Scholarly Communication – Page 40

Is the Access Spectrum a Red Herring or Are Green and Gold Too Black and White?

Stevan Harnad has commented extensively on my "The Spectrum of E-Journal Access Policies: Open to Restricted Access" DigitalKoans posting. Thanks for doing so, Stevan. Here are my thoughts on your comments.

First, let me concede that if you look at this question from Stevan’s particular open-access-centric point of view that, of course, the spectrum of publisher access policies is a complete and utter waste of time. I don’t recall suggesting that this was a new open access model per se, even though it includes open access in it as a component and it makes some further distinctions between open access and free access journals. Rather, it is what it says it is: a model that presents a range of publisher access policies from the least restrictive to the most restrictive. The color codes merely enhance the model slightly, they are not central to it (and, of course, as Steven says, he created this color coding Frankenstein to begin with). The model says nothing about e-prints.

That said, Steven’s view that open access equals free access (period) is not, as he well knows, universal, and his green and gold models are based on this premise.

Here is how Peter Suber defines OA in "Open Access Overview: Focusing on Open Access to Peer-Reviewed Research Articles and Their Preprints" (boldface is mine):

OA should be immediate, rather than delayed, and OA should apply to the full-text, not just to abstracts or summaries.

OA removes price barriers (subscriptions, licensing fees, pay-per-view fees) and permission barriers (most copyright and licensing restrictions).

There is some flexibility about which permission barriers to remove. For example, some OA providers permit commercial re-use and some do not. Some permit derivative works and some do not. But all of the major public definitions of OA agree that merely removing price barriers, or limiting permissible uses to "fair use" ("fair dealing" in the UK), is not enough.

Here’s how the Budapest Open Access Initiative put it: "There are many degrees and kinds of wider and easier access to this literature. By ‘open access’ to this literature, we mean its free availability on the public internet, permitting any users to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of these articles, crawl them for indexing, pass them as data to software, or use them for any other lawful purpose, without financial, legal, or technical barriers other than those inseparable from gaining access to the internet itself. The only constraint on reproduction and distribution, and the only role for copyright in this domain, should be to give authors control over the integrity of their work and the right to be properly acknowledged and cited."

Here’s how the Bethesda and Berlin statements put it: "For a work to be OA, the copyright holder must consent in advance to let users ‘copy, use, distribute, transmit and display the work publicly and to make and distribute derivative works, in any digital medium for any responsible purpose, subject to proper attribution of authorship….’"

The Budapest (February 2002), Bethesda (June 2003), and Berlin (October 2003) definitions of "open access" are the most central and influential for the OA movement. Sometimes I call refer to them collectively, or to their common ground, as the BBB definition.

So, by most OA definitions, a journal that "makes all of its articles immediately and permanently accessible to all would-be users webwide toll-free" is not OA unless it also uses a Creative Commons or similar license that permits use with minimal restrictions. It is FA (Free Access). As I have said in an earlier dialog, we can count on no journal to be "permanently accessible" unless some trusted archive other than the publisher makes it so, an issue that Steven apparently disagrees with, believing that publishers never go out of business.

I note that Steven has deviated from his "chrononomic parsimony" principle by having both "Green" and "Pale-Green," in his model and then lumping them both together in his discussions as "GREEN." (In his Summary Statistics So Far site he also introduces the color Grey, for "neither yet.") If preprints and postprints are of equal value, why not just code them Green? If they are not of equal value (i.e., postprints that accurately incorporate the changes that occur during the peer-review process are the only real substitute for the published article), then, in reality, those 15.5% of "Pale-Green" journals are of limited value in terms of self-archiving, and the real GREEN journal number is 76.2%, not 92%.

I must admit to some confusion on his latest stand that all types of self-archiving are equal. In "Ten Years After," he seems to be expressing a different sentiment regarding author home pages:

That said, there was a naive element to the Subversive Proposal, too, since Harnad’s plan would have led to researchers posting their papers on thousands of isolated FTP sites. This would have meant that anyone wanting to access the papers would have needed prior knowledge of the papers’ existence and the whereabouts of every relevant archive. They would then have had to search each archive separately. Today, Harnad concedes that "anonymous FTP sites and arbitrary Web sites are more like common graves, insofar as searching is concerned."

Perhaps I misunderstand what is meant by "arbitrary Web sites."

