APPENDIX 127
Memorandum from Professor Stevan Harnad,
University of Southampton
The UK should maximise the benefits to the British
tax-payer from the research it funds by strongly encouraging not
only (as it does now) that all findings should be published, but
also that open access to them should be provided, for all potential
users, through either of the two available means: (1) publishing
them in open-access journals (whenever suitable ones exists) (5%)
and (2) publishing the rest (95%) in toll-access journals whilst
also self-archiving them publicly on their own university's website.
Scientists do research to create new findings—to
be applied to improving people's lives and to be used by other
scientists to create still more new findings. If would-be users
of those findings cannot access them, then they cannot be applied
or used. Inaccessible research may as well not have been conducted
at all.
UK research is funded by the British tax-payer.
The researcher is paid to conduct the research and to publish
the findings in peer-reviewed journals, but whether would-be users
can access those findings depends on whether or not their universities
can afford to pay the tolls (subscription, site-license) for access
to the journals in which they are published.
No university can afford access to anywhere
near all research journals (there are 24,000 in all, publishing
2,500,000 articles per year), and most universities can only afford
access to a small and shrinking fraction of them.
A partial solution is to create "open-access"
journals that cover their costs by charging the author-institution
per article (to peer-review and publish it), instead of charging
the user-institutions for access to it. But fewer than 1,000 open-access
journals exist so far, publishing only about 100,000 (5%) of the
2,500,000 articles published yearly.
The solution for the rest of those articles
(95%) is for the authors' own institutions to provide open access
to them for all the would-be users whose universities cannot afford
the access-tolls of the journals in which they are published—by
"self-archiving" them on their own university websites.
The effect will be to maximise the visibility,
impact and usage of UK research and its benefits to the British
tax-payer who funds it.
This is followed by the longer (optional) annex
at: http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/-harnad/Temp/UKSTC.htm
Preamble
(1) Open access (worldwide) to UK research output
maximises the impact (ie, visibility, usage, application, citation)
of UK research output, enhancing the productivity and progress
of UK (and worldwide) research, thereby maximising the return
on the UK tax-payer's support for research.
http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/-harnad/Temp/openaccess.htm
(2) It is essential to understand that the
unified open-access provision strategy supported by the Budapest
Open Access Initiative, the Berlin Declaration, and other such
current movements involves two complementary strategies OAJ and
OAA:
UNIFIED OPEN-ACCESS
PROVISION POLICY:
(OAJ) Researchers publish their research in an
open-access journal if a suitable one exists, otherwise
(OAA) they publish it in a suitable toll-access
journal and also self-archive it in their own research institution's
open-access research archive.
http://www.soros.org/openaccess/read.shtml
http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/-harnad/Temp/berlin.htm
(3) It would be a great mistake (and the
press release already suggests some risk of making it) if open-access
provision were to be mistakenly identified only, or even primarily,
with OAJ (open access journal publishing). There are still far
too few open-access journals, whereas OAA self-archiving has the
power to provide immediate open access for all the rest of UK
research output.
(4) What parliament should mandate is accordingly
open-access provision for all funded research:
http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/-harnad/Temp/self-archiving-files/Slide0027.gif
The Science and Technology Committee's Inquiry
into Scientific Publications http://www.parliament.uk/parliamentary—committees/science-and-technology-committee/scitech111203a.cfm
The House of Commons Press Notice says:
"The Committee will be looking at access
to journals within the scientific community, with particular reference
to price and availability. It will be asking what measures are
being taken in government, the publishing industry and academic
institutions to ensure that researchers, teachers and students
have access to the publications they need in order to carry out
their work effectively. . . What are the consequences of increasing
numbers of open-access journals, for example for the operation
of the Research Assessment Exercise and other selection processes?
Should the Government support such a trend and, if so, how?"
There are today 24,000 research journals (across
all disciplines and languages, worldwide) publishing about 2,500,000
articles per year. There are currently about 600 open-access journals
http://www.doaj.org/ publishing about 75,000 articles per year.
What about access to the 2,425,000 articles
for which there exists no suitable open-access journal today?
Should researchers wait for 23,400 more open-access journals to
be created one by one? It's likely to be a long, long wait!
