Open Access is often a topic that raises vociferous discussion on NN. After arriving back from a relaxing tour of the Roman remains around the Lazio region of Italy, having drunk my fill of Barolo, I was pleased to finally get round to checking out some of the TOCs festering away in my Inbox this morning.
PLoS Biology have an interesting article that doesn’t seem to have been picked up on NN yet, so I thought I’d point it out to interested readers.
Stuart Shieber has published an article which highlights an inequity between subscription and Open Access journal models1.
He did a good job of grabbing my attention with the following controversial statement:
the subscription-fee business model has manifested systemic dysfunctionalities in practice.
Ooooh – mystery, intrigue and a delightful dollop of dysfunctionality. What could the scandal be? I’ll return to that later.
As we get into the article, Shieber outlines his basic problem with how authors face up to the decision of submitting their article to traditional (subscription based) versus processing-fee (Open Access, where the author pays a fee to cover publication costs if the article is accepted) journal models.
The problem is, of course, that the [e.g.] US$1,500 article revenue to the journal that is provided by the processing fee under the processing-fee model is hidden in subscription charges in the subscription-fee model, and these are typically paid not by the authors, even in their role as readers of the journals, but on their behalf by subscribing research institutions, typically university research libraries. The authors don’t see these charges; hence, they don’t enter their economic calculus. Yet authors are now expected to pay these charges under the open-access processing-fee model. It is no wonder they might be expected to submit preferentially to closed-access journals. Indeed, it is a wonder that authors, even now, are willing to submit to processing-fee-charging open-access journals.
Shieber goes on to outline a proposal that would encourage Universities and Funding Agencies to set aside non-fungible (i.e., non-interchangable) sources of cash to pay for both traditional subscriptions and processing-fees. He highlights that the Wellcome Trust is already running such a scheme, and other universities in Europe and North America have established funds to assist with processing-fees. Good on them!
Shieber adds some caveats and issues surrounding implementation of such schemes, with another potential controversy arising from his statement that funding bodies and/or researchers have an
underlying goal of providing a sustainable mechanism for supporting open-access journals.
The controversy?
- Why should we financially support open-access journals?
Well, the obvious retort that springs to my mind is “Why should we publicly support privately owned subscription based journals?”. I guess the underlying insinuation is that we should support Open Access, as it has the potential to disseminate our publicly funded research further.
Shieber then gets into the juicy stuff, which unfortunately isn’t quite so juicy. A brief discussion of how hybrid systems (e.g., Springer’s Open Choice) that are currently in place could lead to a “tragedy of the commons”, as the impact of authors paying to publish is diluted across all subscription payers, leading to incredibly minor reductions in subscription fees across all Universities. This is overcome by excluding such hybrid journals from the OA pot.
One problem I have with this otherwise interesting article and concept is the discussion of “caps” by funders and universities, based on a “typical” author publication rate, with authors then trading off between submitting to OA with author fee and subscription with libraries covering the cost.
I believe Universities are institutions that should help and encourage the most academically gifted individuals, rather than reduce standards to a lower common denominator. I think some of Shieber’s arguments start to unravel a bit here. By basing his trade-off scheme on a “cap” calculated as a percentage of the grant acquired by a researcher, he seemingly overlooks the fact that different research fields typically require and gain different amounts of funding.
I’m cheap baby – as a theoretician and modeller, my main research costs are my drinking salary. Even my shiny new computer was a snip, costing easily less than a month’s salary. I don’t do any lab work, so no expensive machines or reagents to include in my grant applications. I don’t do field work, so no equipment to buy for that either. Although rubber boots are often cheaper than a computer.
A handy mobile phone holder
So, under Shieber’s proposal, I would be more limited in my choice of where to submit articles than someone who has more expensive research costs. There’s likely to be huge variation within and between fields, which will impact upon who gets to submit where, which can then feedback to who is successful in future grant applications. This is a tricky point to overcome.
I enjoyed this article. It was Open Access, and agreed with many of my opinions about publication models, so not much surprise that I like it. By specifically shifting some public money specifically towards OA (processing-fee) journals, Shieber argues, we actually make the publishing system fairer and more competitive. This should eventually curb the hyperinflation of subscription fees that is currently reducing access to all journal articles, and could present a “cost neutral” solution to switching form one dominant publication model to a more balanced situation.
But, by supporting OA in this way, is there a danger of unfairly squeezing some journals out of the market? I’m not convinced of this – we’ve been supporting for profit publishing houses with public money for some time now. If they can’t face up to balanced competition, they shouldn’t be there. If there’s a niche in the market for a certain type of journal, the most appropriate model should be able to occupy it.
It doesn’t make all that much sense to continue with a certain approach just because it’s the status quo. But, I like it, I like it, I la-la-la-like it it’ll be interesting to see if Shieber’s arguments start to affect policy soon.
