Open Access Archivangelism

Dana Roth (CalTech Library) wrote:

"Stevan: In fairness to responsible publishers, I think it would be appropriate to call George Monbiot to task for not differentiating between commercial and society journals. Wiley is especially egregious in increasing prices while publishing fewer and fewer articles (e.g. Biopolymers)."

Dana, I think it's wrong to demonize publishers at all, whether commercial or learned-society. Let them charge whatever subscription prices they can get.

The real culprits (to paraphrase Pogo) are researchers -- the 80% of them that don't yet make their refereed final drafts freely accessible online immediately upon acceptance for publication.

It's for that reason that "green" open-access self-archiving mandates from institutions and funders are the natural solution to the problem of making sure that refereed research is accessible to all potential users, not just those whose institutions can afford to subscribe to the journal in which they are published.

But apart from not demonizing publishers, it's also important to name and laud those publishers that have endorsed immediate, un-embargoed green open-access self-archiving. On the side of the angels in this respect are most of the major commercial publishers: Elsevier, Springer and, yes, Wiley.

(In contrast, some of the major society publishers -- notably the American Chemical Society -- are not yet on the side of the angels, and for that they deserve to be named and shamed. -- There are, however, work-arounds, even for such regressive cases.)

No, green OA self-archiving does not solve the journal affordability/over-pricing problem. But what gives that problem its urgency -- what makes it indeed a serials crisis -- will be completely remedied once green OA self-archiving is universally mandated by institutions and funders worldwide: For once the final drafts are accessible free for all, it becomes a far less critical matter to a university whether it can still afford to subscribe to any particular journal. What they cannot afford, their users can access in its green OA version. The real underlying problem -- research accessibility -- is completely solved by mandating green OA, even if the problem of journal affordability is not.

Let me close with the pre-emptive re-posting of the abstract of the paper that answers the habitual rebuttal to what I have just said, namely, that green OA self-archiving is "parasitic" on journal publishers:

Harnad, S. (2011) Open Access Is a Research Community Matter, Not a Publishing Community Matter. Lifelong Learning in Europe, XVI (2). pp. 117-118.

ABSTRACT: It is ironic that some publishers are calling Green OA self-archiving “parasitic” when not only are researchers giving publishers their articles for free, as well as peer-reviewing them for free, but research institutions are paying for subscriptions in full, covering all publishing costs and profits. The only natural and obvious source of the money to pay for Gold OA fees – if and when all journals convert to Gold OA -- is hence the money that institutions are currently spending on subscriptions -- if and when subscriptions eventually become unsustainable.

Dixit,

Your Weary Archivangelist (gone quite long of tooth during the past two wasted decades of inaction),
Stevan Harnad
EnablingOpenScholarship