Tribute to Aaron Swartz: Watch his “How we stopped SOPA” keynote at F2C2012

Open access to scholarly literature and research online depends upon an open Internet. It is easy to forget this is not a given. The Internet has become such an integral part of our daily lives as academics. We can hardly imagine now a world without it. We have sensed its potential and have been building an information infrastructure based on our experiences with its free beginnings. It is easy to take that freedom for granted.

It was one year ago today that Congressional leaders in the United States shelved two pieces of legislation, ostensibly geared toward curbing online piracy, but which could have had far-reaching and unintended consequences, threatening through censorship this concept of a free and open Internet.

It was a close call. The House bill, the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), and the Senate version, the PROTECT Intellectual Property Act (PIPA), were widely believed, both within Congress and among their supporters in the media industry (including many commercial academic publishers), to be destined for easy passage. However, a groundswell of organizational and, most significantly, citizen opposition forced the lawmakers to back down.

A significant voice in that citizen opposition to SOPA and PIPA was a fellow named Aaron Swartz. Aaron was a prodigious young computer programmer and an activist dedicated to the fight for free and open access to information and knowledge on the Internet.

If you’ve ever attached a Creative Commons license to a research article, book, blog (mine!), or media production, Aaron’s contribution was there. If you’ve ever subscribed to a blog or received webpage updates using RSS, Aaron’s contribution was there. If you’ve ever visited Internet Archive, Open Library, or Wikipedia (as an editor), Aaron’s contribution was there, too.

Tragically, Aaron was found dead in his apartment on the morning of January 11, 2013, apparently the result of suicide. He was 26 years old.

This is a terrible and sorrowful loss. But resisting the temptation to engage in speculation or offer analysis, I found the most fitting tribute to Aaron Swartz on this anniversary of the defeat of SOPA and PIPA was simply to take 23 minutes to watch the keynote address he gave at the F2C: Freedom to Connect conference held in Washington, DC on May 21-22, 2012. In the speech, Aaron tells a story about how it was ordinary people, not a big company like Google, that won this round in the fight “to save this crucial freedom.” Open access depends upon an open Internet. Let’s not take that freedom for granted.

If the sciences can do it… PLOHSS: A PLOS-style model for the humanities and social sciences

The Public Library of Science (PLOS) was founded in 2000 as an advocacy group promoting open access to scientific literature in the face of increasingly prohibitive journal costs imposed by scientific publishers. The group proposed the formation of an online public library “that would provide the full contents of the published record of research and scholarly discourse in medicine and the life sciences in a freely accessible, fully searchable, interlinked form.” In an open letter to scientific and medical publishers that was eventually signed by nearly 34,000 scientists worldwide, the group wrote:

We recognize that the publishers of our scientific journals have a legitimate right to a fair financial return for their role in scientific communication. We believe, however, that the permanent, archival record of scientific research and ideas should neither be owned nor controlled by publishers, but should belong to the public and should be freely available through an international online public library. (excerpt from the Open Letter)

The PLOS group morphed into an open access publisher in its own right with the launch of PLOS Biology in October 2003. Since then, PLOS has expanded to include seven peer reviewed open access scientific journals, many of which have become, in a very short time, highly-regarded prestigious titles in their respective fields. This is a significant achievement, considering that it traditionally takes many years, if not decades, for journals to build their reputations as sought-after publishing venues by authors, and recognized as hosts of high-quality research by scholarly communities (and tenure and promotion committees).

PLOS operates as a nonprofit publisher that sustains its operation by charging producer-side article publication fees (also known as article processing charges [APCs]) in lieu of traditional consumer-side subscriptions. This model begins to fulfill the promise of open access by removing the barriers to reading and reuse of published scientific research literature (PLOS publishes articles with a Creative Commons Attribution License). Having demonstrated the sustainability (if not the accustomed profit margins) of this business model, many commercial publishers are now adopting this approach for their own open access initiatives.

One of PLOS’s particularly interesting titles is PLOS ONE (eISSN 1932-6203), launched in December 2006 as a multi-disciplinary science “mega journal” that publishes articles continuously with rapid turn-around times from submission to publication (over 1,000 articles have already been published in the first half of January 2013), and rigorously peer-reviewed for technical soundness. Except in the broadest sense, the journal doesn’t impose subject or “brand” perimeters. It could even be said that it undermines the function conventionally played by journals in providing a “short-hand” for associating research quality and impact. “This research must be good because it was published in this top-tier journal.” Instead, PLOS ONE is more like a platform from which an article is allowed generate its own metrics for quality and impact, including various forms of post-publication peer review from the scientific research community.

What about the humanities and social sciences?

It is often observed that compared to humanities disciplines and the social sciences, departments of sciences at universities tend to be better funded and their researchers have access to larger pots of money from a greater number of granting sources. It has been argued that shifting publishing revenue to the producer-side in order to make open access sustainable is much easier to pull off in the sciences because of this relative wealth of funding. The cost of publishing research results can simply be rolled into the grant proposal. Indeed, open access is increasingly being mandated when it comes to publicly funded research (consider this example that landed yesterday in my Twitter stream). The expectation that publication charges will be covered is becoming increasingly matter-of-fact in the sciences.

If asked about their reluctance to publish in an open access journal venue, humanities and social science scholars are apt to raise first a concern about how to assure academic reputation. A close second would probably be skepticism about the sustainability of a producer-side revenue model, and concerns about a scholar’s ability to pay to have their research articles published, given current funding levels in their disciplines. Savvy skeptics might even argue that this amounts to a de facto limitation on access, because an inability to pay APCs means that research won’t get published to begin with. “How is this any better than the current model?”

The first reluctance arises out of a long history and deep tradition rooted in the limitations imposed upon scholarly communication by print. Knowledge was never really scarce. But the media of knowledge dissemination created an impression of scarcity because of the practical limits of physical space and time, and the costliness of resources and infrastructure. Scholarly reputation was built not only by producing quality research, but also by successfully navigating these limits to “get your name in print.”