As the prior DigitalKoans dialog beginning with "How Green Is My Publisher?" shows, we clearly disagree on many points related to the importance of author copyright agreements (e.g., they have to permit deposit in disciplinary archives), the importance of deposit in OAI-PMH-compliant archives, and the mission and scope of institutional repositories.

A series of DigitalKoans postings that start with "The View from the IR Trenches, Part 1" provides numerous quotes from the literature that bolster my case.

Second, while I admire Stevan’s unflagging advocacy of open access (by which he really means free access), open access is not the only issue in the e-journal publishing world that is of concern to librarians to whom this missive was mainly addressed. This is because librarians, while hopefully working to build a better future, have to deal with the messy existing realities of the e-publishing environment to do their jobs and to make decisions about how to allocate scarce resources. Consequently, librarians have to scan the e-publishing environment, analyze it, categorize it, and make evaluative judgements about it. They have to make models of e-publishing reality to better understand it. They don’t have the luxury of only dreaming about what that reality should be.

Thus, while Steven is indifferent to many of those 894,302 free full-text articles from 857 HighWire-hosted journals (a number which likely dwarfs all articles available from OA/free journals), librarians are not. Paying attention to them is important. While many are not immediately free, they are free nonetheless after some embargo period. And EA (Embargoed Access) journals are better than RA (Restricted Access) journals in practical terms for users who have no other current access. And even limited access to more restrictive PA (Partial Access) journals is likely to be welcomed by users who today would have no access otherwise. I know that both kinds of access are welcomed by me as a user.

This is not to say that we shouldn’t strive for journals to move up the spectrum from red to green, but it is to say that: (1) some free access is better than no free access for journals that will never move further up the spectrum, and (2) it may be that some journals have to move step-by-step, not in one leap, for the change to take place, and, if they start higher, it may be easier to encourage them to move further and faster. (But we have to know which ones have this potential based on their current status.)

Steven’s model has colors, but, in reality, each color is black and white: Gold and nothing, GREEN and grey. All or nothing. And, as long as you accept his premises, it works, and it allows him to focus on his free-access goal with single minded determination, undistracted by the knotted complexities of the e-scholarly publishing environment. Long may he run.

For those who have a different view of OA or who have broader concerns, it’s too "black and white."

I give him the last word on this matter.

The Spectrum of E-Journal Access Policies: Open to Restricted Access

As journal publishing continues to evolve, the access policies of publishers become more differentiated. The open access movement has been an important catalyst for change in this regard, prodding publishers to reexamine their access policies and, in some cases, to move towards new access models.

To fully understand where things stand with journal access policies, we need to clarify and name the policies in use. While the below list may not be comprehensive, it attempts to provide a first-cut model for key journal access policies, adopting the now popular use of colors as a second form of shorthand for identifying the policy types.

Open Access journals (OA journals, color code: green): These journals provide free access to all articles and utilize a form of licensing that puts minimal restrictions on the use of articles, such as the Creative Commons Attribution License. Example: Biomedical Digital Libraries.
Free Access journals (FA journals, color code: cyan): These journals provide free access to all articles and utilize a variety of copyright statements (e.g., the journal copyright statement may grant liberal educational copying provisions), but they do not use a Creative Commons Attribution License or similar license. Example: The Public-Access Computer Systems Review.
Embargoed Access journals (EA journals, color code: yellow): These journals provide free access to all articles after a specified embargo period and typically utilize conventional copyright statements. Example: Learned Publishing.
Partial Access journals (PA journals, color code: orange): These journals provide free access to selected articles and typically utilize conventional copyright statements. Example: College & Research Libraries.
Restricted Access journals (RA journals, color code: red): These journals provide no free access to articles and typically utilize conventional copyright statements. Example: Library Administration and Management. (Available in electronic form from Library Literature & Information Science Full Text and other databases.)

Using this taxonomy, an examination of the contents of the Directory of Open Access Journals quickly reveals that, in reality, it is the Directory of Open and Free Access Journals, because many listed journals do not use a Creative Commons Attribution License or similar license.

Some may argue that the distinction between OA and FA journals is meaningless; however, to do so suggests that the below sections of the "Budapest Open Access Initiative" in italics are meaningless and, consequently, that the Open Access movement is really just the Free Access movement.

