Science magazine section - "Scientific Communication" - October 4, 2013

Just in time for Open Access Week later this month (October 21-25), Science has published a section on scientific publishing, a topic regarding which they surely are not unbiased. 

I love the infographic,  The Rise of Open Access, by Randall Monroe of xkcd fame which claims that new scientific papers are published at an accelerating rate, currently about one every 20 seconds, and that since 2011, half of new papers are open access. That part of the article comes from an article by Jocelyn Kaiser in another issue of Science (DOI: 10.1126/science.341.6148.830).

There are other worthy pieces in this section, but the one that got my goat was a piece by John Bohannon, "Who's Afraid of Peer Review", an account of his sting operation, sending a scam article to a large number of open access journals to see which of them would catch its problems in their peer review systems. He made some valid points, but overall, I think the project was flawed by not including non-open access journals. The inferences drawn by him and others (see/hear the report on NPR) make it seem like the problems arise from open access rather than from poor peer review. Other bloggers  have written more articulate posts about the shortcomings (see Peter Suber's or Michael Eisen's). 

Science is hosting a live chat session on this issue with the article's author and several others including Eisen, on Thursday, Oct 10, 2013 at 3pm EDT.

"Whither Science Publishing?" in The Scientist

The Scientist has an issue focusing on science publishing, it's problems, strengths, and future.  This includes discussion of open access publishing, peer review, funder mandates, etc., and it polls a wide range of opinion.

Petition to boycott Elsevier journals up to [nearly] 4500 signatures

Elsevier, a scientific publisher, has recently raised the ire of scientists and mathematicians (and librarians) concerned about the rise in journal prices, business practices, and lobbying stances taken by academic publishers.

Well-known mathematician, Tim Gowers, in a piece on his Gowers’s Weblog, was the proximate cause of the latest campaign in reaction to these issues.  He took a stand on Elsevier's practices and positions, namely, the high cost of their journals, the bundling many journals in packages for academic libraries, their 'ruthless' reactions when libraries object to this practice, and their support for the Research Works Act (which would discourage the open access publishing movement) and SOPA and PIPA.  That a prominent mathematician would publicly proclaim his refusal to publish in, or engage in reviewing or editing Elsevier journals caught the attention of the scientific community. It inspired Tyler Neylon to put up an online petition, The Cost of Knowledge, where scientists could register their commitment to boycott Elsevier in those specific ways.

In the time it has taken me to write these words, the number of signatories went from 4479 to 4492.  I will check one more time before I finish this post.

Elsevier, naturally, doesn't  agree with Mr. Gower.  A piece in The Scientist outlines their position - it didn't make a lot of sense to me, so I will leave it to my readers to judge for themselves.  I hasten to add that Elsevier is merely one of the scholarly publishers with these issues, albeit one with the highest priced journals.  It's a complex market/situation/issue.  I wouldn't recommend the Wikipedia article on this topic (Serials Crisis) as it currently stands. If you would like to know more about it, please contact me.

Librarians have been shouting about these issues for a long time - we are on the front line in the struggle to provide access to the academic literature. One could say that we have done such a good job that the problem was obscured to most people - they could get the stuff they needed, so why would they complain? One of the points that Elsevier does not address in The Scientist piece is that the rate of inflation for academic journals  overall has been about 8% per year - much higher than nearly everything else in the economy, including the rise in tuition and fees to students, or academic salaries.  (I've been looking for reasonable sources for this contention but I can't lay my hands on it right now - will provide later.) It has occurred to me that  perhaps commercial publishers are milking the situation as hard as they can now because they see the writing on the wall, so to speak - their cash cow is nearly spent.

Tim Gowers's blog is thoughtful - he had no intention of starting a movement, and he is moving on to looking for alternatives to Elsvier.  I particularly liked reading his post "What's wrong with electronic journals."

The petition just went over 4500.

Note: 9 Feb they are approaching 5000 signers.
6 April, approaching 9000

Reinventing the Research Library: The MIT Libraries in the 21st Century

I was looking at the videos MIT Libraries have posted, and this one caught my eye. It's on the long side (8+ min) but nicely done.  Of particular note to me, starting at about 5:46, they discuss MIT's commitment to open access - as far as is possible, all articles published by MIT faculty are also housed in their archives, and available to anyone with internet access. The Institute Archive is part of the Libraries.

Video: Reinventing the Research Library

ArXiv.org - Cornell Proposes Model to Support Repository

From The Chronicle of Higher Education (January 21, 2010), a "Wired Campus" blog post from Jennifer Howard: "Cornell Library Proposes New Model to Keep arXiv Going."

Cornell University Library announced today that it wants the top institutional users of arXiv.org to help pay for the online scientific repository. "Keeping an open-access resource like arXiv sustainable means not only covering its costs, but also continuing to enhance its value, and that kind of financial commitment is beyond a single institution's resources," Oya Rieger, Cornell's associate university librarian for information technologies, said in a statement describing the new strategy.
...
It costs Cornell about $400,000 a year to maintain arXiv, according to Anne R. Kenney, university librarian at Cornell. The library's annual budget runs in the $40- to $50-million range. Some 200 institutions account for about 75 percent of the download traffic on arXiv, and it's that group that Cornell hopes will pony up first. The suggested contribution for the heaviest users is $4,000. Ms. Kenney says that most of the top 25 have said they will participate.

Broader questions are raised by this eminently reasonable proposal:

• Is this a sustainable arrangement?
• Should there be more governmental support for this kind of repository? And if so, what kind of precedents does this establish for other fields of study? (NSF already provides significant support. See http://arxiv.org/help/support/faq)
  
• How can academic institutions avoid paying for the same material in multiple formats?

UMass Amherst was 159th of the 200 most common users of arXiv in 2009, and so might be expected to bear some of the cost. Academic librarians and others are actively discussing these and related issues of access to and funding of scholarly and scientific information. Cornell asserts that arXiv will continue to be open access. More to come.