(This isn’t part of my essay, but I like to state my biases: I work in an engineering and science library, and the journal costs are debilitating. I also signed away rights to papers I wrote as an engineer and regret it.)
Changes in scholarly communication–particularly in scholarly publishing–are challenging libraries in unprecedented ways. In the past libraries bought books or subscribed to journals and kept physical copies on the shelves in perpetuity. With the advent of electronic journals and researchers’ demand for 24/7 access, libraries are moving away from an ownership model and are now effectively leasing access to electronic content, with indexing and preservation done by the publishers (Borgman 68). Unfortunately, because publishers own the content, libraries are forced to pay ever-increasing subscription fees to maintain access, sometimes paying multiple times for the same content, due to “bundling†(Borgman 112).
This is particularly concerning in the sciences: to gain tenure, one must be published in established journals, but to do so, one must give the publishers all rights to her content; campus libraries then pay dearly for the right to provide that content to other faculty and students. Aaronson describes the economic side of the problem both briefly and bitingly, claiming that most of the writing, typesetting, reviewing, editing, and even archiving and distribution of papers is done by academics with no charge to the publishers, while a single journal subscription might cost a library as much as $3000 a year (2007). Willinsky, addressing the greater picture, refers to this closed access to scientific findings as “human research capacity … being wasted or going unrealized because of … unnecessarily restricted access to the circulation of knowledge†(34).
Happily, the open access movement is gaining ground outside of the library community: last year’s ruling requiring that NIH-funded research be made public within a year of first publication (Albanese 9/5)–to give the public access to research their tax dollars had funded–was slated to be challenged in Congress this month. The issue proved more contentious than expected, with “33 Nobel Prize-winning scientists†and “47 copyright experts and professors of law†writing in support of last year’s ruling, while representatives of certain publishers continued pushing Congress to overrule it (Albanese 9/19). Ultimately, Congress postponed making a decision (Albanese 9/18). The publicity given to cases like this will help publicize and gain support for the open access movement.
As Lesk points out, governmental protection of intellectual property was intended to foster innovation but has often stifled it (294). Unfortunately, a clear path out of this morass eludes us; academics are reticent to change their methods (Aaronson), despite the success of over 1500 open access journals (Willinsky 26) and various “open science†initiatives. Journal publishers add some value, but the question of how much–and whether we are willing to continue trading away open scientific dialog–is difficult to answer.
Aaronson, S. (2007, December). “Review of The Access Principle by John Willinsky,” MIT press, 2005. SIGACT News 38 (4), 19-23.
Albanese, A. “After Hearing, Sweeping Anti-NIH Bill To Be Shelved—for Now,†Library Journal, 9/18/2008. Available online: http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA6597267.html?nid=3285
Albanese, A. “In Blunt Terms, Copyright Lawyers, Researchers, Librarians Blast Anti-NIH Bill,†Library Journal, 9/19/2008 Available online: http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA6597446.html?nid=3603
Albanese, A. “NIH Public Access Policy To Face Copyright Challenge in Congress?†Library Journal, 9/5/2008 Available online: http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA6593398.html?nid=3310
Borgman, Christine. Scholarship in the Digital Age: Information, Infrastructure, and the Internet. MIT Press, 2007. # ISBN-10: 0262026198; ISBN-13: 978-0262026192.
Lesk, Michael. Understanding Digital Libraries . Morgan Kaufman Publishers, 2004. 2nd Edition, ISBN: 1-55860-924-5.
Willinsky, John. The Access Principle: the Case for Open Access to Research and Scholarship. MIT Press, 2005, ISBN: 0262232421.
There’s a point I have yet to see discussed regarding this issue: the fact that the journal publishers spend non-trivial amounts of money on the research community in the form of prizes, support for conferences, and similar activities. (I’d be interested to know how significant such expenditures really are.) So one could view the process, in part, as an indirect way of supporting research.So, while the process is painful to libraries, one could take the view that some of that money is really being allocated to research departments, just in an indirect way.This isn’t to defend the process (as a matter of general policy, it’s insufficiently transparent, even if there were no other problems). But it does mean that changing the system isn’t as simple as, say, switching everyone to non-profit journals and enjoying the savings. (As if that were simple.)
Anonymous, you bring up a really fantastic point. Conferences are one important way in which the research community meets, greets, and shares ideas. Putting a price on that, in terms of the sheer momentum and number of research breakthroughs coming out of those meetings, would be extremely difficult. (Maybe someone has tried; I haven’t searched the literature for that!) I’d be interested to find out how strong supporters of open access journals would respond to that point.A couple of thoughts, which I haven’t really taken the time to put in order: 1) The fees to go to conferences are pretty steep; I’d be interested to see how much of the cost of, say, an IEEE conference is footed by IEEE and how much is covered by attendance fees and exhibitors. 2) Some of the collaboration that is done at conferences could be done via wikis, e-mail lists, Sharepoint, or in a method similar to the Transactions of the Royal Society, when they started out–letters between scientists are “published,” leading to a journal that is almost a conversation. Certainly, there’s nothing quite like throwing a bunch of scientists into a room with writing implements. But I wonder whether the speed of having constant virtual conversations, rather than waiting through publishing and conference cycles, would make up for the energy of everyone being in a room together. (I honestly don’t know the answer.)I agree that changing the system will be non-trivial. I think it’s in our best interest to look into other options and begin trying to answer questions like these; journal subscription prices can’t continue to increase at the rate they are, or libraries will reach a breaking point. I’m getting the sense that it’s already happening, though it’s hard to weed out angry complainers from people with legitimate concerns, sometimes.