Published literature is not free. To be more precise, the process of turning your treasured manuscript from a Word document (LaTeX nerds can shut up right now) through peer review, editing, XML-ification, whatever, to what you hold in your hand or see on your screen costs money.
Even if the peer review process is performed by volunteers, someone has to spend time deciding to whom your manuscript is going to be sent; chasing the reviewers and collating the reports. Not to mention the organization that has to exist, the necessary infrastructure.
Online-only journals obviously have (effectively) zero marginal costs, but the overheads are significant: storage and high speed ‘net access still don’t come cheap, and you probably want to pay a database manager and someone—several someones—to look after the website. And that is in addition to actually making manuscripts readable (have you seen the preprints, or the ‘accepted for publication’ stuff that some journals do? Double-spaced, unformatted references—and don’t even dream of hyperlinks—and all the figures at the end of the document, disparate from the legends).
So. Literature, even stuff that’s only half-usable, costs money—or someone’s time, which boils down to the same thing. I’m banging on about it because in much of the Open Access debate this simple but critical fact is often over-looked. The wild-eyed prophets want it all to be free, without realizing that this can not happen (at least, absenting a Star Trek economy).
Taking that as a given, the whole of Open Access hinges on a simple question: who’s going to pay for it?
The traditional publishing model says that you pay for the literature at point of use. In other words, reader pays. And, you know, that’s really not such a bad thing, is it? I buy milk and I expect to pay for it. You want the literature, you pay for it. But maybe that’s a bad example: milk is a commodity and it perhaps can be argued that scientific knowledge isn’t, or shouldn’t be. For the sake of argument, let us concede that scientific knowledge, for whatever reason, shouldn’t be commoditized.
But even if we do that, even if we don’t take publishers’ moral obligation to their shareholders into account, we still come up against the cost of production. Money has to change hands somewhere. So let’s say that the producers of the literature pay for it. Now, this is a little like saying the farmers should pay (net) to get their milk to us. Isn’t it? Well, maybe it is, maybe it isn’t: let’s assume, again for the sake of argument, that we want milk to be free at the point of use. Maybe we want to get it to poor people, or to somewhere remote (like Birmingham), so we have to subsidize delivery.
Or, just maybe, someone like the government decides that it is good for us to get ‘free’ milk. Except nothing, neither milk nor literature, is free.
In the UK, you don’t pay for healthcare at point of use—unless you really want to. You don’t pay for education (below tertiary level) at point of use—again, unless you really want to. It has not escaped my notice that the Left-Pondians are currently having a debate, largely along party political lines, about State-sponsored healthcare. Some say that you should pay for your own healthcare. Some say that if you get sick you should be able to get treatment without worrying about payment. Some of those in the first group pay for insurance and get really pissy at the thought of subsidizing, through taxes, the layabouts (and Democrat-supporters) who don’t have their own insurance.
Isn’t that the model of ‘author-pays’ Open Access? The Haves, effectively, pay for themselves and the Have-Nots. I pay my taxes, and when you get sick you get cared for. In return, you pay your taxes and I get treatment—and so do those who can’t afford it themselves. I produce the science, I write it up, and I pay for everyone to be able to read it. In return, I get to read what you’ve paid to publish; along with everyone in Birmingham.
It’s socialism, really. But please don’t think any scientific publishing model is going to come at zero monetary cost: we all know how well Communism worked out.
Great post, Richard. Saves me from having to bang on about it as usual.
I always enjoy listening to Americans protesting that the literature should be free because “their tax dollars have paid for it.” All of it, presumably — because of course everyone knows that only Americans do science.
Heh. Thanks Jenny.
And yeah, as you (I think) have pointed out previously, sometimes private corporations do, and publish, science.
And most charities are fueled primarily by philanthropy, not by taxes. In the UK at least, charities are a big funder of biomedical research.
Actually, that’s a good point. I wonder how many beneficiaries/supporters of biomedical research know that? Science communicators? It’s not just about understanding science, it’s about the funding. But that’s a blog post for another day.
Aside: is it just you and me on NN tonight?
Open Access is about free-to-read, not free from any costs.
There are a lot of myths about OA – see this rebuttal .
One thing that is different about scientific research papers, they are produced in order to be read, to be disseminated. Harnad calls it the “give-away literature”. The value added by the publishing process should not be at the expense of the function of the literature.
Absolutely, Frank. In Open Access Week, I wanted to ram that point home.
Damn. My enormously long comment probably has too many links in it.
Bum.
I’m sure it would have been worth reading.
Am I correct in my understanding of the above comments, that because charities support biomedical research, they would prefer their subsidies result in publications to which they have no access unless the subsidized researcher provides them with a copy directly? Why would they argue with their government making sure that not only the charity gets a copy, but also that any other researcher who might build on the work published therein can read it as well?
Am I correct in my understanding of the above comments, that because charities support biomedical research, they would prefer their subsidies result in publications to which they have no access unless the subsidized researcher provides them with a copy directly? Why would they argue with their government making sure that not only the charity gets a copy, but also that any other researcher who might build on the work published therein can read it as well?
‘Subsidies’? Sorry?
The charity is paying for the research and the publication whichever model of publication you use. It’s just that in non-OA they don’t get copies of the paper, although I suspect that they do, in fact.
Interesting parallel between health care and open access. Although don’t get me started on health care in the US…maybe it’s time to move to Canada.
Most charities only pay for part of any given research. Maybe the Wellcome Trust is an exception. But most everywhere else, the costs are borne also by universities, governments, and a number of smaller philanthropies, as well as by private corporations.
Usually all of the above organizations ask for reports that distill results of a paper into something accessible to laypeople. However, this sort of digest does not suffice to permit the sort of cross-pollination among researchers that open access can provide, and that I maintain is an added benefit of any charity’s underwriting of research.
Frank’s link is well worth perusing. I had finished my post-mistaken-temporarily-but-automatically-for-spam by asking exactly where you come across the wild-eyed prophets to whom you refer. Who really thinks that any human activity has no associated cost?
At the risk of troubling your metaphor, I wonder if we should ask who pays for the cattle feed?
In the case of governmentally funded science (which is rather a lot in the UK, and throughout the rest of the known world), and at the further risk of mixing metaphors, it are the government (the public) what pays. Twice. At least.
The government (public) gives cash directly to Universities, Research Institutes and public hospitals for teaching and research. These are the places where a large proportion of published research happens to be carried out. In the metaphor, the government subsidises the maintenance of fields, the training of farmers and primary production elsewhere that leads to cattle cake.
The government (public) also gives more money directly to researchers, to pay their salaries and research costs. Back to the metaphor: The government (public) pays the farmer for raising cattle and milking them. Or perhaps pays the cattle for eating publicly subsidised cattle cake.
Some private entrepreneurs may also be interested in investing in the dairy industry, hopefully speculating to accumulate, if they are to entrepreneu successfully. This may actually be where the for profit publishing houses fit in to the metaphor.
So, now the government, having decided that milk is a good thing for the public, has paid for the farm, cows, feed, machinery and a decent chunk of the farmers’ salaries. Why should individual consumers (the public, including the government and farmers) also have to pay above the cost price for access to the milk?
Or why should researchers, having had much of their training, research and salaries paid for by the public, have to pay more (via the public) to get access to that research? Why would we want to restrict access to something that has been decreed to be of public benefit?
Another problem with the dairy metaphor is the EU milk lake. Well, perhaps that’s not udderly relevant here.
Yes, ‘publishing’ science in journals costs extra. Few dispute that; unless you want to pick on those unfortunates who prop up straw men to tediously knock the straw crap out of them. With a little thought, however, public money could be saved and reinvested in publication schemes that don’t siphon off public money to pay private shareholders to benefit from overpriced access to information that the public paid for in the first place.
Did I remember to mention how the public were involved up there?
And another thing, journal publishing started as a service to science. It has changed into a highly commercial business.
We have to ask – are we being served? The answer seems to come from the OA publishers: “I’m free”
One could argue that scientific publishing is a bit like street lighting- it’s supposed to be a public good.
So one could imagine that the for profit publishers are like guys standing on long ladders up the light pole who supply the lightbulb and won’t turn it on unless you pay them to. This, despite the fact the lighting poll and the electricity are supplied by the government or some other body in order that it be available to the general public. Open access is simply paying another set of people to supply the lightbulb and make sure nobody is charging others for access. All the rest of the infrastructure has already been put in place why not just finish the job so anybody can use what they’ve already paid 99% of the cost for?
Hang on. Aren’t some of you saying that OA is free, in the same breath that you’re saying no one claims it is?
Maybe it’s too early in the morning to be talking about this. Frank — OA Publishers are not free: they are (or can be) a commercial for-profit organization like the toll access publishers. The first OA publisher certainly is.