The medium of electronic and network knowledge dissemination has been breaking down these limits. Yes, reputation still benefits from respected association. But the shift in medium has surfaced at least two significant realizations for scholars: 1) Academic reputation fundamentally originates with the scholar not the communication medium or the agent controlling that medium (e.g., a publisher). Reputation is portable and travels with the scholar. As such, the scholar may be freer than he or she previously assumed to publish in open access venues. 2) Reputation benefits most from the widest possible dissemination of a scholar’s work. Publishing in a top-tier journal brings a certain level of prestige. But if that research is locked behind a paywall it limits the number of eyeballs that can/will see it. Open access removes the paywall barrier and allows the wider community to weigh-in more directly on the value of a scholar’s research.

I believe the second reluctance (to a producer-side revenue model) arises from inadvertent ignorance about the costs associated with operating a journal, and lack of awareness regarding the accumulated costs the subscription-based revenue model has on institutional (library) budgets. A scholar may know about the modest price paid for an individual subscription to a cherished journal (assuming it isn’t being received automatically as a benefit of association membership). However, when someone else is paying the bill—both to produce the journal and to provide access to it—costs are abstracted and distanced from the scholarly endeavor. It is easy to become alarmed by any suggestion that the author should pay. “Only a vanity press would charge an author to publish their work! We all know that so-called scholars who patronize vanity presses simply can’t get their work published by legitimate and reputable means.”

While priced at a fraction of the average science journal, institutional subscriptions for humanities and social science journals have been rising dramatically (see my “A simmering ‘journals crisis’ in the humanities?” section in this earlier post), especially when scholarly society journals get acquired by commercial publishers. Just yesterday I received a notice from a colleague regarding yet another association journal that has been acquired by a commercial publisher. Though no pricing information was provided, this statement was included in the notice: “Institutional subscription rates will…be increasing to bring them to a level compatible with market norms and to account for more advanced features such as online access.” That’s a euphemism for “Brace yourself. This journal subscription is about to get significantly more expensive.”

Traditional society and non-profit academic journals in the humanities and social sciences are loathe to lose revenue generated by subscriptions. Many find it difficult to imagine converting to open access based upon accustomed practices. Some have run the numbers and have determined that the article processing charges that would have to be levied to make the conversion to open access possible are not sustainable (though becoming dated, see for example, this 2009 study [PDF] conducted by Mary Waltham).

My response to this situation has tended to encourage support for smaller, scholar or library published open access journals that are able to operate efficiently and at low cost, utilizing committed editorial teams, existing institutional network infrastructures, and open source journal platform software (such as Open Journal Systems). Most of these journals work with modest budgets funded by academic departments or by redirected library resources, and they do not levy APCs.

There may be another approach worth considering. Why not create a PLOS-style mega journal for the humanities and social sciences? Admittedly, this is new thinking, especially for humanities scholars whose academic traditions are deep and slow to change. But if it is correct to assert that scholars (do and should) create their own reputation, and if in this online era it is the disaggregated but fully discoverable article not the journal that is really the currency of scholarly communication and reputation, maybe a hosting platform otherwise capable of providing credible peer review would suffice for exposing research to anyone who is interested, in the scholarly community or beyond. While it may not be able to entirely avoid using APCs, it would not make ability to pay a pre-condition to publication. Soliciting institutional sponsorships from monies already in the system, and leveraging the scale of a shared multi-disciplinary online service could make operations sustainable and per article costs low.

Enter PLOHSS, the Public Library of Humanities and Social Science

Late last week I received a tweet from Dr. Martin Paul Eve, a lecturer in English Literature at University of Lincoln, United Kingdom. You may recall back in July I gave a hat tip to Martin for his excellent “Starting an Open Access Journal: a step-by-step guide.” The tweet linked to a post on his blog soliciting participants to help build a Public Library of Science model for the Humanities and Social Sciences.

For quite some time, I have been interested in/incensed by the scholarly publication system; the exclusions, iniquities and absurdities of it can be clearly seen from only a brief survey of the economic field. I have watched with despair as the sciences have made projects work while the humanities and social sciences have almost sleepwalked into a disaster. The Finch Report [PDF] published in the UK and accepted by the government will wreak havoc on our modus operandi and work to stratify an already split field.

… [I]t doesn’t have to be this way. We can eradicate much exclusion by building a system that is fit for purpose, more egalitarian and sustainable — a Public Library of Science model for the Humanities and Social Sciences. I can’t do it on my own, though. I need individuals and organizations to contact me so that I can form a mailing list, start brainstorming ideas, accrue startup funding, get the reputation and intellectual capital behind the system and generally get this massive project rolling.

The link immediately above points to the “initial ideas hub” for the PLOHSS project. Check it out and consider getting involved. Dr. Eve identifies areas of expertise he is looking for, including scholars to lend their experience and reputation, journal editors interested in open access, journalists to advocate and promote the project, librarians and techie-types, persons experienced with financial and legal matters, and any other persons simply intrigued by the project and willing to lend their interested support. Within a month he is hoping to coalesce interest and participation around an organizational structure composed of a number of key committees to enable the project to build momentum and focus.

In a subsequent blog post, Dr. Eve articulated his thinking about APCs and sustainability. This is definitely worth a read, as is an excellent interview Meredith Schwartz conducted with Martin earlier this week on the Library Journal website, which includes this excerpt:

We need a publishing venue that attracts instant respect from scholars. That can only be done by ensuring that it was built by scholars with the requisite academic capital, not imposed by publishers, who are losing the moral high-ground. The organization needs to be non-profit, but sustainable.

…

[I can say for sure that] there will be a rigorous but constructive peer-review process that will accept high-quality work, however niche, without bars on resubmission, and certainly no outright rejection without review or reasonable comment. I am in favour of double-blinding submissions in order to ensure fair review (and also to utterly divorce finance from editorial), but this is still under discussion. Only once something has been through the review process will any form of finance be brought up. The decisions of the finance committee on article “targets” cannot be made available, externally or internally, until the end of the year when the next set of prices and targets are revealed. In other words, if we fall short, we fall short, and will have to have backup budget to cover this rather than any form of compromise.

Finally, how do we ensure credibility: only through people. People are what will make this project work, and that’s where we’re starting. “Build it and they will come” is a fallacy. Get the right people to build it… well, that’s a different matter.

Martin Eve is a bright and energetic young scholar who is prepared to push against academic tradition with disruptive innovation, especially where open access to scholarly communication is concerned. I applaud this effort and will be watching its development closely. Again, this is new thinking. But if the sciences can do it, why not also the humanities and social sciences?

