Lacking any sense of proportion: Michael Eisen pushes back on The New York Times’ “dark side of open access” article

On Sunday, April 7, 2013, The New York Times ran a front page article written by Gina Kolata entitled, “Scientific Articles Accepted (Personal Checks, Too),” which exposed “a world of pseudo-academia [running parallel with legitimate scientific and scholarly communication], complete with prestigiously titled conferences and journals that sponsor them.”

The number of these journals and conferences has exploded in recent years as scientific publishing has shifted from a traditional business model for professional societies and organizations built almost entirely on subscription revenues to open access, which relies on authors or their backers to pay for the publication of papers online, where anyone can read them.

The article quotes several scholars, who as a result of their personal experience have come to call this parallel world the “Wild West,” or the “dark side of open access.” The article also refers to the work of research librarian Jeffrey Beall, who tracks what he calls “predatory open access journals,” estimating “that there are as many as 4,000 predatory journals today, at least 25 percent of the total number of open-access journals.”

The article is highlighting a real problem. But after acknowledging (barely, in passing) that “open access got its start about a decade ago and quickly won widespread acclaim with the advent of well-regarded, peer-reviewed journals like those published by the Public Library of Science,” the clear message is that scholars today ought to be skeptical and suspicious about open access. Though not stated—indeed no constructive response or course of action is really offered in the article—the impression is left that in the face of open access run amuck, the only safe harbor is the “traditional business model…built on subscription revenues.”

“The dark side of The New York Times” and of commercial journal publishers

This article was too much for Michael Eisen, biologist at the University of California at Berkeley and co-founder of the Public Library of Science. In an April 9, 2013 blog post, “Door-to-door subscription scams: the dark side of The New York Times,” Eisen pushes back:

[Y]es, a lot of these suspect journals charge authors for publishing their works, just like open access journals like PLoS do. But suggesting, as the article does, that scam conferences/journals exist because of the rise of open access publishing is ridiculous. It’s the logical equivalent of blaming newspapers like the NYT for people who go door-to-door selling fake magazine subscriptions. (link is in the original post)

Eisen chides The New York Times for running “science’s version of the Nigerian banking scams—something far more deserving of laughter than hand-wringing” on its front page. He goes on to suggest a more significant scam story the paper might rather cover:

[I]f Gina Kolata and the NYT are really concerned about scams in science publishing, they should look into the $10 BILLION DOLLARS of largely public money that subscription publishers take in every year in return for giving the scientific community access to the 90% of papers that are not published in open access journals—papers that scientists gave to the journals for free! This ongoing insanity not only fleeces huge piles of cash from government and university coffers, it denies the vast majority of the planet’s population access to the latest discoveries of our scientists. (emphasis Eisen)

Michael Eisen is responding to the lack of any sense of proportion in this article. He sees a gnat-straining attack on open access, while routinely (and historically) camels are being swallowed through the current commercial publisher-controlled system of scholarly communication. Astoundingly, Kolata’s article doesn’t even mention commercial publishers. The closest she comes is a passing reference to “the traditional business model,” but she suggests this exists only to serve “professional societies and organizations.”

Eisen reminds us that the “Wild West” and the “dark side” in journal publishing isn’t a new phenomenon.

Long before the Internet, publishers discovered that launching new journals was like printing money—something Elsevier specialized in for decades, launching hundreds of new journals with hastily assembled editorial boards and then turning around and demanding that libraries subscribe to these journals as part of their “Big Deal” bundles of journals. These journals succeeded because there are always researchers looking for a place to put their papers, and many of these new journals greased the wheels by having fairly lax standards for publication.

Commoditizing the scholarly reputation economy

We all know something of the “dark side” of commercial publishing when we see dramatic increases in subscription prices, especially after a reasonably priced society journal is acquired by a commercial publisher. But what about the way commercial publishers have commoditized the scholarly reputation economy itself?

When we go out to buy a car, flat-screen TV, or a bottle of laundry detergent at the store we are accustomed to the notion that these products are price- and quality-tiered in the market to sell to various economic classes of customers. A single company may create a diverse product line and branding based on price/quality in order to reach all sectors of the consumer market, and so maximize their profit potential. We have been conditioned to the notion that higher quality (as material craftsmanship, or scarcity) commands a higher price, and unless you are of a certain economic class, you can only aspire to higher quality.

Although we might understand that a “top-tier” journal purports to reflect publication of a certain level of research quality—that’s why we call it “top-tier” (though it’s probably more correct to say it’s a matter of reputation)—we do not commonly assume that the products of scholarly communication (i.e., journals and articles) function quite like cars, flat-screen TVs, or laundry detergent. In the current system, a scholar may aspire to have his or her article published in a top-tiered journal. But depending on the editorial and review criteria, and results of the submission, that scholar’s article may be rejected at the top-tiered journal. The scholar will then need to resubmit the article to other journals (though ethically only one at a time) before finally succeeding in getting it published. The journal where the scholar finally succeeds may be understood as a “second-” or “third-tier” journal because it lacks the same level of reputation (though not necessarily less actual quality) of the aspired top-tier journal. We tend to chalk-up the success or failure of the scholar getting published to a combination of factors, but it comes down to the scholar’s reputation.

We understand the academic economy in terms of scholarly reputation. And when we look at and rank journals for reputation we tend to focus on the journal, not the publisher. We may be aware that a given journal is published by a well-known scholarly society, but less-so if it is published by a commercial publisher. I believe this is a failure of appreciation that Eisen is bringing to our attention—and it’s another aspect of the “dark side” of commercial publishing.

What would it mean if the same publisher owned not only a top-tiered journal in a given discipline, but also several second- and third-tier journals in that same discipline? What would be the purpose of this? If the economy is based on the currency of reputation, why is a commercial publisher interested in any journal other than a top-tiered journal? There can be only one real answer. The publisher is creating a price/quality product line, much like cars, flat-screen TVs, and laundry detergent, in order to profit from all sectors of this particular consumer market. Who are the customers in this market? The customers are the scholars themselves looking for venues to publish their research. (See Who are the customers? section in my blog post “The open access journal as a disruptive innovation.”)

After we get over the sting that a commercial publisher views scholars first and foremost as customers, we might agree that the publisher is providing an important service. After all, every research scholar needs a venue to publish (as Eisen points out). Publishers are simply providing a segmented market to account for a full range of scholarly customers—not only those who can “afford” through their acquired reputation to publish in a top-tiered journal, but also “aspiring” scholars who only have a little reputation to spend. The problem in this context is that the publisher doesn’t care simply about assuring the quality of the reputation economy. The publisher is looking to profit from customers in all its market sectors.

I hasten to say here that the editor of a so-called lower-tiered journal will (or certainly should) aspire to improve his or her journal’s reputation by working hard to attract reputable editorial boards, reviewers, and high quality research articles from reputable scholars. But reputations require time to establish. This is the challenge facing many newer open access journals. The quality may be there but the reputation is still being formed because the journal is not yet well-known. I am not suggesting that a commercial publisher would interfere with the scholarly reputation economy to the degree that a given journal will remain fixed within a particular market tier. I am merely suggesting that the publisher has interests that transcend the journal level. It is in the publisher’s best interest to make sure it has and provides venues—both top- and lower-tiered journals—for all potential customers.

Remember, too (if you read my post above), that the publisher is also a customer. The publisher needs academic papers from scholars as the raw material for their journals. No papers, no journals. No journals, no business. It’s that simple. Of course, papers are pretty cheap. I mean, scholars are literally giving them away to publishers at no cost! But what to do with the relatively limited capacity (even in an online environment) of a given journal to utilize all the raw material that might flow to it? Editors and reviewers typically reject the majority (90%+) of papers submitted to top-tiered journals. So what happens to the rest? Wasted? No. These can be utilized at the lower product tiers. There is no guarantee, of course, that a rejected paper will go to another journal owned by the same publisher. But as there are typically plenty of papers being produced, it is inevitable that the publisher will capture enough to sustain their journals in the other tiers. But it has to have journals at the other tiers. Eisen describes how commercial publishers have assured that all journal tiers get profitably sold. They bundle the lower-tier journals with the top-tier journals and sell them as a package to academic libraries for tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars a year in what are called “Big Deals.”

“Personal checks, too”

The alarm generated from scholars in the Gina Kolata article highlights a basic problem—it’s right there in the title. The scholarly community can too easily believe it is operating in an idyllic and enlightened economy of reputation, untainted by “base commerce.” That is certainly how it can appear at the journal level, where typically there is no money changing hands. (Though I recently read Richard Poynder’s interview with Jack Meadows, historian of scientific communication, who reminded me that it has not been uncommon for authors to be charged “page charges” to get articles published.) Consequently, reports of unscrupulous activity at the fringes of a relatively new, dynamic, and alternative publishing model raise consternation and fear. “Can open access be trusted if it is so easily abused?!” Meanwhile, commercial publishers have exploited, segmented, and commoditized the scholarly reputation economy for years, and no one seems to mind. Indeed, the article insinuates most obliquely that the traditional subscription-based business model (which is now largely controlled by the commercial sector) is the scholar’s only reliable savior.

Why is this? Many scholars are (still!) not well informed about the costs their libraries are bearing each year to keep access to cherished journals turned on. If they are aware, the fact has yet to impress them. When someone else is paying the access bill, the problem (what problem?) seems remote, and the status quo holds the day. But more, when someone else is paying for access scholars are less apt to fully think-through the implications of research—maybe even their own research—being locked-up behind a paywall. Is it any wonder that stories of the unscrupulous demanding payment of scholars from their own pocket for the opportunity to publish sound so appalling? It seems scholars will only begin to fully embrace open access as a viable and beneficial alternative when they are awakened to the economic costs that have been borne and continue to be borne to keep the “traditional business model” in business. While it is not inappropriate to report on the darkness that lies at the fringe, this should not be used to distract scholars from the darkness that lies at the heart. A sense of proportion would seem to require as much.

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.

Hat Tip: Let’s not leave Humanities behind in the dash for open access

Nice article this morning by Peter Webster on the Research Fortnight website entitled “Humanities left behind in the dash for open access.” Check it out.

Webster observes that much of the current conversation around the growth of open access focuses on the sciences and use of an “author-pays” business model. He feels inadequate attention in the conversation has been given to the unique needs of humanities scholarship, and why it may be harder for humanist scholars to embrace open access based on the “author-pays” model.

