporations, consultancies, and public sector organisations in the UK....

A few more recent comments on PRISM:

From William Walsh at Issues in Scholarly Communication:

...Ellen Faran of the MIT Press, publisher of The Access Principle, among many other good things, is a current member of the Executive Council [of the AAP/PSP, which launched PRISM], as is James Jordan of Columbia University Press and Paula Barker Duffy of the University of Chicago Press.

Many of us recognize the challenges [university presses] face.  This was an honest attempt to address legitimate concerns; this is not.

From Barry Graubart at Content Matters:

...While some of the journal publishers, most notably Nature, have proven adept at navigating the new world of content, too many of the scientific publishers and aggregators have dug in their heels in an effort to keep the old system in place.  That system, using the research community for peer review, with all the revenues going to the journals, might have made sense when there were no alternative models, but clearly make little sense today.

It seems evident that the journal publishers are going to take the RIAA approach, hoping to use litigation and legislative lobbying, to try to protect their model.  That's a shame and in the long run seems unlikely to succeed.  It's ironic that these publishers of scientific journals seem to have missed the key element of Darwinism: Evolve or Perish.

From Adam Hodgkin at Exact Editions:

...[The publishers’] PR move has really just drawn attention to the impossible position they appear to be defending -- that it is a good and necessary thing for the results of publicly funded research not to be freely available to the public. Whatever you do, you dont want to appear to be arguing for that....

From Janet Stemwedel at Adventures in Ethics and Science:

...I'd be thrilled if this lobbying group would choose some word other than "Integrity" to fill in the "I" in their acronym. At least in the context of scientific practice, it's not clear that they understand what integrity means.

From John Baez and Blake Stacey at Science after Sunclipse:  For this one, you’ll have to click through to see the images.

John Blossom, PRISM Promotes the Interests of Scientific Publishers: Is it Better to Lobby or to Change? ContentBlogger, August 29, 2007.  Excerpt:

Wired Science has the most in-your-face coverage of the formation of PRISM, an advocacy group formed by scholarly publishers to stem the legislative movement towards free access to government-funded scholarly research. This in and of itself is not a surprise, but Wired claims that the site is an example of astroturf advocacy, meaning an organization that tries to position itself as a grass-roots movement when in fact it is created by others wanting to appear to have grass roots support. PRISM is the creation of the Association of American Publishers, so one assumes that the roots of this organization are more likely to grow in the yards of scholarly publishers than the scientists providing the research....

The primary problem with PRISM is that it seems to be advocating on a range of issues which, while valid in their own right, are more about fear, uncertainty and doubt - those familiar sales tools - than the real issues at hand....

[The claim that OA will undermine peer review] seems to be somewhat disingenuous, in that there may be alternative methods for supporting effective peer review that have not been explored by scientific publishers. Certainly a government-mandated publishing of research for free that doesn't take into account how that research is produced has the potential to be an unfunded mandate that could place an undue burden on scientific publishers. This is a real issue, but the answers to the issue may not lie with the government itself - they may lie with addressing how the peer review process is funded in general....

Surely politics should stay out of science, but there's no indication at this time that the government would have the ability to influence the peer review process politically through these proposed [OA] mandates any more than it does today....

If the purpose of PRISM is to convince legislators that there is an advocacy group that supports the publishers' goals then my sense is that they are going to fail. The site is not very convincing and lacks information about its supporters or any input from them that would influence people into thinking that there is a broad base of support for PRISM's views. PRISM does raise some important issues that need to be addressed in the rush to make access to government-funded research public, especially in how to support the peer review process realistically in an era in which public access to research is becoming a given. But the broader outlines of the solutions to many of these problems would seem to lie in how the scholarly publishing community has resisted changes in publishing technologies that disrupt their traditional business models.