JSTOR announces free limited reading access to its journal archive

I am an academic librarian at a small liberal arts college. I am committed, within the confines of a finite library budget, to provide access to the most relevant, highest quality information resources (journals, books, and media) possible for our students and faculty. One important component of this access commitment are the 11 Arts & Sciences collections and 1 Life Science collection (over 1,600 titles) we subscribe to on the JSTOR full text journal archive platform.

JSTOR is a valuable and cost effective resource in our online information mix. JSTOR uniquely features Volume 1, Issue 1 full text coverage to most titles, which then move forward in time, embargoing (most commonly) the latest 3-5 years of coverage so as not to jeopardize publisher revenue through current subscriptions. Disciplines that require access to current content may find this embargo model unacceptable. But for many disciplines in the humanities, for example, where research retains greater informational “shelf life,” the delay doesn’t make these resources less useful. Indeed, a journal archive like this can be especially valuable for historical or diachronic research.

It still amazes me that as a small college library we are able to provide access to a resource like JSTOR for our users. Indeed, I often reflect on the information-rich environment that characterizes our library generally, even with a constrained resource budget. But I also often lament how our students will lose access to this wealth of information when they graduate and enter into their vocations. We encourage our students to commit themselves to “life-long learning” following graduation, but we have to assume that others will provide access to the needed information resources. Licensing agreements expressly prohibit us from providing it.

This is another reason why I am an advocate for open access to scholarly research. Access to information and knowledge shouldn’t be limited to an academic “hot house” environment any more than access to that same information and knowledge should be limited by paywalls within the academic environment. This is a work in progress. While still a significant distance from offering open access, I was interested to read last week that JSTOR has begun to take some steps toward opening access to its journal archive to individuals who would otherwise lose access upon graduation, or who never had access through a participating institution to begin with.

In a press release dated January 9, 2013, JSTOR announced that following a successful 10-month test, it is now expanding an experiment called Register & Read, which will give anyone who signs up for a JSTOR account free online reading access to up to three articles every two weeks in over 1,200 journals (Excel) ”from nearly 800 scholarly societies, university presses, and academic publishers” in the JSTOR archive. Affiliation with an academic institution is not required.

“Our goal is for everyone around the world to be able to use the content we have put online and are preserving,” said Laura Brown, JSTOR managing director. “Register & Read provides a virtual way for anyone to walk into the JSTOR library, register at the door, and ‘check out’ a limited number of articles for reading.” (from the press release)

Register & Read follows another JSTOR initiative launched in September 2011 called Early Journal Content (mentioned earlier on my blog here), which opened public domain journal article content (published before 1923 in the United States and before 1870 in other countries) in the JSTOR archive to anyone, regardless of institutional affiliation, and no registration is required. Indeed, any user can freely search on JSTOR for citations and article previews. [JSTOR also recently announced the Access for Alumni program, where institutions can pay an additional percentage of their annual archival collection access fees to provide access for their alumni.]

A test drive of Register & Read

I conducted a number of searches in JSTOR without logging in with my institution credentials so I could see how this process worked.

Search result (3) is entirely free to access because it is an article in the public domain (from June 1888) and part of JSTOR’s Early Journal Content program. Notice though that result (2) is marked with an “X” to indicate that I do not have normal access to this article. However, if I proceed to click on the record link I am taken to the article page that includes citation information and an article preview, over which is this banner:

The banner indicates that the article is available for me to read online for free (this article is from a journal that is part of the Register & Read archive collection). When I click the “Read Online” button I am prompted to register or login with a MyJSTOR account:

I clicked the “Register” button and was directed to a sign up form for a MyJSTOR account. I don’t recall whether this form is different than the one I would have encountered earlier as an institution-affiliated user to enable management of saved searches and citations. However, I noted the required fields that ask for my name, email address, institutional affiliation (if any), position, and area of study.

Clearly, the trade-off for being granted limited free reading access to articles is granting JSTOR and its publishing partners access to my use activity on the platform. I confess this takes some of the shine off for me—both as a librarian who is committed to protecting user privacy, and as an open access advocate who winces at the strings being attached to this idea of “free.” In fairness, I see this kind of personal information request on other aggregator platforms. I suspect the drive for this comes from the publishers that are anxious for any leverage to sustain or improve their current economic positions. Like so many free online services, users will have to decide whether the value they derive is worth the cost. JSTOR has a user Privacy Policy.

In addition to online reading, Register & Read in many cases provides users with the option of purchasing accessed articles for downloading and printing, or they can be stored in the user’s MyJSTOR account. When I click the “Download” button I am prompted with purchase options. Notice that I am here also given the option of purchasing the entire journal issue:

Register & Read is rolled into the infrastructure that has enabled unaffiliated persons to purchase individual articles off the platform for a number of years now. The price of the article is set by the publisher. JSTOR gets a cut for providing the delivery platform.

Impressions: Good start, but rationing reinforces notion of knowledge scarcity

There is no question that I am spoiled by our institutional access to JSTOR, and this inevitably colors my impressions of Register & Read. I love JSTOR. But my first thought after reading about this initiative was: “Three articles every two weeks? Really?!” What strategy would I need to devise to ration my access if I was more than a casual reading visitor to JSTOR?

I’m sure they ran the numbers after the pilot to arrive at this figure. I’m also sure they engaged in a Herculean effort to get buy-in from all the publishers that agreed to join the program. I don’t want to sound ungrateful. It’s a start. Maybe it’s not the number of articles so much as the access timeframe that feels particularly tight-fisted. Research activity is not evenly spaced in time like this. If I’m doing research or working on a writing project I need access to many sources in relatively short spurts of time. Three articles every two weeks translates into 78 articles a year, 39 articles every 6 months, or 20 (rounding-up from 19.5) articles every quarter. What if JSTOR gave me the option of accessing up to 20 articles every three months to use as I needed? That would have an entirely different feel about it—more generous. It would make the Register & Read service significantly more useful to independent scholars.

I don’t see Register & Read as a form of open access, though I grant it is a step toward the opening of access. I don’t think it would be better if JSTOR were entirely closed. The ability to search the platform like a bibliographic index is itself a valuable feature, as is access to its public domain Early Journal Content. Paradoxically, though, doling-out this little bit of access behind a tracking login seems to more strongly reinforce the notion that knowledge is a scarce commodity whose value must be closely guarded and monetized at every turn. I think JSTOR can do better.

