In this post, Stevan Harnad gives his insights on an important academic topic: open access (OA). For many years, he has worked relentlessly for the promotion of open access and has been a central figure in this debate.
He currently works at Canada Research Chair in cognitive science at Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM) and professor of cognitive science at the University of Southampton. We are extremely pleased to have him share some of his extensive knowledge linked to the debate around open access, a topic we first took up on the Hedda blog in June, when Stevan came with substantial comments and clarifications. He will now further elaborate these in his 14 key points about OA. Stevan has also agreed to answer any questions and comments you might have in the comments section, so you are all encouraged to use this opportunity!
1. Open access (OA) is not synonymous with OA publishing (gold OA). OA means free online access, and its primary target content is the 2.5 million articles published yearly in the planet’s 25,000 peer-reviewed research journals. Currently, these articles are only accessible to users at institutions that can afford to subscribe to the journal in which they were published. Research is hence losing potential usage and impact.
2. There are two ways to provide OA: The authors of the 2.5 million articles can self-archive their peer-reviewed final drafts online, free for all, in their institutional OA repository, immediately upon acceptance for publication (green OA); or the world’s 25,000 peer-reviewed journals can convert to OA publishing (gold OA), publishing all their articles free for all online, with the author’s institution or funder paying the cost of publication..
3. Providing green OA to the final drafts of their published articles is entirely in the hands of the research community, the providers of the content; providing gold OA is in the hands of the publishing community, the purveyors of the content.
4. A transition to universal green OA can be mandated by the research community (its research institutions and research funders); a transition to gold OA cannot be mandated by the research community: it depends on the publishing community.
5. The costs of publishing today are being paid for, in full, by research institutions, through journal subscriptions.
6. That means the potential funds to pay for gold OA are locked into institutional journal subscriptions today.
7. It is hence an unnecessary waste of increasingly scarce research funds to pay pre-emptively for gold OA today.
8. What the research community — research institutions and research funders — accordingly need to do today is to mandate green OA: http://roarmap.eprints.org
9. As green OA becomes universal, it provides universal OA, solving the research access problem; it does not solve the journal affordability problem, but it makes it far, far less important and urgent, since universal online access is available to all, whether or not they can afford the journal subscription.
10. If and when users find universal green OA sufficient for their usage needs, institutions will be able to cancel the subscriptions in which they were locked as long as the contents were accessible to subscribers only.
11. If green OA-induced subscription cancellations make subscriptions unsustainable as the means of recovering the essential costs of publication, publishers will cut costs, downsize and convert to the gold OA cost-recovery model and institutions will have the annual windfall savings from their subscription savings out of which they can then pay the gold OA publishing costs for their individual outgoing articles, instead of paying for access to the incoming articles from other institutions, in the form of bundled journal subscriptions, as they do now.
12. The gold OA publication cost per article, however, post-green-OA, will be far lower than the asking price for pre-emptive gold OA today, because in converting from subscription publishing to gold OA publishing under the cancellation pressure of universal green OA, publishers will have downsized substantially, phasing out their print editions (and their costs) entirely and offloading all access provision and archiving (and their costs) onto the distributed worldwide network of institutional repositories and harvesters, with the green OA version now becoming the canonical version of record.
13. Hence post-green-OA gold-OA publishing costs will have scaled down to just the cost, per paper, of managing peer review (since the peers review for free), its outcome certified by the title and track-record for quality-standards of the journal that publishes the paper (exactly as now).
14. But all of this is contingent on institutions and funders mandating green OA first, rather than paying even more for gold OA, at today’s still-inflated asking prices, while still unable to cancel the subscriptions that are essential to their users.
So what needs to be lobbied for today is the adoption of green OA self-archiving mandates by research institutions (mostly universities) and funders instead of just the spending of scarce funds on paying pre-emptively for gold OA (and fulminating against inflated journal subscription prices). This is what Southampton ECS was the first in the world to do (and urge the rest of the research community to do) in 2002.
For more information, see also:
- Carr, L., Swan, A. and Harnad, S. (2011) Creating and Curating the Cognitive Commons: Southampton’s Contribution. In: Curating the European University.
