On the Open Access Debate within Humanities

In Giving it Away: Sharing and the Future of Scholarly Communication, Planned Obsolescence author Kathleen Fitzpatrick writes about the open access debate within the humanities.  

According to Fitzpatrick this debate has, so far, been bogged down by a focus on the financial difficulties involved in switching to an author-pays model of publishing, due to the relatively low levels of funding received by humanities scholars.  While acknowledging the reality of these concerns, Fitzpatrick argues that the seemingly insurmountable nature of them is leading to a lack of movement on the topic.  She argues that a shift in focus away from these financial concerns, toward a focus on how open access aligns with the core values of scholarship, would help to move the conversation forward.

One key value, well-aligned with open access for Fitzpatrick, (borrowed from Alcoholics Anonymous), is the value of “giving it away.”  

Excerpt-

What I want to argue is that this sense of “giving it away,” of paying forward knowledge that one likewise received as a gift, functions well as a description of what should be the best ethical practices of scholars and educators.  We teach, as we were taught; we publish, as we learned from the publications of others. We cannot pay back those who came before us, but can only give to those who come after.  Our participation in an ethical, voluntary scholarly community is grounded in the obligation we owe to one another, an obligation that derives from what we have received.  [End of Excerpt].

More than a simple duty this “giving it away,” Fitzpatrick notes, is something that serves the larger public good. For example, as humanities scholars make their work freely accessible to the general public, they increase the chances that the larger society might benefit from their knowledge.  

As to the viability of giving it away, Fitzpatrick, acknowledges that clever innovation would be needed to turn open access into a sustainable publishing model for humanities scholars.  However, she notes that the current system might be closer to that solution than one might first assume given the “engine of generosity” that already exists with authors, editors, peer-reviewers, and publishers all contributing to the scholarly publishing endeavor without direct remuneration.   

Fitzpatrick also sees a number of ways open access would benefit the humanities, in particular by increasing scholars’ impact and decreasing “public apathy” toward the field.  In light of these benefits and the alignment with scholarship’s core values, Fitzpatrick argues, open access may well be a worthwhile goal for humanities.  In fact, she argues, it may be time to move beyond the question of whether to pursue open access, to the question of how open access might be accomplished sustainably.

Interview with Stuart Shieber

In his blog Open and Shut? Richard Poynder includes regular interviews with open access pioneers.
Today's interview with Stuart Shieber is valuable not only for the interview itself but also for the excellent primer on the open access movement that prefaces the interview. Prof. Shieber is Director of Harvard’s Office for Scholarly Communication and chief architect of the Harvard Open Access  Policy.
As an example of the depth and clarity of explanation in the article, here is an excerpt on the advantages of open access journals charging article processing fees:

...[W]e need to revisit the question of why subscription publishing is so expensive. The reason for this, says Shieber, is that it is not the users of subscription journals that pay for them, but intermediaries. This disconnect creates a moral hazard, because the users will have no interest in how much journals cost. As such, there is no market mechanism to control prices.
Explaining the problem in PLoS Biology in 2009, Shieber put it this way, “The ‘consumers’ of scholarly articles (the readers, typically faculty, students, and researchers at universities and other research institutions) are insulated from the cost of reading, that is, from the subscription fees paid by the institutions' research libraries. The expected result — inelasticity of demand and hyperinflation — can be amply seen in the statistics of serials costs paid by research libraries. As subscription fees hyperinflate, libraries with budgets that at best merely match inflation must inevitably drop subscriptions, reducing access to the scholarly literature.”
In other words, the disconnect between the purchaser and the user creates an affordability problem, which in turn creates an accessibility problem.
Gold OA differs, argues Shieber, because it takes the buying decision away from the librarian and gives it to the author, who now acts on his or her own behalf (by paying to publish). Since authors will now care about the cost, the moral hazard characteristic of subscription publishing is avoided. In other words, the person buying the product (which is now a publishing service) will become sensitive to pricing (assuming the publication charges come from their own budget), and so shop around.

Full interview.

Open Access Policy @ Georgia Tech

On November 27, 2012 the faculty of Georgia Tech approved a new open access policy which will take effect January 1, 2013.

