Open Access and Academia: Knowledge and Profit
1. Summary
The skyrocketing cost of accessing academic journals is negatively impacting the ability of universities and professors to conduct research optimally. Between 1986 and 2015, research library spending on academic journals increased by 521%, far outpacing the rate of inflation (ARL, 2017). While research library budgets have also grown, they have not kept pace with subscription prices, whose share of library expenditures doubled from 18% to 36% in the same period (ARL, 2017). The growing prevalence of for-profit journals has further increased the funds libraries must dedicate to accessing recent publications (Bergstrom, 2002). Libraries have responded by cancelling journal subscriptions and reallocating funds meant for other uses, but will not be able to do so indefinitely (OASIS, 2014). Meanwhile, a 2009 study by the Research Information network found that “40% of surveyed researchers had trouble accessing journal literature at least once a week, and two-thirds at least once a month. About 60 percent said that access limitations hindered their research, and 18 percent said the hindrance was significant” (Suber, Open Access, 2012). Moving research publication towards an Open Access model could reduce strain on research institutions and researchers alike, and will speed up the pace of scientific progress along the way.
2. Introduction
In November of 2010, Aaron Swartz accessed the JSTOR database at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and downloaded 4.8 million articles from this website hosting academic articles (The Economist, 2013). A short time later, after negotiation, JSTOR and MIT had both settled with Aaron, but a federal prosecutor decided that Aaron was to be “charged on 13 counts, including wire fraud and theft of information, and was to go on trial in the spring, facing up to 35 years of jail.” On January 11th, 2013, in response to the growing pressure from federal prosecutors, Aaron took his own life (The Economist, 2013).
JSTOR, a digital library founded at the University of Michigan in 1995, charges institutions up to $50,000 to access its articles (Bustillos, 2011). On an individual basis, the charges for accessing articles range from $10 to $50, a rather hefty sum for a self-funded or independent researcher (Julian Fisher, 2011). Swartz chose to download and disperse these articles in the name of Open Access, a movement which exists to increase information accessibility on a global scale.
Information inequality is not a new problem. Putting a price on information has been commonplace for hundreds of years, and remains a common practice today. The type of costs has varied, originally limited by literacy, to technological accessibility, to monetary fees. In the Middle Ages, most men were prevented from being able to access information because they were too poor to seek out an education. Literacy was virtually nonexistent, and most literature was confined to places of wealth, such as churches and government institutions. Printed work was difficult to create, and more difficult to reproduce, requiring many tedious hours of manual labor and substantial resources. With the Western reinvention of the printing press by Johannes Gutenberg in the mid-fifteenth century, books became relatively cheap and easy to create, copy, and distribute. The education price of information dropped significantly, acting as aliment to the flame which was the renaissance.
Books were not the be-all-end-all of information access, and they have been functionally superseded in many areas. Computerized information, on the other hand, bypassed many of the drawbacks that accompanied books. Files are infinitely and swiftly replicable, take up no physical or visible space, do not deteriorate nearly as quickly as books do, can be accessed by multiple people concurrently, take substantially less time to travel huge distances, and thus amplify the marginal utility of each copy, without cost or production limitation. Though some people, such as myself, do prefer reading a physical copy of a source, this is not a requirement, and the sources may be provided by digital means to people other than the researcher who prints it off. Data and information now have become a non-exclusionary good.
It is philosophically just as unlikely that digital information is the absolute optimal form of information as it was that the book was the absolute optimal form of information. Short of a universal, instant, and optionally-omnipresent mean of telepathic communication of data, there may be no “absolute optimal form” of conveying information. This raises the question of how different formats change the content of the information, one which is much neglected.
If we think back to the early days of the internet, the 1990s, there was a time when certain web pages had “opening and closing” hours, as if the webpage were a physical location of business. (Indeed, the ubiquitous “dot-com” at the end of website names once implied commercial enterprise, though it has now been made generic by the flood of websites which do not offer commerce, yet preserve the domain name.) While a small handful of websites still maintain this practice of open and closed hours, most have realized that the artificial restriction of availability was at best silly, and at worst damaging to user relations. Similarly, steep financial barriers to digital information are an example of artificially restricted supply, as digital media are virtually costless to maintain, unless there are external factors.