There is no Public Library of History to match the phenomenally successful Public Library of Science.

“It is tempting to look for cultural roots to this problem, and for evidence of ingrained resistance to change, but I don’t think that gets us very far. Better to look at the distinctive ways in which humanities research is communicated.” Webster then provides a concise articulation of research communication in the humanities.

Webster is not suggesting humanities scholars will reject open access because their needs differ. But clearly a one size fits all approach will not help move the conversation forward. Webster’s concluding appeal:

All the disciplines stand to gain from a successful move to open access. However, much of the discussion about open access has been driven by the needs of the sciences. Let’s not allow the humanities to be collateral damage along the way.

From my old school files, Part 2: Excerpts from that research paper on the development of the scholarly journal

I have a few very interesting stories brewing regarding a couple of theological journals that have converted from subscription-based to open access (the library will become the publisher for one, and the other is based at an institution that, along with its library, strongly supports and promotes open access), and a society journal which is not open access per se (although they provide a web archive of freely available back issues) but recently reversed a decision to go with a commercial publisher.

I hope to have my research for these stories completed before too long. I have to confess, however, that since the end of the school year (despite the fact that I work throughout the summer) I’ve been feeling pretty lazy about writing. I know. That’s not good. Bloggers need to keep a forward momentum going so their readers will stay engaged.

So, if only to let you know that I’m still alive, I’m following-up with the plan I suggested in a recent post to excerpt relevant bits from the semester paper I wrote for my Foundations of Library and Information Science course back in May 2004. The paper is entitled The Scholarly Journal: Long Tradition Behind the Coming Change. I uploaded the entire paper here (PDF 141KB).

As I mentioned in my previous post, the paper ended-up veering away from the topic of open access, though it deals with many of the issues that have been pertinent to the developing logic of open access in scholarly communication, including the currently unsustainable economic model, peer review, and intellectual property.

Budget Crunch at the Academic Library

It turns out that the issue of economic sustainability surfaced in a very real way at University of Arizona while I was researching for this paper. I led off in this way:

The news was right on the front page of Arizona Daily Wildcat (April 9, 2004): “Library cuts new books from budget.” The article reported that beginning October 2004, the University of Arizona library will implement an across the board cut of 16 percent over the next two years to book orders and journal subscriptions. The cuts were described as “a move to combat inflation [of about 9 to 10 percent per year] and a lack of additional funding.” Currently, UA library’s budget is about $9 million. Unless the cuts are implemented, librarians fear they will be facing a $1.3 million deficit by 2006. The planned cuts include 7,000 new books, 3,000 journals and $250,000 for electronic indexes. One faculty member who was interviewed for the article insisted the cuts “will be detrimental to the research and teaching mission of the university.” Students interviewed seemed to concur. “A library is a key component of the university. Cutting back is a huge mistake if you want to keep the university’s standards up.” Meanwhile, University President, Peter Likins was reported as appreciating the dilemma of trying to fully support valued assets such as the library in economically tough times. “In recent years, everybody gets cut. It’s more a question of who gets cut less. This university has treated libraries and library materials as very high priorities.”

I found it especially interesting and not a little ironic that commercial publishers, who first hit on the idea of selling journal subscriptions directly to institutions in the years following World War II, thus creating a guaranteed revenue stream from a “captive readership,” were initially resistant to the idea of getting into journal publishing because they didn’t see any profit in it!

After elaborating a bit more on the historical and economic circumstances that precipitated this most recent “serials crisis” (famously enshrined in the “Monograph and Serial Costs in ARL Libraries, 1986-2002″ graph on page 10 of ARL Statistics 2001-02 published by the Association of Research Libraries), I turned to the development of the scholarly journal as a conduit for research communication. The transition was captured in this excerpt and associated footnote, which anticipates key issues in the current conversation around open access—scholars taking ownership of their own intellectual property and having alternative avenues for scholarly communication (the notion that scholar-publishers could utilize the Internet to disseminate their research just like commercial publishers was really just starting to gain momentum in 2004, and print was still dominant), while continuing to assure quality of research through peer review:

There would be no journals to publish, or subscribe to, if there were no scholars and scientists conducting research, and desiring to report their findings to colleagues and contribute to the general store of human knowledge. Budget cuts also punish these primary producers of research. Every journal subscription that is cancelled potentially impacts communication and access between research producers and interested users. But the current journal system impacts communication and access in other ways, too. If there is a “captive readership” it would not be surprising to discover there are also captive researchers, and that commercial publishers are in the thick of it.

There are historical and practical reasons why the journal commands such a central place in the process of scholarly communication, and (ironically) why it became subject to commercial publisher exploitation. The present paper will look at some of these reasons as a preface to understanding the “serials crisis.”* Beyond this, the paper will very briefly introduce awareness of the rapid rise of electronic delivery that may be challenging the dominance of the print journal as the principal conduit of scholarly communication.
__________

* Publisher bashing is fun, and in some circumstances even justified. But I do not really want to belabor the “serials crisis” debate. As I quickly discovered, more than enough bandwidth has been dedicated to it. My introductory comments are (probably more than) sufficient. Rather, what surfaced for me as I began my research on the ways the crisis is being addressed, was coming to an understanding of the long tradition embodied in the journal as the principal and enduring artifact of scholarly communication, and insight into the process of peer-review that is typically conducted through the journal. If only for my own benefit, this is where I decided to put my energies.

“Scholarly” vs. “Scientific”

The paper focused on the particular relevance of journal literature in the sciences. But I was really interested in understanding the development and function of the journal in scholarly communication generally. I consciously chose to use the term “scholarly” instead of “scientific” because of my humanities orientation. I wrote about this in a footnote:

I am persisting in using the term “scholarly” in speaking about journals and communication, even though much of the literature I consulted was oriented toward the “scientific.” I will generalize from this direction, being aware that my own orientation is in the humanities. Naturally, Meadows (1974) grants that “scholarship” exists “outside the sciences.” However, for him the “essential difference is that scientists consider their knowledge to be ultimately objective.…[H]istorians can…write on topics that have been dealt with many times before; yet their work will be counted original—even if it uses exactly the same data—so long as they present their own interpretation. But two scientists who use the same data and work within the same theoretical framework should arrive at virtually identical results” (pp. 35-36). Similarly for Mary Jo Lynch (1984), “scientific research” is oriented toward discovering “new knowledge” with “data collected from nature” utilizing the scientific method. She defines “scholarly research” as “typically done by humanists [and] often based on [finding and analyzing] previous published work [i.e., existing knowledge] related to the matter at hand.” But she adds that in scholarly research, like scientific research, “data are collected and organized in an objective way and analyzed according to systematic principles.” The scholar’s research also “involves disciplined inquiry which enables the scholar to make an original contribution to the knowledge base of a field” (pp. 368-369).
__________

Lynch, M. (1984). Research and librarianship: An uneasy connection. Library Trends, 32, 367-383.

Meadows, A. J. (1974). Communication in science. London: Butterworths.

I highlighted why scientists came to prefer the article over the book, and (in a footnote) why humanists still prefer the book:

The scientific book also had long tradition of use, but its principle weaknesses were that it was too slow and too expensive, for both author and would-be readers. The format was also unwieldy for reporting on a single observation or experiment. Kronick (1976) makes the point that the “new philosophy” (à la Bacon) marks a “change in emphasis from constructing comprehensive world-views and all-embracing philosophical edifices, to an emphasis on collecting the results of observations and experiments.…The single observation or experiment has a unity in itself and the publications in which it results are likely to be short.…[T]he book…is not efficient for presenting the results of experiments or observations, because the author has to wait until he has accumulated a sufficient number of them to justify the publication of a book.” (p. 45)*
__________

Kronick, D. A. (1976). A history of scientific & technical periodicals: The origins and developments of the scientific and technical press, 1665-1790 (2nd ed.). Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press.
__________

* As an aside, but related to the larger topic, humanist scholars are more apt to continue, as it were, “constructing comprehensive world-views” in their research reporting. Consequently, they would be making ready use of the monograph to communicate their findings. Though I haven’t seen the breakdown, there is a good chance that the University of Arizona library’s decision to cut 7,000 books from its 2004-2006 budget will, on balance, hurt humanities scholars more than scientists.

Although the monograph continues to be the gold standard for judging humanities scholarship (Can you demonstrate an ability to construct “a comprehensive worldview” or an “all-embracing philosophical edifice”?), I believe the journal article or essay is increasingly gaining a respectable place. This may be due to a combination of factors, including economic (the expense of publishing a low volume specialized study in book form), social (the desire even among humanist scholars to speed communication to solicit feedback from colleagues; reduced time and capacity of colleagues to spend digesting voluminous works), and cultural (less confidence in comprehensive systems). And even where a comprehensive (or at least, expansive) treatment is desired, there may be greater openness (by tenure and promotion committees?) to have scholars dole it out piece-meal in more easily digested article-sized chunks.

The Purpose of the Scholarly Journal and Peer Review

My research introduced me to a fascinating study by Nancy Fjällbrant (1997) entitled Scholarly communication: Historical development and new possibilities. Fjällbrant argues that the scholarly journal became a “closed artifact” because it provided the best overall solution to the needs of scholarly communication.

Fjällbrant alludes to four important aspects of academic writing: ownership of an idea, societal recognition for the author, claiming priority for a discovery, and establishing an accredited community of authors and readers (Scholarly communication section, ¶ 1). She continues: “Authors are concerned with the ‘reach’ and diffusion of their ideas and findings. Their success and/or influence depends on the extent of the spread and recognition of their texts.”

I have already referred to informal communication among scholars (e.g., “invisible colleges”). But formal means of communication have traditionally taken print form. The advantages of formal communication are listed by Fjällbrant:

1. information can be spread to a widely scattered group of readers;

2. detailed information, such as descriptions of methods, tables, diagrams, results etc. can easily be given;

3. printed documents contain information which can be critically examined and verified;

4. the documents can easily be referred to as and when required;

5. published documents provide a means for establishing “priority” of academic work, and thereby contribute to establishing academic merit for the author(s). (Scholarly communication section, ¶ 4)

According to Fjällbrant, the printed scholarly journal was better able to deliver the majority of these advantages to the majority of the stakeholder groups than any of the alternatives. Consequently, it became dominant and forced “closure.” This has been true for roughly three hundred years. Fjällbrant goes on to wonder whether new forms of electronically published and network disseminated scholarly communication will force a reopening of this traditionally dominant artifact.