Nathaniel, in your analogy someone still has to pay someone to turn on the lightbulb. It still costs money over and above the cost of the research. Open Access refers to whom you pay the money.
Mike, With a little thought, however, public money could be saved and reinvested in publication schemes that don’t siphon off public money to pay private shareholders to benefit from overpriced access to information that the public paid for in the first place you see, you’re not saving money by going OA. You’re simply making the information more available. In fact, you’ll probably spend more money by going OA (just like state health services are probably more expensive than privately-funded ones).
The only way, as I see it, to make OA even approaching ‘free’ is to have University Presses. The monetary value will be lower (but not nothing: see arguments about infrastructure above). But you then pay because you’re taking researchers’ time (and they are untrained and not professional publishers so it will take longer) — unless you do hire competent staff who will attract a reasonable salary.
I’m going to step back a bit and say that you need to think in terms of outsourcing. We have taken the decision to outsource publication because it’s easier and (probably) cheaper than doing it ourselves. Where we went wrong was by tying this to the subscription model rather than pay-to-publish.
The wild-eyed prophets are everywhere, and are usually immune to reason. You get them here (at NN), too. And I see that you’re all hung up on ‘public’ money, too.
Very interesting topic. I’m not all into it, but have heard the suggestion of University Presses as a way to get OA a fair amount of times, and am a bit confused about it. Is it something that could become a reality or just something thrown out there?
Would that imply that everything from one particular university would be published by said university? It would definitely lead to the problem of lack of filtering, like Martin discussed in his post on this subject . Or would these university presses still put your paper through the review process? (And if it did, and you got rejected, would that mean no chance of publishing?)
Richard:
I’d like it if some patient soul could actually direct us to figures relating to this sort of thing. How many Universities pay to access the research in Nature, Science and all the other journals we need to understand how we should advance knowledge? How much public money is used for this, repeatedly?
But this misses the truly important point – we all want access to as much information as possible. We may or may not be saving money with OA (an open question), but we are absolutely increasing access to resarch.
University presses are a reasonable idea in terms of reducing costs – some are/were very successful (Oxford, Cambridge, Princeton, Chicago). However, costs could easily be reduced further by centralization to avoid the inevitable repetition at small scales. This (at a national level) could simply be done by the funding bodies (that pay for all the research and infrastructure anyway) setting up their own journals and employing staff to run them directly. Some of the learned societies also used to do this (e.g., British Ecological Society journals), some still do.
The money that is ordinarily used (through overheads) to fund Uni Libraries and all their journal subscriptions (the cost of outsourcing) could be then redirected for funding body based publication costs.
What’s not to be ‘hung up’ about? Some might call it a moral responsibility. Especially those who directly receive public funds. We get narked off when politicians spend public money on cleaning their duckponds and naughty movies. Why not get hung up when it’s used to fund research no-one can physically access easily?
I think a University Press system that only published its ‘own’ papers would be unworkable and subject to abuse. Not to mention that not everyone who does research is in a University.
No, I’m talking about a UP-type system, in which the major institutions (and Research Councils: an MRC-LMB press, anyone?) publish papers from anyone who cares to submit to them. You’ll then, eventually, get certain of these presses taking the place of Nature, etc., and others being the _PLoS One_s of the publishing world. (Plus f1000 filtering everything too…) Of course you have to have peer review (pre- or post- publication, whichever).
You still need to fund it, though. It’s outsourcing brought back in-house, but there’s no reason it can’t run at a profit, which would be good for that Institution’s research, perhaps?
Or would these university presses still put your paper through the review process? (And if it did, and you got rejected, would that mean no chance of publishing?)
I could imagine a review process based on modification instead of rejection or modification. In the first case the reviewers will suggest what it takes to make the publication acceptable for publication. Not whether it is good enough or not as is often the case now.
In that case there will always be a chance of publishing, although it might not always happen.
bq. The money that is ordinarily used (through overheads) to fund Uni Libraries and all their journal subscriptions (the cost of outsourcing) could be then redirected for funding body based publication costs.
Well, duh. That’s what I’m saying. It’s going to be the same money, spent in different ways.
I’m going to say this as clearly as possible:
Lots and lots of research is not publicly funded!
Let me turn this on its head. Are you happy for private corporations and people who don’t pay tax in your country to read research published under the OA model, but funded by your tax dollars?
(will you guys just let me finish my comments before commenting? KTHXBAI)
In that case there will always be a chance of publishing, although it might not always happen.
is that necessarily a good thing? There’s lots of stuff that shouldn’t get published, ever. There’s lots of papers out there now that I wish were never published…
There’s lots of papers out there now that I wish were never published…
Of course, but the reviewers at the university press could ask for experiments that make a manuscript acceptable, and of course it could well be that the authors cannot meet the demands.
Therefore they have a chance, since the paper is not rejected out of principle, but when the bar isn’t met, then there is no publication.
The university could determine where the bar lies for each discipline, field of research.
The university press then also gains the function of raising the level of research in general at a university.
Perfect system? No.
Could it work? I think so.
bq. I’m going to say this as clearly as possible:
You can shout as much as you like. But it would make your argument more robust if you’d please tell us what proportion of research, in the UK, USA, EU, China, wherever, is (and is not) publicly funded. Don’t need exact figures, but a proportion would be a good start.
bq. Of course, but the reviewers at the university press could ask for experiments that make a manuscript acceptable, and of course it could well be that the authors cannot meet the demands.
Hmm. While I like the way your evil, twisted mind works, are you seriously suggesting that the reviewers are from that University only? Or was that shorthand for ‘reviewers appointed by the University Editorial Board’?
(s/University/Organization/g; , naturally)
@Mike about a third according to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Research_funding.
Mark – you busy this afternoon? We’re having a symposium just along the road from you. Pop in if you’re interested in species interactions in a variable environment.
I think it is up to the University. There might be an alliance between several universities. There might be a collaboration between research groups in specific fields from many universities.
As long as it is representative for the community. That’s a valid criteria I think. Isn’t that what it is all about? Peer review. Peers. I’m sure some of these statisticians can calculate what is a fair representation of the community, or the peer.
I know of course that it is a crazy idea to build the peer review on objective rational criteria considering how the process works at the moment.
I think drawing reviewers from a limited set, a cabal if you like, in any discipline is a bad move. That’s not ‘peer’; it’s cronyism. At least, it’s probably no less susceptible to that charge than the current system.
If we’re going to rebuild according to objective criteria, I think we need to think a lot harder about it.
But they already draw reviewers from a limited set. I can’t remember where I heard it and I don’t know if it is true, but there was allegedly one journal which had used the same reviewer 100+ times in a year.
Even if this example is anecdatal, it seems true that it is mostly the same core group of reviewers that is asked to review papers.
(forgot)
I agree of course that more thought should be put into the process of objective thought.
Yah–there’s no point in replicating the system we’ve already got. The thing is, I think the present system in theory isn’t broken. In theory that journal could use any of thousands of reviewers (of course, we might be talking about a very very specialized field, but then I’d be surprised if there were 100 manuscripts in a year in that case).
OA Publishers are not free
Sorry, I was being a little flippant, and using a shorthand that I thought was understood by now. OA publishers provide scientific literature that free-to-read-at-the-point-of-use.
Sorry, I don’t have time to look up links right now (I have a meeting with MRC’s OA coordinator!). But look at the RIN site for stuff on costs of the different systems. Also the Houghton report (though that has been hotly contested by publishers). Much of the research does point to a system-wide saving under a full OA system. Publishers of the traditional variety deny this.
I’m not sure about figures on the proportion of published research that is not publicly funded. Perhaps Branwen could help.
There are still a lot of myths being peddled here – that link I posted earlier tries to lay them to rest.
I think part of the problem is that there’s too much shorthand.
So let’s say that the producers of the literature pay for it. Now, this is a little like saying the farmers should pay (net) to get their milk to us. Isn’t it?
I think farmers actually do pay to get their milk to us. That’s why so many dairy farmers are going out of business. This reminds me of the canonical Guide to Political Philosophy
Capitalism: You have two cows. You sell one and buy a bull.
Socialism : You have two cows. The government takes one away and gives you the milk.
Socialism (Nu Lab version): you have two cows. The government takes one away and sells you the milk.
Communism : You have two cows. The government takes them both away and gives you the milk.
Fascism: You have two cows. The government takes them both away and shoots you.
Trade Unionism: You have two cows. The Union takes them both away, shoots one, milks the other and then throws the milk away.
Moral: never have anything to do with cows. They only cause trouble.
Heh. I like that.