Religion, Biblical Studies and related journals in the Register & Read titles list

I scanned the current Register & Read titles list (Excel) for journals that would be of interest to persons studying religion, biblical studies, or related disciplines. I may have missed a few, but I picked out the following:

American Journal of Theology & Philosophy
The Annual of the American Schools of Oriental Research
Archives de sciences sociales des religions
Buddhist-Christian Studies
The Catholic Historical Review
Die Welt des Islams
El Ciervo
European Judaism
The Furrow
Hebrew Studies
History of Religions
Iran
Iraq
The Irish Church Quarterly
Japanese Journal of Religious Studies
Jewish Historical Studies
The Jewish Quarterly Review
Jewish Studies Quarterly
Journal of Biblical Literature
Journal of Cuneiform Studies
Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion
Journal of Law and Religion
Journal of Medieval Religious Cultures
Journal of Moravian History
Journal of Near Eastern Studies
Journal of Qur’anic Studies
The Journal of Religion
Journal of Religion in Africa
The Journal of Religious Ethics
Journal of the American Oriental Society
Nashim: A Journal of Jewish Women’s Studies & Gender Issues
Near Eastern Archaeology
Nova Religio: The Journal of Alternative and Emergent Religions
Novum Testamentum
Numen
Oriens
Philosophy East and West
Religion & Literature
Review of Religious Research
Soundings: An Interdisciplinary Journal
Studia Islamica
Syria
The Torah U-Madda Journal
Traditio
U.S. Catholic Historian
Vetus Testamentum
Vigiliae Christianae

The open access journal as a disruptive innovation

I admit it. As a humanist scholar I have not been much inclined to read books or articles on economics. I mean, what could be more boring, right? And all that math.

Well, my inclination has been slowly changing since I began writing this blog. My level of sophistication is pretty basic, and I still try to avoid the math whenever possible. But the economics of academic publishing, particularly journals, has become strangely compelling to me as I have learned more about open access and the dissemination of scholarly research as a digital product in an online environment.

My first exposure came just a few months after starting the blog. I read an interesting article by Caroline Sutton in College & Research Libraries News (December 2011) entitled “Is free inevitable in scholarly communication? The economics of open access.” Sutton applied the economic theory popularized by Chris Anderson in his 2009 book Free: The Past and Future of a Radical Price to argue that the online journal as a digital product operates on a marginal cost of production basis that will inevitably drive the price of additional copies toward zero. I wrote a review of Sutton’s article here. I was so intrigued by this economic concept applied to scholarly publishing that I also read Anderson’s book. I wrote a review of Free from the context of scholarly publishing here.

The economics of disruptive technologies

In a similar vein, I recently read an article by David W. Lewis in College & Research Libraries (September 2012) entitled “The Inevitability of Open Access.” [Incidentally, online editions of both College & Research Libraries and College & Research Libraries News, publications of the Association of College and Research Libraries, are now open access.] The sense of inevitability regarding open access is still there. But with Lewis “inevitability” shifts from a question to an assertion. How can he be so confident?

Lewis has chosen to view open access, and in particular, “pure Gold” open access (journals), through the lens of another economic (business) theory as described in the work of Harvard professor Clayton Christensen, seminally in his 1997 book The Innovator’s Dilemma (reprinted by Harper Business, 2011).

Christensen deals with “the failure of companies to stay atop their industries when they confront certain types of market and technological change” (p. xi). These companies fail not because they ignored sound management principles, but paradoxically—and hence the dilemma—because they didn’t.

[M]any of what are now widely accepted principles of good management are, in fact, only situationally appropriate. There are times at which it is right not to listen to customers, right to invest in developing lower-performance products that promise lower margins, and right to aggressively pursue small, rather than substantial, markets. This book derives a set of rules … that managers can use to judge when the widely accepted principles of good management should be followed and when alternative principles are appropriate. … I call [these alternative principles] principles of disruptive innovation. (p. xv, emphasis his)

I found Lewis’ appropriation of Clayton Christensen’s economics of disruptive technological innovation applied to open access journals interesting enough to go and read Christensen’s book for myself. Afterward, I came back to Lewis’ article, and re-read it with greater understanding. I find his argument persuasive.

Gold and Green Open Access

Lewis’ thesis is that “open access, especially in its pure Gold form, is a disruptive innovation and that given this we can anticipate that it will become the dominant model for the distribution of scholarly content within the next decade” (p. 493). This is a bold assertion, especially considering other recent research suggesting that as of 2009, Gold open access journal articles accounted for only about 8% of all scholarly articles published.

What does Lewis mean by “pure Gold” open access? Open access comes in two major forms, differentiated by color designations, Gold and Green. Gold open access refers to articles that are published in online journals that are made freely available to readers. Green open access refers to forms of articles (e.g., a preprint version, or a delayed post-publication version) that are published in traditional subscription journals but are made freely accessible through submission to an online archive (e.g., author’s website, or an institutional repository). By “pure Gold,” Lewis means articles that are made freely available immediately upon publication, without any kind of delay, “that [also] does away with the overheads associated with restricting access to content and for collecting money from readers or their libraries” (p. 494). Some subscription-based journals make article content available to be read for free after an embargo period (delayed). This could be seen as a form of Gold open access. But because the journal itself is still sustained by subscription revenue Lewis doesn’t consider it “pure” Gold.

Who are the customers?

Lewis talks about two markets that scholarly journals engage, and from a product perspective this situation proves to be fairly unique. “The first is the market for readers’, or their libraries’, dollars. The second…is for the right to publish the best scholarly works” (p. 494). To me, this translates into an interesting question: Who are the customers in the world of scholarly journals?

One obvious customer is the consumer of research communication, or his/her institutional proxy, the library. With subscription-based journals, the product that is purchased is access to research communication. In the print era, this customer also got a tangible product to put on the shelf. As Lewis notes, this customer is clearly advantaged by open access, since articles would be available to him/her at no cost.

