The launching of PLoS Biology -- http://www.plosbiology.org/-- an outcome
of Harold Varmus's highly influential 1999 Ebiomed Proposal -- http://www.nih.gov/about/director/ebiomed/ebiomed.htm
-- is a very important event for research and researchers, for two reasons:
(1) It is another
step forward in providing open access to peer-reviewed research, a major step.
(2) It both
demonstrates and will further stimulate the research community's growing
consciousness of the need for open access as well as the possibility of
attaining it.
It is all the more important, therefore, that
on this auspicious occasion for the open-access publication strategy (BOAI-2) we
not forget or neglect the other, complementary open-access strategy,
open-access self-archiving (BOAI-1)
--http://www.soros.org/openaccess/read.shtml
-- particularly because systematically supplementing BOAI-2 with BOAI-1 has the
power to bring us so much more open-access, so much more quickly.
A KEY-STROKE KOAN FOR OUR OPEN-ACCESS
TIMES
Here is an extremely conservative
calculation that will give you an (I hope unforgettable) intuition for the
importance of not neglecting the other road to open access:
SUPPOSE
that
-- in
addition to signing the PLoS open letter (pledging to boycott toll-access
publishers unless they become open-access publishers http://www.plos.org/support/openletter.shtml),
not even all
the 30,000
PLoS signatories had self-archived not even all their own toll-access articles, nor
even the 55% corresponding to the proportion of
“blue/green” (self-archiving-friendly) toll-access journals {http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Temp/rcoptable.gif}
but --
just
the 18%
of the PloS signatories corresponding to the proportion of “postprint-green”
journals had self-archived just one of the articles they had published in just one of those toll-access journals:
THEN
the number of open-access articles (5400) resulting from just that minimal act
would already have been more than 4 times the number of open-access articles
that PLoS Biology will publish in 5 years (1200, assuming 20 articles per monthly issue at $1500
a pop).
And all
at the cost of only a few keystrokes more than what it cost to sign the
petition.
Yet the only thing researchers did then was
sign the PLoS open letter, and then wait, passively, for toll-access journals
to turn into open-access journals in response to their petition. And today researchers
seem ready to wait yet again, passively, for more open-access journals like
PLoS Biology to be created or converted, one by one.
As we make our estimate less
conservative and arbitrary, and scale it up first to 55% of all annual biology
articles, and then beyond that, to the many journals that will support self-archiving if asked,
I hope the scales will at last begin to drop from the eyes of those who have
not yet noticed the tunnel vision and paralysis involved in focusing only on
open-access publishing, when it is open access that is our target.
And perhaps then we will be less surprised
that the 23,500
toll-access publishers did not take our boycott threat seriously -- and that,
by the same token, they still have no reason to take the handful of open-access
journals created since the beginning of the '90s (of which PLoS Biology is
about the 543rd) seriously -- if that's all
we're prepared to do to demonstrate our need for and commitment to open access
for our research, as we just keep sitting on our hands instead of adding the
modest number of further keystrokes it would take to make at least 55%
of our own articles open-access overnight, tonight!
http://www.eprints.org/self-faq/
- researcher/authors-do
http://www.lboro.ac.uk/departments/ls/disresearch/romeo/
Note that this is in no way an argument
against open-access publishing as one of the two viable means of attaining open
access! It is just an argument against pursuing open access only or even
mainly through open-access publishing, rather than explicitly coupling
it with open-access self-archiving, in a rational, systematic dual strategy.
Indeed, open-access self-archiving can also be seen as a means of preparing the
road for open-access publishing -- while already providing us with open-access
itself in the meantime!
http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Temp/dual-strategy.htm
http://www.nature.com/nature/debates/e-access/Articles/harnad.html
The existing "publish or perish"
mandate of our research institutions and research-funders keeps us productive
and rewards us for it. But now, in the online age, this mandate needs to be
updated, quite naturally, to "publish with maximized impact" by
making all research publications open-access. This means: “Publish your research
in an open-access journal, if/when a suitable one exists, and in a toll-access
journal otherwise, but in that case self-archive it as well.” (Shorter mnemonic for the rule: Self-archive
all your research output!)
http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue35/harnad/
http://www.eprints.org/self-faq/
- institution-facilitate-filling
http://www.eprints.org/self-faq/
- research-funders-do
http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Temp/archpolnew.html
Stevan Harnad
Canada Research Chair
Unversité du Québec à Montréal
NOTE: A complete archive of the ongoing
discussion of providing open access to the peer-reviewed research literature
online is available at the American Scientist September Forum (98 & 99
& 00 & 01 & 02 & 03):
http://amsci-forum.amsci.org/archives/september98-forum.html
or
http://www.cogsci.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/index.html
Discussion can be posted to: mailto:september98-forum@amsci-forum.amsci.org
