Open Access News

Eva Tallaksen, Universities urged: 'share benefits of health research', SciDev.Net, November 17, 2006.  Excerpt:

Prominent scientists have joined forces with a group of students to urge the World Health Organization (WHO) to include in its global strategies how universities can ensure health research benefits developing countries.

Submitted this week (15 November), their petition — the Philadelphia Consensus Statement — outlines how universities can improve access to medicines and transfer of knowledge to the developing world by changing their licensing policies and intellectual property (IP) rights.

Some 80 top law, science and global health experts — including four Nobel laureates — as well as 150 students have signed the petition.

It is unique in seeking to spur universities, rather than companies or governments, into taking action, says Dave Chokshi, a medical student at the US-based University of Pennsylvania....

The petition lays out specific proposals on how universities can improve access to the fruits of this research by such measures as granting rights to companies to manufacture and export generic versions of new drugs to developing countries, price reductions,...lifting of patent requirements...engaging with public-private partnerships or institutions in developing countries, creating new opportunities for drug development, and carving out exemptions for research in university patents or licences....

Each year, 10 million people die from diseases that are treatable with existing drugs, according to the WHO.

More than half of all pharmaceutical innovations in the United States come from universities, making them a key place to address issues of access to medicines and research into neglected diseases.

"The current IP system isn't working for the majority of the world," says signatory David Mayne, professor emeritus in engineering control theory at the UK-based Imperial College London....

Comment.  The policy recommendations in the statement are very good but sadly incomplete.  The statement calls on universities "to make the fruits of their research available in the developing world" but doesn't call on them to make the research itself available in the developing world.  Or, it focuses on access to new drugs and technologies and largely ignores access to literature and data.  Or, it focuses on access barriers created by patents and largely ignores those created by copyrights.  It should ask universities to mandate open access to the research output of their faculty.  (It should also ask funding agencies, especially public funding agencies, to mandate open access to the research published by their grantees; but so far the statement is limited to university actions.)  If researchers routinely deposited copies of their journal publications in interoperable OA repositories, then barrier-free access to the peer-reviewed research would complement barrier-free access to new medicines and technologies.

Jan Velterop, Price & Value, The Parachute, November 17, 2006.  Excerpt:

...In a normal functional economic system, the potential buyer just doesn’t buy [when the price seems too high]...or buys something that can be regarded as a substitute for what he initially desired, elsewhere, at a lower price.

Academic journals with their subscription models are not functioning along those lines, as they are monopoloid, i.e. non-substitutable, non-rivalrous. The paying party doesn’t have the choice. A subscribing library can’t just cancel an expensive journal and buy a cheaper one instead, because what his patrons find in one, they will not find in the other and vice versa. That’s why the model should be ‘flipped’, from a ‘user-side’ payment, to an ‘author-side’ payment.

In contrast to users, authors do have the choice. They can, in almost all cases, decide to go to another journal with their paper. And if price becomes a factor for them or their backers, they can weigh that in their decisions. For them, journals are substitutable, rivalrous....

[C]hanging to a standard economic model – which is what author-side payment for publication (i.e. payment on behalf of the party with a choice) entails – will offer us a chance to create a functional market environment and to converge the perceived value and the fee (the definition of a fair price)....

Those who see open access simply as a way to pay less are free to do so, of course, but it makes open access a mere negotiating lever with publishers....

The problem really is that for non-substitutable, non-rivalrous, material, the market for subscriptions is intrinsically dysfunctional. It may sometimes look as though high prices cause cancellations, but low-priced journals have suffered cancellations as well, and what’s more, there is no discernible pattern that reliably shows a distinction between higher priced and lower priced journals in that regard....

Open access is more fundamental than about price. It is also more fundamental than increased usage figures or citation counts. It is about the notion that results of research carried out with public money are public goods....

Should the cost of publishing be scrutinized? Sure. In the same way as the cost of research is scrutinized....

The current subscription system doesn’t give us that chance. Nobody knows what a fair price is. We are, absurdly, measuring ‘cost per download’, ‘cost of citation’ and the like and believe we are measuring value. Has anybody ever approached, say, the proceedings of a parliamentary debate in that way? Even just as a thought experiment? What is 'usage' anyway? Scientific articles are important documents. The only thing that valuing them by their usage and citation does is to make the usage and citation potential of articles into criteria for publishing them, instead of their intrinsic scientific merit. Thus making a brilliant article that few understand seem pretty worthless. And – possibly worse – making a poor, but controversial, popular, and fashionable article seem the more valuable of the two. Surely, that can't be where we want to go.