But they already draw reviewers from a limited set
Not in the journals where I’ve worked. That may also be anecdotal, but in my last stint we have a pool of about 2500. And believe me, those “same 100 people” you might ask are going to say no about 90% of the time – a journal would flounder without a pool of thousands.
University presses are a reasonable idea in terms of reducing costs – some are/were very successful … Some of the learned societies also used to do this (e.g., British Ecological Society journals), some still do.
I’d like to point out that the journals of learned societies and university often have as high or higher subscription costs than more commercial journals.
bq. I’d like to point out that the journals of learned societies and university often have as high or higher subscription costs than more commercial journals.
I’d just like to say ‘economies of scale’ and then run away.
In the old days, the Editor of Nature used to take a sheaf of manuscripts down to the Athenaeum and pass them round his mates. That constituted peer review (and not only that, some of the peers would have been Peers). Now we have a database of many tens of thousands of referees. True, in some specialized subjects the field narrows down a lot, but one is always on the lookout for new referees, and many busy PI’s
hide behindget their postdocs to help – the postdocs often having more, more recent, more relevant experience. And so the pool of referees expands.Richard, could feel the heat coming out of the screen! There seems to be some confusion on some basic points in the above, so in case there are some groups out there also fuming away …
Peer-review quality in journals isn’t tied to any one business model, i.e. OA, subscription, or the various hybrid models – there are examples of good and bad in all. Anyone involved with running a peer-review process knows how sophisticated and powerful it can be, and what it can at its best achieve. Unfortunately there are journals and editors –in all the business favours of journals – that give peer review a bad name. Some because they act inappropriately or unethically, others because they are thrust into editorial control of a journal when they have no experience and are given very little guidance. And even in the journals with the most rigorous peer-review systems, problems arise.
The only way, as I see it, to make OA even approaching ‘free’ is to have University Presses. The monetary value will be lower (but not nothing: see arguments about infrastructure above). But you then pay because you’re taking researchers’ time (and they are untrained and not professional publishers so it will take longer) — unless you do hire competent staff who will attract a reasonable salary. isn’t a true representation of university presses – most are highly professional organisations with highly skilled workforces, competing with other publishers in the market place for journals, books and other forms of intellectual content. They also, as all publishers who want to survive, have to invest heavily in infrastructure and keep abreast of new technological advances – these don’t come cheap.
_But they already draw reviewers from a limited set. I can’t remember where I heard it and I don’t know if it is true, but there was allegedly one journal which had used the same reviewer 100+ times in a year.
Even if this example is anecdatal, it seems true that it is mostly the same core group of reviewers that is asked to review papers._
I think drawing reviewers from a limited set, a cabal if you like, in any discipline is a bad move. That’s not ‘peer’; it’s cronyism. At least, it’s probably no less susceptible to that charge than the current system.
Most reputable journals have large numbers of potential reviewers on their databases and take great care in reviewer selection. The also monitor reviewer workload so as not to overload any single reviewer. Many of those reviewers are of course also being approached by other journals . If anyone is being asked to review 100+ times a year they are being massively overloaded and should protest. To give an idea of scale – last year we used 1169 different individuals, for 1200 manuscripts, from a database of 13,000 people, with any single reviewer doing no more than 5-6, most doing 1-3. If anyone is reviewing 100+, then they are also likely having too much influence in what a journal is publishing.
As long as grant funding, jobs and promotions are based on publication records- number and where work is published – it’s crucial that the people and organisations – currently journals – overseeing the peer- review process are totally impartial. Universities aren’t – they are competing hotly for funds, at both national and international level.
(sorry, meant to make a few brief points but they sort of grew)
Why are journals impartial? Aren’t they also competing for funds in one form or another? The funds to survive as a business organization or as an organization.
Thanks for that, Irene. All very valid.
I think, Mark, that the point is that journals are scientifically impartial. Unless you call wanting to publish good science ‘partial’. And of course they’re competing. That’s capitalism.
But we all know that capitalism doesn’t guarantee higher morals or ethical guidelines.
I’m not saying that journals are corrupted, but why assume universities are corrupted because they compete with funds (capitalism) when journals do the same thing.
I would rather assume that both organizations act in good faith and can do a similarly objective job and we can build on that if we would like to add a new publication model.
(shame) for funds, not with.
Is anyone assuming corruption? I must have missed something.
Oh, I don’t know. People sometimes ask me about the going rate to get a paper published in Nature. Of course, I always assume they’re talking about the author-pays model 🙂
You’re right, Mark, that journals are competing, but they’re generally competing for the best and most interesting research work, not funding, and they work hard to attract and keep good authors. They do have to have an income stream to survive, and where that comes from depends on the business model – from subscribers in the reader-pays model and from an author-side payment (which can come from a number of sources) in the OA model. There is also the world of ‘vanity publishing’.
To survive journals have to be read and cited. If the quality drops, readers drift away, citations drop and people stop submitting (especially as researchers are in some cases being put under pressure by their institutions to submit to journals with Impact Factors above a certain level), and even fewer people want to read the journal.
and what do you tell them, Henry? 🙂
@Irene, interesting link.
Do journals actually disappear a lot? I had a vanity project myself in PLoS One and I could only notice a constant increase in the amount of scientific articles in biological sciences and what seems a corresponding increase in scientific journals, most of which are of course of low impact.
@Irene – commercial journals also get income from advertisers, and from sponsorship for particular editorial features. These days, inividual subscription is a relatively small part of the income stream. When I joined Nature in 1987, when print was all that there was, we sold between 55,000 and 60,000 copies a week. Almost 22 years later, guess how many copies we print? Yes, between 55,000 and 60,000 a week. But many millions of people read Nature online at their institution through site licensing – and when they do this, they do it (almost) free at the point of use. In this way, Nature (and many other journals) are, in effect, open access, to the bulk of their readers.
@Richard – I tell them it used to be £20 a paper, but it’s gone up to £50 in used tenners with nonconsecutive numbers.
Richard,
We had a little technical snafu and the URL to my post on the Scholarly Kitchen changed to:
http://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2009/10/22/open-access-and-vanity-publishing/
Would you be willing to update your link?
Thanks,
Phil Davis
Fair enough, Henry. I’ll bear it in mind.
Phil, nice to see you. Thanks for the correction, I shall toddle and do that forthwith!
Um, Phil–care to confirm that?
In case anyone’s still paying attention, Phil’s link works.
Argh. But my comments don’t post, perhaps because of links. Or they post twice. If they ever re-appear, keep in mind the time-date stamps, because it will be odd otherwise as far as the conversation aspect is concerned.
perhaps your comments are not OA? You voted Republican?
grin
Heather. If M@’s about, he should be able to retrieve and re-post (as he did recently with one of mine on another thread) your missing comment(s) remotely.
I await, with breath bated.
Henry – yes, you’re absolutely right about journals having additional income streams, some coming from sponsorship and advertising. Unfortunately both are open to abuse, which is why there are guidelines in place. As has come to light recently, some of the sponsorship of ‘journals’ can be extreme!
Richard, the link to Phil’s Open Access and Vanity Publishing post has disappeared in my comment above, so here it is again.
That link is getting a lot of press here …
We hashed over some of these issues in “Bad Science World” a while back here.
Surprised to hear Jenny R say learned society journals were expensive. The ones I know about (mainly the Physiological Society’s ones) have the prices deliberately kept low. The last meeting I went to at which journal pricing was discussed opted unanimously against a “RPI-linked price increase” specifically because the point was not to maximize income – it was to maximize article scientific quality, and thereby reader numbers and citations of the journals.
I have the impression, though, that learned societies are tending to “out-source” journal production these days (and sometimes much of or all of the publishing process) – partly for economies of scale, and partly because that way the publishers take on promotion and marketing, which they have the expertise in. The Physiological Society, for instance, has outsourced its journal publishing for the last few years to Blackwell.
Of course, the pricing may owe a lot to the choice of publisher. The learned society owned journals are generally understood to be much cheaper than Elsevier journals – so perhaps the expensive Society journals are the ones that have been outsourced to Elsevier..!
One aspect of OA publishing that is not often discussed is that if everything goes full OA then journal income will likely drop and the learned societies that depend on journal profit to fund their activities will take a big hit. Given the amount of science stuff the learned societies do and pay for this is a real worry. A few years ago the Phys Soc and some other learned societies put this point to a senior figure at the Wellcome much associated with the OA movement. S/he responded:
– which was a little disappointing, to say the least.
I think one of the other “real world” problems with OA models, which someone already mentioned, is that it is very rare in academic labs that only one funder is funding a piece of work, with no other sources of income involved. This (single funder) seemed to be the assumption some of the funding agencies were making a while back. In my view this is completely unrealistic, and much more typical would be:
Now, obviously you could say that the project (RO1-type) grant that paid the postdoc should underpin the OA costs, but there was certainly a sense from some funders that they were experting that, if their money was paying the OA charges, then only their name would be on the paper as “supported by…” – which, as I say, doesn’t reflect how science is actually done, at least in the UK.
