Royal Society tries open access

In today's world of rapid advances in almost all fields the time it takes for a conventional journal to publish a paper is very very serious impediment on the progress of science. I don't think the discussion should be about open access to paper journals but should be if anything but open access online publicising is relevant in today. I have access to everything through a university. Even though inter library loans are often available in 24 hours. It is still still much more painful to use print than online resources. I can't use search and find on paper books and journals.

A simple mailing list ProMed www.promedmail.org ferreted out SARS and is credited with not only bringing to the world attention but helping find the best treatment methods and being largely responsible for the fast action to bring the worldwide outbreak of SARS to a screeching halt. Without ProMed China would probably still be in denial and we might have a world wide problem with SARS if it had been handed in print journals with their inherent delays. Another example is 24 hours after Zeiss announced a new method of Differential Interface Contrast DIC microscopy several people had duplicated it using a informal Yahoo group and email to correlated their work using comments they had on hand.

Conventional journals are trading on their very well established names. The high page prices, resistance to open access, the fact the they only rent and don't sell electronic access to their journals and high subscription costs all work against them. In many cases it make them appear as only concerned about the money with little concern for the author or reader. When I first approached some one about online publishing the comment was, "show me someone that got a PhD publishing on the Internet." Now particle physic arXiv.org has erased that objection and leads the way with both open access publishing and peer review. Open access peer review give even faster access to new information. They make their case at LINK

The cost of access to information is an inexcusable barriers to the poorer institutions and self financed researchers of the world. In a wold of shrinking funds for research increasing cost for access to information just to have it published in a prestigious journal raises ethical issues in my mind. If my work is good enough to be published by a top name journal does the added prestige of the journal add enough to my paper to be worth limiting the access to my work to the elite of the world that can afford access to the journal. If my work has merit it should stand the test of publication in a lessor journal with access to all.

If a few of the outstanding worker in a field will simply refuse to publish papers in Journals that require exclusive copyright it will solve the open access problem. Keith Yamamoto and Peter Walter have take the first step with the Elsevier boycott reusing to publish there because of the high price of the journals. Top name journals can't exist if the top names publish elsewhere.

There is no reason for outrageous page charges for open access publishing. The author can host them on his own web site or find a web site that will host them for far less money. A disturbed journal with resources scattered around the world is not hard to do. Building redundancy in would take some work but its possible.

The Journals that try to cling to their monopoly of the printed word could find themselves with an empty bag if the fail to react to the fast changing word around them.

The real cost of publishing on line are very low. It costs me about $1,200 a year to keep a sever up and running. To be safe you need to have two. Many small societies that don't run for prof tit only pay one or two people to keep the office running. They have the authors submit the papers in a format ready to publish. The reviewers aren't paid a cent. Charges of one or two hundred dollars or less would cover the cost of publishing. When you remove the cost of publishing a paper journal from the equation the cost of running a professional society can become very small.

Sincerely
Gordon

Gordon Couger
624 West Cheyenne Dr
Stillwater, OK 74075 1411
405 624 2855 405 269 3588

The Royal Society is a green publisher, giving its authors
the green light to provide immediate Open Access to their articles by
self-archiving them in their own institutional repositories in order
to maximise their usage and impact. The Royal Society is now also an
optional gold publisher, offering its authors the "Open Choice" of
providing Open Access on their behalf, for a fee. But all of this is
outweighed by the fact that this most venerable of Learned Societies,
contrary to the wishes of at least 64 of its (unconsulted) members,
has put its substantial prestige and gravitas behind a vehement -- and
so far successful -- lobby against the Research Councils UK proposal
to mandate author self-archiving by its fundees, as recommended by the
UK parliamentary Select Committee on Science and Technology as well as
the U.S. Federal Research Public Access Act, and the European
Commission. In this respect, the Royal Society is deporting itself
exactly like the crassest of commercial publishers, and is putting a
sad blemish on its proud record in the history of Learned Inquiry and
the dissemination of its fruits.

It is fine that the Royal Society is experimenting with the "EXiS Open
Choice" option (giving individual authors the choice to pay their
journal to make their article Open Access [OA] for them), but this is
a minor gesture, given that the Royal Society is meanwhile also
stoutly -- and so far successfully -- opposing the UK recommendation
to mandate that all RCUK fundees must make their own articles OA by
depositing them in their own institutional (or central) OA
repositories.

What the research world needs today is OA, now: immediate 100% OA (not
necessarily OA publishing: OA itself). It is a matter of historical
record that (without consulting its membership) the Royal Society,
driven by its publishing arm -- and exactly as many other (decidedly
non-royal) publishers have done -- has shrilly opposed the RCUK
proposal to mandate that UK-funded researchers provide immediate OA by
self-archiving their research: opposed it on the basis of no evidence
whatsoever, just speculative hypotheses of doom and gloom (eliciting
great disappointment in the Royal Society's admirers, as well as an
open letter of protest from 64 of its members, including 6 Nobel
Laureates, opposed to the Royal Society's stance on OA). (See 1, 2,
and 3.)

The fact that the Royal Society, like a number of other publishers, is
now trying a leisurely experiment with Open Choice by offering their
authors and their institutions the option of paying (a hefty and
rather arbitrary fee) for OA is next to ludicrous in this context --
while institutional funds are still tied up in subscriptions, while
there is no evidence that self-archiving reduces subscriptions, and
while publishers are vigorously opposing self-archiving mandates on
the grounds that they might reduce subscriptions.

Although the analogy is unfairly shrill, it is useful in order to make
the underlying logic transparent if we note that this is not unlike a
call for an immediate public-smoking ban being opposed by a royal
tobacco company, with a counter-offer to sell individual clients an
alternative smoke-free product, as a matter of (paid) personal choice.

We will never even come near 100% OA if we keep waiting passively for
the 24,000 journals to convert to paid OA publishing, one by one,
author by author, under these conditions. OA and hybrid OC (Open
Choice) journals today are merely a sop for the ongoing worldwide need
for immediate OA: They do little to stanch the daily, needless
hemorrhaging of research usage and impact.

An OA self-archiving mandate for publicly funded research, as proposed
by the RCUK, FRPAA and EC (and already implemented by the Wellcome
Trust and 6 universities and research institutions) would (like a
public-smoking ban) be a genuine remedy, but the Royal Society is
opposing it.

This is a sad historical fact -- even though, to its credit, the Royal
Society's 7 journals are among the 94% of journals that have endorsed
their authors' right to exercise the choice of self-archiving their
own papers, if they wish:
"the author(s) may... post the work in its published form on their
personal or their employing institution's web site"
It is just that the choice the Royal Society affirms with one hand, it
lobbies vigorously with the other hand to discourage authors, their
institutions and funders from actually exercising.

There is absolutely nothing in the Royal Society's ignoble deportment
today that warrants making any reference whatsoever to its noble
history in the evolution of research and publishing. The less said
about that, the better. This is a business, acting in the interests of
its bottom line, not a Learned Society acting in the interests of
Learned Inquiry.

American Scientist Open Access Forum Topic Thread:
"Not a Proud Day in the Annals of the Royal Society" (Nov 24, 2005)

In the transition from student to graduate one of the most fustrating aspects is not having the access to interesting articles that once was freely available through university. You can see the article title but unless you pay the subscription fee there is no way of reading the treasured words within. This is not promoting interest in science within the general public and I for one am supportive of open access to journal articles.