Jeff Van Drimmelen, Skypecasts' Academic Potential, Educause Connect, November 13, 2006.  (Thanks to Charles Bailey.)  Excerpt:

Skypecasts have the potential to revolutionize the academic community. They not only open up many options to teacher and student interactions, but level the playing field in a way that equalizes every participant’s voice. They also create thousands of new and exciting possibilities for real-time learning that were never possible before. This article gives a broad overview of what Skypecasts are, some possible applications in academia, as well as some of the pros and cons of using them now.  You can see the original post on my webpage here.

In writing this article I realized that it would be appropriate to create a Skypecast to discuss this article and other issues facing those who implement technology in education.  Join me at 10:30 (Eastern Standard Time) on November the 20th, 2006 to discuss Using Technology in Education....

Definition:  Skype has a great Skypecasts FAQ page. They define Skypecasts as “large, hosted calls on Skype.” Sound pretty simple. Basically you can create or join a large online conference call with UP TO 100 people. Skypecasts are scheduled to begin and end at a certain time and usually have a certain topic of discussion. The users must download and use Skype in order to join the Skypecast....

There are Skypecasts going right now with the title “Chat in HINDI or URDU” or “You speak English with me I teach you Chinese.” Online discussion groups could be created for foreign languages acquisition classes where students could speak with a native speaker of a language and in turn help others learn English....

Comment.  Hear, hear.  Earlier this month I participated by telephone in an OA conference taking place in Hyderabad, India.  It would have been much less expensive for the hosts if I participated by Skype.  I have a couple more teleconferences coming up, one for a group in Vancouver and one for a group in Barcelona.  I prefer them to travel because they save time (how often have you spent three days on the road to give a 40 minute talk?), money, hassle, backaches, and (no joke) carbon dioxide emissions. 

Eric Kansa, Once more on FRPAA, Digging Digitally, November 17, 2006. Eric restates some of Gary Ward's excellent answers to publisher objections to FRPAA, clearly hoping that officials at the AAA will pay attention.  Then he continues:

Now, it is not my purpose to bash the AAA on this matter. I believe very strongly that they are mistaken in their opposition to FRPAA, but I also believe it is essential to fully explore and address the concerns of scholarly societies and their publishing arms....

In moving toward open access, we need to consider how the costs will be covered. It is obvious that not every open access model will be sustainable or appropriate for disciplines such as anthropology or archaeology. I can’t imagine “author-side fees” (such as those expected by PLoS) working in these disciplines. I can imagine a system where professional societies, university libraries, and other consortia come together to underwrite and subsidize open access dissemination.  Universities and university libraries already spend a great deal of money on publication, and shifting some of these resources toward lower-cost open access systems seems viable. Peter Suber has devoted much attention to this issue and explores many pragmatic options (two examples: here and here.) I’m glad open access advocates in anthropology are careful and judicious in how they approach this issue (see this open letter on Savage Minds). Not all routes toward open access are the same. Some may be more sustainable than others, and some models adhere to the ideals of “open knowledge” more than others. FRPAA represents one strategy, and as noted by Gary Ward (above), FRPAA represents little risk to existing publication frameworks.

That said, we must not lose sight of the fact that the current publication regime is in trouble and is not sustainable (here, here, and this important letter about cost pressures on the University of California libraries). The AAA needs to remember this broader context before they entrench themselves even further in their opposition to FRPAA....

Hopefully, heads will cool and the AAA executive staff will realize that the (now defunct) AnthroSource Steering Committee recommendations, especially for the development of a “member-informed policy on open access” are sound and reasonable. FRPAA and open access should not be summarily dismissed. They are important issues that need to be aired and debated by the membership and other anthropological stakeholders. Hopefully, we’ll continue to see some progress toward these ends.

The Karman Center for Advanced Studies in the Humanities at the University of Bern is undertaking an OA Pantheon Project on the architecture of the ancient Roman building.  More importantly, the project marks a general commitment by Karman to OA.  (Thanks to Klaus Graf.)  From the Pantheon site:

The Pantheon Project, as all other future Karman Center projects, focuses on Open Access Scholarship, that is, not only the research results from the Pantheon Project and the Karman Center, but also all the basic data and discussion concerning them will be made freely accessible to all interested scholars for their own use. We also hope to convince archives and other institutions owning historical sources, such as drawings, photographs, prints, rare books, maps, etc., to help us make them available online for research. This would not only help to intensify scholarly work but would at the same time help to preserve the often very delicate or easily damaged originals. One tool developed at the University of Bern to serve large amounts of images and other data over the internet, is Digilib, the digital image library.

And more from another page within the site:

The Pantheon Project aims to establish new tools and norms of Open Access Scholarship: not only the research results from the Pantheon Project, but also all the basic data, intermediate results and discussion will be made freely accessible to all interested scholars. Archives and other institutions will be asked to publish their historical sources – drawings, photographs, prints, rare books, maps – online and make them freely accessible for research....