PS I should say that that “not my problem” response was what was said to have been the gist of what was said. Not a direct quote, I should make clear, and I wasn’t in the room at the time. Just thought I should clarify that for the lawyers.
Heh, nice smokescreen there, Austin.
Wow. There’s a lot to think about in there. The learned society owned journals are generally understood to be much cheaper than Elsevier journals wouldn’t be difficult. We all hate Elsevier, right?
The point about learned societies taking a hit, and that affecting their scientific activities, is well-made and something I certainly hadn’t considered.
The funding author thing… well, I think whatever we do we have to abstract the OA/toll access away from the source of the funding, because–as pointed out above–not only is most science not funded by public money, but it all gets too complicated!
In my (weak) analogy I never meant to imply that OA was free, Richard. I think I said you still have to pay extra for it in order that’s it is from then on supplied to all for no charge (05:34 UTC).
While I generally like this idea for a system it creates problems for me as an epidemiologist. So I’m certainly no OA evangelical. More than half of my work doesn’t come under a specified project for which a grant has been awarded with a budget line to pay for OA charges. I write a lot of papers for which there isn’t USD3K sitting around waiting.
So the problem with a full OA model is that some of these serendipitious off-shoot studies and ideas are not going to get published for lack of a budget to cover OA.
And what’s up with calling me Nathaniel? I feel like I’m in a Black Adder episode…
Surprised to hear Jenny R say learned society journals were expensive. The ones I know about (mainly the Physiological Society’s ones) have the prices deliberately kept low. The last meeting I went to at which journal pricing was discussed opted unanimously against a “RPI-linked price increase” specifically because the point was not to maximize income – it was to maximize article scientific quality, and thereby reader numbers and citations of the journals.
The goal of the society journals I’ve been involved with was to make money for the society, and the journals provided almost all of the society’s income. They weren’t concerned with the quality of the papers for their own sake, but only so that they could increase their impact factor so the product would be desirable so that their income stream wouldn’t flounder. (In this case, their main society activities was NOT papers, but in things like awards and student bursaries and networking events.) I expect that’s the case quite a bit of the time. I worked with society journals outsourced to one of the largest commercial publishers, and at price-setting time each year we followed the company’s suggestions for any subscription rises. The business was remarkably successful. In summary, I think there are different sorts of societies, and the journals they produce play different roles.
Right Nat (sorry) — I guess I wondered where the 99% was coming from. I guess some would argue that the money you already spend on subs would go towards author-pays OA.
Advertising. That’s the ticket.
Thanks Jenny. Very interesting to hear that the experience appears to vary so much between societies. The Journal of Physiology provides a lot of the Physiological Society’s income, to be sure, but never have I heard anyone, either at the Society’s Council or its Publications Management Ctte, say the goal was to make money for the Society. The goal was never anything but being the best specialist journal of physiology.
Of course, it is perhaps easier when you are talking about a journal that goes back to 1878, belongs exclusively to the society, has published a lot of seminal work over the years and maintains – I hesitate to say it – a pretty desirable Impact Factor (ducks to avoid flying bricks).
The J Physiol and Exp Physiol “archives” are full OA. The subscription “embargo” on new content is a year, thereafter all OA. Since the Phys Soc journals have “citation half lives” of 5-10 yrs, most of the people that cite the stuff in there would have been able to get it OA. So the costing set-up is a conscious compromise between open access and making SOME money to fund the Society’s other activities – but the core purpose of the journals is never in question, even when discussing pricing.
My pet hate in online journals is the paywall-ing of OLD content, BTW. I also think it is counter-productive, as I reckon it means almost no-one will ever read it. Delving around in historic journal online archives can be great fun. For the Phys Soc ones I actually do a regular “hundred years ago” column for the Phys Soc magazine Physiology News (plug plug), where I pick a paper / journal issue from exactly a century ago and write about it. That is where I came across the GR Mines paper I wrote about on your self-experimentation thread.
On the funding question, can I raise a point of information? The figure of one third of research being publicly funded from the wikipedia link mentioned above is from a statement pointing out that most R&D is done by industry or commercial organisations. But presumably most of the latter research is never published.
If we consider only the output which ends up in the scientific literature, is is fair to say that most of it is publicly funded? Within public funding I would include not only government support but also income from charities that receive donations from the general public (I guess the Wellcome Trust is an exception).
And the public funds this research because it considers it to be a ‘good thing’ (setting aside the burgeoning issue of economic impact requirements for the moment). As part of the goodness of the scientific enterprise is the culture of free (meaning easy rather than costless) exchange of information. To that extent I fully support the OA ethos of making research free to the reader. Or at least to the academic reader – it should be technically easy to make non-academics pay for access.
As an author, however, I have concerns about the rather ad hoc way commitment of funding agencies to providing the funds for me to cover these costs. The Wellcome Trust provides funds (via the University) for publications that arise even after the project grant funding is finished but the BBSRC, for example, does not (AFAIK).
Sorry – bit rambly – must have caught something from Austin…! 😉
Ouch…! Perhaps I will have to get a “respectable” blog if the length of the comments is getting too loser-ish.
Sorry Austin – I’ll behave now.
My pet hate in online journals is the paywall-ing of OLD content, BTW.
you and me both!
Stephen, I think in this discussion (not just this one, but the whole publishing schtick) there have been too many ‘presumably’s. I refuse to answer the question because (a) it took me all of 15 seconds to answer the previous one and it’s someone else’s turn to STFW and (b) I haven’t had coffee yet.
To that extent I fully support the OA ethos of making research free to the reader.
So do I, but for reasons other than how research is funded (and I think you’re saying more or less the same).
The problem at the moment, as I see it, is that we have a mixed system where you subscribe to certain journals through overheads that get siphoned off (to use a provocative phrase) to your library, but you have to pay even more (and a serious chunk of money per) to publish in an OA journal.
So perhaps the analogy with healthcare and taxation isn’t quite right: perhaps we should keep the subscription model, increase overheads (=taxes) but make access to all journals ‘open’. Collective bargaining in other words (and this is something currently being considered by JISC &c.).
Kinda like Nu Labor Socialism, as Henry says.
Warning: Utopian thought below
What if we would spend more time on teaching how scientists can handle quality control themselves. There would be no need for peer review. Scientists could put their stuff straight on the university’s or their own website.
And this in combination with the abolishment of the system where careers are dependent on impact factor.
Publication costs: negligible.
Or in other words: could you envision a world where you could trust your peer?
Mark,
people already do that. They’re usually referred to as cranks. Some of them even write press releases before peer review.
(and publication costs negligible? Can you tell me who does your hosting please? And your markup, XML, etc. etc.)
Short answer: No.
PS I think serious scientists appreciate good peer review. It’s invaluable for telling you where your work is incomplete. We should remember that peer review is not just about checking for cranks.
Maxine will be along in a minute to tell us how many authors appreciated the improvements in their MSS that came about because of peer review.
I was just playing the devil’s advocate of course. I love constructive feedback from the peers. A recent manuscript completely changed course because of a reviewer. I don’t like the non-constructive feedback though.
Well, you can ignore that. Or pay them fifty quid (wasn’t that the going rate, Henry?)
Mark, I’m shocked. Shocked.
Peer review is an absolute corner-stone of the scientific process. As Richard points out, it is our defence against cranks and nutters. That is why quacks so dislike it.
Yeah, I don’t think anyone seriously doubts peer review is necessary. How it’s done, that’s another matter, of course.
Mark claims to be playing devil’s advocate, but I wonder to what end?
He’s probably starting his own OA journal or something.
At the risk of repeating something already said in the eleventy-seven comments above, I wonder if an OA journal relying solely on web-based advertising for revenue might work? Probably not, I’m guessing, but I’m too
lazy to find outuninformed about the economics to really have a clue.laugh
There’s a lot of chaff surrounding advertising, but I think the bottom line is that it’s not making anyone any money, particularly in the current economic climate. Most savvy web users are blind to ads these days. Didn’t I blog about this recently?
Probably, but I can’t keep up with you and your newfangled blogpost-majiggeries.
Funny, after just a few minutes on Nature Network, I suddenly have a strange hankering to read Scientific American and the American Journal of Gastroenterology… 😉
Oh, do they advertise here? I must admit, I’ve {whispers} added doubleclick.net to my .hosts file at home.
I realise that this might be tangential, but I would like this point to be added to the discussion. Apologies if I missed it!
NPG encourages the self-archiving of the accepted version of your manuscript in PubMed Central or your institution’s repository, six months after publication.