Regarding the early development of peer review:

Addressing advantages #3 (verifying the quality of research) and #5 (establishing priority of discovery) above led to a parallel development of refereeing, or peer review. It was the learned societies that first pushed scientists from secrecy into the public by providing mechanisms to guarantee priority of discovery, to register a permanent record of the discovery (society archives), and to give “an authoritative stamp” on their work through the judgment of peers (Fjällbrant, 1997, Needs of various groups section, ¶ 4-8). This model was carried over into print form via the scholarly journal. An early example can be seen in Rozier’s diligent editorial policies for the Observations. As was noted above, not only was Rozier prepared to reject articles that lacked requisite quality and originality (negative control), he also implied a belief that the community of scientists would conduct itself ethically and objectively “as friends of humanity” (positive control). These were the values and safeguards—what Stephen Cole (2000) alludes to as “the norm of universalism”—that lent credibility and sufficient confidence to this format.
__________

Cole, S. (2000). The role of journals in the growth of scientific knowledge. In B. Cronin & H. B. Atkins (Eds.), The web of knowledge: A festschrift in honor of Eugene Garfield [ASIS Monograph Series] (pp. 109-142). Medford, NJ: Information Today.

Re-opening the “Closure”: Print to Electronic…and Beyond

Fjällbrant could wonder in 1997 about the prospects for electronic dissemination of journals in electronic format. Most prescient, she identifies “a shift in emphasis from [library] collection building in anticipation of possible needs (JUST IN CASE) to information access on demand (JUST IN TIME) delivery” (Problems section, ¶ 2). I responded that this “is a challenge to the long-held perception of the library as a repository for human knowledge.”

The day is now here. Just the other day I was reviewing our periodicals renewals list for 2013. If I wasn’t canceling a title (due to cost, or lack of demonstrated use) I was making sure we were able to receive it in electronic format. Print is now reserved for the casual reading rack.

A change in delivery format driven by user expectation and demand is only the start. But I left it there. I gave the last word to Kate Thomes (2002), who did provide a passing reference to open access:

We are moving from a known mature system of scholarly communication in the print environment to an unknown digital environment in which established practices are no longer deemed relevant or necessary. The stakes are high in changing the system both economically, for publisher profits and costs to higher education, and socially, for the potential benefits of open access to the scholarly record.…It took the ingenuity and intelligence of our predecessors to create the past system and it will require nothing less from us to create a new system of scholarly communication that fulfills its mission in the digital age. (p. 109)
__________

Thomes, K. (2002). Scholarly communication in flux: Entrenchment and opportunity. Science and Technology Libraries, 22(3/4), pp. 101-111.

Open access as a matter of academic ethics: The right thing to do

In order to succeed, open access needs to demonstrate real and practical benefits to the scholarly community and beyond. In order to instill confidence as a publishing model, open access needs to be both economically accessible and economically sustainable.

However, it’s not just what open access needs to be or do to justify its serious consideration. As has been discussed on this blog before (especially here), open access brings with it a capacity to raise awareness of a values dynamic in the creation, dissemination, and use of the products of scholarly research. If for no other reason than the fact that open access presents scholars a choice (as an alternative to traditional publishing avenues), it ought to at least provoke thoughtfulness about what we need to be or do when it comes to publishing research. The decision is no longer just where will we publish (to best enhance our academic careers and reputations) but how will we publish (to best contribute to the growth of knowledge to the widest possible audience with the fewest possible barriers). In other words, open access introduces an added dynamic to academic ethics.

John Willinsky and Juan Pablo Alperin, in a recent article entitled “The academic ethics of open access to research and scholarship” (in Ethics and Education 6(3), October 2011, pp. 217-223), note that academic ethics in the institutional context usually focuses on issues of academic integrity and honesty. Ethics committees in the institutional context are commonly directed to investigate and recommend disciplinary action against faculty or students for infringements of academic integrity and honesty, whether through fraud (manufactured data), or plagiarism (intentionally claiming the work of another as one’s own, or failing to give proper attribution).

The application of academic ethics from this negative point of view is, regrettably, too well known. The new dynamic Willinsky and Alperin propose is that we also view academic ethics as positive action.

We believe that with the coming of the digital era, the university faces an unprecedented ethical opportunity to act in a positive fashion by reaching out to help others. We wish to present the ethical case for going out of one’s way to ensure that one’s research and scholarship has been made as widely available as possible to other scholars around the world, as well as to interested members of the public. (pp. 217-218)

Willinsky and Alperin believe that whereas the negative aspects of academic ethics have and will be with us for a long time, “there is something of a time-limited opportunity for ethical action when publishing models are changing and in this unsettled period are radically split between tendencies toward increasingly restrictive (for reasons of profit) and open (for wider sharing) practices” (p. 218).

Once there was a time when having a study published in a scholarly journal was the only way to make the work public in a timely and responsible (peer-reviewed) way. Publishing it in a highly reputed journal further guaranteed that the work was more widely circulated, as such journals had more subscribers. …

This is no longer the case. As libraries struggle to afford even their current subscriptions, the new means of achieving almost universal online access presents itself. We, as scholars, face new responsibilities for thinking about how widely our work circulates, which does not preclude publishing in prestigious journals, but which does call for a more ethical approach to the sharing of our work. (p 218)

But not all open access approaches are ethically equivalent. Publishers may sense a change in the air. Willinsky and Alperin raise concerns about “the commercialization of OA,” and merely shifting the economic model from “high-priced subscription journals to high-priced article-processing fees” (p. 219). Yes, this approach brings down the user-side paywall, but it raises new barriers for researchers and scholars. Some disciplines enjoy generous grant funding that can fairly easily cover these new producer-side open access publishing costs. But what about disciplines—like most of the humanities, including religious studies—where grant funding is scarce and department budgets are perennially tight? If scholars cannot afford to publish their research how can even open access help to enhance the production of and access to knowledge?

Willinsky and Alperin do not say this explicitly, but the implication is that institutions, as part of their larger concern that faculty and students act ethically in their academic context, need to take a role in authorizing scholars to choose less costly approaches to open access, and also recognize the legitimacy of these approaches. Willinsky and Alperin specifically mention author self-archiving of research papers and articles in open access institutional repositories or websites, and the creation of new “scholar-publisher” open access journals that typically do not charge article-processing fees as two low-cost alternatives to either the traditional subscription-based journal, or the open access journal that imposes article-processing fees.

We are, of course, familiar with John Willinsky’s work with the Public Knowledge Project at Simon Fraser University in Canada, which developed the open source Open Journal Systems journal platform. A study referenced by Willinsky and Alperin, which surveyed journals using Open Journal Systems, found that “a good number of journals are making a go of it with OA. [The study notes that approximately 5,000 journals are using the OJS platform!] [T]he scholar-publisher [i.e., a scholar or group of scholars in an academic department who start a journal without seeking/requiring the support (or the costs) of a professional publisher] dominates these titles, with an average per article cost under US$200″ (p. 219).

Willinsky and Alperin conclude:

The university has long been regarded as a center of knowledge creation, one that has often held to strict ethical standards. In addition, certainly when it comes to the best ways of engaging in scholarly publishing, we can accept that there will be a debate as to where the balance lies in terms of how to organize, finance, and structure this increased access to knowledge. What we cannot do is ignore the ethical dimensions of this issue. We must come to a shared understanding of what our obligations are in undertaking this research and scholarship. … Our hope is that as we might move forward ‘in search of the ethical university,’ so that the ways and means by which we distribute what we have learned, as a matter of public trust and public good, might become more public and widely available. It seems like the right thing to do. (pp. 221-222, emphasis added)

Maybe it’s not so much physicality but ‘edges’ we are looking for in Humanities scholarly communication

In my recent interaction with Peter Suber’s 2004 article “Promoting Open Access in the Humanities,” I offered an additional point to the nine he had proposed to answer the question: Why is open access moving so slowly in the humanities? My point focused on a research tradition or ethos that has long shaped humanist scholarship and scholarly communication.

Until a few years ago, I would have added (only half-jokingly) that humanities scholars had just recently become fully comfortable working with computers in an online environment! Putting this in a more culturally-sensitive way, many areas of humanities scholarship (including religious studies) have historically operated from a strong engagement with the substantive physicality of printed texts and artifacts. This engagement has carried over into a long tradition and preference for a printed mode of scholarly communication. Part of the “weight” of a scholar’s research and argumentation is communicated through the equal physicality of his or her printed journal article or monograph (preferably in hard cover). Since open access as a mode of scholarly communication operates almost entirely in the online environment, the challenge for humanist scholars is to admit the legitimacy, viability, and preservability of the non-substantive virtuality of their research work now in electronic form. I’ve been told that folks are getting over this concern, though I still encounter hesitation from scholars and librarians who wonder if their bit-based articles and books will endure half as well and as long as the paper-based tomes and ancient manuscripts they have committed their scholarly lives to study.

Yesterday, I was catching up on some reading over at John Gruber’s (Apple and technology) blog Daring Fireball. Gruber linked to a compelling essay written by Craig Mod entitled, “The Digital-Physical: On building Flipboard for iPhone and finding edges for our digital narratives.”

Craig Mod is a writer, designer and publisher. He is interested in the future of books, and especially how book form, design and publishing negotiate the transition from print into a digital environment. It turns out I had read some of Craig’s stuff before (I thought that name sounded familiar). It’s good stuff.

Craig Mod had worked on the development team that produced the free iPhone/iPad app called Flipboard. Flipboard aggregates your social media (Twitter, Facebook, RSS feeds, etc.) and presents them in an attractive and engaging magazine-like interface that updates in realtime. In “The Digital-Physical,” Mod reflects on his process of chronicling the development of this piece of software through, ironically, the production of a physical book.

At first, it would appear the only commonalities between software development and scholarly communication in an electronic environment are that they both involve bits and sitting in front of computer screens. But as I read Mod’s essay, I got this overwhelming sensation that he had anticipated the heart of what I had said above about humanist scholars—even down to use of words like ‘weight’ and ‘physicality.’

We’ve entered a…binary on/off era for physicality. Big physicality. Star Trek style. To go digital-physical and back again is increasingly frictionless.

And so:
What do we gain from these jumps?
How can they reframe experiences to help us better understand them?

These are questions I’ve found myself returning to repeatedly these past few years.