This inherently abundant supply complicates matters when a digital product is meant as a commodity, such as in the film, music, software, and gaming industries, where a group of individuals intend to profit on the distribution of their work by having an exclusive release of a new piece of software or information. The nature of their distribution is not particularly conducive to this goal of exclusivity, as Swartz demonstrated; once the Pandora’s Box of information on a topic is opened, it is unlikely to be fully extirpated from the internet. However, in industries like academia, where authors are not paid for the distribution of their publications, but for the work they did in creating that publication, the artificial restrictions of information can be bypassed.
The Open Access Initiative has become even more important to the academic community as the prices of journal subscriptions have steadily risen over the past several decades, rising 273% between 1986 and 2004 (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign). By 2011, that number had reached 402% of the 1986 constant value (ARL Statistics). Consequently, between 1986 and 1999, a research library’s serial subscription fell from an average of 16,312 to 15,259 journals, even though the average number of students and faculty increased (Kyrillidou, 2000). In a piece of bitter irony, I would be able to access even more recent statistics on research library serial expenditures, were the reports not behind an academic paywall (ARL).
3. Background
The Open Access movement is not limited exclusively to digital material, although it did gain popularity in the 1980s and 1990s with the growing popularity of the internet. The belief that information should be freely usable by all was present in some social circles as early as the 1950s, when publications such as Situationist International were encouraging free use of all material published by them. Project Gutenberg, a text digitization movement founded in 1971, similarly makes the eBooks they create available to the public, free of charge (Project Gutenberg, 1971).
Interest in open access to information gained momentum throughout the 1990s, and at the start of the 21st century, the “three B’s” came to pass: The Budapest Open Access Initiative, The Bethesda Statement on Open Access Publishing, and The Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities (Leslie Chan, 2002) (Patrick O. Brown, 2003) (Jurgen Mittelstrad, 2003). These three statements provided a public definition of Open Access for the first time, with the Budapest Statement taking lead:
By ‘open access’ to this literature, we mean its free availability on the public internet, permitting any users to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full text of these articles, crawl them for indexing, pass them as data to software, or use them for any other lawful purpose, without financial, legal, or technical barriers or than those inseparable from gaining access to the internet itself. The only constraint on reproduction and distribution, and the only role for copyright in this domain, should be to give authors control over the integrity of their work, and the right to be properly acknowledged and cited. (Leslie Chan, 2002)
The definitions provided by Berlin and Bethesda were that users be able to “copy, use, distribute, transmit and display the work publicly and to make and distribute derivative works, in any digital medium for any responsible purpose, subject to proper attribution of authorship” (Jurgen Mittelstrad, 2003) (Patrick O. Brown, 2003). These definitions set the stage for the Open Access movement that was to come.
3.1 The Open Movements
Since the 1990s, the Open Access movement has gained momentum and given birth to several related practices, such as Open Source Software, Open Data, Open Science, and Open Education.
Open Source Software allows programmers and developers who were not originally involved in the making of a piece of software to access that software and, in many cases, modify it to suit their purposes, much as one would tailor a suit jacket. One example of open source software would be the Chromium Projects, which were behind the development of the Chrome browser and Chrome OS (The Chromium Projects, n.d.). Although Chrome was only launched in 2008, it managed to overtake Microsoft’s Internet Explorer in 2014, even though the redoubtable browser was launched in 1995 and had possessed the largest share of internet since then (Goodger, 2008) (W3Counter, 2017) (Schnoll, 2000)[9, 10, 20]. Although 2017 is not yet over, the amount by which Chrome has surpassed Internet Explorer is impressive: Chrome now boasts a 51.1% percentage point difference in global usage over its now-diminished foe (W3Counter, 2017). The Chrome project showcases the potential and efficacy of open-source projects; this crowdsourced product beat out the existing leader in its software category, one with the resources of a massive technology corporation explicitly behind it and keeping it current. Open Source Software can be the new standard by which to produce code.
Open Research is the movement to allow discrete datasets created by researchers to be made available to other researchers. Organizations such as figshare allow researchers to store their data online, where they can decide who to share it with (figshare). The content made public on the site is put under “the most liberal Creative Commons License”, which allows for nearly unrestricted use of the data. Being open with information allows for 1) greater scrutiny, 2) faster analysis, 3) a wider range of analysis, and 4) more easily determines replicable results. Open Science is the broader movement to make all aspects of the scientific process public, from project planning to final publications.