There are two other customers—the producer of research seeking a publishing venue, and the publisher seeking high quality research to put in its journals. Lewis highlights what makes this particular market interesting and unique:

[A]uthors do not exchange their work for money; instead, they trade it for prestige, a much less tangible commodity. Enhancements in prestige then make it possible for authors to earn tenure and promotion or to compete for grants or better jobs. Because it takes time for a journal to establish a reputation, today most high-prestige journals are subscription-based. Authors wishing to enhance their reputations often feel compelled to publish in these established, highly thought-of venues and, especially before tenure, are unwilling to risk exploring other alternatives. Established scholars have generally been successful with subscription journals and often feel no need to change their publishing choices. Currently, inertia favors subscription journals. (p. 494)

This is a unique arrangement indeed, with an odd additional wrinkle. The research producer customer is buying prestige with her articles in hopes of building her academic reputation. But she is also the research consumer customer buying access, via a subscription, to those same articles with real money. Meanwhile, the publisher customer uses the reputation it has built-up over time from past research to buy articles from current research producer customers for the cost of prestige. It then turns around and sells those articles back to research consumer customers for real money. The reputation flows in two directions. But the money flows in only one—to the publisher. The money-paying customers (e.g., libraries) are saying this is no longer sustainable, especially as prices continue to rise at dramatic rates. Exploring publishing alternatives must be risked, otherwise access will become increasingly limited.

For Lewis, “currently” (from the previous quote) is the key word. Although prestige is a powerful currency, open access brings some real advantages to these markets. Pragmatically, “to anyone connected to the Internet, the author’s [open access] work is available to the widest possible audience. The work is not restricted to those whose libraries can afford the prices of high-prestige subscription titles” (p. 494). A principled case for open access observes that “many…for-profit publishers…have used their position as monopoly providers to charge excessive prices…[T]hese pricing policies are at odds with the interests of scholars and their universities” (p. 495). I would add, also on principle, that although “inertia [currently] favors subscription journals,” because reputation flows in two directions, established scholars (at least) would not be risking that much to vet open access journal initiatives with their articles and editorial participation. Isn’t this a better use of reputation than subsidizing the profits of commercial publishers?

The Gold open access journal as a disruptive innovation

After summarizing the history and current status of open access journals as documented in a recent article by Mikael Laakso et. al., Lewis turns to the research of Clayton Christensen to argue that Gold open access journals have the characteristics of a “disruptive innovation.”

Ironically, disruptive innovations rarely begin life as a superior product. In fact, they almost always start out inferior to products sold by established firms in established markets. Even though they start this way, disruptive innovations generally have two distinct characteristics. First, they bring a new value proposition to the market. This new value proposition is almost always the application of a new technology using a new business model. Second, disruptive innovations usually make it possible for customers who had not been able to access a service or product to acquire it. … Over time, the disruptive innovation improves and becomes suitable for some of the less demanding customers of the established product. The new technology and business model embedded in the disruptive innovation provides a cost advantage that draws these customers from the established product to the disruptive one and the established firm loses market share. As time goes on, the disruptive innovation gets better and better and eventually it attracts more and more customers and comes to dominate the market. …

One might expect established firms to be able to react to disruptive innovation. They are, after all, leaders in their industries and they did not achieve this position by accident. But, as Christensen documents, this rarely happens. Established firms have succeeded because they have established successful business models and values that reinforce these models. It turns out that business models and organizational values don’t change easily, and it is thus nearly impossible for established firms to quickly adjust to take advantage of new technologies in disruptive ways. (p. 497)

Following Christensen, Lewis describes Gold open access journals as a disruptive innovation. “It combines a new technology, digital distribution of content using the Internet, with a new business model, free distribution to the reader with cost paid by the author or through other means” (pp. 497-98).

It is interesting now to reflect on the early experiments of scholars in the 1990′s who saw the potential of the Internet as a medium for the broad and free distribution of scholarly research. Early efforts were often rudimentary and primitive. These scholars often encountered skepticism, if not outright scorn, from colleagues who couldn’t conceive of the Internet as a credible venue for “serious scholarly communication.” Resistance also came from academic administrations, who viewed this “Internet thing” with suspicion—just a passing fad (well, except maybe for email). But vast improvements in network technology and browser and document delivery software in a relatively short period of time have brought a remarkable level of refinement and quality to low-cost scholar-driven online journal publishing activity (e.g., the open source Open Journal Systems platform).

It is not surprising that commercial publishers, too, have now almost universally embraced online distribution for their subscription-based journals. But they are using this technology to sustain their existing business models and values, not disrupt them (a practice repeatedly observed by Christensen in his research). Consider, for example, the level of sophistication of digital technology which now enables a commercial publisher to put its content securely behind an electronic paywall, and to monetize their journals, with time-limited pay-per-view shopping carts, down to the article level. “Please have your credit card ready.”

Gold open access brings an entirely different value proposition.

It is hard to compete with free unencumbered access, and easy and free linking and sharing. For authors the value proposition is less clear, but…it is at least as compelling. Having your work a click away from everyone should in the end be better for authors than having that work locked up, even if the lockbox is currently prestigious. …

A final part of the the value proposition that Gold OA brings is to universities and other institutions that support the scholarly enterprise. Subscription journals cost these organizations large amounts of money. … If some of this money could be redirected into more cost-effective ways of distributing scholarship, such as institutional subsidies for open access publishing ventures or author charges to open access journals, this would be a benefit. (p. 498)

Lewis notes that the response of established publishers to Gold open access “is what Christensen would predict.” Because established publishers operate on different business models based on different values—many dating from the world of print (when they were the only game in town)—they are culturally unprepared to adjust to new realities introduced by the disruptive innovation of open access. They are scrambling to keep their value propositions in place while issuing reports of doom and gloom, expressing doubts and skepticism about the sustainability of Gold open access. Lewis sees the use of Hybrid OA (where an author can pay to make their article open access in an otherwise subscription-based journal) and Delayed OA (free access to articles after an embargo period) by commercial publishers, and their tolerance for Green open access, as efforts to appear pro-OA while protecting their author base for high quality research articles without jeopardizing subscription income.

The S-curve of disruptive innovation and its impact

From Christensen, Lewis notes that Gold open access as a disruptive innovation will replace the established subscription-based journal, not through linear substitution, but by following an S-curve pattern (growth charted over time)—a pattern observed over and over in other industries and products (e.g., digital photography). The innovation may languish with slow growth initially, then the pace of adoption accelerates dramatically, until it flattens-out again after acquiring market domination. This behavior is the basis of Lewis’ bold claim regarding the future of Gold open access. Based on historical to present data, Lewis extrapolates a couple of scenarios. A conservative estimate shows 50% of articles will be published Gold OA by 2021, 90% by 2025. A more aggressive estimate shows 50% by 2017, and 90% by 2020. “Even the more conservative estimate suggests a radical shift in the nature of scholarly journal publishing in the next decade” (p. 501).

