Open Library of Humanities is recruiting discipline editors, including Theology & Religious Studies

Open Library of Humanities, a multidisciplinary open access “mega-journal” platform inspired by the Public Library of Science (PLOS) and their multidisciplinary science journal PLOS ONE, announced that it is now recruiting discipline editors across the Humanities, including Theology and Religious Studies.

If you have academic editorial expertise and would like to get involved in open access publishing, please get in touch. …

Please email a 1-2 page CV outlining your current academic position, editorial experience and research publications, as well as contact details to: editorial@openlibhums.org.

We look forward to hearing from you!

This is a wonderful opportunity for any scholar interested in open access and new models of scholarly publishing and communication. I am especially excited by the unambiguous invitation of OLH to represent Theology and Religious Studies on equal footing with other disciplines in this developing Humanities publishing venue. It strikes me as an unique opportunity for our discipline, both to disseminate research widely, and to become active partners in a larger multidisciplinary conversation.

This is very much in line with something Justin Meggitt said in my recent interview with him and Peter Webster regarding their decision as religious studies scholars to become involved with the Open Library of Humanities:

A multi-disciplinary humanities mega-journal will be good for the study of religion as the scrutiny of religion should be a multi-disciplinary endeavour. … If more of those involved in study of religion supported OLH they might well find their work valued by a far wider constituency than is currently the case and it would, I think, disrupt the prejudicial assumptions so many other academics have about what we do and ultimately, what it is worth.

I encourage you to get in touch with OLH today.

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.

Conversation with two religious studies scholars on committee at Open Library of Humanities

The other day I checked-in on developments over at Open Library of Humanities. As I reported earlier here and here, the idea for this very interesting project sprang from a number of often asked questions: Why hasn’t anyone created an analog to the Public Library of Science (PLOS)—meaning, a broad-based, not-for-profit organization dedicated to publishing open access research—for the Humanities? What would it take—meaning, at least, editorial and technical infrastructure, sustainable funding, and broad-based scholarly support—to create such a PLOS analog for the Humanities? Given our deep and long-standing scholarly communication traditions, would such an approach—meaning, in particular, developing a multi-disciplinary “mega-journal” like PLOS ONE—even work in the Humanities?

OLH’s advisory committee structure appears to be in place. There are still numerous details to work out, but posted minutes from recent meetings of two of the committees (Academic Steering & Advocacy and LibTech) suggest conceptual outlines of the OLH platform are beginning to take shape. Summarized from the Academic Steering & Advocacy Committee meeting minutes of February 25, 2013: “The committee overwhelmingly favoured, with some caveats, a mega-journal structure, but one which also had the option to present as a ‘traditional’ journal through overlay function.” “Overlay journals” are created by curating and filtering subject-specific content pulled from submissions to the central mega-journal platform, branded to “give the appearance, and benefits, of more localised journals.”

Somewhat surprised but very proud: Religious Studies scholars well-represented on OLH committees

As I looked over the lists of assembled OLH committee members, I was somewhat surprised but also very proud to discover representation from not just one (if even one) but three Religious Studies scholars. Peter Webster (an independent historian of religion in twentieth century Britain, whose day job is at the British Library) and Steven Engler (Professor of Religious Studies at Mount Royal University, Calgary, Canada) are members on the Academic Steering & Advocacy Committee. Justin Meggitt (University Senior Lecturer in the Study of Religion at the Institute of Continuing Education, University of Cambridge) is a member on the Advocacy Forum.

I was surprised because, to put it honestly, the Open Library of Humanities project represents new and non-traditional thinking regarding the nature and future of scholarly communication in the Humanities. Others may reflect similarly from within their own disciplines, but as a generalization, I know religion and theology scholars are committed to long-standing and authoritative academic traditions. They tend to be skeptical of fads or what they perceive to be change for its own sake. Would they be able to see any relevance for themselves in an open access and multi-disciplinary project like this? And yet, I felt proud to see these particular scholars coming out to engage this new thinking through direct participation in the OLH project. It was sort-of a validation of my own open access advocacy in religion and theology, and an opportunity to demonstrate that, yes, there are real scholars within the discipline who are thinking about and embracing new mediums and formats of research communication.