With some added focus and some sponsorship of honest debate between government research sponsors, scientists and publishers PRISM may yet serve a positive and constructive purpose as an advocacy group. But if PRISM remains little more than an "astroturf" organization that defends the commercial interests of publishers then it's not likely to gain the needed respect from any of the parties that it needs to influence in this debate. Publishers in general are reluctant to engage their markets in a more conversational manner, but if scholarly publishers can position PRISM as a tool to build an honest conversation about the future of commercial and non-commercial scholarly publishing then they may be able to make some headway. At the moment I wouldn't bet on that happening, but you never know.

Stevan Harnad, Association of American Publishers' Anti-Open-Access Lobby: PRISM, Open Access Archivangelism, August 29, 2007.  Excerpt:

The Association of American Publishers (AAP) has launched "PRISM" (Partnership for Research Integrity in Science & Medicine), an anti-OA lobbying organization, to counteract the accelerating growth of OA and the dramatic success of the pro-OA Alliance for Taxpayer Access (ATA) lobbying organization in the US and the EC Open Access Petition in Europe.

See Peter Suber's splendid, measured critique of PRISM's statements in Open Access News (more to come in Peter's September SPARC Open Access Newsletter [SOAN]).

The blogosphere is also on the case. (See especially the brilliant caricature of the publishing lobby's arguments here.) Unlike the pro-OA lobby, which has a huge and growing public support base worldwide, the anti-OA lobby is up against the problem that it has neither a public support constituency, nor any ethical or practical case to build one on. It is simply an industry trying to favor its corporate interests over the public interest without quite saying so. Hence PRISM is now applying, quite literally, the "pit-bull" tactics recommended to them by the PR firm of Eric Dezenhall, namely, to pretend that OA (i) represents government interference in both the corporate sector and the research sphere and that it (ii) puts both peer-review and scientific quality at risk.

Although the bickering and blogging and spinning on this will be frenetic, the actual issues behind it are extremely simple: ...

(2) OA is therefore in the best interests of research, researchers, research institutions (universities), research funders (private and governmental), the vast R&D industry, and the tax-paying public that funds the research and the research institutions, and for whose benefit the research is being conducted.

(3) OA might, however, be in conflict with the best interests of the peer-reviewed journal publishing industry, as it might reduce their subscription revenues or even eventually force them to downsize and change their cost-recovery model from subscription charges paid by the user-institution to peer-review service charges paid by the author-institution. (So far none of this has happened, but with the growth of OA, it might.) ...

(5) Researchers' institutions and funders cannot mandate the transition of publishers to Gold OA, but they can mandate their own transition to Green OA.

(6) Hence it is these Green OA mandates, being adopted and proposed worldwide, that are the real target of the anti-OA lobby.

(7) The anti-OA lobby's argument against OA and OA mandates is that they represent (7a) government interference in private-sector industry and (7b) they will destroy peer-reviewed journals, peer-review, and the research quality that peer-review certifies.

(8) The reply is very simple:

(8a) Inasmuch as research is publicly funded, it is for the funders to decide the conditions under which that public money is spent;

(8b) it is also up to the universities to decide on the conditions under which their employees publish their findings;

(8c) peer review is done by researchers for free; publishers merely fund the management of the peer review process;

(8d) if and when subscription demand can no longer sustain the cost of managing peer review, that cost can be covered through a conversion to the Gold OA cost-recovery model, with the OA institutional repositories themselves providing all the access and the archiving, and the Gold OA journals merely managing the peer review and certifying its outcome with their name.

That's all there is to it: The online era has made possible an obvious benefit for research, and the publishing lobby is trying to resist adapting to it. What needs to be kept clearly in mind is that research is not conducted and funded as a service to the publishing industry, but vice versa.

Fortunately, the very openness of the online era is to the benefit of the pro-OA lobby, as the specious arguments of the anti-OA lobby can be openly exposed and answered rather than being left to be voiced solely in closed corridors (lobbies), where their obvious rebuttals cannot be promptly echoed in reply....