Only 60 of the 1000 plus protocols we have published have been archived in PubMed Central.
I realise that this might be tangential
hasn’t stopped anyone else…
Maybe the whole debate would go away if we enforced self-archiving, although then we have the problem of copyright (is Cory Doctorow in the house?!); the publishers would have to take the lead and say ‘yeah, after six months you can republish the pdf/xhtml’, but I can’t see that happening… can you?
On your most recent comment, Richard:
The policy Bronwen links to is accompanied by our manuscript deposition service – all an author has to do is to check one box when submitting their paper, and it is automatically archived for them.
On your “enforcing self archiving” idea (which is being tried in a couple of cases) and your earlier idea about “university presses” – university (and other academic institutions) have their own archives and many institutions/funders now make their employees (the profs, etc) deposit their papers and other materials there.
Hope this helps.
Sorry I missed the argument, busy yesterday, and I’ve only managed to skim the comments but I think you’re making both a category error and an unreasonable comparison. The core question is how we get value for money and control costs for the communication of scientific outputs.
The problem at the moment is that the person who is paying (for the most part), the subscriber, has absolutely no choice about where they go to get a specific piece of science. I can’t exercise any market power and say, I’d rather read this in Nature than in JBC. We actually have a communist system at the moment in which the money is top sliced before I see it and then distributed in a way that doesn’t give me much if any choice.
A central problem is that we’ve removed the choice about which journal to pay from the peope who make that choice, the authors. If I make the decision on where I want to publish, based on the service being offered by the journal, in terms of brand, quality of peer review, and distribution then we would actually have a proper market system.
In the current system I make milk, decide who to give it away to, and then have it provided back to me “for free” (in as much as I don’t see the money changing hands, but its coming off my tax) but have no choice about which milk I get.
We need to compare the cost and logistical benefits of author pays vs subscription business models – that is a fair comparison, and one on which I think the jury is still out. More competition should encourage costs to come down and more diversity of provision in a functioning market but we don’t have enough OA journals out there yet to provide that market. On the other hand there is an argument that making many small payments is less efficient than making a small number of big ones – again the devil is in the details given that average page and colour charges are comparable to author side fees.
The question of what licence materials are made under is actually a separate one, but we can only have a proper market and competition that lets people select that, if we have author side fees. The two are intimately connected but it is important to keep the distinction clear.
But in summary – I think your analogy is precisely inverted. We currently have a communist system for the most part. To have a functioning market system we have to enable the people making the decision on where to publish to have the market power. One of the strong arguments for OA and for making sure that authors do feel the pain of those costs, is precisely that it should bring costs down by creating a functional market, one we simply don’t have at the moment.
Thanks Maxine. I knew we could rely on your for clarification.
Cameron, that’s a splendid comment, with an intriguing argument: I need to think about it some more before I can comment sensibly. But don’t you think that the model you’re proposing runs the risk of skewing the market towards cost of publishing? Id est, the ‘cheaper to publish in’ journals will be the most successful in terms of numbers published, but the quality might suffer? The higher quality journals might still be able to pick and choose but poorer labs won’t be able to publish in those journals? A bit like buying meat from Tesco’s: it’s cheap, but low quality… and if you’re less well off you can’t afford to go to a decent butcher?
That’s the problem with capitalism, isn’t it? How will developing countries, less well-off labs publish where it matters? (cue sales pitch for f1000, but I won’t 😉 ) This argument of mine isn’t well thought out, because I haven’t had coffee yet. But while communism is broken, we have to admit that it’s ‘fair’ in how it treats its stakeholders, don’t we? Everyone is on the bottom of the rung.
… how many authors appreciated the improvements in their MSS that came about because of peer review
Sense About Science carried out a large peer-review survey in July-August this year. More than 4000 researchers completed the survey, and the preliminary findings are available prior to publication of the full report. 91% of the respondents to that question (_n_=3657) thought the review process had improved the quality of their last paper.
As Richard points out, it is our defence against cranks and nutters. That is why quacks so dislike it.
What stops them from starting a journal where the peers are peer quacks?
The weird thing is that the average nutter and quack seems to have no notion on the nature of scientific publication and submission. When I encounter them on a popular science forum they are simply flabbergasted when I suggest to them to submit their ideas to a journal. The last one I encountered was convinced you need a scientific degree to do that. Others think that their stuff will be automatically rejected.
It’s weird when you point out that everybody has the same chance, as long as your work is solid. It’s a concept that just never reaches them. Maybe it is a blessing in disguise for the editors of scientific journals that lot of our quacky friends don’t even bother to submit.
Thanks, Irene. I knew the research had been done–I just needed someone to do my dirty
laundrywork for me.Didn’t you just answer your own question, Mark? Although there is such cough Medical cough a cough Hypotheses cough journal…
bq. As Richard points out, it is our defence against cranks and nutters. That is why quacks so dislike it.
The answer is that there are already loads of journals like that. A bunch of them are listed on PubMed. Just look for anything with “Alternative” or “Complementary” in the title along with “Medicine” or “Health”.
For examples of the level of scholarship involved, you could try here, or for a more recent example relating to general accuracy (or lack of), try here.
And it should be noted that there is a “grey literature” of “Alternative Reality” journals even wackier and more cranky than the ones that are in PubMed.
Alternatives to Complementary Health Medicine
ISAGN.
Richard, definitely agree that there is the risk of a race to the bottom, but I would counter that at the moment we have a race to the top with expenses spiralling out of control, and no-one really making an effort to counter them. There are risks both ways, but a market may be the best way to work those out. And at the end of the day regulation exists to protect those at risk of being hurt by the worst of market excesses, well in theory anyway…
I still think the key question to ask is whether we are getting value for money for the public investment. And if profit margins are at 30% amongst the publicly held publishers I would say the answer to that is a resounding no. The even more radical position then becomes not just whether you want to go to publisher A or publisher B but whether you want to pay for editorial support, publication support, and peer review, or just some selection. Or a selection from different publishers. What if I want Nature level peer review but don’t want the editorial overhead? Or vice versa? Then interesting things start happening.
I’ll just throw one more thing into the mix. I wonder whether the poorest third world scientists actually get the same quality of peer review as western scientists get at the moment? Would be interesting to see some evidence but anecdotally it is harder to get peer reviewers to look at e.g. Indian papers than e.g. US ones.
Speaking of value for money – the following is quite interesting in terms of what it has to say about traditional peer review – haven’t had a chance to follow up in detail as yet. http://jopm.org/index.php/jpm/article/view/12/25
@Cameron: regarding the spiralling costs, some of that is to invest in new technologies that will make the papers better. Hopefully we’ll (or rather the progammers who work on these things) produce papers that are smaller than PDFs, don’t take forever to load and that are more intelligently interactive. Some of it goes to societies too (plug: SGM), who in turn sponsor lots of important activities. And then there are the for profit publishers, but then that’s capitalism for you.
@Nicolas all that is good but 30% margins is something that people in functioning markets would drool over. And remember that is reported profit, after re-investment. But my main point is that those of us spending public money need to ensure that the public is getting good value for money. All the systems in place at the moment drive things in the opposite direction. We could choose to do publishing for a lot less than we currently do – the debate should be really about what we would lose and whether the savings are worth it.
30% margins? In the interests of peer review, I’d ask for a cite 😉
That JOPM opinion piece is interesting for as much as it doesn’t say as what it does. Doesn’t mention improvement of manuscripts in the way that Maxine and others have. Also doesn’t point out the differences between science and medicine, and doesn’t consider that the system of peer review isn’t so much at fault as the value of the reviewers themselves.
If ordinary scientists and medics can come to see a real value in peer review, they might be more inclined to do a better job.
If ordinary scientists and medics can come to see a real value in peer review, they might be more inclined to do a better job.
This kind of comment makes me want to stand up and cheer out loud, but my colleagues currently present in the room will freak out if I do so.
I was a bit pissed the last time I was a reviewer. The paper was rejected outright because one reviewer basically said that he didn’t believe the result. And that was all. The other two (me included) had actually focussed on making comments on how to improve the manuscript.
The paper was actually rejected and it made me feel that doing a good job is actually pointless. And that is not good.
Wow. That’s a seriously impartial editor then.
I really don’t like this rejecting papers because someone doesn’t believe or understand the result. If the science is sound—i.e. performed correctly—then it should be published.
Took us two years to get one paper published because no one would actually accept that we’d done the experiments right, just in a somewhat unusual model system.