I was interested to get these scholars to tell me about their work and research; about their thinking regarding open access publishing in Religious Studies; and especially about their decision to participate directly in the Open Library of Humanities project. I am pleased to share the conversation I was able to arrange with Peter Webster and Justin Meggitt. I regret that I was unable to contact Professor Engler to participate in this conversation.

The Conversation

Omega Alpha: Thank you, Peter and Justin, for the opportunity to speak with each of you. Can you tell me a bit about your academic career and specific interests. What about your vocation and current activities? Peter, why don’t we start with you. As I understand it, you are what we might call an independent scholar/researcher, and you have a “day job” at the British Library. Is that correct?

Webster: Yes, that’s basically it. For a number of years I have worked in what you might call the interface between scholars and digital resource providers and developers. I worked for eight years, until recently, at the Institute of Historical Research, which is part of the University of London, doing resource development, networking, advocacy, conferences, and various digital projects to support university departments of history, including managing the digital repository for a group of ten specialized research institutes, of which IHR is a part. Last summer, I moved over to the British Library, where I look after communications, engagement and liaison activities in terms of digital projects for the United Kingdom Web Archive. That’s the day job.

Parallel to this, I have nurtured a research interest in twentieth century British religious history. I did my doctoral work on religious music in the Stuart Church in the Early Modern Period of Britain. Through a circuitous route, I started looking at questions relating to religion and the arts in the twentieth century, particularly, initially, contemporary church music in the 1950s and 60s. My research interests have widened-out from there. Right now I’m doing a study of Michael Ramsey, Archbishop of Canterbury in the 1960s for Ashgate’s The Archbishops of Canterbury Series. Also, I’m hoping shortly to conclude contract terms on a biographical study of Walter Hussey, Dean of Chichester Cathedral, who was a patron of the arts in the Church of England.

Meggitt: My current post is as University Senior Lecturer in the Study of Religion at the Institute of Continuing Education, University of Cambridge. I’ve had a number of ‘normal’ academic posts, such as British Academy Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Jesus College, Cambridge and lecturer in New Testament Studies in the Faculty of Divinity, Cambridge. But I have always had a direct interest and involvement in such things as distance learning (as it used to be called) and continuing education because I would consider it my vocation to enable the widest possible access to the critical study of religion, in all its forms. That explains why I have ended up where I am today.

I continue to straddle the traditional academic world and that of lifelong learning, supervising graduate work in the Faculty of Divinity and producing research appropriate for someone holding a permanent post at the University of Cambridge. But in my role at the Institute of Continuing Education, I contribute to a range of forms of teaching that allow public engagement with current thinking in the study of religion and cognate fields. My interests are somewhat varied, but are largely concerned with religion in ancient and early modern cultures, and the themes of poverty, slavery, madness, magic, and apocalypticism, amongst others.

Omega Alpha: How did you first learn about open access? How did you become a “convert” to OA, if this is the right way of putting it?

Webster: My becoming a ‘convert’ to open access isn’t an inappropriate way of putting it, in some ways. My exposure to open access came mostly through being in charge of the institutional repository at IHR and its affiliated research institutes. I became drawn into open access over time dealing with management policies, talking with faculty, etc. The IR served primarily the Humanities with a bit of Social Sciences on the edge. It was very interesting to see how scholars responded to, and hear what they thought about open access within that quite dedicated humanities space. Incidentally, I think it’s fair to say that the Humanities are a significant distance behind, certainly behind the natural sciences, regarding open access.