By "open access" to this literature, we mean its free availability on the public internet, permitting any users to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of these articles, crawl them for indexing, pass them as data to software, or use them for any other lawful purpose, without financial, legal, or technical barriers other than those inseparable from gaining access to the internet itself. The only constraint on reproduction and distribution, and the only role for copyright in this domain, should be to give authors control over the integrity of their work and the right to be properly acknowledged and cited.

Not that there would be anything wrong with the Free Access movement, but some may feel that the broader scope of the Open Access movement is much more desirable.

In any case, the journal universe is not just green or red, and it’s a pity that we don’t know the breakdown of the spectrum (e.g., x number of green journals and y number of cyan journals), for that would give us a better handle on how the world has changed from the days when all journals were red journals.

More Blind Than Double-Blind Review?

The Wall Street Journal has published an interesting article on the failure of medical journals to adequately screen articles (reprinted below in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette):

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/05130/501996.stm

To quote:

A study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association last year reviewed 122 medical-journal articles and found that 65 percent of findings on harmful effects weren’t completely reported. It also found gaps in half the findings on how well treatments worked. . . .

Journal editors rarely see the complete design and outcome of the studies summarized in articles submitted for publication. A typical article is perhaps six or seven pages long, even when the research behind it took years and involved thousands of patients. Peer reviewers — other scientists who work voluntarily to review articles before they are published — also see only the brief article. They might fail to notice suspicious omissions and changes in focus, or, if they do, lack the time or inclination to follow them up.

Scholarly Communication Web Sites at ARL Libraries

The Association of Research Libraries (ARL) currently has 123 member libraries in the US and Canada. Below is a list of scholarly communication web sites at ARL libraries. This list was complied by a quick examination of ARL libraries’ home pages, supplemented by some Google searching. It’s not comprehensive, and I would welcome additions.

Heading for the Exits

At SPARC: "Rick Johnson, SPARC’s founding Executive Director, has announced his decision to resign. Heather Joseph has been named to succeed him. Joseph is the founding President and Chief Operating Officer of BioOne, an innovative aggregation of high-impact bioscience research journals. The change in SPARC leadership is effective July 1, 2005." And, at BioMed Central: "Jan Velterop, Director and Publisher of BioMed Central, will be leaving to pursue independently his many engagements as an advocate of Open Access to societies, funding institutions and publishers. Matthew Cockerill and Anne Greenwood will take joint responsibility for publishing and other activities of BioMed Central as the business continues its rapid growth." (Thanks to Peter Suber for the second one.)

What are the chances that these two major figures in the scholarly publishing reform movement would have their resignations announced within a day of each other? Let’s hope it’s not a trend. Rick Johnson did a bang-up job of "creating change" at SPARC, and Jan Velterop vigorously led the OA journal charge at BioMed Central, fostering the development of over 100 journals. Kudos and best wishes to both. I’m sure we haven’t heard the last of them.

The Access Principle: The Case for Open Access to Research and Scholarship

John Willinsky’s book, The Access Principle: The Case for Open Access to Research and Scholarship, will be released in December by MIT Press. The blurb indicates: "A commitment to scholarly work, writes Willinsky, carries with it a responsibility to circulate that work as widely as possible: this is the access principle."

Interesting. OA as a "responsibility," perhaps even a moral obligation. Often OA advocates discuss the benefits to authors of widespread digital exposure through OA, which boils down to enlighted self interest. And, of course, there is mandatory discussion of the need for access for the disenfranchised (not just the developing world, but anyone that can’t afford toll fees) in order to promote scholarship and other activities. (Let’s face it, who isn’t disenfranchised these days?) But, "responsibility," . . . hmmm, that heats up the dialog.

In any case, here’s a bit more: "Willinsky describes different types of access—the New England Journal of Medicine, for example, grants open access to issues six months after initial publication, and First Monday forgoes a print edition and makes its contents immediately accessible at no cost. He discusses the contradictions of copyright law, the reading of research, and the economic viability of open access. He also considers broader themes of public access to knowledge, human rights issues, lessons from publishing history, and ‘epistemological vanities.’"

By the way, Willinsky is a key figure in the Public Knowledge Project, which provides cool open source software such as Open Journal Systems and Open Conference Systems. (Thanks to Adrian Ho for the tip on this book.)