Royal Society Offers Open Choice: Giving With One Hand, Taking Back With the Other

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SUMMARY: The Royal Society is a green publisher, giving its authors the green light to provide immediate Open Access to their articles by self-archiving them in their own institutional repositories in order to maximise their usage and impact. The Royal Society is now also an optional gold publisher, offering its authors the "Open Choice" of providing Open Access on their behalf, for a fee. But all of this is outweighed by the fact that this most venerable of Learned Societies, contrary to the wishes of at least 64 of its (unconsulted) members, has put its substantial prestige and gravitas behind a vehement -- and so far successful -- lobby against the Research Councils UK proposal to mandate author self-archiving by its fundees, as recommended by the UK parliamentary Select Committee on Science and Technology as well as the U.S. Federal Research Public Access Act, and the European Commission. In this respect, the Royal Society is deporting itself exactly like the crassest of commercial publishers, and is putting a sad blemish on its proud history in the annals of Learned Inquiry and the dissemination of its fruits.

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It is fine that the Royal Society is experimenting with the "EXiS Open Choice" option (giving individual authors the choice to pay their journal to make their article Open Access [OA] for them), but this is a minor gesture, given that the Royal Society is meanwhile also stoutly -- and so far successfully -- opposing the UK recommendation to mandate that all RCUK fundees must make their own articles OA by depositing them in their own institutional (or central) OA repositories.

What the research world needs today is OA, now: immediate 100% OA (not necessarily OA publishing: OA itself). It is a matter of historical record that (without consulting its membership) the Royal Society, driven by its publishing arm -- and exactly as many other (decidedly non-royal) publishers have done -- has shrilly opposed the RCUK proposal to mandate that UK-funded researchers provide immediate OA by self-archiving their research: opposed it on the basis of no evidence whatsoever, just speculative hypotheses of doom and gloom (eliciting great disappointment in the Royal Society's admirers, as well as an open letter of protest from 64 of its members, including 6 Nobel Laureates, opposed to the Royal Society's stance on OA). (See 1, 2, and 3.)

The fact that the Royal Society, like a number of other publishers, is now trying a leisurely experiment with Open Choice by offering their authors and their institutions the option of paying (a hefty and rather arbitrary fee) for OA is next to ludicrous in this context -- while institutional funds are still tied up in subscriptions, while there is no evidence that self-archiving reduces subscriptions, and while publishers are vigorously opposing self-archiving mandates on the grounds that they might reduce subscriptions.

Although the analogy is unfairly shrill, it is useful in order to make the underlying logic transparent if we note that this is not unlike a call for an immediate public-smoking ban being opposed by a royal tobacco company, with a counter-offer to sell individual clients an alternative smoke-free product, as a matter of (paid) personal choice.

We will never even come near 100% OA if we keep waiting passively for the 24,000 journals to convert to paid OA publishing, one by one, author by author, under these conditions. OA and hybrid OC (Open Choice) journals today are merely a sop for the ongoing worldwide need for immediate OA: They do little to stanch the daily, needless hemorrhaging of research usage and impact.

An OA self-archiving mandate for publicly funded research, as proposed by the RCUK, FRPAA and EC (and already implemented by the Wellcome Trust and 6 universities and research institutions) would (like a public-smoking ban) be a genuine remedy, but the Royal Society is opposing it.

This is a sad historical fact -- even though, to its credit, the Royal Society's 7 journals are among the 94% of journals that have endorsed their authors' right to exercise the choice of self-archiving their own papers, if they wish:

"the author(s) may... post the work in its published form on their personal or their employing institution's web site"

It is just that the choice the Royal Society affirms with one hand, it lobbies vigorously with the other hand to discourage authors, their institutions and funders from actually exercising.

There is absolutely nothing in the Royal Society's ignoble deportment today that warrants making any reference whatsoever to its noble history in the evolution of research and publishing. The less said about that, the better. This is a business, acting in the interests of its bottom line, not a Learned Society acting in the interests of Learned Inquiry.

American Scientist Open Access Forum Topic Thread:
"Not a Proud Day in the Annals of the Royal Society" (Nov 24, 2005)

Stevan Harnad
American Scientist Open Access Forum