- Houghton, J.W., Rasmussen, B., Sheehan, P.J., Oppenheim, C., Morris, A., Creaser, C., Greenwood, H., Summers, M. and Gourlay, A. (2009). Economic Implications of Alternative Scholarly Publishing Models: Exploring the Costs and Benefits, London and Bristol: The Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC)
Stevan Harnad says:
14 PRIMA FACIE OBJECTIONS FOR REFLECTION
1. What evidence is there that “research is losing potential usage and impact” because “articles are only accessible to users at institutions that can afford to subscribe to the journal in which they were published”?
2. Who says “there are two ways to provide OA” [green OA self-archiving of non-OA journal articles or publishing in a gold OA journals]? Why can’t researchers just post articles online instead of publishing them in a journal at all?
3. Why is only green OA “in the hands of the research community”? *Can’t the research community just stop publishing in and subscribing to journals that don’t convert to gold OA?*
4. Why is it that only “green OA can be mandated by the research community”? *Can’t the research community just stop publishing in and subscribing to journals that don’t convert to gold OA?*
5. Why are publication costs paid only by “institutions, through journal subscriptions.” What about individual subscribers?
6. What ensures that the “funds to pay for gold OA” will be used for that purpose, if they are no longer “locked into institutional journal subscriptions”?
7. Why is it “a waste of… funds to pay pre-emptively for gold OA today.” OA is OA, isn’t it?
8. Why does “the research community… need to… mandate green OA”? If they need/want OA so much, can’t they just provide it, unmandated?
9. How is it that “universal green OA” makes “journal affordability… far, far less important and urgent”? Journals still need to be paid for, don’t they?
10. How do institutions know whether “users find universal green OA sufficient for their usage needs” so they can “cancel the subscriptions in which they were locked”?
11. How do we know that all “institutions will have the… subscription [cancelation] savings [to] pay the gold OA publishing costs for their individual outgoing articles”? Won’t those that have more “individual outgoing articles” be paying more?
12. If publishers “phas[e] out… print editions… and offload access provision and archiving (and their costs) onto… institutional repositories…[and] the green OA version… becom[es] the… version of record,” don’t institutions still bear the costs? And is the author’s final draft fit for the record?
13. “If publishing costs… scale down to just… peer review,” what keeps those costs from rising — and keeps the peer review quality standards from falling?
14. Why do “institutions and funders [need to] mandat[e] green OA first, rather than [just] paying… for gold OA? *Can’t the research community just stop publishing in and subscribing to journals that don’t convert to gold OA?*
[ANSWERS SOON: COMMENTS WELCOME]
5th September 2011 at 4:28 pm
Chris Maloney says:
Thanks very much for this post. It is nicely succinct and informative. I’ve really only recently started reading about this issue, and only very recently discovered your blog, Stevan, and am very impressed.
I work for PubMed Central (PMC), and I have a couple of questions about this topic.
1. Can/do journal publishers put stipulations on authors, as a condition of publication, that their self-archiving have an embargo period (i.e. not be available for a period such as six months)?
2. Assuming the article is in the biomedical field, can authors simultaneously put a copy of their manuscript in their institution’s repository, and upload it to PMC through the NIHMS? Or does the article have to be funded by the NIH for them to do this? (I should probably know the answer to this, but I don’t. If you don’t know, I will probably pursue finding the answer on my own, among my colleagues, and post a follow up here.)
3. The reason I ask question #2 is that I am wondering if just putting a manuscript to an IR is enough to truly make the article visible and accessible. Just because something’s on the web doesn’t mean it will be found. Just because something’s indexed by Google doesn’t mean it will have high rank in their search results. Putting a manuscript on PMC, through NIHMS or other channels, means that it would be indexed in PubMed, which would make it more accessible.
Thank you.
