{"id":309,"date":"2009-10-21T20:07:29","date_gmt":"2009-10-21T20:07:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/2009\/10\/21\/on_open_access\/"},"modified":"2009-10-21T20:07:29","modified_gmt":"2009-10-21T20:07:29","slug":"on_open_access","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/2009\/10\/21\/on_open_access\/","title":{"rendered":"On Open Access"},"content":{"rendered":"

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<\/em>) through peer review, editing, XML-ification, whatever, to what you hold in your hand or see on your screen costs money.<\/p>\n

\nEven 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<\/em>. <\/p>\n

\nOnline-only journals obviously have (effectively) zero marginal costs<\/a>, but the overheads are significant: storage and high speed \u2018net access still don\u2019t come cheap, and you probably want to pay a database manager and someone\u2014several someones\u2014to look after the website. And that is in addition to actually making manuscripts readable (have you seen the preprints, or the \u2018accepted for publication\u2019 stuff that some journals do? Double-spaced, unformatted references\u2014and don\u2019t even dream of hyperlinks\u2014and all the figures at the end of the document, disparate from the legends).<\/p>\n

\nSo. Literature, even stuff that\u2019s only half-usable, costs money\u2014or someone\u2019s time, which boils down to the same thing. I\u2019m 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<\/em> economy).<\/p>\n

\nTaking that as a given, the whole of Open Access hinges on a simple question: who\u2019s going to pay for it?<\/em><\/p>\n

\nThe traditional publishing model says that you pay for the literature at point of use. In other words, reader pays. And, you know, that\u2019s 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\u2019s a bad example: milk is<\/em> a commodity and it perhaps can be argued that scientific knowledge isn\u2019t, or shouldn\u2019t be. For the sake of argument, let us concede that scientific knowledge, for whatever reason, shouldn\u2019t be commoditized. <\/p>\n

\nBut even if we do that, even if we don’t take publishers\u2019 moral obligation to their shareholders into account, we still come up against the cost of production. Money has to change hands somewhere. So let\u2019s 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\u2019t it? Well, maybe it is, maybe it isn\u2019t: let\u2019s assume, again for the sake of argument, that we want<\/em> 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.<\/p>\n

\nOr, just maybe, someone like the government decides that it is good<\/em> for us to get \u2018free\u2019 milk. Except nothing, neither milk nor literature, is free.<\/p>\n

\nIn the UK, you don\u2019t pay for healthcare at point of use\u2014unless you really want to. You don\u2019t pay for education (below tertiary level) at point of use\u2014again, 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\u2019t have their own insurance.<\/p>\n

\nIsn\u2019t that the model of \u2018author-pays\u2019 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\u2014and so do those who can\u2019t afford it themselves. I produce the science, I write it up, and I<\/em> pay for everyone to be able to read it. In return, I get to read what you\u2019ve paid to publish; along with everyone in Birmingham.<\/p>\n

\nIt\u2019s socialism, really. But please don\u2019t think any scientific publishing model is going to come at zero monetary cost: we all know how well Communism worked out<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-309","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/309","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=309"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/309\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=309"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=309"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=309"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}