Excerpts:

The Faculty of Georgia Tech is committed to disseminating the fruits of its research and scholarship as widely as possible. In addition to the public benefit of such dissemination, this policy is intended to serve faculty interests by promoting greater reach and impact for articles, simplifying author retention of distribution rights, and aiding in electronic preservation. In keeping with these commitments, the Faculty adopts the following policy: 

Each Faculty member grants to Georgia Tech Research Corporation (hereinafter "GTRC") nonexclusive permission to make available his or her scholarly articles and to exercise the copyright in those articles for the purpose of open dissemination. In legal terms, each Faculty member grants to GTRC a nonexclusive, irrevocable, royalty-­‐free, worldwide license to exercise any and all copyrights in his or her scholarly articles published in any medium, provided the articles are not sold or licensed for a profit by GTRC or any GTRC-­‐granted licensee. 

This policy applies to all published scholarly articles that any person authors or co-­‐authors while appointed as a member of the Faculty, except for any such articles authored or co-­‐authored before the adoption of this policy, or subject to a conflicting agreement formed before the adoption of this policy, or conducted under a classified research agreement. Upon notification by the author, the Provost or Provost's designate will waive application of this license for a particular article. At author request, access will be delayed for up to one year. 

To assist in distributing the scholarly articles, each Faculty member will make available an electronic copy of his or her final version of the article at no charge to a designated representative of the Provost’s Office in appropriate formats (such as PDF) specified by the Provost’s Office, no later than the date of publication. The Provost’s Office or designate will make the scholarly article available to the public in an open-­‐access institutional repository. . . .

Berlin 10 Open Access Conference

Abby Clobridge in Information Today provides a recap of the proceedings of The Berlin 10 Open Access Conference that took place at Stellenbosch University, South Africa (6–10 November 2012). The theme of the conference was "Networked Scholarship in a Networked World: Participation in Open Access." One may also download a number of conference papers and the keynote address (given by Ms Máire Geoghegan-Quinn, European Commissioner for Research, Innovation and Science, European Commission, Belgium), listen to a selection of podcasts, and view Powerpoint presentations from the official Conference site.

Open Access Mandated by Durham University

Durham University has agreed to mandate open access to the research publications of its community. The principle stipulations are:

1. Where copyright agreements permit, all research outputs published in peer reviewed journals since 1 January 2008 must be made freely available in Durham Research Online (DRO), the University’s institutional repository. This should be the final peer-reviewed, pre-publication version of the paper where copyright restricts the use of the published version.

2. Authors are also strongly encouraged to deposit other types of research outputs (including book chapters, reports and grey literature) in DRO and make them freely available for consultation.

3. Where the deposit of final research outputs is a requirement of the funding conditions, it is the responsibility of the individual author to ensure that these conditions are met.

4. Where appropriate, researchers are strongly encouraged to take advantage of opportunities to publish their research in other Open Access forms. . . . 

See the full open access mandate statement.

Why Decouple the Journal?

 "Today's journals are still the best scholarly communication system possible using 17th century technology."

Jason Priem, altmetrics innovator and creator of such tools as ImpactStory, gives persuasive reasons to "decouple" the journal.

He notes that we have not allowed the web to revolutionize scholarly communication and that "online journals are essentially paper journals delivered by faster horses."

In addition to using altmetrics as a broader and more meaningful measure of impact, journals could be decoupled. Instead of all journals providing all services separately and redundantly, authors could pick and choose providers of the four major journal functions: dissemination, certification, archiving and registration from various (decoupled) providers. For instance -- scholarly societies might provide peer review services and institutional or subject based repositories might provide archiving and registration, while the author might choose to do his own marketing through tweets, blogs and scholarly contacts.

Jason's own description of this new publishing model is more eloquent. His in depth article has been published in Frontiers in Computational Neuroscience.
Kevin Smith has a recent blog post about his ideas that is helpful as well.

Open Access Explained

The video below includes excellent talking points for open access advocates -- concise, easy to understand and fun!
Nick Shockey and Jonathan Eisen take us through the world of open access publishing and explain just what it's all about.  From phdcomics.com