Abstractly, you can think about going from digital to physical as going from boundless to bounded. A space without implicit edges to one composed entirely of edges.

For a while now it had been clear to all of us that edges are a critical framing aid in helping us consume but it wasn’t until last year — helping build Flipboard for iPhone — that I began to understand how critical they are to gain perspective on creation. To gain perspective on a journey captured in bits.

This is an essay about recognizing and reorganizing our journeys that live largely in digital space. How do we ground and bind those experiences? What is the value in giving them edges so we may hold them in our hands and hope to understand, perhaps, the weight of the work we produce? (emphasis his)

Mod characterizes the feeling experienced by many who work digitally from a computer screen as ‘thinness.’

There’s a feeling of thinness that I believe many of us grapple with working digitally. It’s a product of the ethereality inherent to computer work. The more the entirety of the creation process lives in bits, the less solid the things we’re creating feel in our minds. Put in more concrete terms: a folder with one item looks just like a folder with a billion items. Feels just like a folder with a billion items. And even then, when open, with most of our current interfaces, we see at best only a screenful of information, a handful of items at a time. (emphasis his)

The problem is a perception of boundlessness, which humanities scholars may fear as they move from the physical to the digital in their research communication. Mod brought the boundless to bounded by producing a physical book from the digital artifacts of this software project. And the weight of the physical book he produced (using an online digital printing service called Blurb) came to “nearly eight pounds.” How’s that for substantive physicality?

But Mod is talking about frictionless movement, back and forth, between the physical and the digital—not either/or but flip-flop. I infer that Craig Mod was not so much after physicality as ‘edges’ to bound the boundlessness by being able to communicate physically the work he and his team did in the digital. By the same logic, humanities scholars should be able to bring those bounding edges with them from their work in the physical as they increasingly communicate their scholarship digitally.

[W]hat projects like this speak to is the unique and increasingly important value we can give data by abstracting physicality. Jumping back and forth. Creating that space. Capturing a journey effortlessly in bits, and then giving it edges. This dance makes our digital experiences more understandable, parseable, consumable.

Edges are about feeling as much as seeing. With edges comes a sense of weight. And with that comes the ability to feel — physically and psychically. And with that, a better understanding of what we’ve built and where we’ve been. (emphasis his)

Definitely worth a read.

Peter Suber’s “Promoting Open Access in the Humanities”—eight years later

Momentum in the adoption (by scholars/researchers) and support (by colleges/universities, funding agencies, and libraries) of open access scholarly publishing is growing in all academic disciplines. But the pace of adoption and support is much quicker in the sciences than in the humanities. Why is that?

Open access advocate, Peter Suber, who is himself a humanist scholar (philosopher), gave a presentation in 2004 at the Annual Meeting of the American Philological Association in San Francisco, later revised as an article entitled “Promoting Open Access in the Humanities.” In the article, Suber enumerates nine cultural and economic differences between the humanities and the sciences to explain why open access is “moving so slowly in the humanities.” Many of Suber’s points (summarized from the article here) continue to hold-up—now eight years later—though changes are clearly evident.

1. In the humanities affordable journals defuse the urgency of reducing prices or turning to open access as part of the solution.
2. Much more STM [science, technology, and medicine] research is funded than humanities research. Hence, in the STM fields there is much more money to pay the processing fees charged by open access journals.
3. The taxpayer argument for open access (that tax-payers shouldn’t have to pay a second fee for access to the results of tax-payer-funded research) is stronger in the STM fields than the humanities.
4. On average, humanities journals have higher rejection rates (70-90%) than STM journals (20-40%). This means that the cost of peer review per accepted article is higher in the humanities, lower in the STM fields.
5. There is more public demand for open access to research on (say) genomics than Greek grammar, which is one reason why genomics has more federal funding than Greek grammar.
6. The urgency of timely notification of other work [through the use of preprint archiving services] is greater in the STM fields than in the humanities.
7. Demand for journal articles in the humanities drops off more slowly after publication than demand for articles in the STM fields. This means that humanities journals will worry more than STM journals that offering open access to articles after some embargo period…will jeopardize their revenue and survival.
8. It’s much harder to get reprint permission [for poems or illustrations] for open-access distribution than for a limited-circulation, priced and printed journal. And when permission is granted, for either kind of distribution, it usually costs money.
9. In the humanities, journal articles tend to report on the history and interpretation of the primary literature, which is in books. STM faculty typically need to publish journal articles to earn tenure, while humanities faculty need to publish books.

Until a few years ago, I would have added (only half-jokingly) that humanities scholars had just recently become fully comfortable working with computers in an online environment! Putting this in a more culturally-sensitive way, many areas of humanities scholarship (including religious studies) have historically operated from a strong engagement with the substantive physicality of printed texts and artifacts. This engagement has carried over into a long tradition and preference for a printed mode of scholarly communication. Part of the “weight” of a scholar’s research and argumentation is communicated through the equal physicality of his or her printed journal article or monograph (preferably in hard cover). Since open access as a mode of scholarly communication operates almost entirely in the online environment, the challenge for humanist scholars is to admit the legitimacy, viability, and preservability of the non-substantive virtuality of their research work now in electronic form. I’ve been told that folks are getting over this concern, though I still encounter hesitation from scholars and librarians who wonder if their bit-based articles and books will endure half as well and as long as the paper-based tomes and ancient manuscripts they have committed their scholarly lives to study.

A simmering “journals crisis” in the humanities?

Suber’s first point about the relative affordability of humanities journals compared to journals in STM is certainly still true. But that doesn’t mean libraries haven’t experienced significant “sticker shock” in institutional subscriptions, especially after scholarly societies and associations turn their journals over to commercial publishers. Suber referenced the 2002 Library Journal periodicals price survey, which compared the average prices for journals in various disciplines. He writes:

[T]he average subscription prices for journals in STM fields were 10-20 times higher than the average prices in the humanities. For example, compare biology ($1,097.01), chemistry ($2,143.22), and physics ($2,218.82) with history ($126.35), literature ($110.51), and philosophy ($146.60).

Yes, the prices of STM journals are dramatically higher than those in the humanities. But it is interesting to look at the average prices from the 2011 Library Journal price survey, and compare the percent change over the last 10 years for Suber’s sample. Biology $2,167 (+98%), chemistry $4,044 (+89%), physics $3,499 (+58%), history $266 (+111%), literature $269 (+142%), and philosophy & religion $328 (+123%). Although absolute prices for STM journals are still dramatically higher than humanities journals, prices in the humanities disciplines have risen at a greater rate (some significantly so) than STM. This is not sustainable.

The 2011 survey also tracked the average percent change of prices from 2009-2011. Over the last three years, biology increased 13% (4.3%/year), chemistry 11% (3.7%/year), and physics 7% (2.3%/year). But during the same period, history increased 16% (5.3%/year), literature 29% (9.7%/year), and philosophy & religion 22% (7.3%/year). Language & literature and philosophy & religion, in fact, reported the highest percent increases of all subject categories for 2009-2011.

Although there was some reason to hope at an earlier point in this transition, it now comes as little surprise that the shift from print to electronic format for journals has not resulted in cost savings for customers. Subscription prices just continue to rise. As I discussed in an earlier post, commercial publishers have readily invested in online infrastructures in order to benefit from the economics of marginal costs that come from selling bits. This both reduces costs previously associated with print (raw material and printing, warehousing and managing physical inventory, physical distribution, etc.), and gains in editorial management efficiencies (electronic submission and peer review management). All to enhance the bottom line.

It would be interesting to speculate whether wider adoption of open access in STM is having an effect in slowing the rate of increase for traditional subscription-based titles as commercial publishers sense a backlash from libraries, and (more recently) from researchers. But what about in the humanities? There certainly isn’t any big money in the humanities. This is why I continue to wonder about the aggressive buy-up of journals by commercial publishers from societies and associations. Perhaps it’s a volume proposition—make less per title, but build a larger stable of titles. Or maybe publishers are just thinking it’s relatively easy money, especially if they don’t sense resistance from humanities librarians and scholars.

Maybe it’s time to generate some resistance. Even if not a “journals crisis” of the magnitude that provoked the birth of the open access movement in the first place, the comparatively high rate of price increase for humanities journals should be grounds for librarians to sound a note of “urgency” with faculty and scholars.

Doing better with less

It would appear another significant impediment to greater open access adoption in the humanities as highlighted by Suber relates to lower overall levels of funding, and the perception of value gained from such investment. There is a common public perception, to use Suber’s example, that genomics research is more useful, and therefore more worthy of being funded, than Greek grammar. Of course, value and usefulness are subjective qualities, and Suber tells a wonderful story from his philosophical background.

There are two kinds of usefulness, which is why the sciences and humanities coexist wherever civilization takes root. But each kind of usefulness tends to be dismissed or misunderstood by champions of the other. The most succinct wisdom on the usefulness and fundability of humanities research was uttered by Aristippus, a Greek philosopher who sought patronage from one rich Athenian after another. Dionysius once asked him, “Why do I always see you philosophers knocking on the doors of the rich, but I never see the rich knocking on the doors of philosophers?” Aristippus replied, “Because philosophers know what they need and the rich don’t.”

I would of course argue that society should be interested and willing to fund intellectual research that enriches and deepens human understanding, experience and creativity with at least as much enthusiasm as it seems willing to grant to solving practical problems (as important as those things are). But that isn’t the way things are typically prioritized in our society. Suber noted in his article that the 2002 budget of the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) amounted to less than 1% of the 8 federal agencies funding STM research. Although I didn’t check to update Suber’s findings on federal funding for the humanities, I can’t imagine the situation has improved much, if at all.

Large commercial (e.g., Springer), large nonprofit (e.g., Public Library of Science), and smaller for-profit publishers (e.g., Co-Action Publishing) who are promoting open access as an alternative to the traditional subscription model, all fund their efforts using government grants, institutional subsidies, central budgets, or author/article publication fees. This seems to be working in STM where producer-side costs can be fairly easily rolled into overall research funding. Suber made this a recommendation for the humanities, though he framed it in terms of universities and colleges allowing existing library monies that go to pay for subscription-based journals to be diverted to support open access initiatives. Can this approach scale (downward) and still cover costs, and also satisfy commercial interests in turning a profit? Conversations I have had with publishers at both Springer and Co-Action (both for-profit publishers) exude confidence. But they also admit that entry into this market has thus far been slow-going.