5th September 2011 at 3:15 am
Reme Melero says:
I think we should start thinkig on a more wider concept, i.e. Open Knowledge and Open Scholarship, because science is not only built on published papers but any other material. In this way maybe the discussion about green or gold OA would not be so important or contradictory. In the advice paper published by LERU ” Roadmap towards Open accesss” says :
Open Knowledge is ‘any kind of information – sonnets to statistics, genes to geodata – that can be freely used, re-used, and redistributed’ (Open Knowledge Foundation definition).7 Open Scholarship refers to research that generates Open Knowledge. While the LERU Roadmap focuses on more traditional research outputs, it is important to note that ‘Open Knowledge’ is much broader than this, and would encompass primary data, associated software, and educational resources. The reason for focusing on Open Access to more traditional research outputs is that they have common issues around making them freely available that make it reasonable to consider them together, and separately from other types of knowledge. ( http://www.leru.org/files/publications/LERU_AP8_Open_Access.pdf )
5th September 2011 at 8:25 am
Stevan Harnad says:
On Publisher OA Embargoes, ID/OA Mandates and the “Almost-OA” Button: Reply to Chris Maloney (CM)
CM: “Can/do journal publishers put stipulations on authors, as a condition of publication, that their self-archiving have an embargo period (i.e. not be available for a period such as six months)?”
Yes they can and do. See SHERPA Romeo: http://www.sherpa.ac.uk/romeo/
But over 60% of them (including most of the top journal publishers) do not, and instead endorse immediate “green” OA self-archiving of authors’ refereed final drafts, in the author’s institutional repository (IR) immediately upon acceptance for publication.
For the minority of journals that still do embargo OA, there is nevertheless a work-around: The Immediate-Deposit/Optional-Access (ID/OA) mandate still requires immediate deposit, but allows the author to set access to the deposit as Closed Access instead of OA during the embargo. Would-be users web-wide can still access the bibliographic metadata, and can then use the IR’s automated “email eprint request” Button to request a copy.
http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/71-guid.html
(This is not OA but “Almost-OA” and can tide over researcher needs while hastening the natural, inevitable and well-deserved demise of the remaining publisher embargoes.)
Sale, A., Couture, M., Rodrigues, E., Carr, L. and Harnad, S. (2012) Open Access Mandates and the “Fair Dealing” Button. In: Dynamic Fair Dealing: Creating Canadian Culture Online (Rosemary J. Coombe & Darren Wershler, Eds.)
http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/18511/
ABSTRACT: We describe the “Fair Dealing Button,” a feature designed for authors who have deposited their papers in an Open Access Institutional Repository but have deposited them as “Closed Access” (meaning only the metadata are visible and retrievable, not the full eprint) rather than Open Access. The Button allows individual users to request and authors to provide a single eprint via semi-automated email. The purpose of the Button is to tide over research usage needs during any publisher embargo on Open Access and, more importantly, to make it possible for institutions to adopt the “Immediate-Deposit/Optional-Access” Mandate, without exceptions or opt-outs, instead of a mandate that allows delayed deposit or deposit waivers, depending on publisher permissions or embargoes (or no mandate at all). This is only “Almost-Open Access,” but in facilitating exception-free immediate-deposit mandates it will accelerate the advent of universal Open Access.
5th September 2011 at 8:06 pm
Stevan Harnad says:
SELF-ARCHIVE INSTITUTIONALLY, HARVEST CENTRALLY:
Reply-2 to Chris Maloney (CM)
CM: “Assuming the article is in the biomedical field, can authors simultaneously put a copy of their manuscript in their institution’s repository, and upload it to PMC through the NIHMS? Or does the article have to be funded by the NIH for them to do this?… The reason I ask question #2 is that I am wondering if just putting a manuscript [in]to an IR is enough to truly make the article visible and accessible. Just because something’s on the web doesn’t mean it will be found. Just because something’s indexed by Google doesn’t mean it will have high rank in their search results. Putting a manuscript on PMC, through NIHMS or other channels, means that it would be indexed in PubMed, which would make it more accessible.”
This an extremely important practical issue, and at the moment it is not being properly implemented.
The short answer is, yes, a document deposited in the author’s institutional repository (IR) can be uploaded to PMC through NIHMS, regardless of whether NIH has funded the research (and, a fortiori, regardless of whether NIH has funded extra “gold” OA publication fees).