I don’t think very many people, if pushed, would dispute the general principle of open access—that academic research ought to be freely available for anyone who might conceivably want to read it, especially if it is publicly funded. I think I would probably stop short of saying there is a moral obligation for open access, though I do agree in the idea of supporting open access as a ‘public good.’ There are benefits to the scholar having their work available to even a lay readership in this way. The material that scholars write about in the Humanities (including Religious Studies) in theory is more easily accessible to the average reader than most of microbiology is, for instance. One might expect humanities scholars to be more engaged in open access precisely because of what there is to be gained from it in terms of getting ideas out for public discourse—knowing that their research has relevance. So I’m surprised by this reticence. Is it a lack of confidence that what we do is too specialised to be of interest to anybody?

I suppose I have it relatively easy, though, because no one pays me to do the research I do. I’m not dependent on it for tenure, or anything like that. But almost all my existing research for which I can get permission to do so is in the repository I used to run. Having seen the usage statistics, I know that it gets the kind of traffic that one couldn’t possibly expect if it were only still available in print. You will have a sense of the average use of a typical theological monograph. I’m pretty sure my stuff has at least been found and the PDFs opened by a much larger number of people. This usage has yet to present itself in citations, but that’s partly because my material is quite new. I would expect to see the ‘citation effect’ build-up over time. There are studies suggesting there is this demonstrable ‘citation effect’ for open access.

The other thing I would add is the whole international dimension. The traffic to the material in the repository is coming from all sorts of places around the world, not just western anglophone countries as you might expect. So, if you want your work to be read as widely as possible this is an obvious way to go. If you can get past the ‘professional drivers’ there’s a lot to be gained.

Meggitt: I do not think I was ever a ‘convert’ to open access, but I see in OA the key values that have shaped my understanding of what higher education teaching and research should be. I have always been driven by the desire to facilitate access to the most recent ideas in the field, and to bring into discussions contributions of those who otherwise would be excluded from usual academic debate, to the detriment of us all. (If I hear anyone studying religion use such exclusive terminology as ‘Academy’ or ‘Guild’ I get an unpleasant, visceral sensation.) Although I have spent years working in the long-established ‘continuing education’ model here in the UK (alongside more traditional responsibilities)—teaching in village halls, and at evening classes, and writing distance learning materials that were delivered by mail—I have also always been interested in the possible liberative effect of technology. Initially, I saw its value for those with disabilities. But then, more broadly, in its capacity to allow access to resources and research beyond the privileged few at well-resourced higher education institutions.

Over a decade ago I became involved in early print-on-demand publishing, partly out of a desire to challenge the prevailing model of academic publishing that was, I believe, consigning most scholarship in Religion (and the Humanities more generally) to functional oblivion through its prohibitive costs (what I’d call the ‘monograph crisis’). The traditional model was also slowing intellectual debate and exchange down to snail’s pace. I hoped technological developments would speed it up. About the same time, I also became a user of and advocate for open source software.

To be brutally honest, all this comes from my religious and political views, enhanced by bouts of (limited) penury and job insecurity earlier in my working life—something that comes with fixed-term contracts and the somewhat unpredictable nature of much UK higher education. It has also come about as a result of my experience of both so-called ‘research intensive’ and ‘non-research intensive’ universities here and in the US, and the widely different access to resources students and scholars have at these institutions.

Omega Alpha: How did you learn about Open Library of Humanities? Tell me specifically about your interest in this project, and why you decided to join one of the advisory committees.

Webster: I follow Martin Eve on Twitter, and back in January after the project idea first got going he put out a call for interested folk to get in touch. I tweeted back saying that I’d be interested to be involved some how. He wrote back inviting me to join the Academic Steering & Advocacy Committee.

What is very interesting to me about the project is the way in which peer review may be dealt with. I’ve become more and more convinced that the current system of peer review is an accident—that it is actually the product of a particular historical confluence of a technology (print) and a particular way of rewarding or assessing where academics are in relation to each other. OLH is examining the approach used by the Public Library of Science, which very helpfully separates-out two quite distinct functions of peer review. A basic level of gatekeeping for basic competence in method, and expression, and documentation, and genuine engagement with the field of scholarship as it lies. That’s a useful filter to have. It’s relatively fast and light-weight to do. It can be reasonably objective. You can tell if someone’s footnoting is right, whether there’s engagement with most of the work in the field, and if there’s a coherent argument involved. These are reasonably objective criteria.