If revenues cannot be increased then costs need to be brought down. We have been getting very good at this, and that may not be such a bad thing. It is often a challenge that drives innovation. I found it interesting to read Suber’s mention of Open Journal Systems (OJS), which had then only recently launched (in 2002). OJS is one innovative response enabling scholars to do better with less. It is a highly effective and low-cost platform (the software itself is free) that puts the capacity for publishing a journal in the hands of practically anyone, providing efficient management of journal production (such as article submission and peer review), and simplifying widespread distribution to readers via the Internet. According to a forthcoming article by Brian Edgar and John Willinsky, OJS is now used by approximately 5,000 journals worldwide and is available in 20 languages. That’s incredible uptake in just ten years!

I don’t want to minimize the expertise and infrastructure benefits of engaging a professional commercial publisher to handle open access if the budget allows. But it is also good, and actually quite exciting, to know there are low-cost “do it yourself” solutions available for committed groups of scholar-publishers to produce their own high-quality journals. As was surfaced in my recent profile of Theological Librarianship (which publishes on the OJS platform), there is a growing body of “learning by doing” experience that can be tapped and shared to assist others in getting up and running quickly.

What about that book?

Humanities disciplines tend to expect and reserve the higher honors (tenure, career advancement, respect of peers) for scholars who publish their research in monographs as opposed to just journal articles. It is assumed that success in presenting a sustained and comprehensive treatment of a topic is only possible in book form.

Ironically, for this expectation, the publication of scholarly monographs is becoming an increasingly tenuous economic proposition, as transformations of dissertations treating specialized and arcane topics often have difficulty finding a wide, much less a popular, audience/market. University presses might hope to sell a few hundred copies to academic libraries and a few copies (okay, maybe it’s more like a case) that the scholar will buy to give to family members and immediate friends. That is usually the extent of it. These presses were founded to help advance the dissemination of knowledge, but they also need to be able to keep the lights on. Recently and increasingly, many presses have been shifting to e-books and print on demand as a way of reducing costs.

What about open access for monographs? Suber was aware of the potential for online open access distribution of scholarly monographs in his article. He mentioned, for example, The National Academies Press as a possible model. NAP has long had a “read for free” online option, but now also offers many of its titles as free PDF downloads, with purchase options for print. But platform options for monographic open access have really only started rolling out in recent years. See for example, Open Humanities Press, University of Michigan Press’ collection in HathiTrust, Open Monograph Press, a new initiative at the Public Knowledge Project (the same folks who developed OJS), and Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB), a new initiative just announced by Open Access Publishing in European Networks (OAPEN), which would run parallel to DOAJ. One example of a monographic open access effort in religious studies is the Ancient Near East Monograph Series, published by SBL and edited by Ehud Ben Zvi.

A clear and desirable benefit of open access is wider dissemination of a scholar’s work. The value of this exposure can often compensate for any illusions of getting rich off book royalties. But again, whether giving books away in hopes of generating print sales can be sustained as a business model for university presses remains an open question.

Caroline Sutton, publisher at Co-Action Publishing, who wrote an article (PDF) in 2010 to engage Peter Suber’s nine points, had an interesting idea.

I was reminded of a debate that was brewing while I was in Sweden working on my own PhD in Sociology. At that point in time sociologists wrote books to fulfill their dissertation requirements. Due to a shift in national funding policies the university administration was putting pressure on the department to move towards dissertations that consisted of a collection of published articles with an introduction (sammanläggningsavhandling [the term in Swedish]). We were outraged, because as sociologists that just was not what we did. We wrote books. Period. …

I could argue here that change comes to those who wait, but I’d rather point out a more self-serving argument (for humanities researchers) in favor of publishing articles in the humanities. At the same time, however, I do not want to argue that one should throw the baby out with the bath water. Rather than regarding articles as a replacement for books, humanities researchers might choose to regard articles as an opportunity to market themselves, making themselves more discoverable to book publishers. Articles allow you to publish ‘teasers’ of your work, and if that work is Open Access, this means wide dissemination to a greater number of potential publishers. (pp. 10-11)

This sort of reminds me of the reverse of Charles Dickens’ episodic writing style, where his monthly or weekly story installments in magazines were only later reprinted in book form. Why couldn’t a scholar’s yet to be published monograph be “serialized” as a series of peer reviewed articles over several issues of an open access journal? Such a venue would be more easily discoverable, and it could create sustained interest and exposure in a format that readers might find easier to digest with minimal upfront commitment (time and money). If the topic and treatment grabbed their interest and attention, options could be provided for full free access, or print on demand. My point is one made by both Suber and Sutton—that humanities scholars can and should be empowered to experiment.

Forging new scholarly traditions that include open access

All academic disciplines develop formal and informal traditions to differentiate themselves from each other. Sometimes the tradition insists on the use of a particular writing style manual, or citation format. The teacher gives perfectly rational reasons for it (consistency, clarity, completeness, conciseness, etc.) though the sophomore student is often just mystified and confused (especially if the professor in another class is insisting she use an entirely different style manual). Does the teacher have the heart to admit to the young student that behind the reasons it’s also part guild “turf” and part initiation rite?

Sometimes the tradition is formulated more credibly by virtue of the subject under inquiry, and this in turn shapes the appropriate medium of scholarly communication. Is it the results of an experiment that needs to be reported, or an analysis of the significance of an historical event that requires renewed evaluation and interpretation of available primary sources and thorough engagement with previous treatments in the secondary literature?

Scholarly traditions build an important sense of continuity within a discipline, and they are reinforced and sustained generation to generation. But sometimes disruptive forces surface that provoke new ways of thinking, and invite substantive change of even long-standing traditions.

The sheer ubiquity of desktop (and increasingly mobile) computing and networked technology—most powerfully manifested through the Internet—has made an inevitable and unavoidable impact on the humanities. Even the most curmudgeonly scholar has by now turned-in his Underwood for a word processor. Although he still claims to hate it, he’s been using email to communicate with scholarly colleagues around the world for years. And when, really, was the last time he was in the library scouring indexes and bibliographies for that needed citation? The ease, immediacy, and I would say especially, the openness of communication online has eroded some of the rationality of historic modes and preferences. Even if it isn’t speed that is required in humanities scholarship, it should strike scholars as increasingly odd that while their day to day communication is open, access to the larger conversation—including their own contribution to that conversation (whether as a researcher, reviewer, or editor)—is often locked behind a publisher’s paywall.

Suber’s article holds-up so well after eight years because he understood the power of scholarly traditions operative in the humanities. He was measured and even deferential in his response. But reading closely, you get the sense that even then he was hoping his colleagues would pick up the pace. In the summary of his original nine points, he writes:

[O]pen access isn’t undesirable or unattainable in the humanities. But it is less urgent and harder to subsidize than in the sciences. Progress is taking place, and as more humanists come to understand the issues, and the strategies that work, we should expect to see progress continue and accelerate.

I think we are, at last, coming “to understand the issues, and the strategies that work.” So maybe it’s time to forge open access as a new scholarly tradition in the humanities.

“Church as Wikipedia”: Scholarly publishing encounters an open source worldview

I’m usually pretty attentive in church. But my ears perked-up in a special way a couple of weeks ago when the minister announced a “theologian in residence” lecture series happening at a near-by college, featuring a fellow who was talking about the “open source church.” Open source—as in the open source software movement (or alternatively, the free software movement)—has many historic and philosophical affinities to the open access information movement. Hence my interest.

It turns out the fellow is named Landon Whitsitt, a writer, artist, and theologian, who is also currently the Vice-Moderator of the Presbyterian Church (USA)’s General Assembly and the Executive of the Synod of Mid-America. Whitsitt has written a book called Open Source Church: Making Room for the Wisdom of All (The Alban Institute, 2011). The premise of the book (from the Alban website):

Open source software makes the basic program instructions available for anyone to see and edit. An “open source church,” likewise, is one in which the basic functions of mission and ministry are open to anyone…

In Open Source Church: Making Room for the Wisdom of All, Landon Whitsitt argues that Wikipedia, the encyclopedia that anyone can see and edit, might be the most instructive model available to help congregations develop leaders and structures that can meet the challenges presented by our changing world. Its success depends, he demonstrates, not on the views of select experts but on the collective wisdom of crowds.

Then, turning to the work of James Surowiecki in The Wisdom of Crowds, he explores the idea that the body of Christ itself—when it is intentionally diverse, encourages independence of thought, values decentralization, and effectively captures and aggregates the group’s collective wisdom—is an open source church. (links added)

I downloaded the free chapter sample of Whitsitt’s book into my Kindle app to get a feel for his approach. Whitsitt moves his open source discussion in the direction of practical theology—calling for the freeing-up of organizational and leadership structures so that all members of the community can openly and creatively participate and serve.

Ultimately, the open source movement is a discussion about what freedom is and how all of us use that freedom. Pertinent questions are: Who decides what freedom is? Is there a limit to the amount of freedom any person or group should have? Does the freedom of one person or group mean that another person or group doesn’t have freedom? If everyone is exercising a lot of freedom, how do we tell someone or some group that they can’t do whatever it is they are doing?

A popular way of talking about freedom in the open source movement is to differentiate between the terms gratis and libre. The word gratis means that a piece of software does not cost anything to obtain or use. This is not to say the software doesn’t have value (it very much does), only that someone will not be required to offer anything of value in exchange for that piece of software. You don’t have to pay money to obtain or use it. Such software is often called freeware and is referred to as being “free as in beer.”

On the other hand, when people in the open source software movement say that something is libre, they are referring to the fact that the piece of software has no restrictions placed upon it. If software is libre, you cannot dictate who uses the software, the reasons for its use, or whether or not it can be modified. Those of us who are residents of the United States of America are taught this understanding of the word freedom with our first lesson in civics. We are taught that in our country we are “free” to be and do and pursue whatever it is that we want to be, do, and pursue. When we say that we have “freedom,” we mean that no restrictions are placed upon us as long as we behave in a manner that does not restrict anyone else. It is in this regard that we would say something is “free as in speech.”

These ideas—free as in beer and free as in speech—are important to the open source movement. However, it is not only the open source movement that can claim them. One could say that that these twin ideas are an integral part of the way we understand what is required of us as Christians. Together, gratis and libre form the basis of Christian ethics. (Kindle Locations 222-240, emphasis added)

We have encountered some of this before (e.g., gratis and libre forms of “free”) in other conversations about open access. Whitsitt also draws upon the ten criteria of the Open Source Definition—what he likes to refer to as “The Ten Commandments of Open Source”—for his practical theology.