But those extra author self-archiving steps should not be necessary! The reason it became apparent that green OA self-archiving mandates (from both institutions and funders) would be necessary was that spontaneous, unmandated self-archiving rates remain low (about 20%), even when recommended or encouraged by institutions and funders. That’s why the first NIH OA policy, a request, failed until it was upgraded to a requirement: http://bit.ly/NIHpolicyFailure
But the practical implementation of the NIH mandate was still short-sighted: It required direct deposit in PMC, and allowed this to be done by either the author or the publisher. The result was not only (1) uncertainty about who needed to deposit what, when, not only (2) a partial reliance on a 3rd party other than the fundee, not bound by the grant, namely, the publisher, to fulfill the conditions of a grant to the fundee, but it also (3) imposed a double burden on fundees if their own institutions were to mandate self-archiving too: They had to deposit in their own IRs and also in PMC.
This did not help either with encouraging more institutions to adopt self-archiving mandates (even though institutions are the universal providers of all research, funded and unfunded, across all disciplines) nor with encouraging authors, already sluggish about self-archiving at all, to comply with self-archiving mandates (since they might be faced with having to deposit the same paper many times).
Yet in reality, the problem is merely a formal one, not a technical one. Software (e.g., SWORD) can import and export the contents of one repository to another automatically. More important: There is no need for institutional authors ever to have to self-archive directly in an institution-external (central) repository like PMC: The contents of IRs are all OAI-compliant and harvestable automatically by whatever central repositories might want them.
So institutional and funder mandates need to be collaborative and convergent, not competitive and divergent, as some (including NIH’s) are now. And the convergence needs to be on institution-internal deposit, followed by central harvesting (e.g. to PMC) where desired — certainly not the reverse.
“Deposit institutionally, harvest centrally.” This not only encourages institutions to adopt their own mandates, to complement funder mandates and cover the entire OA target corpus, but it also puts institutions in a position to monitor and ensure compliance with funder mandates. (Ensuring that all funder grant fulfillment conditions are met is something that institutions are always very eager to do!)
(The visibility/accessibility worry is, I think, a red herring: OAI-compliant institutional repositories are harvested by Google, Google Scholar, BASE. citeseerx and many other search engines, including OAI-specific ones. And besides, IR metadata and documents can also be harvested into central repositories like PMC and UK-PMC. The only real factor in visibility and accessibility is whether or not an article has been made green OA at all! Where it is made OA matters little, and it matters less and less as more and more is made OA.)
See: “How to Integrate University and Funder Open Access Mandates”
http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/369-guid.html
SUMMARY: Research funder open-access mandates (such as NIH’s) and university open-access mandates (such as Harvard’s) are complementary. There is a simple way to integrate them to make them synergistic and mutually reinforcing:
Universities’ own Institutional Repositories (IRs) are the natural locus for the direct deposit of their own research output: Universities (and research institutions) are the universal research providers of all research (funded and unfunded, in all fields) and have a direct interest in archiving, monitoring, measuring, evaluating, and showcasing their own research assets — as well as in maximizing their uptake, usage and impact.
Both universities and funders should accordingly mandate deposit of all peer-reviewed final drafts (postprints), in each author’s own university IR, immediately upon acceptance for publication, for institutional and funder record-keeping purposes. Access to that immediate postprint deposit in the author’s university IR may be set immediately as Open Access if copyright conditions allow; otherwise access can be set as Closed Access, pending copyright negotiations or embargoes. All the rest of the conditions described by universities and funders should accordingly apply only to the timing and copyright conditions for setting open access to those deposits, not to the depositing itself, its locus or its timing.
As a result, (1) there will be a common deposit locus for all research output worldwide; (2) university mandates will reinforce and monitor compliance with funder mandates; (3) funder mandates will reinforce university mandates; (4) legal details concerning open-access provision, copyright and embargoes will be applied independently of deposit itself, on a case by case basis, according to the conditions of each mandate; (5) opt-outs will apply only to copyright negotiations, not to deposit itself, nor its timing; and (6) any central OA repositories can then harvest the postprints from the authors’ IRs under the agreed conditions at the agreed time, if they wish.
