<p>Universities from Britain to California are refusing to renew their expensive subscriptions, turning instead to “open access” publishing, an arrangement whereby material is made available free on the Internet with few or no restrictions except for the obligation to cite it.<br /><br />Paul Ayris, director of library services at University College London, describes the revolt’s goal as “the dream of every researcher — from the desktop and at the end of an Internet connection, to be able to have the world’s literature at your fingertips.” For the moment, that dream is still a long way off. But with British universities already spending 65 percent of their library acquisition budgets on periodicals — up from 50 percent 10 years ago — and university funding cut back, the pressure for change is mounting. <br /><br />Like newspapers and the music business, scholarly publishing has been drastically affected by the Internet. But the differences are as striking as the parallels. Unlike journalists, most academics are paid for research or teaching, not writing. <br /><br />Yet all academics need to publish their work — to share and validate their research and also, crucially, to advance their careers. A scholar who does not publish regularly generally does not get promoted, making for a one-sided relationship with publishers.<br /><br />Unpaid peer reviewers<br />Sales figures, which can often be counted in the hundreds, matter far less than impact — the number of times a publication is cited by other researchers. And most journals rely on unpaid academic peer reviewers, rather than a paid editorial staff, to select articles for publication all of which makes the economics of scholarly publishing very different from that for either newspapers, which depend on advertisers and a mass readership, or music.<br /><br />Not all open access journals are equally open. In June, the Wellcome Foundation, which in addition to housing the Wellcome Library also funds about £650 million, or $1 billion, worth of medical and scientific research, announced a collaboration with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute in the United States and the Max Planck Society in Germany to establish a new open access journal aimed at the top tier of researchers around the world.<br /><br />If open access journals represent what is know as “gold open access” — in which the final, published version of an article is made available free to the general public as soon as possible — UCL Discovery, a new venture by University College London, is an example of what advocates call “green” open access: a freely accessible repository in which researchers are invited (or required) to deposit their findings but with some possible restrictions on reuse.<br /><br />Gold open access normally involves a publication fee, paid by the author or funder, Mr. Ayris said, which may be one reason why it accounts for only a fraction of scholarly publishing. However, thanks to mandates like those at the N.I.H. or the Wellcome Foundation, and repositories like UCL Discovery, or the Latindex Portal of Portals, a new project by the Autonomous University of Mexico providing open access to scientific articles from Latin America, Portugal and Spain, green open access is far more widespread.<br /><br />Sir John Daniel, president of the Commonwealth of Learning, an organisation that helps developing countries improve access to education, said such efforts did not go nearly far enough. “One of the major obstacles to education in the developing world is the lack of high quality teaching materials,” he said. “The countries we work with can’t afford journals; they’re already paying an arm and a leg for textbooks.”<br /><br />His view that open access scholarly publishing is a matter of international justice has become increasingly influential. In June, the Commonwealth of Learning will be co-host to a world conference on open educational resources with the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, where Sir John was once an assistant director general.<br /><br /> In the lead-up to that conference the Commonwealth of Learning has just been awarded a grant by the William and Flora Hewitt Foundation to conduct a survey of government attitudes to open access and to help formulate possible guidelines for government support.<br /><br />“Open access is now an established part of the publishing landscape,” said Mr. Patterson of PLoS, “but there is still a long way to go before it becomes the dominant model.”<br /></p>
<p>Universities from Britain to California are refusing to renew their expensive subscriptions, turning instead to “open access” publishing, an arrangement whereby material is made available free on the Internet with few or no restrictions except for the obligation to cite it.<br /><br />Paul Ayris, director of library services at University College London, describes the revolt’s goal as “the dream of every researcher — from the desktop and at the end of an Internet connection, to be able to have the world’s literature at your fingertips.” For the moment, that dream is still a long way off. But with British universities already spending 65 percent of their library acquisition budgets on periodicals — up from 50 percent 10 years ago — and university funding cut back, the pressure for change is mounting. <br /><br />Like newspapers and the music business, scholarly publishing has been drastically affected by the Internet. But the differences are as striking as the parallels. Unlike journalists, most academics are paid for research or teaching, not writing. <br /><br />Yet all academics need to publish their work — to share and validate their research and also, crucially, to advance their careers. A scholar who does not publish regularly generally does not get promoted, making for a one-sided relationship with publishers.<br /><br />Unpaid peer reviewers<br />Sales figures, which can often be counted in the hundreds, matter far less than impact — the number of times a publication is cited by other researchers. And most journals rely on unpaid academic peer reviewers, rather than a paid editorial staff, to select articles for publication all of which makes the economics of scholarly publishing very different from that for either newspapers, which depend on advertisers and a mass readership, or music.<br /><br />Not all open access journals are equally open. In June, the Wellcome Foundation, which in addition to housing the Wellcome Library also funds about £650 million, or $1 billion, worth of medical and scientific research, announced a collaboration with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute in the United States and the Max Planck Society in Germany to establish a new open access journal aimed at the top tier of researchers around the world.<br /><br />If open access journals represent what is know as “gold open access” — in which the final, published version of an article is made available free to the general public as soon as possible — UCL Discovery, a new venture by University College London, is an example of what advocates call “green” open access: a freely accessible repository in which researchers are invited (or required) to deposit their findings but with some possible restrictions on reuse.<br /><br />Gold open access normally involves a publication fee, paid by the author or funder, Mr. Ayris said, which may be one reason why it accounts for only a fraction of scholarly publishing. However, thanks to mandates like those at the N.I.H. or the Wellcome Foundation, and repositories like UCL Discovery, or the Latindex Portal of Portals, a new project by the Autonomous University of Mexico providing open access to scientific articles from Latin America, Portugal and Spain, green open access is far more widespread.<br /><br />Sir John Daniel, president of the Commonwealth of Learning, an organisation that helps developing countries improve access to education, said such efforts did not go nearly far enough. “One of the major obstacles to education in the developing world is the lack of high quality teaching materials,” he said. “The countries we work with can’t afford journals; they’re already paying an arm and a leg for textbooks.”<br /><br />His view that open access scholarly publishing is a matter of international justice has become increasingly influential. In June, the Commonwealth of Learning will be co-host to a world conference on open educational resources with the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, where Sir John was once an assistant director general.<br /><br /> In the lead-up to that conference the Commonwealth of Learning has just been awarded a grant by the William and Flora Hewitt Foundation to conduct a survey of government attitudes to open access and to help formulate possible guidelines for government support.<br /><br />“Open access is now an established part of the publishing landscape,” said Mr. Patterson of PLoS, “but there is still a long way to go before it becomes the dominant model.”<br /></p>