Digital resources can be referred and quoted in electronic documents, and links can be backtracked to citation sources, so that in the future scholarly work carried out using the Open Access archive can be easily harvested and searched.

A second and very important aspect is the form of interactive collaboration over the internet....

As can be seen, the Karman Center is testing new forms of scientific work and publication in the humanities, which will hopefully result in the establishment of these new forms as permanent working methods in the scientific community. Although the natural sciences, particularly in large projects that can only be realised through the collaboration of hundreds of scholars, have been using web-based collaboration and publication for more than a decade now, the approach to scientific work in the humanities is of a very different structure....

Also see Gerd Grasshoff's slide presentation on the Karman Center's approach to humanistic scholarship, its commitment to OA, and its Pantheon Project.

The Library 2.0 gang has released a podcast of its telephone conference on Open Access and Web 3.0.  (On November 7 it released a podcast on Open Data about libraries.)

The Australian Government Productivity Commission has posted a circular on how to submit comments on its recent draft report on public support for science:

You are invited to examine Draft Report and to provide written submissions to the Commission. (In addition, the Commission intends to hold a limited number of consultations to obtain feedback on the draft.)...There is no specified format for submissions. They may range from a brief outline of your views, to a much more substantial assessment of a range of issues. Where possible, you should provide relevant data and documentation to support your views. Written submissions should reach the Commission by Thursday, 21 December 2006....Submissions will normally be placed on the Commission’s website shortly after receipt, unless they are marked confidential or accompanied by a request to delay release for short period of time....Submissions may also be sent by mail, fax or audio cassette....By email: science@pc.gov.au.

PS:  For the OA recommendations in the draft report, see my blog posting from November 13, 2006.

Sascha Knauf, Open Access — Global Instrument for Society Development, a slide presentation (in German) at the seminar on Open Access to Knowledge: new opportunities with Internet: Part 2: Copyright and Open Access (Kiev, November 13, 2006).  (Thanks to Iryna Kuchma.)

From George Porter at Caltech:

[The] Open Access @ Caltech blog has surpassed 200 entries this week. The entries document Open Access choices made by Caltech faculty, staff, and students, primarily from 2003 to date. In addition to articles published in Open Access journals (PLoS, BMC, NAR, etc.) and hybrid-OA journals (PNAS, Company of Biologists, etc.), the blog notes participation on editorial boards of OA journals, release of technical reports, archiving commitments from individual faculty, among other noteworthy OA-related activities.

Wiley has acquired Blackwell.  For details, see today's press release.

Also see the news coverage.

Comments.  I don't blog this because it already has consequences for OA but because it could.

1. Wiley has a hybrid OA program called Funded Access (since August 2006; see my SOAN review) and Blackwell has a hybrid OA program called OnlineOpen (since February 2005; see my SOAN review).  Wiley's policy is much less author-friendly than Blackwell's.  After the merger, will the Wiley policy move toward the Blackwell policy?  Vice versa?   Both?  Or will each continue to apply, more or less unchanged, to separate sets of journals?
2. On another front, see Mark McCabe, The Impact of Publisher Mergers on Journal Prices.

Bill Hooker, Open Question on Open Access, Open Reading Frame, November 15, 2006.  Excerpt:

In a comment on Scott's recent entry (discussed below), Mark D makes a good point, one that I've touched on previously and that bears repeating:

The problem is, I haven't seen any hard data that documents the cost of peer review, redaction, and publishing. Everyone throws numbers around as if they were confetti. We are all, supposedly (publishers and librarians) in the scientific/technical community, yet so very few people take a scientific approach to this issue.

The first step on the road to open access, should be a review of the processes and costs associated with scientific publication. Sounds like a good paper for the library association journal. Any librarians out there that want to tackle this paper?

And as for the publishers, if they really do wish a dialogue, then why don't they reveal their redaction costs? Any takers out there in the publishing world?

Online publication dramatically lowers costs relative to printed journals, but it is not free. Copyediting is still required, peer review must be co-ordinated even though the actual reviewing is done by authors for no charge, and the digital objects (articles, data, etc) must be created, archived and maintained in an accessible format. There are surely other important costs, too, that do not occur to me right now. All of this costs money, but the Big Question of OA is: how much money?... [PS:  Omitting a good collection of stated costs and estimates.]

Comments. The problem is complicated.  Here are a few reasons why.