Yet there is another way to provide open access,
immediately, and that is for the authors of those 2,425,000 articles
in those 23,400 journals to self-archive them on their own institution's
website. That will make them all open-access overnight. There
are already three times as many articles that are made open-access
yearly through OAA self-archiving than through OAJ open-access
publishing today. And 55% of the 24,000 journals, though not yet
ready to take the risk of becoming open-access journals, are ready
to serve the interests of research and researchers by formally
supporting self-archiving by their authors; many of the remaining
45% of journals will also agree if asked: http://www.lboro.ac.uk/departments/ls/disresearch/romeo/Romeo
Publisher Policies.
So why is the Science and Technology Committee
inquiry into scientific publications considering only open access
journals (OAJ), rather than also considering, at least as seriously,
mandating university-based provision of open access to their own
(peer-reviewed, published) research output (OAA)?
The (UK portion of) at least 1,250,000 articles
could be made open-access overnight. The longer we wait, the longer
and bigger will be our growing daily, weekly, monthly and yearly
loss of research impact because of access-denial to would-be users
worldwide. (336% impact loss, according to Lawrence in Nature
2001): This represents a needless cumulative loss of research
progress and productivity for researchers, their institutions,
their funders, and ultimately for the tax-payers who fund the
funders. http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/-harnad/Temp/openaccess.htm
Harnad, S. (2003) Measuring and Maximising UK
Research Impact. Times Higher Education Supplement. Friday, June
6 2003. http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/-harnad/Temp/thes.html
Lawrence, S. (2001) Online or Invisible? Nature
411 (6837): 521. http://www.neci.nec.com/-lawrence/papers/online-nature01/
Detailed Comments and Recommendations
"The Committee will be looking at access
to journals within the scientific community, with particular reference
to price and availability."
A more targeted way to put this would be "access
to the articles published in peer-reviewed journals". The
articles (2,500,000 annually) are research output. Researchers
publish them in peer-reviewed journals (24,000 in all, across
all scientific and scholarly disciplines, worldwide) in order
to make them accessible to all other researchers (worldwide) to
be read, applied, used, built-upon, cited: This is called "research
impact" and it is what is behind research productivity and
progress (as well as the career advancement and future research
funding of the researcher, the prestige and research funding of
the researcher's institution, and the benefits to the UK tax-payer
for the money spent funding the research).
"It will be asking what measures are being
taken in government, the publishing industry and academic institutions."
It is extremely important to separate the sectors
over which the UK government has some direct control—government
itself, and academic institutions—from the ones over which
it can only have some indirect influence: the publishing industry.
The UK government can do a great deal to maximise
the access to and the impact of UK research output through government
research funding policies and through HEFCE influence over academic
institutional policy through research assessment and funding,
in particular, by extending existing publish-or-perish policy
to mandate open-access provision.
Harnad, S., Carr, L., Brody, T. & Oppenheim,
C. (2003) Mandated online RAE CVs Linked to University Eprint
Archives: Improving the UK Research Assessment Exercise whilst
making it cheaper and easier. Ariadne 35. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue35/harnad/
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But government can only influence publishers
indirectly. The greatest indirect influence will be the effect
of the above open-access provision policy itself, if it is mandated.
This will encourage journals (first) to support author self-archiving
http://www.lboro.ac.uk/departments/ls/disresearch/romeo/Romeo
Publisher Policies.htm and—perhaps—eventually also
to become open-access publishers:
http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/-harnad/Temp/self-archiving-files/Slide0028.gif
Secondarily—but note that the amount of
open access to UK research this will help provide is far less
than the amount that will be provided by the above open-access
provision policy—the Government can also provide (as part
of research support) some support for covering the costs of publishing
in open access journals, to further encourage publishing in open
access journals, to help sustain the small number of open access
journals that exist today (600, vs. 23,400 toll access journals),
and to encourage the creation of new open access journals and
the conversion of toll-access journals to open access.
But note that the greatest impetus to this (possible
eventual) transition from toll-access publishing to open-access
publishing will come from mandating open-access provision itself
(by the joint OAJ/OAA route), for this will generate open access
directly—and perhaps eventually also the university journal
subscription cancellations from which the annual university windfall
savings will be the natural source out of which to pay the open-access
journal publication (peer-review) costs for each university's
own research output: http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/-harnad/Tp/resolution.htm#4.2
"to ensure that researchers, teachers and
students have access to the publications they need in order to
carry out their work effectively."