We’ve allowed peer review to carry the weight of trying to establish how important something is. It seems to me, that were I a journal editor, I shouldn’t think my judgment, while informed, should necessarily be authoritative in determining whether or not something should be published based on my assessment of how ‘important’ it is. It seems to me that it is the readers who are in a better position of determining whether or not a piece of research is important. I believe ‘the cream will rise to the top.’ There is now no issue of capacity, referring back to the technological ‘accident’ of print above with its inherent limitations of space. We allowed the rationing of scarce space in a print journal to become a proxy for importance. I believe anything that is defensible in scholarly terms should be published, and the genuinely important stuff will be found—it will rise to the top. This second function, which includes various kinds of ‘altmetrics’, is called post-publication peer-review. I don’t see any reason why this approach shouldn’t work in the Humanities.

Meggitt: I came across OLH quite recently, as a result of the reaction to the Finch Report, which recommended that the results of research that has been publicly funded should be freely accessible in the public domain. What bothered me was that amongst many colleagues in my field—at least here in Cambridge—there was a strongly hostile reaction to the idea, despite this being a public university. This provoked me to seek out those who could see the potential of open access in the Humanities—those who were thinking creatively and practically about realising it. And so I found OLH. I am associated with the Advocacy Forum because, although I’m not very well known, I’ve done quite a bit of media work here and there, and public engagement (an element of advocacy) is what I do for a living.

Omega Alpha: What do you think about the “mega-journal” and multi-disciplinary format of OLH compared to traditional subject- or association-focused journals in religion? How might this format compare to subject-focused gold open access journals in religion?

Webster: At the pragmatic level, I don’t see lots and lots of open access journals utilizing the PLOS model springing-up in the various disciplines. The strength is in the platform itself, which can serve as a common technical backend for the various disciplines within the Humanities. The platform gives us economies of scale. Having a multi-disciplinary platform doesn’t preclude the creation of discipline-specific journals on the platform. We may find, over time, that the users of the platform are in a position to curate their own subject subsets of material. Or over time, as you build-up a large amount of content, we may find we can create special issue ‘journals’ retrospectively edited, bringing together ‘the cream’ of most significant and important research. A looser structure at the beginning will give us greater flexibility as things develop and mature. Being able to search across disciplines may enable us to to make research connections we might miss in a more siloed environment.

Meggitt: A multi-disciplinary humanities mega-journal will be good for the study of religion as the scrutiny of religion should be a multi-disciplinary endeavour. At present, a number of traditional subject- and association-focused journals in religion—including some extremely prestigious ones—have become parochial backwaters, slaves to tradition or fashion, and frustratingly cumbersome vehicles for enabling academic debate. The OLH model should, amongst other things, disrupt this. I also like the idea of articles—albeit ones that have met the “ready to publish” criterion—being judged on their significance by the users of research rather that journal editors trying to prejudge this. We are, I am sure, all aware that whilst editors do a good (and often unpaid) job—and I’ve done this myself—they can also be problematic, replicating assumptions within the field and restricting its development, or conversely, using their weight to push ideas and approaches that lack substance but survive longer than they should.

Omega Alpha: What would (or do) you say to fellow scholars in religion and theology who may be reluctant to embrace open access as a viable and legitimate scholarly communication venue?

Webster: I don’t have that many opportunities for ‘evangelism’ in that way (going back to your question relating to my ‘conversion’ to open access). But I would simply come back to all the benefits that we were talking about before. I think the various objections to open access come down to getting the implementation right, rather than issues with the principle of freely available access to this work that we’re all doing. I would major on the opportunity to get material out fast to wide audiences, including lay audiences, and of course, the international dimension. You would hope that a healthy Church, or faith community more broadly—if we’re looking at this from a religious point of view—would be an organization or community that engages with its own history and scholarly thinking about what it is that it believes and practices. You would think there would be a greater than average gain for theological scholars in being able to reach those audiences directly.