I’m just reading over proofs for the next Hypothesis issue, and the editorial is actually about this – about the role of peer review when it comes to papers that may be controversial. (Hyp. publishes those kinds of things, but they are peer reviewed for references and logical flow and clear separation between data/opinion.) It was based on the fact that some published papers later get refuted, but the public will take any paper ([cough]autismvaccinemyth[cough]) and give it equal value. Basically, we say – look, reviewers do what they can to check if it’s reasonable, but even once something is published that doesn’t make it final. Quote from upcoming editorial: “Peer review does not end at the time of publication. Readers should consider evidence for and against novel theories by sampling multiple studies and critically judging which studies were best conducted.”
Ok, that’s a fair call. Initial cite from Elsevier’s preliminary accounts for 2008. I am currently trying to wade through Springers 2008 results (PDF) to see if I can find a number. I can only see for STM EBIT (earnings before interest and tax) of €168M against income of €655 (25%) but I can’t figure how the tax and interest comes out of that. An old piece from 2004 suggests profit margins rising by 5% year on year at that point. And from Britannica.com “Elsevier…profit margin of 32%…Informa…31%”.
But I think the JPOM piece does mention improvements, specifically where it describes the experiments that test referees noticing gaping and minor errors. And says there is no adequate evidence of such improvements. Maxine has data on author returns for published authors but I think it’s fair to say that this is neither objective, nor necessarily unbiased. Of course authors with Nature will agree that Nature’s process has improved the paper. Even those who aren’t will be worried about sending the wrong message. There is a literature on how questionaires tend to elicit the answers that the respondents think the requester wants. But there is no external or objective data that measures article quality (as opposed to “impact”) that I am aware of. Please point me in that direction if there is some.
I don’t doubt we can disagree on what the evidence says, or how relevant it is, but it seems to me that the central point; that there really isn’t any evidence of the efficacy of the system we use. If we are going to criticize IDers &c for poor and selective use of evidence then we need to apply the same standards to ourselves. At the moment this debate is based largely on handwaving and anecdote.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. If someone can show me evidence (and I’m interested in collaborating on gathering such evidence) that a toll entry subscription system based on current approaches to peer review offers the best value for money (we may disagree on the definition of that of course) on the public investment (and before we get onto “non-funded” research lets remember that most of those salaries still come from the public purse even if there is no explicit research funding) then I will defend that system against all comers. But I see no evidence that we are getting value for money and significant evidence that what we are doing is supporting a bloated system with no internal checks and balances.
@Cameron: thanks for the JPOM link, very interesting read. I found it interesting that the authors asks why researchers couldn’t publish their results online, with no peer-review/editing. My answer to that is, you can, just head to Blogger or whatever and set up an account. It can be done with institutional support too in some places (group websites etc) but the problem with this is that other scientists will not go to your site to get data, it won’t be cited, and you can’t put it on your CV under “publications” or send a link to a funding agency. I think one solution would be to have a biological/medical equivalent to arXiv. It also doesn’t seem to be in the biological researcher mindset. I’m a microbiologist by training and my dad a physicist, and we’re always surprised at how closed/open researchers of the other field are with each other!
I thought the ratings idea very interesting too, but to be honest I think it can go only so far. As a personal experience, I leave ratings in eBay only because I have to, and is usually 1 OR 5 stars, click, end of. The automated system described for Wikipedia was interesting, but how do you apply this to research papers? It can also lead to “vendetta” campaigns, where slighted people retaliate through the ratings system.
I think the whole web 2.0 thing is a bit overblown. OK, you can set up your article so that anyone can comment/review, but does it actually happen? The PLoS One experience shows that most researchers do not have the time or inclination to spend time doing this, even the Darwinius paper attracted only 12 comments to date. I actually think it all comes down to grubby money, if you paid people to review articles you’d magically get faster replies and more in-depth and accurate reviews. I think this would greatly add value to papers, but does anyone do this? Let’s look at who gets paid to publish a paper: sometimes the editor, and then the production staff (copy-editing, art, prod, typesetting, printing/web publishing). The addition of the reviewers to that list is in my opinion overdue, it is on their work (and the authors’, of course) that the scientific process relies. Not paying for it is under-valuing it, and it is treated as such by reviewers, leading to the poor quality reviews underlined in the JPOM paper.
From your post I understand you think the market is not functioning properly, which is why profits are so high. I would agree with this up to a point, in that OA or author-pays is in a way a reaction to this. Will the prices actually go down because of it though?
Also, it is difficult to talk about a market in scientific publication. As a reader, there is no choice in where you get your information from. As an author, there is choice but tempered by acceptance of your manuscript. Should the whole industry switch to author-pays, then there might be price competition, but for now the competition is really (rightly or wrongly) about impact factors.
I should say the thing that really infuriates me is when I look for an old (say 20-30 years) paper, and you have to pay to access it. Now this is just annoying!
The PLoS One experience shows that most researchers do not [comment]
Nature showed the same, didn’t they? Again, there has to be an incentive.
Agreed on the old paper thing. No excuse for that.
OA Publishers are not free: they are (or can be) a commercial for-profit organization like the toll access publishers. The first OA publisher certainly is.
Here is the FLOSS community’s take on “free”: that’s free as in freedom of speech, not as in free beer 😉
Yah, which reinforces my somewhat poorly worded contention that we need to define our terms before we can talk sensibly about these things.
Nature showed the same, didn’t they?
Yes.
I don’t see the subscription fees for most journals to be an issue. Researchers read the results of other researchers in an effort to improve their own projects. They allow people to study what other people are doing in their field, allowing them to improve their own methodology which directly benefits them in a business sense. In this respect it is not an argument about free information, but the purchase of an obvious commodity with tangible value.
On the other hand, people who are not involved in research also must pay for this information, even though they have no obvious route to monetary gain through it. The only thing is, even if the information was free, it would be practically useless to most “laymen”, who would use it for educational value, due to the high technicality of the language.
While I agree whole-heartedly with the open access movement in respects to models used for wikipedia and the like, I feel that a strong argument can be made for the niche of scientific journals to be an exception.
When I write a paper, I want to be able to paste it into some kind of online form, ONCE, then stand back and let the journal editors (OA or not) duke it out for the honour of publishing my paper (after peer review of course). Having just resubmitted the same paper four times I am fed up to here (>points at own eyebrows
There’s a good point in that, Karen, that is a totally different kettle of fish. I object to it too, but if all/most journals could accept the same format then you’d lose differentiation between the journals. Nature isn’t JMB, on more than one level.
(Reminder to self: I must go easy on the “n” of links otherwise this comment will not appear)
“JOIN THE OPEN ACCESS PUBLISHING COMMUNITY in a free live webinar to discuss the latest developments in Open Access scholarly publishing”.
—
On the 20th of October 2009, ~ 150 beings (myself included) from around the
universeGlobe listened in intently via telephonic devices to the OASPA OPEN ACCESS WEEK WEBINAR: LIVE Q&A SESSION WITH FIVE OA PUBLISHERSOASPA = Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association
I for one found this to be a rather interesting blend of speakers/perspectives etc., and am glad that this has now been opened out for wider discussion.
—
How does Open Access publishing work in practice? Representatives of 5 very different publishers discuss the promise and perils of open access publishing. Following short presentations by each of the panellists, webinar attendees will be able to pose questions live to our panel of Open Access journal publishers.
The archived version of the Webinar is now online
Details of the event and participants are of course online and since I’ve only used one link so far, I can safely say, go here
Listen to the Chair, Caroline Sutton, President of OASPA, introduce the following speakers:-
1) Mark Patterson – Public Library of Science
2) David Hoole – Nature Publishing Group
3) Pierre de Villiers – African Online Scientific Information Systems
4) Matthew Cockerill – BioMed Central
5) Saskia Franken – Utrecht University Library
(Links not provided. See second link above for more links, I’ve only got one left, if you’re following this….)
Lots of interesting stuff here, circling the theme. Let me throw another comment into the mix.
I’ve just been dealing with the final admin. on the paper we’ve just had accepted at JMB (aka not Nature!) and had to face the OA question directly. Since the paper derives from work funded by a BBSRC grant awarded prior to Oct 2006, we were encouraged — but not obliged — to make it open access.
To do so would cost $3000 but the grant is finished and the BBSRC will not stump up any further readies. So, although I am a supporter, I cannot go down route one for OA, along which the publisher would take care of everything and the open access nature of the paper would be flagged in PubMed searches.
Instead I will be allowed to place a pre-print version (final text and figures but without the publisher’s added value formatting) on a public server (but not on PubMed Central). This is very much a second best solution but the hard economics give me little choice.
bq. funded by a BBSRC grant awarded prior to Oct 2006, we were encouraged — but not obliged — to make it open access… To do so would cost $3000 but the grant is finished and the BBSRC will not stump up any further readies.
Hah. There is something wrong with this picture.
Yeah – though perhaps it is down to being in a transitional phase. If I have understood correctly, the funds to pay OA fees are included in the ‘overheads’ (FEC) on grants awarded since Oct 2006. Have yet to test whether I can prise this out of the university’s hands!