The Government can of course act for all of
these good reasons. But remember that most of peer-reviewed journal
research is written by researchers for researchers, to be used,
applied and built upon in further research, to further research
progress. Otherwise it is hardly read by anyone (including teachers
and students).
So the Government's open-access provision policy
has to be very clear both on why open access to this special literature
is so important and necessary (for the sake of research productivity
and progress) and how it can make this importance and necessity
known to researchers, so that they will want to support the mandating
of open-access provision: Researchers will support it for the
sake of enhancing research impact. That they will understand and
approve fully. But they will not be much persuaded (and perhaps
even resistant) if they are told that open-access provision is
mandated in order (1) to encourage publishers to convert from
toll-access to open-access publishing, (2) to save money for libraries,
(3) to provide access to research for teachers, students and the
general public, or even (4) to provide access to research for
the developing world.
(1)—(4) may all be valid reasons for the
Government to support open-access provision, but for the researcher
the only persuasive reason is: to maximise the impact of his own
peer-reviewed research output (thereby maximising its contribution
and benefits to science and scholarship, as well as the resulting
rewards to the researcher and his institution).
"The inquiry will also examine the impact
that the current trend towards e-publishing may have on the integrity
of journals and the scientific process."
There is no "current trend toward e-publishing"!
Virtually all of the 24,000 peer-reviewed journals are already
hybrid print/electronic: They publish both an on-paper and an
online version, both still accessible only through institutional
tolls. There are a few online-only journals, but these are not
necessarily open-access journals (of which there are about 600).
So do not confuse hybrid-online or online-only journals with open-access
journals.
All journals have benefited from the new economies
and efficiencies of the online medium for processing submissions,
implementing peer review, and producing and distributing both
the paper and online edition. But those economies and efficiencies
themselves have not inclined most journals to convert to open
access. (Only 600 out of 24,000 have done so to date.)
So the electronic medium itself has increased
access for those institutions that could afford the tolls, because
licensed online institutional toll-access provides more and better
access than paper subscriptions do. But migrating journal contents
to the electronic medium certainly has not generated open access—far
from it. It is still a fact for every one of the 2,500,000 peer-reviewed
journal articles published annually that most of its would-be
users cannot access it, because their institutions cannot afford
the access-tolls. This means that an estimated 336% of potential
research impact is being lost, and continues to be lost daily:
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http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/-harnad/Temp/self-archiving-files/Slide0025.gif
Lawrence, S. (2001a) Online or Invisible? Nature
411 (6837): 521. http://www.neci.nec.com/-lawrence/papers/online-nature01/
Lawrence, S. (2001b) Free online availability substantially
increases a paper's impact. Nature Web Debates. http://www.nature.com/nature/debates/e-access/Articles/lawrence.html
Kurtz, M.J. et al. (2003) The NASA Astrophysics Data
System: Sociology, Bibliometrics, and Impact. Journal of the American
Society for Information Science and Technology http://cfa-www.harvard.edu/-kurtz/jasis-abstract.html
This has nothing to do with the "integrity
of journals and the scientific process." Research journals
are journals, whether paper or online, whether toll-access or
open-access. And the journal's contribution to the scientific
process—the administration of peer-review (the peers review
for free)—is unchanged, whether peer review is administered
on paper or online, and whether its administration costs are recovered
on a toll-access publishing-cost-recovery model or an open-access
publishing-cost-recovery model. The only thing that has been changed
(and changed radically) by the advent of the online medium is
the possibility, at last, of providing open access to this special
literature that its authors have always given away for free (even
to the point of making and mailing hard-copy "reprints"
at their own expense for any would-be users who asked for them)
in order to maximise their research impact.
Harnad, S. (1998/2000) The invisible hand of
peer review. Nature [online] (5 Nov. 1998) and Exploit Interactive
5 (2000): http://helix.nature.com/webmatters/invisible/invisible.html
http://www.exploit-lib.org/issue5/peer-review/
"What impact do publishers current policies
on pricing and provision of scientific journals, particularly
big deal schemes, have on libraries and the teaching and research
communities they serve?"