Meggitt: I would say that they need to think hard about how inequitable and inefficient the current system of academic publication in religion is and whether they really think its a good idea to perpetuate. Why are we so wedded to financially restrictive ways of disseminating research that limit access to knowledge to the privileged few (by which I mean institutions as well as people)? Do we really value work in our subject so little? The reluctance in some quarters seems to come from ignorance about the financial models involved in academic publishing. But I also think the reluctance comes from a fear of what might happen if a form of research dissemination and evaluation emerges that is not tied to certain assumptions about academic status and credibility but the actual, demonstrable, significance of the output. The OLH model, for example, will help break up the patronage networks that afflict the field, and that is not a bad thing.

Omega Alpha: Do you have any final thoughts?

Webster: For scholars who are used to traditional print-form research outputs, engagement with open access will lead necessarily to greater engagement with the digital environment and the use of digital methods of research production and communication, such as blogs and other social media, enabling us to interact more directly with our audiences. Relatedly, this ought to make us think harder about how we write, how clearly we write, and the audiences for whom our research material is written. It’s a cliché to say that academic writing is often opaque, but there is enough of it that is opaque to make it a truism. I do not think it should be impossible to write clear and accessible prose that also conveys difficult ideas. These two things need not be incompatible. It strikes me that communicating with all the groups that have a stake in what it is we do (that is, not just scholars but also interested lay persons) is a good place to test that hypothesis.

Meggitt: The study of religion and theology in the UK is marginal to academic life generally. To most of those involved in higher education, it is only present as a result of historical accident, the legacy of past inequalities of power or reflecting the increasingly uncritical agendas of special interest groups who are in the business of trying to buy influence (particularly as government funding recedes). Some of it, and I am afraid this is particularly true of theology, is judged to be little better than phrenology. Such a picture is unfair but it is a prevailing one. It is, for example, hard to think of someone who would identify themselves as a scholar of religion today who is taken seriously in any other field. If more of those involved in study of religion supported OLH they might well find their work valued by a far wider constituency than is currently the case and it would, I think, disrupt the prejudicial assumptions so many other academics have about what we do and ultimately, what it is worth.

Omega Alpha: Peter Webster and Justin Meggitt, thank you so much for your time and your participation in this conversation. I was struck by many of the common threads that wove their way through your various responses. I will, of course, continue to watch developments at the Open Library of Humanities with considerable interest. Perhaps you will allow me to check-in again with each of you as those developments touch on the impact of open access on Religious Studies research communication.

Now we know first-hand: Editorial board of librarians resign over journal publisher’s restrictive licensing

The entire editorial board of the Journal of Library Administration, published by the Taylor & Francis Group, has resigned in protest over the publisher’s restrictive author licensing policies. Brian Mathews, who was preparing a special issue of JLA on library futures as guest editor, reported the mass resignation (including the text of the board’s statement) this last weekend on his The Ubiquitous Librarian blog. In the post, Mathews also linked to a post from Chris Bourg, one of the former board members, and from Jason Griffey, who earlier declined to participate in Mathews’s project due to pointed reservations regarding T&F’s author policies.

Editorial boards resigning in protest over publisher policies is not new (see the Open Access Directory’s “Journal declarations of independence” page [Update: I should have clarified that this page lists not only boards that resigned but who also took their journals [or replacements] into a less restrictive publishing environment, including open access.]). Indeed, just this last October, the editorial board of the journal Organization & Environment (SAGE) resigned over allegations of publisher intrusion on the journal’s academic freedom (see article in Inside High ED from October 29, 2012). What is interesting is how this issue has arrived at the door steps of libraries with new force and nuanced complexion. Once upon a time, it was sufficient that libraries played their primary role in providing access to information resources for “the many” who might not (OK, let’s just say they simply wouldn’t) be able to afford on their own. Publishers have never been happy with this, though occasionally they grant the marketing value of libraries—helping them sell books by enhancing public awareness.

