The Orthodoxy of Open Access

Based on a debate that was held at the Society for Scholarly Publishing on Open Access. August 2004. Also found in Nature Forum.

Snow White was working around the cottage one day when she got word of a terrible cave-in at the mine of the seven dwarves. She frantically rushed to the mine, peered down the dust-filled shaft, and called out: ‘Hello there, are you all right?’

A distant voice came back: ‘I believe the politicians when they say we can solve our healthcare problems, fix Social Security, increase defense spending, pay down the debt, balance the budget, and still cut our taxes’. Snow White looked up.

‘Whew!’ she said… ‘at least Dopey is alive’.

We hear a lot about Open Access (OA) these days at publishing conferences, in scholarly magazines and even in the popular press. Advocates have tried to shape the debate as merely a call for experimentation, claiming they are only promoting a new business model: OA, they say, can be achieved by a simple shift of costs from subscribers to authors; OA is another model for paying the costs of publishing; OA is so obviously good for scholars that surely no-one can object.

The debate, however, is neither about experiments nor about business models. This debate is about single-minded beliefs—an orthodoxy that is promoted with religious fervour. A few quotes illustrate that fervour:     MORE

Misdirection

About the debate on Open Access, which distracts us from the real crisis in journals -- exorbitant prices. 

Journals publishing is in crisis. For years, subscription prices have increased rapidly, often at annual double-digit rates. Prices for some journals have tripled in the past ten years, and the average increase is now close to ten percent. The budgets of university libraries have fallen far behind, forcing librarians to cancel subscriptions. Publishers have used declining subscriptions as a rationale to increase prices even more. And the literature has expanded, creating fatter journals (and yet more reasons for publishers to increase prices). Scholars and librarians have become increasingly unhappy about the state of affairs, and they demand action.

So what action do they suggest? They want to change the way in which publishers collect the money. Go figure. Instead of collecting money through subscriptions, they plan to charge authors a fee — perhaps $1,500 per article (although higher amounts are suggested). We are told that the real problem is access to information, and that we should focus our attention on making material more accessible. Magicians call this technique misdirection, and it's at the heart of all tricks. Are open access advocates really trying to trick everyone?

No—this misdirection is caused by a mistake.

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