Open Access is not about copyright abolition or author reprint royalties

[Update: See new definition of "Weak" and "Strong" OA, 29/4/2008]

Dr. Raveendran, whose message appears at the end of this item, is Chief Editor, Indian Journal of Pharmacology, an OA ["gold") Journal, but he seems to be mistaken about what Open Access (OA) means: He seems to think OA is about "abolishing copyright"! That is certainly not what OA means, or advocates. I am puzzled as to where that erroneous idea came from (and offer 3 hypotheses below), but first, the meaning of OA needs to be made clear straight away (I. DEFINITION OF OA, below).

Dr. Raveendran also recommends the journals pay author reprint royalties. I discuss this in the second part of this posting (II. AUTHOR REPRINT ROYALTIES?)

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I. DEFINITION OF OA

OA (Open Access) is about making the full-texts of all published, peer-reviewed research journal articles accessible online toll-free for all would-be users, webwide, in order to maximise their research usage and impact.

There are two ways to provide OA. One ("OA Green," also called BOAI-1) is for the author to publish the article in a traditional journal (with the usual copyright agreements) but also to make his own final draft freely accessible online by self-archiving it in on the web, free for all (usually in his own institutional repository).

Of the nearly 9000 journals published by the 128 publishers processed by SHERPA/Romeo so far (including virtually all of the top international journals), 93% have already endorsed author self-archiving.

The second way to provide OA ("OA Gold") is for the journal in which the article is published to make the published version freely accessible online. (Some, but not all, OA journals charge $500-$3000 per article to the author-institution for this service.) The total number of OA journals is currently 2000 (and Dr. Raveendra's IJP is one of them).

As should now be clear, neither form of OA involves the abolition of copyright. Both forms continue to depend on it. OA green retains conventional copyright or licensing agreements; OA gold sometimes adopts a Creative Commons copyright license, sometimes not.

The only three ways I can even imagine that Dr. Raveendran arrived at his mistaken idea that OA is about abolishing copyright are (1) from the minority of well-intentioned people who are unfamiliar with OA and have been (needlessly) urging researchers to retain copyright (or negotiate a Creative Commons License) rather than to transfer it to the journal in which they publish. There is nothing wrong with doing this, but it is neither OA nor necessary for OA (and implying that it is either OA or a necessary prerequisite of OA, is actually a disservice to OA, needlessly delaying it still longer, when it is already long overdue).

The second possibility is that Dr. Raveendran heard the recommendations (2) from an even tinier number of well-meaning but misinformed individuals who have been urging authors to make their work "public domain." e.g., the ill-fated US Sabo Bill (2003) . That 2003 Bill was not well thought out, and has already failed. It has been replaced in the US by the (pending) 2005 CURES Act, and in the UK by the UK Government Science and Technology Committee 2004 recommendation
which is soon (we hope) to be implemented as the 2006 RCUK self-archiving policy.

My third and last hypothesis as to how Dr. Raveendran might have arrived at his mistaken impression of OA is that it was somehow a result of some early, unfortunate internal squabbling in the OA movement about so-called "Free Access" (FA) vs. "Open Access" (OA).

That squabbling arose from two sources: the first was (i) an unnecessarily exacting initial "definition" of OA, defining it, needlessly, as not only the free online webwide access that it really is, but as also including the retention by the author of certain re-publishing/re-use rights, which the author then gives to all users.

This over-exacting initial definition of OA (since replaced in practice by the more natural, simpler, and more realistic one: "free online access") had itself been inspired by what had at first glance appeared to be valid analogies between the OA movement and (a) the Open Source Initiative, (b) the Creative Commons movement and (c) the data-sharing of the Human Genome Project.

Ultimately, however, all three analogies proved to be misleading and invalid, and the extra requirements they would have entailed (including author copyright retention/renegotiation and the granting of blanket re-use and re-publication rights to all users) proved to be both unnecessary and a retardant to OA, for the simple reason that for article texts (unlike software, data, and other kinds of content), all requisite and legitimate research uses already come with the territory when the full-texts are made immediately and permanently accessible for free for all online, webwide.

(The second source of the squabbling was (ii) a green/gold dispute about whether green OA is "true" OA. This has, I think, now been settled affirmatively, and so we can forget about it.)