[These] criteria not only provide the open source software movement with a consistent and unifying voice but also offer other open source ideologies (such as open source Christianity) with a foundation on which to build and explore. (Kindle Locations 287-289, emphasis added)

Though clever and intriguing, I am not prepared here to explore Whitsitt’s particular application of open source in his practical theology. Besides, I’m working off a limited preview of his book. Nevertheless, I believe Whitsitt’s premise has implications, by analogy, for open access. First, we are now firmly in a cultural milieu where scholarly communication is shaped and enriched—metaphorically and literally—by computer and network technology, especially the Internet and the Web. Second, although I fully appreciate that the study of religion need not presuppose a confessional commitment by the scholar, the concepts of free/freedom implied in open source (and by extension, open access) is implicit in and consistent with the ethical stance of (in Whitsitt’s case) Christianity. As such, those who are so inclined need not look very far for moral support of open access. Finally, as was already discussed while interacting with Chris Anderson and his comments on the democratizing impact of the Internet from his book Free, this will challenge traditionally authoritative and controlling modes of communication and access.

This last point comes across especially strong in an article adapted from Whitsitt’s book on The Alban Institute website called “Church as Wikipedia.” Here is a key excerpt:

Wikipedia’s origin story suggests to us what the church [replace with traditional scholarly publishing here] is in for (and has already experienced, in many cases) when it encounters an open source worldview. Established institutions are eager to do whatever they can to ensure their viability (the development of Nupedia—the non-open source predecessor to Wikipedia­­—was slow, and Wikipedia would ensure that it got content up in a timely manner), but they rarely realize that the very thing they are counting on to save them will be the harbinger of their death. There might be a host of reasons for their demise, but the primary one has to do with structure. Institutions are generally aware that their current way of doing business is not tenable in the long run and are astute enough to know they must commit to some drastically different practices if they want to survive. But decades of habit are not easily changed.

…

If we want to appeal to the “open source generation” (is there such a thing?), we can’t be wedded to our current understanding of church [um, traditional publishing] structure. Our bureaucratic committee system will betray our true intentions, and that will repel those whom we hope to attract. I’m sorry, but it’s true.

* * * * * * * * * *
UPDATE: As I was browsing around looking for more information about the “open source church,” I stumbled upon an interesting article in The Economist (September 3, 2011) that tracks a path parallel to Landon Whitsitt’s book. The article, “What would Jesus hack?: Cybertheology: Just how much does Christian doctrine have in common with the open-source software movement?” draws from an article written by Antonio Spardaro, an Italian Jesuit priest, entitled “Hacker ethics and Christian vision,” in the magazine La Civiltà Cattolica. “Mr Spadaro argued that hacking is a form of participation in God’s work of creation… ‘In a world devoted to the logic of profit,’ wrote Mr Spadaro, hackers and Christians have ‘much to give each other’ as they promote a more positive vision of work, sharing and creativity.”

The inevitability of free? The inevitability of open access? (Part 2)

In Part 1, I interacted with Caroline Sutton’s recent article in College & Research Libraries News (Vol. 72, No. 11, December 2011, pp. 642-45) where she engages with the thesis of Chris Anderson’s 2009 book Free (Hyperion) to argue “given that scholarly journals are now digital products, they are subject to very different economic principles and social forces than their print ancestors,” and “our product [the scholarly journal article] is also subject to the ‘zero is inevitable’ rule of pricing.” You will recall Sutton nowhere suggests that it doesn’t cost anything to publish an academic journal. Rather, the costs associated with online distribution of articles have and will continue to fall to the point that the “marginal cost of adding one additional user is for all practical purposes, zero.” Consequently, Sutton argues for a different publishing business model that moves the generation of revenue (to cover costs and make profits) away from the access (reader) side to the producer (author/sponsor) side. The resulting open access not only makes research reporting more widely available, it also creates a marketing channel to promote the publisher’s competitively priced services to new potential authors.

Chris Anderson is Editor in Chief at Wired magazine and also author of The Long Tail (Hyperion, 2008). I mentioned that Sutton’s engagement with Anderson’s thesis in his book Free was so interesting that I found myself wanting to read his book for myself.

It turns out I had a copy of the book in the Kindle app on my iPad all along but hadn’t yet taken the opportunity to get into it. I got my copy of Free while it actually was free as a special promotion on Amazon.com when the Kindle edition was first released. It now costs $9.99 on the Kindle Store (the paperback edition is just $6.40), although you can still get an abridged audiobook version, read by Chris Anderson, for free over on Hyperion’s website. As I read Anderson’s book, a number of additional thoughts related to open access publishing came to mind that I’d like to share. I won’t re-trace the ground already covered by my previous interaction with Sutton’s reading.

The Long Tail

Anderson begins by drawing on an observation he made in his first book, The Long Tail. Namely, that the Internet creates a totally unique distribution system for the movement of digital goods and services.

The abundant marketplace of the Long Tail was enabled by the unlimited “shelf space” of the Internet, which is the first distribution system in history that is as well suited for the niche as for the mass, for the obscure as well as the mainstream. The result was the birth of a wildly diverse new culture and a threat to the institutions of the existing one, from mainstream media to music labels. (p. 3)

You could almost say that the whole dynamic of online scholarly communication and publishing, including open access, is contained in this short opening excerpt.

First, in the online world we are dealing with bits instead of atoms, and bits don’t take up space. This creates a direct challenge to the notion and assumptions of scarcity because, as Anderson notes, “shelf space” is unlimited. In the physical world, some things really are scarce. Scarcity tends to increase the value of an item, and so drives up its price if it is being sold. Sometimes the value of an item is so high in terms of its rarity or cultural significance that we say it is priceless, literally beyond price.

What kind of price can/should we put on information and knowledge? This is not a simple question to answer. Clearly, all information has some value, more or less depending on its implicit value, the application to which it can be put, how accurate and current it is, etc. Too, there is no doubt that persons are willing to pay to have access to certain information or acquire certain knowledge. That there is a correlation between value and price is not in dispute. But as information of all kinds migrate to the online environment we are suddenly awakened to the fact that when a publisher controls both the process of production and its distribution it can create a false notion of information scarcity that artificially drives up value in order to force a higher price. This control was much easier for traditional publishers to exert in the physical world because 1) it was the only alternative available to scholars (both as research producers and consumers), and 2) the product of scholarly research was intimately tied to (and reinforced by) the physical product of information dissemination and access—the printed journal.

The printed journal is now quickly fading as the advantages of articles disseminated in electronic format have been almost universally appreciated and embraced. Actually, traditional publishers are just as pleased to be out of the print journal business so they can maximize profits behind the reduced marginal costs of online distribution. (Have you noticed over the last decade how the language has changed from publishers offering online access as a value-add with your print subscription to offering print as a premium option on your online subscription?) But now that the product linkage has been broken, publishers are shoring-up the notion of scarcity behind paywalls, and by pushing the value proposition (including leveraging the reputations of their top-tiered titles) to keep subscription prices high.

There is second dynamic at work in the online environment. Through this distribution system, large and small players alike can gain equal access to their audiences. As Anderson puts it, the Internet is “as well suited for the niche as for the mass, for the obscure as well as the mainstream.” This is because of the way online network technology works, and because the cost of entry is so low. (I am blogging on a powerful browser-based publishing platform, with my own unique web address, and it doesn’t cost me a thing.) This democratizing characteristic of the Internet means that an individual scholar who chooses to freely “publish” her research articles on a personal website, or an open access publisher who disseminates its journals at no charge, can potentially attract as much attention and build as much reputation as any large traditional academic publisher that moves into the online space.

This leads to a third observation, which has a potentially troubling side effect. The leveling or democratic character of the Internet is a threat to existing institutions that have been used to thriving handsomely in vertically controlled systems of production and distribution in the physical world. In some respects, smaller players can do better in the online environment than a large player because they are less encumbered by (well-developed but) lumbering infrastructures. A smaller player can often adapt much more quickly to changing social, cultural and technological conditions online.

The troubling aspect surfaces when large commercial players, feeling the pressure from their smaller and more agile competitors, are seen trying to dismantle the democratic character of the Internet rather than compete through innovation. Right now we are watching large commercial players seek government intervention to end Net neutrality (which would create a system of tiered access), or apply blunt legislative instruments to protect copyright holders (frequently the publishers, not the original content creators), ostensibly to prevent online piracy (which could have a chilling effect on the link-based economy on the Web), or to actively dull the impact of open access as a viable alternative. The vital diversity of scholarly communication, among other activities online, depends on the preservation of the Internet’s democratic character.

The Psychology of Free

The network infrastructure of the Internet enables content providers to distribute their digital goods at little or no cost. This cost savings can be passed on to consumers in the form of free access. This is the approach Caroline Sutton and her company Co-Action Publishing is using to make a business out of open access. But how do folks respond to free? How do scholars respond to open access as a concept, and as a platform for scholarly communication?

Several chapters into his book, Anderson turns to the topic of the psychology of free. At first I thought I would just skip this chapter as unlikely to contribute anything especially meaningful to this discussion. But I went ahead and read it anyway, and as I did it occurred to me that while a good chunk of the status quo system of scholarly communication is rooted in pragmatism and inertia, another significant chunk, frankly, is rooted in fear. Scholars may be afraid that their research won’t get noticed if they publish in an open access journal; or they’re afraid that open access journals won’t be viewed as credible sources of publication by employers or tenure an promotion committees; or they’re afraid that their scholarly peers won’t take their research seriously if it can be had for free. Librarians might be afraid that open access is not a reliable enough medium to replace traditional journals; or they’re afraid that open access articles aren’t adequately indexed, or otherwise harder to manage; or they’re afraid of faculty backlash if they contemplate cancellation of cherished but over-priced subscription-based journals. Some publishers have played-off these fears of scholars and librarians in order to reinforce the status quo. But now these same publishers are afraid they won’t be able to make as much money as they’ve been used to using business models from the print world.