Lewis spends the remainder of the article discussing the impact of a journal system dominated by Gold open access on a variety of stakeholders (authors, readers, libraries, established subscription publishers, scholarly societies, etc.), and he offers-up some interesting points of change, including one certain and inevitable result (regardless of how long it actually takes)—the disruption and decline of the subscription journal. We can try to fight it and lose (because that’s how disruptive innovations tend to work), or we can embrace it and participate in its results. “[I]n the end [Gold OA] is a disruption whose success will make our world better” (p. 504).

Now that’s not boring.

Adoption of open access in Theological Studies will accelerate with a new generation of scholars—like Jack

Jack Weinbender works half-time in our library as my assistant. He’s a whiz around an Excel spreadsheet, so I regularly put him to work gathering and representing our user and resource statistics. He’s also a mean (self-taught!) web coder, so I put him to work implementing the recent re-design of our website. It looks great!

Jack is a senior at a nearby seminary. He is currently preparing applications to various doctoral programs in ancient Near Eastern and biblical studies for next Fall. Jack is an excellent student and a competent researcher. I hate the prospect of losing him as an employee, but I sincerely wish him well in his desire to find a placement for continuing his studies.

The other day Jack shared with me a draft of the Statement of Intent he is preparing to accompany his applications. As I was reading, I encountered this excerpt (included with permission):

Upon completion of the PhD, I hope to participate actively as a professional scholar through the publication of my own research and as an instructor in the classroom. On both fronts I feel that I can make meaningful contributions professionally. For example, I hope to be an advocate for open publishing in the fields of Near Eastern and biblical studies by supporting the few Open Access publications extant in the field and by advocating for open scholarly communication via the internet. In a similar vein, I hope to engage students in the classroom by utilizing sound curricular design theory with meaningful and measurable learning outcomes. (emphasis added)

Jack is aware of my open access advocacy, and it is gratifying to consider that I may have had an influence on his thinking as he contemplates a future in research and teaching. It is even more gratifying to consider that as a scholar of a new generation, Jack and others like him will surely accelerate the adoption of open access in theological and related fields of study. Blessings to you Jack!

Hat Tip: “The Future of Publishing” (But I viewed it from the perspective of open access)

I’m surprised I hadn’t seen this earlier. I want to thank a librarian colleague for the link, who posted it this afternoon to a listerv we both frequent. This wonderfully clever video was uploaded to YouTube back in March 2010. According to the description, “This video was prepared by the UK branch of Dorling Kindersley Books and produced by Khaki Films.”

The video was produced for the commercial publisher’s sales conference. Ironically, I viewed it from the perspective of open access and found its message compelling and powerful.

I encourage you to view the 2:30 video in its entirety. I won’t spoil the experience. But I’ll give you a hint. Notice how the message (in this excerpt) completely changes when it’s rewound.

Is this the message?

I know what I want when I see it and
packaging
is more important than
content
I have to tell you
my attention span is too small for big ideas
and it’s just not true that
I read a lot and I like learning …

Or this?

I read a lot and I like learning
and it’s just not true that
my attention span is too small for big ideas
I have to tell you
content
is more important than
packaging
I know what I want when I see it and …

The part about content or packaging proved serendipitous. Unbeknownst to my colleague, he posted the link just as I was preparing to participate in a thread discussing scholarly societies that turn their journals over to commercial publishers, and how this all too commonly results in increased institutional subscription prices. Here is an excerpt:

In addition to being a medium for research communication, I know many societies intend their journal to be a source of revenue to help subsidize other programming. In the print era especially, offering the journal as a benefit of membership is a long-standing tradition that is surely under considerable pressure as this incentive is losing its appeal in the digital age. I imagine that increasing institutional subscriptions is seen as a partial solution, and making a deal with the (commercial publishing) devil who has a lot of experience and brand recognition is seen as the (only?) way to do this credibly.

I appreciate this is simplistic. But it seems to me that the dilemma of a society in this situation is at least exacerbated where there is the perceived need to view their journal as a source of revenue in addition to it being a medium of research communication. If the revenue component could be minimized, or taken out of the equation entirely, then the focus could shift to simple cost recovery of the later. If, further, expectations could shift to the content and its dissemination rather than product packaging, the costs that would need to be recovered would be further reduced. (I’m working on a piece following-up on a recent article that sees open access journals as a “disruptive technology.” Disruptive technologies originate down-market but grow as they are increasingly able to satisfy core customer demands. Meanwhile, commercially published journals may actually be shown to be over-shooting customer demand, and price consciousness becomes a more important consideration. What do consumers of scholarly research really care about? Content or packaging?)

I suspect that leveraging the perception of increased value might bring the entertainment of thoughts that this product should be able to fetch a higher price in the marketplace, especially based on traditional expectations. But I find it difficult to believe that the initiative for these thoughts generally originate with the societies, especially if the reason for going to the commercial publisher in the first place is to provide a rescue from the near-term prospect of insolvency. It’s a pretty big leap from: “What can we do to keep this thing afloat?” to delusions of grandeur: “Ha! Ha! This will turn our journal into a veritable cash cow! We’ll be rich!” (OK. Maybe that’s just a little hyperbolic. But it’s for effect.)

I imagine, rather, the conversation between journal editors and society publication committees when meeting with their commercial publisher partners to be more like: “Yes, we want our journal to be revenue positive. But can you assure us that there is enough value here to justify raising the subscription price that much? Don’t we risk driving away subscribers?” The publisher replies: “No question about value. More people will learn about your great journal on our great platform, which is sure to increase subscriptions. And hey, we’ll throw-in access to a backfile. Librarians love backfiles! Besides, the increased price will offset any short-term loss of subscribers. Don’t worry. We are committed to the long-term viability and success of your journal. We can’t succeed if you don’t succeed. We’re in this together!”

Content or packaging? Selling a product or getting a message out? Which is more important?

Omega Alpha | Open Access is one year old today!

It’s Thanksgiving Day in the United States. As it happens, Omega Alpha | Open Access is also one year old today!