1. Different publishers give different estimates (as Bill well-summarizes).  Some test our credulity, such as Richard Charkin's testimony before the UK House of Commons that the cost per published article at Nature is 30 thousand pounds (scroll to p. Ev 2, Q16).  But even if we could eliminate absurd, miscalculated, and bad-faith estimates, we'd face the problem that different estimates may count different aspects of the publishing process in the cost per article.  And even if we could standardize the measurement, we'd have to face the fact that different publishers really do have different costs.  One reason is that they differ in their overheads and efficiency.  A lean and mean start-up, optimized for OA publication, will have lower costs than a traditional print publisher retooling for electronic publication.  It will have no legacy equipment or employees and therefore lower overheads.
2. Apart from leanness and meanness, OA publishing has fewer expenses than non-OA publishing.  It dispenses with print (or prices the optional print edition at cost), eliminates subscription management, eliminates DRM, eliminates lawyer fees for licenses and enforcement, reduces or eliminates marketing, and reduces or eliminates profit margins. In their place it adds back little more than the cost of collecting author-side fees or institutional subsidies.
3. Some other variables are the submission rate, the acceptance rate, and average article length, the average use of charts and illustrations, and the local cost of labor.  Of course profit margins also vary.
4. In 2002, Fytton Rowland found that the average cost of peer review per published article was about $400.  Note that this depends on the average acceptance rate, since the cost per accepted paper must also cover the cost of reviewing rejected papers.  Also note that the cost of peer review is almost entirely the cost of facilitation, since most referees are not paid, and the clerical tasks in facilitation are steadily being automated.  Hence the cost of peer review is coming down every year as journal management software improves, especially open-source software like DPubS, GAPworks, Hyperjournal, ePublishing Toolkit, OpenACS, Open Journal Systems (the current leader), SOPS, and TOPAZ. 

Carl T Bergstrom and Theodore C Bergstrom, The Economics of Ecology Journals, Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, November 2006.  (Thanks to Katie Newman and George Porter.)  Only this abstract is free online, at least so far.

Over the past decade, scientific publishing has shifted from a paper-based distribution system to one largely built upon electronic access to journal articles. Despite this shift, the basic patterns of journal pricing have remained largely unchanged. The large commercial publishers charge dramatically higher prices to institutions than do professional societies and university presses. These price differences do not reflect differences in quality as measured by citation rate. We discuss the effect of price and citation rate of a journal on library subscriptions and offer an explanation for why competition has not been able to erode the price differences between commercial and non-profit journals.

Update. See the OA edition of this article. (Thanks to William Walsh.)

There's a new entry on the Weasel's Manual of Apologies for Misbehaving Monopolists from Ted Bergstrom: 

Geography Professor, Nick Blomley, wrote an editorial called "Is this Journal Worth US$1118?"  in Geoforum, an Elsevier journal.  Blomley presented data comparing prices and citations for a number of geography journals.  Blomley's article inspired an Elsevier spokesperson, Chris Pringle, to write a rejoinder titled "Price and Value:  A Publisher's Perspective", an essay that will appeal to connoisseurs of Weaselsprache the world over.  Mr. Pringle explains that "the cost per download has declined fivefold between 1999 and 2005".  You have to give the man credit for finding something that grew more than five times as fast as Elsevier prices over this period.   Article downloads will do it.  The days when we used to walk over to the library to read journals are not so far behind us.

Of course we are still left wondering why it is that Elsevier journals cost about four times as much per article as non-profit journals, (whose downloads must also be growing about five times as fast as Elsevier prices. )  Mr. Pringle has an answer for that one too. "Some journals rely solely on a limited number of subscriptions whereas others benefit from additional revenue sources as well as subsidies and tax breaks."  I suppose that he means that  Elsevier journals have fewer subscribers than the cheaper non-profit journals.  (What do you suppose could be the reason for that?  Reminds me of Lizzie Borden pleading for leniency on the grounds that she was an orphan.)    As to subsidies: most professional societies do not subsidize their journals, but collect a substantial surplus from journal operations which they use to sponsor societal activities.  Nevertheless they manage to make do with prices that are about a fourth of Elsevier prices.  Maybe its the tax breaks, eh?

Tim Brody, Google CSE added to the Registry of Open Access Repositories, Open Access Peon, November 16, 2006.  Excerpt:

A few weeks ago OpenDOAR announced the inclusion of a experimental Google CSE ("customised search engine"). Google released their CSE (or 'co-op') tool on the 26th October, and its a testament to Google's skill at identifying new niches that CSE has already gained such interest.
Being OpenDOAR's nearest (good natured) competitor its incumbent on me to make sure we don't fall behind in the technical stakes....

What Google CSE means for us registries is we can now (theoretically) provide full-content searches of registered repositories with a minimal of effort. This is what OpenDOAR have done, and we've followed suit in our own search interface.

In addition to constraining the search to given sites Google CSE provides 'refinements' - editor-provided key terms that either filter the list of sites, or