For a profession that identifies itself with the ability to think critically, and approach questions and solve problems with objectivity and rationality, this seems like a whole lot of fear going around! I say this to be provocative. Not all fears are irrational. Too, I fully appreciate that scholarship is also a human and a social endeavor, with egos and emotions unavoidably in the mix. As Anderson writes, “Behavioral economists explain much of our perplexing responses to free by distinguishing the decisions made in the ‘social realm’ from those made in the ‘financial realm.’” (p. 66) In other words, free isn’t simply a matter of “taking money out of the equation.” In order for open access scholarly communication to move forward, we need to become more aware of how and to what degree our resistance is motivated by fear, and then use that awareness to clarify our thinking and shape our decisions and actions.

“Information Wants to be Free”

Anderson recounts the history of how this now famous declaration of the digital era originated (in a slightly different form) as one of the principles of the “hacker ethic” proposed by computer science students at MIT in the late 1950s and early 1960s. (You can read about this fascinating era in computer history in Steven Levy’s Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution, which was originally published by Doubleday in 1984.)

It turns out that this famous reformulation by Stewart Brand is only a half-remembered meme of a larger statement he originally made at a conference of computer hackers in 1984. Anderson quotes Brand:

On the one hand information wants to be expensive, because it’s valuable. The right information in the right place just changes your life. On the other hand, information wants to be free, because the cost of getting it out is getting lower and lower all the time. So you have these two fighting against each other. (p. 96)

Interestingly, Stewart Brand changed the hackers’ original meaning of free from free as “unrestricted” (those students wanting to get access to the mainframe computer) to free as in “zero price” (the way Anderson means free in his book). It turns out that both these definitions of free are employed in discussions surrounding open access scholarly communication (see Peter Suber’s article, “Gratis and libre Open Access” on SPARC’s website). Anderson attempts his own reformulation of Brand’s statement with an explanation:

Abundant information wants to be free. Scarce information to be expensive.

In this case we’re using the marginal cost construction of “abundant” and “scarce”: Information that can be replicated and distributed at low marginal cost wants to be free; information with high marginal costs wants to be expensive. So you can read a copy of this book online (abundant, commodity information) for free, but if you want me to fly to your city and prepare a custom talk on free as it applies to your business, I’ll be happy to, but you’re going to have to pay me for my (scarce) time. I’ve got a lot of kids and college isn’t getting any cheaper. (pp. 97-98, emphasis added)

Anderson went and talked with Stewart Brand to try to get a clearer understanding of the context and intended meaning of his statement. Brand explained that he intended the statement as a paradox, not a contradiction.

Paradoxes are the opposite of contradictions. Contradictions shut themselves down, but paradoxes keep themselves going, because every time you acknowledge the truth of one side you’re going to get caught from behind by the truth on the other side. (p. 99)

At one and the same time, information as bits “[are], economically at least, virtually free, but their meaning [can] have a wide range of value, from nothing to priceless, depending on who [is] receiving them.” (p. 100)

This returns us to something we said above. There is a correlation between value and price, though it’s hard to nail it down what that correlation is or should be. A traditional commercial publisher rightly argues from the “information wants to be expensive” side of the paradox, that the information contained in its journals and articles is valuable. Too, there is the established publisher infrastructure and journal reputation that imputes a different kind of value. From here the reasoning flows: If a reader deems the information in our journal(s) to be valuable, they will not be adverse to paying for access, regardless of the actual cost of delivering that article to the reader. It is the value of the information and its access, not the distribution, that the reader is paying for.

Sounds logical. But there are a raft of complicating factors. For example, it is to some degree up to the reader to determine whether the value of the information available in a given journal is worth the price the publisher is charging for access. But not always. Sometimes the reader effectively has no choice because all the key research reporting for the discipline is tied-up in a few journals (the scarcity factor). The reader, or the library as his proxy, may feel compelled to pay the publisher’s price in order to access that research. Further, an author may believe that the reputation she will derive from being published in a certain journal is valuable for the advancement of her career. But it is still appropriate to ask whether she really intends the access to her research to be limited behind a paywall, and maybe at the additional cost of her intellectual property rights.

In fairness to the paradoxical nature of Stewart Brand’s declaration, a group of scholars or a publisher who is advocating for open access from the “information wants to be free” side still needs to grapple with all the non-distribution costs associated with journal publication. Yes, it is easier and far less expensive for a small player to get into the game online than a large player with a costly infrastructure and an accustomed revenue stream to protect. Too, new, innovative, and readily available tools can help startups build attention and reputation online fairly quickly. But the commitments of time and energy from numerous folk, and a business model with a sustainable source of funding are absolute requirements to successfully facilitate that free flow of information.

ECON 000

In Part 1, Caroline Sutton indirectly referenced Gordon Moore’s and other related computer technology “laws” (the costs associated with bandwidth, storage, and processing are being reduced by approximately 50% every year) coupled with Joseph Bertrand Competition economics (in a competitive market, the price of a product will move toward the marginal cost of producing an additional good) as the key principles driving the “zero is inevitable” rule of pricing in the online environment. She also mentioned that top-tiered journals retain certain “marginal utility,” but she didn’t really define this term. It might be helpful to spend a moment teasing out these concepts from Anderson’s book.

Anderson explains if “free is not just an option, it’s the inevitable endpoint,” why it is that Microsoft was able to gain a virtual monopoly selling its Windows operating system and Office productivity software for hundreds of dollars apiece.

The answer lies in that part about “competitive market.” Microsoft created a product that benefited hugely from network effects: The more people use a product, the more other people feel compelled to do the same. In the case of an operating system like Windows, that’s because the most popular operating system will attract the most software developers to create the most programs to run on it. In the case of Office, it’s because you want to exchange files with other people, so you’re inclined to use the same program they use.

Both of these examples tend to produce winner-take-all markets, which is how Microsoft created a monopoly. And when you’ve got a monopoly, you can charge “monopoly rents,” which is to say $300 for two plastic disks in a box marked “Office,” when the actual cost of making those disks is just a dollar or two. (p. 173)

The analogy to academic journals is striking. Until recently, journal publishing has been largely a non-competitive winner-take-all market, creating the network effect, and a virtual monopoly in scholarly communication. But there is another force at work that can carry over into the competitive online world.

The other thing about Bertrand Competition is that it applies mostly to products that are similar. But if one product is vastly superior to another for your purposes the primary determinant of price is not marginal cost but “marginal utility”—what it’s worth to you. Online, that can reflect either the features of the service or how locked into it you are. (p. 173, emphasis added)

In one sense, a journal is a journal is a journal in terms of its function as an instrument for communicating the results of scholarly research. There may be many or few journals in a given discipline. But we also speak about “top-tier” and “second-tier” titles, and how scholars desire to publish in or cite from top-tier journals—journals that have acquired the reputation of attracting and publishing the best research. This is the “marginal utility” of a journal. Commercial publishers seek to leverage the marginal utility of their top-tiered journals online to argue that continuing to pay (even) a high price for access is better than the free alternative of open access. “Let the buyer beware.” ”Remember, you get what you pay for.” ”Stick with what you know—and who you trust.”

This can be a powerful argument. But the argument may not hold quite as much force now that there are alternatives, and now that younger web-savvy scholars, with perhaps less “brand loyalty,” are willing to experiment with new forms of online communication. Too, while scholars may affirm the research from top-tier journals as trustworthy, and while they may view members of their editorial boards and reviewers as respected peers, questions are now being raised about the trustworthiness of publishers that employ tactics to fend off legitimate competition, or lock scholars into restrictive intellectual property arrangements. Let the buyer beware, indeed!

The Online “Currencies” of Reputation and Attention: Links and Clicks

In Part 1, I quoted Caroline Sutton as saying: “At its core the scholarly economy is a reputation economy in which prestige ranks before all else.” Scholars typically are not paid money to publish in journals. But the attention they receive through publication converts into reputation, which they can use to advance their careers. In scholarly communication, including journals, the non-monetary “currency” of attention, and thus reputation, is the citation. When Scholar B cites Scholar A in an article or book, Scholar A’s reputation is enhanced because Scholar B draws attention to him. The more times Scholar A is cited by Scholar B and others the more reputation he accrues. Conversely, by drawing attention to Scholar A, Scholar B’s reputation may also be enhanced to some degree (e.g., she understands the importance of Scholar A’s work on her own). Already understanding this non-monetary economy of attention and reputation prepares scholars for operating in the online environment. Anderson writes:

[W]hat if we could treat attention and reputation as quantitatively as we do money? What if we could formalize them into proper markets so we could explain and predict them with many of the same equations that economists use in traditional monetary economics? To do so, we’d need attention and reputation to exhibit the same characteristics of other traditional currencies: to be measurable, finite, and convertible.

We’re actually coming close, thanks to the 1989 creation of Tim Berners-Lee: the modern hyperlink. It’s a simple thing—just a string of characters starting with “http://”—but what it created was a formal language for the exchange of attention and reputation, and currencies for both. Today when you link to someone on your blog, you are effectively granting them some of your own reputation. In a sense, you are saying to your own audience: “Leave me. Go to this other place. I think you’ll like it, and if you do, perhaps you’ll think more of me for having recommended it. And if you think more of me, perhaps you’ll come back to my site more often.” Ideally, this transfer of reputation leaves both parties richer. Good recommendations build trust with a readership, and being recommended confers trust, too. And with trust comes traffic. (pp. 182-183, emphasis added)

The citation is still a citation, but in the online environment it also becomes a link. When the link is clicked it takes the reader to a linked article (which may or may not be immediately accessible and free, depending on whether or not it is sitting behind a publisher’s paywall). Clicks become a metric of traffic, i.e., attention. The more clicks the more attention. The more attention the higher the reputation. The higher the reputation the more attention, and so on. This metric finds its way into search engine indexing such as Google’s PageRank algorithm. Notice Anderson’s reference to citation analysis in scientific journal literature as the idea and work behind Google’s PageRank:

PageRank is a deceptively simple idea with great power. It basically states that incoming links are like votes, and that incoming links from sites which themselves have lots of incoming links count for more than those that don’t. This is the sort of calculation only a computer can do, since it requires having the entire link structure of the Web in memory and recursively analyzing each link. (Interestingly, PageRank is based on earlier work on a much smaller scale in scientific publishing. An author’s reputation can be calculated by how many other authors cite him or her in their footnotes, a process called citation analysis. There is no more explicit reputation economy than academic reputation, which dictates everything from tenure to grants.) (p. 183, emphasis added)

“Publishing is no longer the sole privilege of the paid”

The interesting thing about this online link economy is that—assuming an open, democratic Internet—it can work just as well for small and large players, because the size of the player doesn’t count as much as the player’s link reputation. While talking more specifically about journalistic publishing online, Anderson makes an observation that seems to be relevant to scholarly publishing as well:

It’s true: free does tend to level the playing field between professionals and amateurs. As more people create content for nonmonetary reasons, the competition to those doing it for money grows. (As the employer of lots of professional journalists, I think about the relative roles of the amateurs and the pros all the time.) All this means is that publishing is no longer the sole privilege of the paid. (p. 234, emphasis added)

This, as I said in Part 1, becomes an opportunity for open access. It’s OK to think of ourselves as “amateurs” (Anderson certainly didn’t mean it as a pejorative). We have as much right in the online space as any “professional” publisher. We’re learning. And we’re here to compete.