Open Education is the movement to remove barriers to education, particularly those of class and location. Khan Academy, a free online lesson space founded by Salman Khan in 2006, offers education anywhere in the world, free, including everything from art history to advanced calculi. Even this noble effort, and those like it, remain inherently limited by the lack of web access to many places and people around the globe, but it is certainly superior to the ivory towerism of closed-access journals with steep financial inhibitions. More recently, websites like Udemy, Udacity, and Coursera have begun to provide similar educational services, but only a subset of the classes they offer are free of charge. Some more specialized websites, like CodeAcademy (for computer science) and Duolingo (for learning new languages) offer nearly all content for free, but have paid options for removing advertisements or getting special certifications.
While the various “open” movements focus on different aspects of barrier removal, they all work towards allowing for broader access to information, for the betterment of both the information providers and information consumers. It is mutualistic, and, once business models adapt to the new reality, one with very little in the way of concerns.
3.2 Open Access Impact
Open Access has the potential to positively influence institutions, researchers, and the general public alike. From the perspective of the public, Open Access allows people outside of the “ivory tower” to learn about the goings-on within it, bringing scholastic papers that were once only accessible to people within academia to those without it. For the researchers, multiple studies suggest that articles that are published under Open Access have a greater academic impact than those that are not (Eysenbach, 2006). This finding makes sense, especially when we consider the fact that “A study by the Research Information Network in late 2009 found that 40% of surveyed researchers had trouble accessing journal literature at least once a week, and two thirds at least once a month. About 60 percent said that access limitations hindered their research, and about 18 percent said the hindrance was significant” (Suber, Open Access, 2012). On a broader, institutional level, the increase of Open Access publications will help to relieve the stress libraries feel when purchasing serials (see section 3), and may also help decrease the information gap between research institutes in developed and developing nations: “In 2008, Harvard subscribed to 98,000 serials and Yale to 72,900. The best-funded research library in India, at the Indian Institute of Science, subscribed to 10,600” (OASIS, 2010). Decreasing this inequality will allow a broader range of scientists to access the literature. There is no telling what benefit would arise from this increased access, but there is certainly little good in restricting access, a philosophy which naturally lends itself to eliminating a primary source of scientific progress: peer-review.
4. Policies
Open Access policies have been implemented by several research funding institutions, as well as research universities. The National Institute of Health (NIH) took a bold stance on Open Access in 2008, effectively mandating that any publications resulting from research funded by the NIH would have to be made publicly available. This policy was “first proposed by Congress in 2004, adopted as a mere request or encouragement in 2005, and strengthened into a requirement in 2008” (Suber, An open access mandate for the National Institutes of Health, 2008). If I had a spare $39 to spend on a single article, I could tell you all about the Journal of Library Administration’s views on the NIH’s Open Access impact, but I do not, so this paper will just have to rely on articles that are not paywalled.
The European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) is also known for its forward-thinking stance on Open Access. In 2009, CERN started an Open Access project: the Sponsoring Consortium for Open Access Publishing in Particle Physics, or SCOAP3 (SCOAP3). The goal of this project was to “convert all the major toll-access journals in particle physics to OA, redirect the money formerly spent on reader-side subscription fees to author-side publication fees, and reduce the overall price to the journal-supporting institutions” (Suber, Open Access, 2012). This shifting of the cost from the reader to the publisher creates greater access, because there is not a need for purchasing papers on a case-by-case and unpredictable basis; funding for projects can provide the money to publish, and researchers from all fields and backgrounds can read while uninhibited by pricing and access concerns.
Numerous research universities have also implemented open access policies in the past few decades. These policies can be put into three categories: loophole mandates, deposit mandates, and rights-retention mandates (Suber, Open Access, 2012).
1) Loophole mandates require the author to publish their work in an Open Access manner, provided that the publisher allows it. If the publisher does not allow for Open Access, the university does not interfere. A copy of the article may be kept in the university’s repository, but it will not be made available to the public.
2) Deposit mandates require the author to place their article in an institution’s repository, regardless of whether or not they can obtain permission from their publisher for Open Access. Normally, if the publisher has no objection to Open Access, the article in the repository is made available to the public either at publication, or after an embargo period of a few months.
