We need to restore the original meaning of Open Access
Part 1: Shifting paywalls
Below is Part 1 from series representing my personal views, mostly scratching the surface for maximum brevity. Questions, debates, comments, including representing other views, are welcome and will be answered. For more extensive analysis and debates, see our Publishing Reform Forum (Twitter). See also other related projects where I am involved: Free Journal Network and MathOA.
We work with stakeholders on different levels to achieve a transformation to Fair Open Access that is widely supported by renowned scientists. If you share our values that knowledge should not have barriers and all participants should have equal opportunities and be fairly rewarded, please help us make it happen. Directly by email to zaitsev@maths.tcd.ie or via our forum. All contributions will be acknowledged.
“Make no mistake about it: the resolution of these questions will determine a large part of the digital future.” (From Foreword by Robert Darnton to Knowledge Unbound, Selected Writings on Open Access, 2002–2011, by Peter Suber.)
Why Open Access?
The largest part of taxpayer-funded knowledge in academic literature is closed to public behind paywalls. Doctors are prevented from reading cutting-edge research that can save lives. Teachers are prevented from reading advanced science in their subjects to prepare their students for the future. Democracy is in danger when people are unable to access reliable scientific sources to dispel the “fake news”.
Budapest Open Access Initiative
The Budapest Open Access Initiative (BOAI, 2002) was one of the first to coin the term Open Access:
“To secure these benefits for all, we call on all interested institutions and individuals to help open up access … and remove the barriers, especially the price barriers, that stand in the way.” (From the original BOAI declaration.)
Removing barriers replaced with shifting paywalls
Sadly this visionary meaning of Open Access seems to have changed. Instead of “removing the price barriers that stand in the way”, the barriers have been in many cases simply shifted from readers to authors. Paywalls for readers became paywalls for authors.
The new shifted paywall aka author-payed model became established as the so-called “Gold Open Access”. Or worse, it became explicitly or implicitly used as replacement of the very definition of Open Access. The latter lead to particularly sad consequences, where numerous problems, specific only to author-payed models, became implicitly associated with Open Access itself. Researchers became sceptical and journals started using the new “definition” without feeling the need to make it more clear and explicit and make details easy to find, only adding to researchers’ mistrust.
Admittedly, shifting paywalls from readers to authors is the easiest way to remove barriers for the former, without losing any revenue. Equally, being the easiest, it is sometimes regarded as the most “scalable” one. That is, if scalability is measured by the number of the articles. It can be argued, however, that for the wider readership looking for research results on solving specific problems, a smaller identifiable number of high quality thoroughly refereed sources might be of some higher value.
The authors of Budapest, Bethesda and Berlin OA declarations foresaw three changes with the coming of the internet. Flipping to a barrier to publish (APCs) from a barrier to read (subscriptions) wasn’t one of them. (From “We’re *still* failing to deliver open access” by Toby Green.)
Conclusion and call to action
This was Part 1 with more Parts to follow. We work with stakeholders on different levels to achieve a transformation to Fair Open Access that is widely supported by renowned scientists.
If you share our values that knowledge should not have barriers and all participants should have equal opportunities and be fairly rewarded, please help us make it happen. Directly by email to zaitsev@maths.tcd.ie or via our forum. All contributions will be acknowledged.