I am very thankful today for the opportunities the decision to start writing this blog has afforded me. Although I feel as though I’ve barely scratched the surface, I know I have learned a lot about open access in the last year, both through my reading and through the many wonderful conversations I have had with some very smart people. Indeed, in recent days I’ve finally turned my attention to Peter Suber’s book Open Access (MIT Press, 2012), and I hope to get a few more chapters read before the family arrives for dinner—review to follow in a subsequent post.

I am especially thankful for all the folks who found their way to my blog, and to those who clicked the “Follow” button in order to catch my updates. I hope I can dedicate a bit more time to this effort in the coming year.

Speaking of folks who found their way to my blog, I continue to be amazed by the network effect that multiplies the distribution of freely accessible information online—a power that open access leverages to disseminate scholarly communication in ways that print or (even) online toll-access modes cannot match. I just checked my statistics. After one year, the blog has logged just short of 12,000 views from 127 countries world-wide!

Happy Birthday Omega Alpha, and Happy Thanksgiving to all!

Hat Tip: Clay Shirky: Open access gives preference to our academic mission not our current practices

Author, consultant, and teacher Clay Shirky was the general session speaker on Wednesday, November 7 at the 2012 EDUCAUSE Annual Conference in Denver, Colorado. The session was entitled “IT as a Core Academic Competence,” and within it Clay Shirky described how the Internet, especially as a milieu for collaboration, is dramatically impacting how people learn and changing the ways in which knowledge is created and shared. The video of the session is available on the EDUCAUSE website, and Shirky’s presentation, which starts about 20 minutes in, is well worth a view.

The first question in the Q&A following Shirky’s presentation (at 59:40) was about open access journals. His response:

The real tension around open access journals is that institutions occasionally get to this moment—the moment I think our community is in—where you’re given a choice between conserving your mission and conserving your practices. Institutions tend to want to preserve the problem to which they are the solution. And so we have a world where trying to keep the current structure of journals intact has become obviously a goal of, say, Reed Elsevier, but also it’s just the easy slot to fall into for tenure committees, if you know how to rank them. At the same time, we have open access journals, which are plainly more in line with our academic self-conception, mission, and goals. Not just for the generic spreading of information, but for the internal professional needs for wide self-criticism and conversation.

So the first thing I think you have to say about open access journals is: We have to support them. Interestingly, as the number of submissions to a journal goes up the quality of the submissions they can choose also goes up. … The other thing we can do, as some institutions have already done, is to announce that our institutional preference is for our mission and not our current practices, and that we expect faculty to expose their work widely for feedback and for conversation. That de facto means preferring the open access journals. Not as a way of intervening in the fight with Reed Elsevier, or what have you, but simply as a way of living up to our own stated goals. (emphasis added)

Doxology: Open access “magnifying lens” on worship scholarship

In a previous post, I related a conversation I had with Geoffrey Moore, the new editor of the recently converted online and open access journal Doxology: A Journal of Worship (ISSN: 2167-0153) regarding the pros and cons of publishing complete periodic issues or publishing articles as they are submitted and reviewed in open annual volumes. In that post I indicated that I planned a follow-up profile of the journal itself. At last…

The scholarly publication of the Order of Saint Luke

Doxology was founded in 1984 as a scholarly publication of the Order of Saint Luke. The Order of Saint Luke is a “religious order in the United Methodist Church dedicated to sacramental and liturgical scholarship, education, and practice.” It was formed in 1946 “to bring about a recovery of the worship and sacramental practice which has sustained the Church since its formation in Apostolic times,” and “to help the Church rediscover the spiritual disciplines of the Wesleys as a means of perceiving and fulfilling the mission for which the Church was formed” (from the website).

I spoke with former editor, Professor Byron Anderson (Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary), about the history of Doxology.

Anderson: Doxology began in 1984, primarily as a venue for members and friends of the Order of Saint Luke. It served as a venue for publishing the lectures/papers offered at the annual retreat of the Order, along with a few other occasional pieces—either solicited by or offered to the journal. It did not publish substantive reviews, nor were materials reviewed independently prior to publication. In 1998, with Volume 15, Clifton Guthrie and I took over editorial responsibility for Doxology after conversation with the OSL Council about the future and shape of the journal. Among our goals were moving to a juried journal, broadening and deepening the scholarship offered through the journal, providing a venue through which to support younger scholars, giving emphasis to Protestant worship, and offering “more exacting” and more selective reviews (soliciting particular reviewers rather than accepting unsolicited reviews).

Omega Alpha: I understand the print journal was published once per year, and it is continuing as an annual in its online incarnation. When was the issue typically released each year? How many subscribers did you have prior to Doxology going online?

Anderson: Issues came out in December, although several years we had a print/delivery delay, which helped support our push to go online. The primary subscriber base was the membership of the Order of St. Luke, which has somewhere around 800 members. [They also had 39 institutional subscribers.] The subscription price for individuals and institutions was $10.

Omega Alpha: So the subscription price was primarily intended to help defray the cost of printing and mailing. Did you publish Doxology in-house?

Anderson: The journal was and is a publication of OSL Publications, which usually contracted with a printer and mail service for production and delivery. Printing and postage costs were becoming a concern, and we were beginning to have some problems with timely delivery. Yes, the subscription had been part of the annual membership dues to the organization.

Omega Alpha: Your first online annual issue—Volume 28—was published last year (2011) while you were still co-editor. You mentioned printing costs and delays. Did these things factor into your decision to move Doxology online?

Anderson: Yes. I first broached the possibility that we take the journal online after several years of printing/delivery delays and with changes being made in the staffing of OSL Publications. The first conversation took us as far as agreeing to continue to explore the possibility. After learning about Open Journal Systems, seeing it in use at Methodist Review, and conversing with the editor of Methodist Review, I developed a proposal and pressed for this move. Admittedly, the move also came at a time when financial considerations helped press it forward. Of course, because Doxology has always been produced on a shoe string, there wasn’t much to fund. What we have done is make use of the previous budget for printing and postage to cover the modest cost for the online move. The editors receive a modest honorarium; we do this, in part, as a contribution to the OSL.

Omega Alpha: Volunteerism applied to tasks such as editing and peer review is common and frequently necessary. But it is a long-standing, honorable, and collegial tradition in scholarly communication that reaps a lot of direct value in the online open access environment because infrastructure costs (when coupled with the use of open source tools like OJS) are otherwise low. It is now possible for any group of committed scholars or a scholarly organization to contemplate embarking on a fully credible journal publishing venture with readily available tools. Can you say more about your decision to embrace the open access publishing model for Doxology?