5th September 2011 at 8:27 pm
Stevan Harnad says:
DON’T OVER-REACH: GRASP FIRST WHAT IS ALREADY WITHIN IMMEDIATE REACH:
Reply to Reme Melero
Yes, Open Scholarship and Open Knowledge are both desirable. But unlike Open Access to the annual 2.5 million articles published in the planet’s 25,000 peer-reviewed scholarly and scientific journals, they are not within immediate reach.
Why not?
Because (1) not all authors of all scholarly and scientific writings — let alone of all “knowledge” — *want* to give their writings away, free for all online. (2) Not all (or even most) book and textbook authors want to put their chances of earning royalties at risk. (3) Most novelists and poets don’t give away their writings in order to advance knowledge and to maximize the “research impact” that earns their reputations, pays their salaries, and funds their grants, as researchers do. Rather, novelists and poets (like playwrights, musicians, artists, journalists and trade authors) try to sell their works in order to put bread on the table (or maybe even to get rich).
Besides, nothing is stopping any give-away author (of book, textbook, treatise or verse) who wants to make his work free for all online from making it free for all online. No one can mandate that he must do it. But no one can stop him from doing it either.
That makes it all the more ironic that it is in the one knowledge domain in which every single author, of every single refereed journal article, without exception, wishes his work to be accessible not just to those whose institutions can afford subscription access to it, but to all its potential users — so that they can read, use, apply, build upon and cite it in their own subsequent work — that these special authors nevertheless feel that there is something stopping them from giving their work away free for all online.
What this special, exception-free population of give-away authors feel is stopping them from being able to give away their work free free for all online varies from author to author. There are at least 38 different groundless worries paralyzing them, copyright worries being perhaps foremost among them: http://www.eprints.org/openaccess/self-faq/#38-worries
But it is precisely in order to free these authors from their Zeno’s Paralysis that green OA self-archiving mandates are needed from their institutions and funders.
For other kinds of authors, it’s only the fact that they may wish to earn revenues from its sale, rather than to give it away gratis, that prevents them from making the words they have to offer “open.” (It’s not their knowledge they are concerned to sell, remember, it’s their words.)
Let us therefore first grasp what is already within reach — by mandating green open access self-archiving — rather than holding out for even more, thereby letting the unreachable Best get in the way of reaching the reachable Better.
And remember that the very first essential PostGutenberg distinction is to distinguish the author give-away work from non-give-away work — http://bit.ly/GIVEAWAYvsNON — so please let us not conflate them.
Harnad, S. (2006) Opening Access by Overcoming Zeno’s Paralysis. In: Open Access: Key Strategic, Technical and Economic Aspects, Chandos.
http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/12094/
ABSTRACT: Open Access (OA) means free access for all would-be users webwide to all articles published in all peer-reviewed research journals across all scholarly and scientific disciplines. 100% OA is optimal for research, researchers, their institutions, and their funders because it maximizes research access and usage. It is also 100% feasible: authors just need to deposit (“self-archive”) their articles on their own institutional websites. Hence 100% OA is inevitable. Yet the few keystrokes needed to reach it have been paralyzed for a decade by a seemingly endless series of phobias (about everything from piracy and plagiarism to posterity and priorities), each easily shown to be groundless, yet persistent and recurring. The cure for this “Zeno’s Paralysis” is for researchers’ institutions and funders to mandate the keystrokes, just as they already mandate publishing, and for the very same reason: to maximize research usage, impact and progress. 95% of researchers have said they would comply with a self-archiving mandate; 93% of journals have already given self-archiving their blessing; and those institutions that have already mandated it are successfully and rapidly moving toward 100% OA.
5th September 2011 at 10:13 pm
marielk says:
Small remark to new commentators – it might take a short while before your comment gets approved, we have struggled with some spam issues before, so new users would have to have their e-mails approved first (after the first time your posts get approved automatically later).
We have people checking the moderation queue as frequently as possible.
Hope for your understanding on this,
The Hedda team
5th September 2011 at 12:48 am