The inevitability of free? The inevitability of open access? (Part 1)

Caroline Sutton writes a provocative article in the December 2011 issue of College & Research Libraries News entitled, “Is free inevitable in scholarly communication? The economics of open access.” Drawing on Chris Anderson’s book Free: The Past and Future of a Radical Price (Hyperion, 2009), Sutton makes a bold assertion regarding the economics of academic journal publishing in the online space:

In this article I would like to make the case that a change in the delivery of scientific content and in the business models for delivering scholarly communication was inevitable from the moment journals moved online, even if much of this change is yet to come. By applying a thesis put forth by Chris Anderson in his 2009 book Free, I will argue that given that scholarly journals are now digital products, they are subject to very different economic principles and social forces than their print ancestors.

Anderson’s thesis on competition and pricing in the digital market begins with Bertrand economics, which states that in a competitive market, the price of a product will move toward the marginal cost of producing an additional good. … Because the costs associated with bandwidth, storage, and processing are being reduced by approximately 50% every year, digital products get cheaper every year, and indeed have become so cheap that the marginal cost is so small as to render it near to impossible to measure. … It is for this reason the default price of a digital product is zero: zero is inevitable. …

Scholarly journal articles are no different from any other digital product with respect to distribution costs. As such, one can argue that our product is also subject to the “zero is inevitable” rule of pricing. (p. 642, emphasis added)

Sutton is an open access publisher at Co-Action Publishing and president of the Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association. She brings significant experience from the commercial publishing world to this issue. In a curious way, although her commitment to open access is strong, Sutton’s assertion gains credibility for me precisely because Co-Action Publishing is run as a for-profit business. While I might base my commitment to open access on more altruistic principles, Sutton and her partners have real money riding on this. (Incidentally, I don’t say this because I believe that risking money indicates a higher level of commitment than altruism. People and businesses squander money on foolish ideas all the time. I simply mean that Sutton isn’t merely offering an interesting thought-experiment or academic exercise. Her argument is tied to her experiences of running a real business in the real world.)

Reading Sutton’s article made me interested in reading Chris Anderson’s book, which I had not gotten around to up to that point, though I’ve had a digital copy of the book in the Kindle app on my iPad for some time. I would like to engage with Anderson’s thesis as it relates to open access scholarly communication a bit myself in a subsequent post. But here let me interact with Sutton’s take on the notion of “zero is inevitable.”

To be clear, Sutton (following Anderson) is not saying it doesn’t cost anything to publish an academic journal. The key situation is that publication of journals in the online environment eliminates costs associated with producing and moving around journal issues as physical objects (paper and ink, printing machinery, warehousing inventory, shipping, etc.). The key concept is “the marginal cost of producing an additional good.” After a journal article has been created and uploaded to a publisher’s server as an electronic file, it costs virtually nothing to “make” an additional copy or copies of that file. The key activity and infrastructure to which the “zero is inevitable” economic principle is applied is the distribution costs—that is, costs associated with getting journal articles out to readers. Yes, would-be readers require access to a computer or smartphone, and an Internet connection. But after that, all they need to be able to do is click a link on a webpage. As Sutton writes:

In addition to staffing and other overhead costs, there are also a number of fixed article and page-related costs (e.g., copyediting, language editing, typesetting, etc.) that must be covered in some way. The point is that these are largely fixed costs that are the same regardless of whether one user finds and downloads a given article or if 5 billion users find and download it. The marginal cost of adding one additional user is for all practical purposes, zero. In this context, charging for access as such involves charging for that which does not cost. (p. 642, emphasis added)

Now stop for a moment and let that last sentence really sink in. “In this context, charging for access as such involves charging for that which does not cost.” This is a remarkable admission for a for-profit publisher to be making! The traditional knowledge-is-a-scarce-commodity-subscription-based-or-pay-per-article-view-model commercial publisher would not want us to know about this. In the physical world, increasing a journal’s subscription base scales to reduce the costs of printing additional copies. But in the online world there are no additional copies to produce. Subscriptions or per-article download fees to cover distribution costs should not be necessary. Incidentally, in case you were still thinking about this from the point of view of the physical world, an online publisher doesn’t “stock” their servers with multiple copies of journal articles waiting to be downloaded like a bookstore stocks their shelves with the latest hardcover bestseller. The duplication happens on the user side when a download link is clicked. With the exception of a copy sitting on a back-up server, there is really only one electronic file required for each article. Further, the size of that file (commonly a PDF) is nearly inconsequential from a storage perspective. So, the costs aren’t merely reduced by scale. They effectively cease to exist! Again, none of this denies the costs incurred by publishers to initially set-up and maintain an online infrastructure, though it is clear that most publishers are now working in a born-digital environment, even if they are still engaged in print publishing. By continuing with subscription-based or pay-per-article-view models in the online space, traditional for-profit publishers are effectively “charging for that which does not cost.” Applying an old model to a new online reality enables them (for the time being, at least) to further reduce their overall bottom-line costs and maximize their profits.

But scholars and libraries are beginning to seriously question the sustainability and fairness of the old model (historically tied—some would say in an exploitative way—to the academic system of peer review and tenure and promotion), especially now that alternatives exist. Sutton has chosen a different approach.

Whether for profit, non-profit, large or small, publishers must have the resources to produce the first copy of an article and all goes with it (not to mention further research and development). The challenge of the digital marketplace, as Anderson points out…is to identify new and creative ways to build businesses and revenues around giving products away. In the case of scholarly publishing, giving away products amounts to open access, and the question is how to “give away” articles yet stay in business.

…

Because there are no additional costs for additional users, we have moved the payment mechanism away from that element in the publishing process that is near zero in cost (digital distribution of articles), and instead applied it to a stage of publishing where we are in fact consuming resources (for preparation of manuscripts for publication and other work). Thus, the article as such is demonetized. (p. 643, emphasis added)

Sutton maximizes distribution through open access. Since the costs associated with adding users is close to zero, her business leverages this “free” aspect to get the word out about her business through the products of the scholars who publish their articles with her. Maximum distribution, including giving permission to authors to self-archive in digital repositories (a problem for many traditional commercial publishers), is reconceptualized as a marketing tool.

Not only is wide distribution a service to our authors, as the number of people who are reading our content grows, it becomes increasingly likely that enough of them will also submit an article to a journal that is accepted by an editor, and for which we can charge a fee and recover our costs. (p. 643)

The use of article processing charges is one way Co-Action Publishing generates its revenue. In the sciences, the costs of article publication can often be rolled into research grant funding. But that doesn’t mean there is no competition in this space to control costs and provide choice.

[W]e regard our work as a service to authors. This is where competition is—in providing customers (authors) with a preferred service at the right price. (p. 643)

Now here is a refreshing perspective—that a publisher would regard the scholar author as a customer to be satisfied because they have a choice, and can take their business elsewhere.

Sutton suggests creative ways to generate additional revenue by offering enhanced features to the author on top of the basic free version of the article.

Repositories might represent a basic version of a service to an author (the possibility of depositing a flat word doc or PDF), while the article on the publisher’s platform is a premium version with added features such as semantic searching, the publisher’s work to distribute the article, etc. that add value to the author’s work, and which he or she may be inclined to pay for. (p. 644)

Sutton admits that many traditionally published top-tiered journals maintain high marginal utility even after moving online because of long-standing reputations and high impact factors that continue to attract the best research. These top journals currently have little incentive to move toward an open access model because they don’t feel the competition. “At its core the scholarly economy is a reputation economy in which prestige ranks before all else” (p. 644). The challenge is to produce open access journals that can compete on prestige by quickly building reputations. Sutton refers to a number of open access journals in biology and medicine published by the Public Library of Science that have managed (in less than 10 years!) to earn top-tier reputations.

Sutton also notes that an open access journal can get a kickstart on reputation by being funded by a prestigious or respected organization in the discipline. I have often thought that in the fields of religion and theology an organization like the American Theological Library Association could lend its credibility to promote the creation of new open access journals. In 2008 they began publishing an open access journal geared to theological librarians, so they are already gaining valuable experience in this alternative space.

Sutton doesn’t reference Anderson on this point (more on this in Part 2), but the currencies of the Web are links and traffic. Links are like citations in scholarly communication. They indicate an author’s presence on the Web. As these links are discovered they drive traffic (measured by clicks), which is really a metric of attention. As attention grows so does reputation, which tends to drive more traffic, further enhancing reputation. In the online environment, prompt publication, broad distribution, and immediate free access (coupled, of course, with competent and engaging research reporting) can help authors (and their associated journals) to build attention and reputation in ways, and at a pace, that authors whose articles are locked behind paywalls of (albeit) prestigious journals cannot do. This, it seems to me, is also an opportunity for open access.

Does Caroline Sutton make the case about the inevitability of free in scholarly communication? Although the transition of academic journals to the online environment is now largely complete, it is still too early to tell how various business models will play out. It does seem beyond question, however, that open access is a viable alternative to traditional subscription-based revenue models. Libraries have long complained about the sustainability of the old model in the face of continually rising prices and shrinking budgets. Too, the scholars themselves, who have long been passive in this relationship, are starting to wake up and some are even revolting against the exploitative practices of many big name commercial publishers, especially around the issues of intellectual property rights, and the abuse of their free labor in peer review. This can only help enhance the case for open access.

The landscape is definitely changing, where creativity and innovation are driving new business models. I mean, who would have thought the day would ever come when the concept of a “for-profit open access publisher” would not be perceived as oxymoronic?

In Part 2, I will share some of the insights for open access journal publishing I gained from reading Chris Anderson’s book for myself. Stay tuned.