Best of luck with that one, Stephen!
You’re right; if they’ve taken it as overhead, they should stump up. And the question is still, I guess, ‘Is it fair to operate in this fashion?’. I mean, some labs will publish lots of papers; others few. And top-slicing the grant to pay for OA in this way… brings us full circle to my question on socialism.
…if all/most journals could accept the same format then you’d lose differentiation between the journals.
I’m not saying there shouldn’t be tailoring, I’m just saying it should happen after a commitment to publish rather than before submission.
Lets imagine that you’d put a full, maximally fleshed-out version of your paper onto the system. Then the editors of, say, three journals see it and indicate that they might like to publish it. This expression of interest from at least one journal would trigger the initiation of peer-review process. Once the reviews are in, let’s say one of the journals drops out while the other two stay interested, but only on the conditions they stipulate, e.g. that you address particular elements of the reviewers remarks and tailor your paper to their style. Then you choose.
@Richard: So a solution would be to nationalise all scholarly publishers? NuLab will love the idea!
I think the way the system is evolving right now is OK, the funders that have business or moral interests in making papers freely available, will pay for it. Those that don’t, won’t. By and large, the people who need access to papers for their work, get it (albeit through sometimes cumbersome systems). If the OA journals do their work well, they might even bring down the profit margins of publishing (since I understand that’s one of the criticisms of the current system), thus making it more affordable. All this keeping in mind that some OA publishers are for profit, and will thus try to push up the profit margins!
I will repeat my point: for a big increase in quality/added value, forget all the wizz bang new technology and web 2.0 (it will trickle down anyway), use some of the profit margin to pay reviewers. Get better reviews, faster, with better feedback. It might lead to a class of professional reviewers, but safeguards could be put in place. I still don’t know of any journal that does this, should anyone know of one please drop me a word.
I like the ideal of having everything available for free to everyone, but as was pointed out earlier how many lay people will do this?
@Stephen: glad to hear your paper was accepted. At SGM I occasionally helped authors through the meanders of claiming money from their funder/university to pay for (usually funder-mandated) OA, and it was atrocious. The Wellcome Foundation was one of those (as I recall) that had the clearest policy and system to claim, but I can’t remember how the BBSRC functioned.
May I suggest Nature Precedings for your pre-print version?
@Karen: I feel your pain. It would indeed be great for authors, not so much for editors who would have to fight for papers in a feeding frenzy of academic accomplishments. Dr HG might have something to say about this. As Richard pointed out too, it means that all (most) journals would feel the same (we could tweak the look easily). Wouldn’t that be sad? Journals tend to have distinct cultures/habits/practices too, an author told us at JGV he liked to publish with us because our emails were “always so polite”.
bq. “If I have understood correctly, the funds to pay OA fees are included in the ‘overheads’ (FEC) on grants awarded since Oct 2006. Have yet to test whether I can prise this out of the university’s hands!”
Hmm. Let me offer a somewhat cynical prediction, Stephen – though one, I would argue, based in a lot of years knowledge of how Univs feel about handing out money. If the grant is still active (i.e. running), possible. If it is no longer active: good luck. (As in “you’ll need it”).
And in that latter situation, I wouldn’t be surprised if the Impact Factor of the journal played a role.
But anyway, I suggest the likely response from most Finance Depts would be:
By and large, the people who need access to papers for their work, get it (albeit through sometimes cumbersome systems).
By and large. The problem is that some work doesn’t actually get accessed, or even cited (‘nutha rant there!), if it’s behind a paywall. I mean, I do’t link to the NYT (along with another magazine that I actually quite like but object to the model) because you have to register (for free, yes) to read it.
Karen, I see what you mean. Wouldn’t it be nice to have journals fighting over one’s papers??
Long ago I once had a job interview for Henry and Maxine’s employers. One of the questions I was asked was:
The follow-up Q, after I’d given my answer, was:
I obviously wasn’t much of a salesman because I didn’t get the job…!
Fifteen pages?
That’s not a paper, it’s a frellin’ book.
I’m a science communicator who tries to understand how publishing works. I’m not sure I’m there yet, but one way I’ve tried to look at it is that in the end, it’s all down to the funders of research to pay for the publishing costs?
In an OA model, the budget for the research includes an element for publishing the papers. There’s a direct relationship between the nature of the research and the journal that is funded. And there’s a direct financial relationship between the researchers and the journal.
In a traditional access model, the budget for the research includes overheads which pay for the library which pays for the institution subscriptions for the journals. There’s an indirect relationship between the nature of the research and the journal that is funded – the overheads are aggregated with all the others and the selection of the journals that are funded is done a an institutional level.
So if you look at it that way, then would the OA journal market (ie the journal titles available) be more or less responsive to trends in research? How would the situation for developing countries compare? If research is more expensive to publish but cheaper to research, how does that square up against their available funds? I’d guess that developed world funding for scientists in the developing world would be able to include the cost of OA publishing easily – but would funding that originated within the developing world (eg the country’s government itself?). If everything was OA, would the journals really lose out? Would commercial research that’s academically published be dissuaded from going OA because of the upfront cost?
My gut feeling is that a mix of funding styles is necessary – so a mix of OA and traditional. But I can’t quite work out how all the economic influences will come together with the research ones.
bq. it’s all down to the funders of research to pay for the publishing costs?
Yes, yes it is. No matter which model you care to use.
So it’s just a question of at which point do they pay, and should everyone get access to something only a few (relatively) have paid for? Which is why I drew parallels with healthcare.
I think OA is less responsive to trends in research. In traditional access your research is going to get published whether you can afford to pay for it to be published or not. In author-pays OA you have to pay to publish, but the_effective_ readership pool (i.e. those who can do something with that knowledge) isn’t going to be much greater.
Just to note that for the developing world, most major publishers make the papers in their journals free online, via the WHO programmes AGORA, HINARI and OARE. NPG does, but so also do most others.
@Nicholas – May I suggest Nature Precedings for your pre-print version?
You may but it’s disallowed by the publisher’s terms and conditions. The pre-print can only go on my web-site or that of my university. Which is a pain, since it won’t be the easiest thing to find.
@Maxine – that’s an interesting piece of information and makes me wonder if, in these circumstances, OA is worth the money (since researchers in developed countries will likely have reasonable levels of subscription-based access).
Actually HINARI provides free access only for countries with a GNI per capita below $1250. Institutions in slightly richer countries are invited to $1000 p.a. for access. That still leaves a good of countries that cannot afford good access to STM research. I blogged about these initiatives earlier this year when they changed their name.
@Stephen – I think you are over-optimistic in thinking that all institutions in all developed countries have excellent access to the literature. Dare I suggest that Imperial may not be entirely representative? 😉
Also, don’t forget that one of the big drivers to OA (at least in the biomedical sciences) is to build PubMedCentral into a genuine database of literature that can be reused, text-mined, mashed-up etc etc. Open Access is not just about freedom to read an article, but freedom to reuse the article.
If all gene sequence data had been subject to licensing restrictions do you think we would have had the enormous explosion in bioinformatics tools and knowledge discovery?
Still digesting all of the above but in response to Frank’s comment. Journal’s I do not have access to at work include. J Mol Biol, Cell, Biophys J, Eur J Biophys, Nature from more than ten years ago, Nature Physics, and pretty much any medical journal that isn’t OA. I can’t access about 50% of my own papers. As you might expect as someone who could loosely be classified as a structural biologist this is less than ideal. Coverage of main chemical and physics journals is not bad but patchy.
Also in response to Stephen, prompted by Frank, the real shock in the system is that £3000 doesn’t even allow you to re-use the text and images in other works in many cases – I can’t remember what the JMB rules are – but in most cases those fees only make it possible for people to read the article – they’re usually explicitly not allowed to actually use it do anything else.
As I’ve said before, not being able to access old papers is really stinky.
I wonder—do inter-disciplinary researchers such as yourself suffer disproportionately from ‘pay to read’? You’d have thought so, if your institutional library is very much discipline-based.
@Cameron – I thought that Wellcome had negotiated with most publishers to ensure that payment of the fee did ensure re-use rights? This is why they are less sanguine about self-archiving, where you are not assured of rights (I know NPG are an exception to this).
It may be that Elsevier etc only grant reuse rights if prompted to by (eg) Wellcome or MRC. They do seem reluctant to come up with one broad, permissive, easily-understandable policy.
I’m now imagining an Elsevier rep turning up here, asking plaintively (a la
Kenneth WilliamsHenry) ‘Why does everybody hate us?’Richard, absolutely, Jon Eisen’s first editorial for PLoS Biology is a particularly poignant example of the same thing. I take a somewhat more extreme approach though. If I can’t read it, I don’t.
