Fourteen Recommendations and Fourteen Objections

Comments invited -- but please don't post them here but in the Higher EDucation Development Association (HEDDA) blog.

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.

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.

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)

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FOURTEEN 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?

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