Separate the serials budget problem of university
libraries from the research impact problem of university researchers.
They are related and connected, but not in an obvious way, and
they are certainly not the same problem.
Libraries must make do—and provide access
for their researchers to whatever they can afford—from year
to year. For them, online licensing has been a boon: it has meant
more journal titles and articles accessible to more of their institutional
researchers per pound or dollar paid in access-tolls.
But prices keep going up too. So there is also
a shrinkage in the number of journals that libraries can afford.
The "big package deals" offer libraries the bonus of
getting both the paper and the online version of all journals
(from the same publisher) that they have subscribed to previously,
plus all journals (by the same publisher) to which they did not
subscribe previously—for the price of only the journals
they subscribed to previously.
This "big deal" too provides some
increased access, but the prices still keep going up. So the net
outcome is the same: An overextended journals acquisition budget
(at the cost of an underfunded book acquisitions budget) and affordable
access to only a tiny fraction of the annual 2,500,000 articles
in the 24,000 journals.
This means university libraries remain cash-strapped,
and their users remain access-deprived (not relative to what they
used to have, in paper days, but relative to all there is: the
2,500,000 annual articles in the 24,000 peer-reviewed research
journals). This is the serials budget problem, and it is purely
on the input/buy-in side.
But there is also the research impact problem,
which is on the output side: University researchers are impact-deprived—because
of the access problems of other universities: those universities
cannot afford access to my university's research output, so I
lose research impact.
The two problems are connected, but in a subtle
way. The key to understanding the two problems is to understand
the reciprocity involved. Libraries tend to misunderstand and
mis-state this as: "Our university does the research, gives
it away to publishers for free, and then has to buy it back!"
This is completely incorrect. What the university
is buying in (not back) is the research output of other universities,
not their own research output. (They already have their own research
output!) And what is being lost is research impact: the consequences
of access-denial to my give-away research because other universities
cannot afford the tolls to access the journal in which it appeared
(hence cannot read/use/cite it).
The picture seems complicated, but the solution—in
the first instance, to the lost research-impact problem, but eventually
perhaps also to the serials budget problem—is to capitalise
on the new online medium as well as the peculiar reciprocity-relation
that exists among the respective author give-aways, by mandating
that universities extend their existing publish-or-perish policies
to include open-access provision for those publications: It is
not enough to publish, and hence let the affordability of access-tolls
determine who can and cannot use your research output. Publication
must be supplemented with open-access provision (by implementing
the Unified Open Access Provision Policy ).
The result, in the short run, will be open access
to all UK research output worldwide, thereby maximising its research
impact. http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/-harnad/Tp/resolution.htm#4.1
In the longer run this might also lead to a transition
from toll-access to open-access journal publishing, thereby solving
the libraries' serials budget problem. http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/-harnad/Tp/resolution.htm#4.2
"What action should Government, academic
institutions and publishers be taking to promote a competitive
market in scientific publications?"
Trying to increase between-journal competition
in order to lower prices is only a library serials-budget strategy.
This has been going on for years now (led by SPARC http://www.arl.org/sparc/
and SPARC-Europe http://www.sparceurope.org/, a consortium of
university libraries trying to use their collective power to drive
down journal prices). Its success has so far been minimal, and
its effect on researchers' access and impact has been negligible.
http://www.sparceurope.org/
The reason this strategy does not work is because
of inelastic demand for peer-reviewed research. The 24,000 journals
have a priority hierarchy in this inelastic demand: All researchers
need access to it all, but no university can afford access to
more than a fraction. So it is just a matter of trying to buy
in as much as each can, top-down.
The journals know (and feel, from the market's
responses to price increases) that the demand is inelastic: that
the university libraries have no choice. Moreover, because of
the peculiar reward-structure of this anomalous form of publishing—in
which, unlike book authors, peer-reviewed journal article authors
give away their articles, seeking no royalties or payment, but
only research impact—the only relevant competition among
journals is for articles (ie, to get the best articles); there
is little competition between journals for subscriptions.
And competing for the highest-quality authors
and articles depends, paradoxically, on rejecting articles, in
order to maintain the highest standards of peer review. For it
is the highest-quality articles that generate the highest research
impact (usage, citation).