Update. See Daniel Griffin's story in Information World Review based on Stevan's blog post.

Klaus Graf, Urheberrechtsnovelle - Implikationen für die Wissenschaft, H-Soz-u-Kult, August 29, 2007.  Read the German or Google’s English.

In short:  German copyright law will change in late 2007 or early 2008, and authors will have one year to decide whether they want to own the exclusive electronic rights to their works published in Germany before 1995, or transfer the rights to their publishers.  If authors choose to keep the electronic rights, and tell their publishers within a year, then by law they will own those rights and may therefore authorize OA for those works.  If they don’t, then the rights will vest in the publisher.  Graf includes a sample letter to send to publishers to deny them electronic publishing rights.  The new rules apply to authors of any nationality who published with a German publisher before 1995.

Comments. 

• The issue is very similar to the one raised by New York Times v. Tasini in the US in June 2001.  (See my brief article on it from July 2001.)  Early publishing contracts were silent on electronic rights, and as the internet grew authors and publishers both needed to know who owned those rights.  In the US, the Supreme Court decided in favor of the authors.  Roughly:  if the contract didn’t expressly transfer electronic rights to publishers, then the rights were never transferred.  In Germany, the issue was decided by legislation and in nearly the opposite way.  The rights will go to the publisher unless authors expressly communicate their opposite desire to the publisher within a year. 
• If your rights are at stake, read the German law and don’t rely on my very imperfect paraphrase.
• Please spread the word to authors who might be affected.  It’s a shame that authors must act or lose rights that they never knowingly transferred.  But if they do act, they could authorize OA for an enormous body of copyrighted German literature.

Update (11/13/07). Klaus has updated his appeal and linked to some others who join him in making it.

Update (11/23/07). See Klaus' latest update and my own.

Clifford Lynch, The Institutional Challenges of Cyberinfrastructure and E-Research, Educause Connect, August 22, 2007.  An 80 minute podcast of Lynch’s keynote address the 2007 Seminars On Academic Computing (Snowmass Village, Colorado, August 8, 2007).

Abstract:   It has become clear that scholarly practice and scholarly communication across a wide range of disciplines are being transfigured by a series of developments in IT and networked information.  While this has been widely discussed at the national and international levels in the context of large-scale advanced scientific projects, the challenges at the level of individual universities and colleges may prove more complex and more difficult.  This presentation will focus on these challenges, as well as the development of truly institution-wide strategies that can support and advance the promises of e-research.

Jeffrey Brainard, NIH Releases Final Policy on Centralized Database of Human Genetic Data, Chronicle of Higher Education, August 29, 2007 (accessible only to subscribers).  Excerpt:

The National Institutes of Health announced on Tuesday the final version of a policy governing a powerful, central repository of human genetic data that the agency will establish for the study of diseases.

Among other provisions, the policy will give scientists who contribute data to the repository exclusive rights for up to 12 months to publish scholarly analyses based on the data.

In other respects, the final policy, published in the Federal Register, is similar to a draft version published last year for comment (The Chronicle, August 31, 2006). The agency said it received nearly 200 comments, a large response reflecting controversy over some aspects of the new database, including privacy protections and controls over publishing and intellectual property.

The NIH and biomedical researchers are viewing the database as a promising tool that will help bring about the next phase in the development of medicine: new understanding of the contribution of genes to many common diseases. Scientists have already begun such research using smaller databases. Such work aims to correlate, for example, conditions like heart disease and diabetes with variations in particular genes.

The success of such studies, called genome-wide association studies, depends on having data from large-enough populations to yield statistically significant results. The NIH's data repository will allow the pooling of smaller databases containing similar information. Scientists financed by the agency to conduct such studies will be required to contribute their data to the repository....

The agency will also require scientists who want to study the database to agree not to publicly distribute it. Privacy advocates have worried that health insurers, for example, might obtain information from the database that identif