1 Shieber SM (2009) Equity for Open-Access Journal Publishing. PLoS Biol 7(8): e1000165. doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.1000165
The only thing I knew about this topic was what I learned from the recent PhD comic series – so thanks for writing about this! There do seem to be some (major) kinks to work out, but it sounds like things might be moving in the (right?) direction.
I believe Universities are institutions that should help and encourage the most academically gifted individuals, rather than reduce standards to a lower common denominator.
Unfortunately, that seems to be a running theme at various academic levels these days.
Hi Alyssa, I think the fact that there’s a discussion going on about these things shows that there’s interest from the academic community in expanding the options available to us, in terms of getting our work read as widely as possible. The fact that the discussion goes on in journals and comics makes me even more confident people are interested!
Is this the comic you mean?
http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=1208
And while there’s a very good argument for allowing everyone who wants to extend their education the chance to do this, I don’t think that University is necessarily the best place for this – at least, if there are other alternatives. If there aren’t, there should be.
I hope that you got permission to reproduce that image, or is it open access? ;-)
Yup – that’s the comic I was referring too. It’s definitely a topic that is becoming more widely discussed, and rightly so. We’re doing all this research, but aren’t reaching a lot of people – Open Access would definitely help with that.
Don’t tell me you’re confusing copyright and open access too, Maxine…?
Mike – thanks, that’s very interesting. I see that Stuart Shieber is said to have been a major force behind Harvard’s OA mandate . He also has a blog .
One problem when talking generally about OA is that publishing behaviour varies so widely between disciplines.
Some OA publishers have complained to me that by subscribing to traditional journals we are subsidising those journals, and we should therefore provide some equal upfront subsidy to open access journals. I don’t buy this.
I think one of the problems of the subscription system is precisely that the costs are hidden. I am sure that plenty of readers of articles online really think that the articles are just free to read, not appreciating that money has changed hands. Open Access does begin to make the costs more visible. I think it is a painful transition, and our financial systems are not coping well as yet, but I would hate to see the costs just brushed away into a general publishing slush fund.
He is right to highlight Wellcome’s approach of providing funds for its funded University researchers (though curiously not the researchers in its own institutes). MRC also allows grant applicants to request funds for OA, though it is restricted by rules on public funding. At the RIN/RSP seminar on open access fees this topic came up. It was clear from that day that more work needs to be done to find ways through the thicket of rules, fees and funding for OA.
Re. the problems of hybrid journals, and how to use OA fees to reduce subscription costs, I do know that some publishers are looking right now at the best way to do this. It’s not always straightforward.
Thanks for the links, Frank. I guess Shieber kept quiet about his own institute’s policies to avoid any bias or conflict of interest in the published article.
As an idealist, I’d like to see all high quality (i.e., technically correct) science available to the people who pay for it (the general public), never mind the people who rely on the process (scientists). While it can be hard for the public to understand the technical details, at least it’s available to them, and they can contact and ask the authors for some further help in decoding if required.
As a realist, I have to accept that we can’t have an immediate shift from previous/current subscription based journal models to purely OA type models. Publishing science costs money. How we choose to spend that money is correctly being examined at the moment. I may be atypical (or mibbe it’s just my Scottish heritage) in that I’ve always been concerned about where money comes from and goes to in the whole scientific process – I think more transparency (but less beaurocracy) here would be hugely beneficial to everyone who takes part – perhaps that’s slipping back to idealism though.
As a football fan, I’m just getting over the hangover brought on from drowing my sorrows following a Dutch disaster on Wednesday evening. Pfpfffff.
Sorry, Richard – I stand corrected on my misuse of the term “open access”. However, the image does have a copyright sign on the original post, so I repeat that I hope Mike obtained permission before reproducing it here.
Absolutely, Maxine.
It’s probably fair use: he’s not claiming it as his own, it’s the low-quality image, it’s about the cartoon (not using it to illustrate something else), and posting it is actually promoting it (and linking back to the site)
I once asked someone law-related about the use of images on easternblot, where I regularly write about arts or crafts and show a picture of it, and that is considered okay for similar reasons.
Use any of my photos, Eva, and I’ll sue your a$$ off!
;)
Hasn’t someone raised this idea of a pool to support OA journal publication costs before? Maybe that was in connection with the Wellcome Trust scheme that you mention. Another aspect to all of this is that right now, I think people are increasingly including “publication costs” as a line item in grant budgets (we’ve all done this for years, but I suspect the dollar values are increasing, and possibly the number of agencies allowing this, or accepting it as part of “general and administrative expenses”).
If this is so, then OA publication costs are being downloaded on the granting agencies, and carving bits out of the direct costs of research. Somehow, that seems like it can’t be a good thing.
We discussed such a beast at the RIN in May. More practical at this stage to go for equal access rather than OA as such. Not everyone thinks OA is a good thing, with reason.
thought you guys might be interested to know that the Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association (OASPA) just had a the first conference and the last day was all about funding open access publications. There were a few interesting discussion throught out the whole thing and it should be avalible via webcast soon.