3) Rights-retention mandates also require the author to deposit their work in a repository, but the authors either retain or preemptively give their university the right to publish their works open access, bypassing any disagreements the official publication venue may have with the setup.
Open Access policies of all sorts have been gaining traction since the start of the 21st century. ROARMAP, or the Registry of Open Access Repository Mandatory Archiving Policies, has been keeping track of these policies over time. To date, there are nearly 900 open access mandates in place, most of which originated in research organizations themselves (ROARMAP). While funders are the second-largest group to be mandating open access for the research they fund, growth in this sector would be the most impactful, as funders would then be required to allocate the necessary funds for researchers to publish their findings in an open access journal.
Figure 1 – Change in number of Open Access mandates over time, 2005 – 2017
5. Barriers to Open Access
The most common barrier to Open Access is the lack of understanding most people have concerning it. Many of the people I’ve talked to about working in research seem to believe that research is kept behind paywalls because the only way scientists profit is by charging people to view their work. While this is a common misconception, it is a misconception nonetheless, and a symptom of the lack of exposure the average person has to the research process – and research findings. Opening up journals would not only allow researchers to better critique the work of their peers, or check the reproducibility of their results, but could also enable those who are not involved in research to gain more insight into the process.
Research functions in a very different way than most industry jobs do. Once a researcher obtains their PhD, and potentially goes through a postdoctoral research position, they are expected to apply for grants in their area of expertise, so that they may conduct their own research instead of operating under the instruction of others. Several institutions provide research grants, such as the National Institute of Health and the National Science Foundation. Once the grant application is submitted, it is reviewed, either by peers, a panel, or both. If the application is approved, the researcher receives the grant and uses it to fund their research in the project for which the grant is written.
Once the researcher conducts their experiments and has written up their findings, there are still steep fees associated with publishing articles in some open access venues. For the conference I presented at this past summer, a digital library, ACM, charged the conference $2,000 per article they wished to host with Open Access, and charged the authors $1,500 for the same article – $3,500 to publish a single article that would be open to the public. According to a source inside the organization, ACM was hoping that their fees would encourage the NSF to start providing grant money for open access de facto.
On the other hand, the NIH requires that all articles be published with Open Access permissions and has made it so that those applying for grants may ask for money specifically to meet the fees that arise as a result. The NSF has considered a comparable practice but has, as of yet, not acted on this consideration. (Update: As of March, 2015, the NSF has implemented a “public access” plan that requires the papers they fund be made publicly available within one year of publication. (Zacharias, 2015))
There also exists the traditional problem of research findings being “scooped”. This is particularly a concern with Open Data, because unproofed data collected by a party might be more quickly analyzed by a researcher from outside the organization, published, and then make obsolete any analysis which the original researcher might do. In science and in academia as a whole, there is a need to change focus from who is credited with discoveries to the importance of the discoveries themselves. Unfortunately, as much of the current job market expects a large amount of novel research as a precondition for consideration for positions, this attitude shift may still be a long way off, if it happens at all.
5. Future Work
Open Access should be implemented on a global scale. However, as Suber puts it, this is not an event that will be precipitated by force, but rather by continuing education and seeing the societal improvement which has been made by making works Open Access. Dozens of studies point to the fact that increased access to academic articles allows more researchers to reference past work for their own research, spurring scientific process through a collaborative workforce. Making Open Access the norm would allow for not only the improvement of research, but would also allow people outside of academic institutions to access information they not have reasonably afforded before. In an age of head-in-the-sand climate change denial and anti-vaccine activism, Open Access is more important than ever; accessible research is a necessary precursor to well-informed conversations on public policy.
It does seem that Open Access is enjoying a generally positive trend. To date, the Directory of Open Access Journals boasts an impressive 10,625 journals, spanning 122 countries (DOAJ, 2017). In 2011, 11% of the world’s articles were being published in open access journals, and a 2015 analysis found that 28% of all published scholarly literature is free-to-read online in some format (Noorden, 2013) (Heather Piwowar, 2017). With any luck, and a lot of work, the situation for Open Access publications will continue to improve, allowing for increased access to published work, decreased spending on the part of libraries, and a faster pace for higher quality research.
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