Publishers have apparently been smarter with journals, pricing institutional subscriptions based on the assumption that one (print) copy received into the library would be accessed/read by “the many.” I’m not exactly sure how they pulled that off. Can you imagine a generalized institutional pricing system for book purchases? (Actually, I can. Kevin Smith reported here and here on the recent decision of the Supreme Court in Kirtsaeng v. John Wiley & Sons. Had the Court ruled in favor of the publisher, libraries could have faced precisely this kind of institutional pricing system. He says libraries “dodged a bullet” with this decision. But I digress.) Perhaps libraries thought, in our typically good-natured way, that it was reasonable for publishers to ask more based on this assumption. The problem with this calculus was run-away subscription pricing. Publishers reasoned they had captive customers in the libraries, and that “the many” would protest loudly if access was jeopardized. Problem was, while the demand was presumed to be inelastic, the budget also proved to be inelastic. We have been watching this story play-out for at least the last 30 years now.

Anyway, in the print world, no one, least of all libraries, really cared whether academic authors were getting exploited regarding their intellectual property rights. It wasn’t our business to care. Our singular mission was to provide access to published information resources for our constituencies, which we would do happily, assuming it could be done with some sense of economy. Print was the only game in town. Authors signing away their copyrights was simply the cost of doing business, and the price for getting published. Nobody, not even authors, really gave it a second thought (sadly, many still don’t).

This latest incident is a signal that something has changed in Libraryland, and librarians are awakening to it. It’s not only that we’ve been increasingly priced-out of providing access to many important and high-demand resources for our patrons. The BIG change, of course, is the whole paradigm shift in publishing from print to electronic, which includes the birth of a mode of “democratic publishing” available to anyone on the web. With this change has come the prospect of alternatives—alternatives to publishers, and (frankly) alternatives to libraries.

Something else has changed in this shift. Academic authors are starting to discover that they wield significant power in their research products. They don’t need to sell their souls for the right to be published. It’s no longer the publisher with a printing press that wields all the power, or makes all the rules. With alternatives abounding, the truth has been exposed that publishers desperately need author content in order to stay in business. Authors are starting to demand a more equitable relationship, or they’ll take their business elsewhere. (Presently, it would seem the only major lingering problems for academic authors are their out of touch colleagues, and antiquated policies of academic advancement that are still wedded to the old publisher-controlled system.)

Better late than never, astute libraries, too, are beginning to realize that it needs to be our business to care about authors, including advocating for them regarding intellectual property rights. The irony in this incident is that library researchers as academic authors are now being sensitized to the no longer acceptable practices of publishers in this regard. Creative libraries, too, are beginning to reach out to authors in the provision of direct publishing services, promising to by-pass traditional publishers altogether.

Brian Mathews, who was preparing his special issue of JLA as guest editor before all this blew-up, said he was asked why he didn’t just take the project to an open access journal. His answer was curious. “The reason I agreed to take on the guest editorship of this issue was specifically because it was in a traditional journal and distributed by a traditional publisher. I like the idea of taking disruptive content and baking it into a conventional platform. I’m a fan of OA but this was one instance where I was intentionally aiming for something with more confinement. You know, change from within, and all that” (emphases his). In an update, Mathews was even more adamant: “I get that librarians are passionate about OA and that OA definitely provides some high quality options—but I feel that a person should have the right to publish anywhere they want for whatever reason they want. … I guess you can say I’m pro-choice when it comes to publishing. I only care about the quality of the ideas expressed” (again, emphases his). I like a lot of Brian’s forward-thinking ideas on library topics. But while I can respect his opinion (I also applaud choice), and I sympathize with the fact that this news ruined his weekend, I think he is simply mistaken in this case. Libraries have given publishers too many passes. I’m siding with the editorial board on this one.