So the top-down variable in the journal hierarchy
is quality and impact. This, not price, is the main determinant
of which journals will and will not be subscribed to by the libraries.
It is for impact that journals compete. But peer-review quality
standards and rejection rates have absolutely no connection with
any competitivity one might generate between journal subscription
prices!
So the path of trying to spark competition between
journals in order to lower access tolls is one that has afforded
and promises limited success. SPARC has subsidised and offered
consortial subscription support to lower-priced journals. It is
now doing the same for open-access journals. But the scope for
any substantial change here is very limited, and it concerns mainly
the libraries' year-to-year serials budget problems; it has little
impact on the access problem, hence the research impact problem.
(600 open access journals out of 24,000 journals represents a
very small portion of actual and potential impact space).
The way to solve the research impact problem
is to implement the Unified Open Access Provision Policy .
"What are the consequences of increasing
numbers of open-access journals, for example for the operation
of the Research Assessment Exercise and other selection processes?
Should the Government support such a trend and, if so, how?"
It is not the (very slowly) increasing number
of open-access journals (OAJ) that is relevant to the Research
Assessment Exercise (RAE), nor even the (almost as slowly) increasing
number of articles made open-access by self-archiving (OAA). What
is relevant to the RAE, and what the Government should support,
is increasing the amount of open-access provision—via both
OAJ and OAA—by mandating it.
"How effectively are the Legal Deposit Libraries
making available non-print scientific publications to the research
community, and what steps should they be taking in this respect?"
This is irrelevant. Legal Deposit Libraries
store copies of record, for archival and preservation purposes.
They are not open-access providers. What should be mandated is
that all universities make their own published research articles
openly accessible by publishing them in an open-access journal—or
in a toll-access journal and depositing them in their own university
open-access archives: http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/-harnad/Temp/archpolnew.html
"What impact will trends in academic journal
publishing have on the risks of scientific fraud and malpractice?"
It is not clear why research access and impact
problems are being considered in the same breath with problems
of fraud and malpractice. There was some fraud and malpractice
in paper journals. There is some fraud and malpractice in online
journals. The cost-recovery model (whether toll-access or open-access)
is also irrelevant. It is true that it is easier to plagiarise
or to otherwise misuse an online text than a paper one, but it
is also true that plagiarism and misuse are more easily detectable
online. So these balance out.
Apart from that, questions about scientific
fraud and malpractice (and questions about modifying the peer
review system in any way) have nothing to do with the question
of open online access.
"In announcing the inquiry, the Chairman
of the Committee, Ian Gibson MP, said Journals are at the heart
of the scientific process. Researchers, teachers and students
must have easy access to scientific publications at a fair price."
As noted, the access problem for this specialised
literature is not primarily a problem of teachers and students,
but of researchers, for the sake of research productivity, progress
and impact. Nor is it about ease of access: It is about having
access at all (as opposed to access-denial). Nor is it merely
or even primarily about having access at "a fair price."
This is an author give-away literature, written purely for the
sake of research impact. Access-denial at any price is already
needless impact-denial. Even if all 24,000 peer-reviewed journals
were sold at cost (and cost was minimised using all the economies
and efficiencies of the new electronic medium) it would still
be true of all 2,500,000 annual articles that they are inaccessible
to most of their would-be users, because their institutions still
cannot afford access to them all, and hence that all that potential
research impact is still being needlessly lost.
The only remedy is to supplement toll-access
(whatever its going price) with open-access provision by the authors,
institutions and funders that provide this give-away research
in the first place.
"Scientific journals need to maintain their
credibility and integrity as they move into the age of e-publication.
The Committee will have some very tough questions for publishers,
libraries and government on these issues."
There is no new credibility/integrity problem
for the 2,500,000 articles appearing annually in the world's 24,000
peer-reviewed journals. There is an access problem for their would-be
users—those whose institutions cannot afford the access-tolls—and
an impact problem for (all) of their authors.
The tough questions should not be directed primarily
at publishers and libraries but at the research community itself:
researchers, their institutions, and their governmental research
funders. And the question is: Why are the potential benefits of
this research not being maximised by maximising the access to
it (through open-access provision)? It is the research community
that it is in the position to solve this problem—especially
if government mandates it.
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February 2004
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