Anderson: Pretty much as I just indicated before. Seeing it in use at Methodist Review, having it recommended to me by my institution’s librarian, and then beginning to explore its “ease of use” from an editorial perspective.

Omega Alpha: Do you feel that open access lends itself appropriately to the mission of The Order of St. Luke?

Anderson: I think it does. The purpose of the journal focuses on the OSL’s desire the “seek the sacramental life, promote the corporate worship of the church, and magnify the sacraments,” attempting to do these things from an academic perspective yet trying to maintain a bridge between the church and the academy. Open access potentially expands our audience beyond the membership. Because we are an annual journal, we had not been able to be listed in ATLA’s Religion Database so our materials did not show up in library searches. But by moving Doxology online, we at least can make an appearance through web searches.

I posed this same question to Daniel Benedict, the Abbot of the Order of Saint Luke.

Benedict: As Abbot, I am responsible for overseeing the spiritual and temporal matters of the Order of Saint Luke. In this regard, the publications of the Order are an important part of our work and service to the church and the academy. Doxology is our scholarly periodical. However, publishing it as an annual print volume was both expensive and limited in the audience it could reach. As an annual publication, Doxology was not indexed in ATLA. Without database indexing, few scholars could know of it or its contents. With Dr. Ron Anderson’s encouragement and background work, I concluded that the Order and the academy would be better served by going to the online/open access approach and advocated for that to the Council.

Omega Alpha: What has been the response to this transition within the Order of Saint Luke?

Benedict: Two part response: First, the Council was favorable because the savings are significant. We are now realizing a $2,500 annual reduction in costs of publishing the journal. Second, the promise of wider availability to the intended audience has appeal to the leadership of the Order and to members who are aware of the shift to online/open access publication.

The new approach to publication costs us nothing, beyond the time given by the editor, Br. Geoffrey Moore. That is not to minimize the gift and sacrifice on his part as a scholar, giving himself to this work. We pay a small stipend for his efforts. Beyond that, the savings realized allows the Order to contribute a significant portion of his expenses for attending the North American Academy of Liturgy, where he is able to interface with other scholars with an eye toward generating potential writers for Doxology.

Omega Alpha: So the move to open access has resulted in reduced costs, timely publication, and the prospect of a broader readership and increased discovery by scholars of worship and liturgy. These were the very goals Drs. Anderson and Josselyn-Cranson articulated in the “Note to Readers” in the first online issue of Doxology.

Benedict: We are still living into the transition and our awareness of what the new approach will mean for our end users. The journal’s end users are not, for the most part, members of the Order. Rather, the end users are scholars who engage in academic considerations with each other for the sake of matters of practice in the church’s liturgy and sacramental life. The Order and the Church benefit from this ongoing conversation.

Doxology 4.0

In the “Note to Readers” from the first online issue of Doxology (Volume 28, 2011), Dr. Byron Anderson writes: “In my count, this issue of Doxology represents either its third or fourth ‘incarnation’—Doxology 4.0 perhaps. … What has changed is the means by which it is delivered to you, our readers. … What has not changed, however, is the quality of the material presented here” (emphasis added). This is a very neat and concise way of communicating the intentions of open access. The quality of scholarship, editorial oversight, and peer review is in no way compromised by open access. Open access is about distribution of scholarship not scholarly quality. [I had dinner with a professor colleague just last evening who still didn't "get" this basic fact about open access—an indication that advocates for open access still have some work to do!]

Another point raised by Dr. Anderson in his “Note” was that a search for new editorial leadership was underway, after his 15-year tenure. That search was successfully concluded this year as Geoffrey Moore, a doctoral student at Southern Methodist University, assumed the post as editor.

I followed-up this profile and my earlier conversation with Moore about plans for Doxology moving forward. The 2012 issue (Volume 29) is slated for publication in December along the lines of the first online issue last year. However, he has decided, beginning in 2013, to adopt an open submission and publication format (publishing articles immediately as they pass peer and editorial review), similar to the approach taken by Methodist Review. “This is a logical choice in the interest of getting scholarship ‘out there’ with greater expedience; and given that we’re already an annual, there doesn’t appear to be a downside with respect to the history of our serial.” Moore is also interested in exploring a print on demand option for individuals and institutions. And as time allows, he wants to scan the back issues to create a complete journal archive on the site.

An open access “magnifying lens” on worship scholarship

The Focus and Scope section on the journal’s “About” page includes these words regarding the mission of Doxology: “Doxology is a refereed scholarly journal. Through the academic and pastoral conversations developed in Doxology, the journal seeks to promote the corporate worship of the church,… While, on the one hand, we seek to ‘lift up the sacraments’ we also seek through the same to apply a magnifying lens to them through scholarly conversation and critique” (emphasis added).

What a great metaphor for the scholarly endeavor and its communication. I am pleased that this particular scholarly magnifying lens is now open access. I wish it continued success.

Hat Tip: Open Access Explained!

One of the clearest, concise, and entertaining explanations of open access I have seen. Check-out this animated comic, Open Access Explained! narrated by open access advocates Nick Shockey, Director of Student Advocacy at SPARC (Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition) and Jonathan Eisen, Professor of Evolutionary Biology and Ecology at University of California, Davis on the PHD Comics website.

The piece focuses on open access to publically-funded scientific research. I wished for more of a nod to Humanities scholarship and the unique challenges of our disciplines relating to open access. But the explanation still translates very well. For example, this excerpt—I believe it is Jonathan Eisen speaking—could just as easily be applied to Humanities scholarship:

I think the main impediment [to open access] is the slow movement of scientific cultural practices. Scientists, despite being great explorers in terms of knowledge, are sort-of very conservative in changing their practices. Lots of the [scientific] community says: “O yeah, I support openness…but I want a Nature paper [that is, I only want to publish my research in a high-profile journal].” That reliance on impact-factor and the name of the journal [prestige] does allow some journals to not respond to the community pressure toward openness…

[We need to experiment with other models.] I view it much more as scientists and scientific publishers are slow to change. Some of them are going to be left in the dirt because openness is clearly the future. The creative ones are going to survive.