@Frank – yes I think that Wellcome have negotiated separate agreements – indeed I have a vague memory of someone (who was not being funded by Wellcome) trying to pay such a fee for a journal that had negotiated with Wellcome but coming up against a bric wall . I think the Elsevier Open Choice system charges an immense amount simply to make it freely available but I can’t remember off the top of my head. Elsevier are no worse than most other publishers providing this kind of option in this regard. Equally this is the problem I have with the NPG policy which excludes commercial use (such as for instance using materials for educational purposes at an institution that charges fees)
bq. “If I can’t read it, I don’t.”
As I probably already said, my personal version of this is:
A fair number of other people have told me they do this, though it is not always a matter of principle as much as convenience, especially when citing reviews.
PS Agree 100% that there is certainly nothing like not being able to access the online versions of your own papers to righteously piss you off.
If I can’t access the article the first thing I do is write an email to the authors
demandingasking for the pdf. It’s probably illegal for them to give it to me, but strangely enough researchers really like it when other researchers actually read their work. So they have so far always honoured my request.That doesn’t work of course with old material.
For old articles I usually check JSTOR.
bq. That doesn’t work of course with old material.
we used to have these things called (p)reprints.
I was more or less referring to my own laziness combined with the fact that people tend to move around during their scientific career. I’m just too lazy to look up the most recent address.
If you want annoying, try this for size. A friend of mine has access to the paper version of Nature at his institution, but not the electronic version.
Mark – I actually get my older (non PDF) material very well from researchers, some retired, some who have founded institutes and are currently deceased but have dedicated followers. But you’re right, requesting a PDF by e-mail is nice for the author. I don’t think it’s illegal for them to distribute like that, under fair use.
Richard, I tried to embed this thread, which seemed relevant, but you’ll have to click on the link instead. If the system allows me to post it. The article itself, is open access.
The best trick is usually to search google scholar for the title which is a great way of finding freely available versions online. Increasingly people are putting papers on their own website or in institutional repositories, both of which google will find for you. The reprint request by email is usually just too high a barrier for me – and that’s assuming you can find a current email address. Many people would claim that this distribution is fair use but it isn’t really clear to me how that can be the case because by definition you are transferring the whole of a copyright work. In practice I’ve never heard of anyone being taken to task for it but it is legally dubious. Probably also violates the terms of use that your library has signed up to which usually explicitly prohibits distribution.
It’s a classic case of the problems created by the move to digital in terms of copyright. Distributing a preprint is fine. Even giving away a printed copy that you’ve made yourself is fine from a copyright perspective. Creating a digital copy however triggers copyright every time making it decidedly not fine (I am, of course not a lawyer)
Many publishers give authors some rights to distribute their own papers, and some give you a link that you can send to requesters that will give them free access. As usual, it depends on the publisher.
Heather, thanks for that, v. interesting.
Yah, morally I don’t see anything wrong in sending a PDF to a requesting scientist, although to the letter of the law it’s dodgy. (If they then decide to re-distribute then they’re being unethical, not me.)
Frank, I didn’t know that. Is a nice idea. However, I knew the OED frexample allows subscribers to distribute links to entries, that are valid for three days.
@Heather: there is some solace for us that Nature came top of the literature requested in front of Science. I’m not sure the marketing department would use that as an advertising line though!
‘Ripped off more than Science!’
Oh, I dunno.
From here :
“NPG recognizes the balance of rights held by publishers, authors, their institutions and their funders (Zwolle principles, 2002), and has been a progressive and active participant in debates about access to the literature. In 2002, NPG was one of the first publishers to allow authors to post their contributions on their personal websites, by requesting an exclusive licence to publish, rather than requiring authors to transfer copyright. NPG actively supports the self-archiving process, and continues to work with authors, readers, subscribers and site-license holders to develop its policy.”
From there :
“Science authors grant to AAAS exclusive rights to use and authorize use of their Work, however, they retain copyright in the Work as well as rights to make certain uses of the Work. […] Once the Work has been published in Science and provided the Work’s first appearance in Science is properly cited, authors may: […] Reproduce the Work for use in courses the author is teaching (If the author is employed by an academic institution, that institution may also reproduce the Work for classroom use). The Work may be reproduced in photocopy format for distribution as stand-alone handouts or as part of a packet, or electronically for use by students enrolled in the course the author is teaching, with proper credit to the Work’s first appearance in Science. […] Authors may distribute photocopies or download and email the Science PDF to their colleagues for their colleagues’ personal use provided the recipients understand that the copy may not be further distributed or reproduced without the approval of AAAS. (and may) Post a copy of the accepted version [note: not the copy-edited version] of the Work on the author’s personal website.”
AND:
“Authors may provide access to the Science version of their article from their website by taking advantage of our referrer linking service. Science provides one free referrer link per article, which enables free access to the article on Science Online, as well as the article’s corresponding links, Supporting Online Material, and Science PDF.”
Okay, that’s pretty reasonable from our two major standard-bearers. I know from experience it’s not like that at all journals, but I’m willing to defend my distribution of PDFs of my articles for my “colleagues’ personal use provided the recipients understand that the copy may not be further distributed or reproduced” – to anyone who wants to take me to task for it.
bq. but I’m willing to defend my distribution of PDFs of my articles for my “colleagues’ personal use provided the recipients understand that the copy may not be further distributed or reproduced”
Hear hear.
The British Library is actually terrible when it comes to electronic versions of papers. I purchased a paper from them, and they send you a link to download your PDF. So far so good, except that’s actually an Adobe Digital Editions PDF, which can be opened only with Digital Editions. You can’t put that in e.g. EndNote, and you can print it only once (or twice, can’t remember), so tough luck if you drop it in the bath. So what did I do? well, I had access to a feeder printer/scanner with OCR, so I printed/scanned it, and then promptly removed Digital Editions from my PC. There!
@Heather: Nature also recommends archiving your paper with PubMed. This can be done automatically for the authors, and the cut-off date is only 6 months. I understand it is the same/similar with Science.
Nicolas, that’s terrible. Forcing us to use particular software kind of defeats the whole ‘portable’ bit of PDFs.
I was just reading a blog post by David Crotty about another (the other?) topic of perennial interest to science bloggers ;-), the value (or not) of social networks/blogs, when I came across this in the comments:
“two-thirds of American researchers (all science and engineering degree holders) work either in the for-profit sector or are self-employed. Only 9% work in academia. About 70 percent of all R&D in dollar terms is now for applied science done in the commercial sector.”
Nicolas – that’s PubMedCentral, not PubMed. PMC is the repository, PubMed the index.
I commented on Nature’s policy on this somewhere up in the conversation in response to a question from Richard – perhaps the conversation is getting a bit long for anyone to read it/take it all in before addiing to it!
Indeed, Maxine!
It’s odd, because on reading your excerpt from the comment on David’s blog, I swear the words ‘sordid’ and self-serving’ came out. I have no idea why.
@Nicholas – don’t blame the BL; they just have to abide by publishers’ conditions. Libraries are not permitted to supply open PDFs of articles to anyone except their registered users. This is all controlled in the licence agreements we sign with publishers. The Secure Electronic Delivery (SED) system that the BL use is the best they can do – it speeds up delivery but does not give you an electronic copy to keep.
I believe the BL will bring in an improved system soon, but it will still be similarly restrictive.
Soon we will all be using networked electronic readers for papers and the publisher will have complete control over your reading material. Just imagine what could happen if they suspected a license was being broken.
Wait a minute…
Hm, so if we behave ourselves we get Nature, and if we’re naughty we get the Canadian Journal of Really Obscure Tundra Fungi?
Excellent plan.
About 70 percent of all R&D in dollar terms is now for applied science done in the commercial sector.
I’m not sure why anybody would be surprised by this. Industrial R&D is expensive, and done by many, many companies, a good proportion of which are a lot larger (in dollar terms) than the largest universities.
R&D, however, does not equal “research” in the way academics think about it, so the statistic is a bit meaningless.
I guess the better statistic is what percentage of published research is published by publicly funded research. I’m guessing even industrial R&D reads papers…
Now here’s an interesting one. Columbia University Health Sciences Library have decided that Open Access is just too expensive. I should blog that separately, I guess.
An interesting one indeed, Richard !
The new (Oct 2009) SPARC study by Raym Crow understands that there are no-fee business models for OA journals.
There are, but does it say they’re viable?
Under Open Access philosophy, Redalyc aims to contribute to the editorial scientific activity produced in and about Ibero-America making available for public consultation the content of 550 scientific journals of different knowledge areas: http://redalyc.uaemex.mx
Um… yes? What’s the legality of that? Are those journals already OA?