"Free Access vs. Open Access" (2003)

"On the Deep Disanalogy Between Text and Software and Between Text and Data Insofar as Free/Open Access is Concerned"

"Apercus of WOS Meeting: Making Ends Meet in the Creative Commons" (2004)

"Open Access Does Not require Republishing and Reprinting Rights"

"Proposed update of BOAI definition of OA: Immediate and Permanent" (2005)

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II. REPRINT ROYALTIES?

The idea of peer-reviewed research journals offering to pay their authors "royalty" revenue from reprint sales is based on a misunderstanding of why researchers publish in peer-reviewed journals. It is in order to maximise the usage and impact of their findings, not in order to make pennies from their sales! (That is why researchers, as authors, give away their texts to their publishers as well as to all would-be users, and that is why researchers, as peer-reviewers, give away their refereeing services to publishers and authors for free.)

"Authors 'Victorious' in UnCover Copyright Suit" (2000)

Indeed, in the paper era, authors used to take upon themselves the time and expense of providing free reprints to all would-be users who mailed them a reprint request (based, often, on scanning ISI's weekly "Current Contents") -- so eager were authors to maximise the usage and impact of their work. Today the OA movement's main motivation is to end all access-denial to would-be users who cannot afford the access-tolls, thereby ending authors' needless impact loss.

Harnad, S. (2006) Publish or Perish - Self-Archive to Flourish: The Green Route to Open Access. ERCIM News (January 2006)

Maximising the Return on UK's Public Investment in Research

Maximising the Return on Australia's Public Investment in Research

Making the case for web-based self-archiving [Canada]

Indeed it was Thomas Walker's proposal that authors should pay journals for OA eprints (a precursor of OA gold) that launched the American Scientist Open Access Forum in 1998!

Walker, T.J. (1998) Free Internet Access to Traditional Journals. American Scientist 86(5)

I doubt, though, that reinforcing access-blocking tolls is what Dr. Raveendra had in mind, given that his is an OA (gold) journal! If I might make a suggestion, a better use of any journal reprint-sale revenue would to be to use it to cover the journal's own costs, to ensure that it remains a viable OA journal in the long term! If there is a surplus, why not use it to reduce the journal's paper subscription costs, or reprint costs themselves, thereby increasing access still more, rather than simply offering the author a share in the access-blocking tolls?

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From: R. Raveendran, Chief Editor, Indian Journal of Pharmacology
To: Discussion Group for Open Access Workshop India
Sent: Thursday, January 12, 2006 1:12 PM
Subject: [oa-india] Sharing reprint revenue, OA and FA

"I am not a great enthusiast of OA mainly because of its 'copyright abolition clause'. I have already expressed my concern on this forum that copyright abolition will benefit only the commercial organisations not the researchers and academics. In my opinion, Free Access will be more beneficial to researchers if only journals are willing to change their policies. One such policy and its benefits to the researchers is evident from the announcement given below. Journals can retain the copyright and use it to make money for themselves and the researchers. At the same time journals should not restrict any legitimate, non-commercial use of its contents by academics and researchers. Can't this be achieved by Free Access? Why do we need OA which is likely to kill many journals if not all?"

IJP starts sharing reprint revenue with authors

Starting 2005, IJP took a policy decision, to reward authors for their contributions which bring in reprint revenue for the journal. Sale of reprints adds to the financial stability of the journal, while propagating knowledge transmitted by its contributors. Sharing of the reprint revenue by the journal is expected to motivate authors for better quality inputs to the IJP. This practice will be more rewarding for the journal as well as the authors

In 2005, IJP sold reprints for more than one lakh rupees. A German company, bought reprint rights of the paper "Ginger as an antiemetic in nausea and vomiting induced by chemotherapy: a randomized, crossover, double blind study " which was contributed by Smita Sontakke, Vijay Thawani and Meena Naik from Government Medical College, Nagpur (IJP, Feb 2003, 35: 32-36). The chief editor gave away 10% of the reprint revenue to the authors by presenting them with a cheque for Rs 12,000 during the Annual Conference of the IPS at Chennai in December 2005.

The IJP congratulates the first recipients of the "reprint share scheme" and hopes they would utilize this amount for academic pursuit.

R.Raveendran
Chief Editor
Indian Journal of Pharmacology
JIPMER, Pondicherry - 605 006
Ph: 0413-2271969

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Stevan Harnad