Of course this is only a first (and largely symbolic) step. Libraries admittedly cannot easily, quickly, or single-handedly extricate themselves from this ingrained system. We do still and must serve our constituencies first in the provision of needed information resources. But I think the point that this incident surfaced is that now we know first-hand how the current academic publishing system has been treating its authors, even as we have already long known (but felt powerless to avoid) what it has been asking us to pay to keep the system in place. With this new knowledge we can no longer go along as before. From now on we continue as knowing if not willing accomplices.

Video tutorials for using Open Journal Systems available on Public Knowledge Project’s website

Open Journal Systems (OJS), is an open source online journal publishing and management platform developed by the Public Knowledge Project. With OJS, scholars with very little publishing expertise and minimal budgets can produce high-quality academic journals for world-wide distribution of scholarly research on the web. While not all of the nearly 15,000 installations of OJS are open access (the software can be used to manage restricted and subscription-based access), the majority are. It is difficulty to over-estimate the contribution PKP and OJS has made to the open access movement.

OJS has been designed to be relatively to easy to use. Public Knowledge Project provides excellent written support documentation on the site. What I hadn’t noticed before, however, is a growing list of informative video tutorials covering all aspects of OJS installation, setup, and use. From preparing the server and installing the software; to setting up your journal and creating issues; to defining and assigning editorial roles and reviewers; to managing article submissions and peer-review; to tracking journal traffic using Google Analytics. The tutorials are produced by PKP and members of the OJS user community. The several that I viewed provided clear, concise, step-by-step instructions that nicely complement the written documentation.

Croatian Open Access Declaration, the “Hamster” portal, and open access theology journals

I received an email last month from Matina Ćaran, theological librarian at the Biblijski institut/Bible Institute in Zagreb, Croatia about open access initiatives happening in her country. She told me about the Croatian Open Access Declaration that was officially released on October 24, 2012, and about Hrčak (“Hamster”) an open access scientific journals portal, which also hosts a number of journals in theology, including Kairos, a title published by the Bible Institute. I want to thank Ms. Ćaran for bringing these initiatives to my attention. I am also indebted to Dr. Ivana Hebrang Grgić, senior research associate with the Department of Information Science Faculty of Philosophy in Zagreb, whose book Open Access to Scientific Information in Croatia: Increasing Research Impact of a Scientifically Peripheral Country (2011, pre-publication version) added significantly to my understanding of the current state of open access in Croatia as I was researching for this piece. Thanks too, goes to Google Translate, which helped me immensely with the Croatian language.

Croatian Open Access Declaration

The Croatian Open Access Declaration was presented at a workshop hosted by the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, University of Zagreb, on October 24, 2012 during International Open Access Week. The workshop featured presentations by professors, librarians, computer information technologists, and a computer science student. The opening speech was given on behalf of the Croatian Ministry of Science, Education and Sports—the central funding body for basic research in Croatia—which has put open access to scientific literature on the national agenda. The first signatories of the Declaration were members of the organizing committee and presenters at the workshop.

To express our concern caused by lack of strategic points of reference on access, dissemination, storage and preservation of scientific information in Croatia, we are making the Croatian Open Access Declaration the purpose of which is to sensitise everyone who participates in creation, publishing, use, and preservation of scientific information in Croatia. In our declaration we are stressing the fundamental importance of scientific information, necessity of it being available to everyone, and obligation of its permanent preservation. Open Access means unrestricted, free, and undisturbed online access to digital scientific information that allows scientific information to be read, stored, distributed, searched, reached, indexed and/or used in any other legal way. Unrestricted in this context means free of any restrictions and terms imposed upon its access and use. For the purpose of having unrestricted access to the information, it is necessary to guarantee anonymity to the information users. … We are inviting the state administration, headed by the ministry responsible for science, as well as scientific and educational institutions, organisations, professional associations, and all the others involved in gathering and publishing scientific information to act decisively and in coordination in order to store all the Croatian scientific information in open access form. (from the Declaration)

As of February 2, 2013, 549 persons have added their names in support of the Croatian Open Access Declaration.

Hrčak (“Hamster”): Portal of Scientific journals of Croatia

In 2003, the Croatian Information and Documentation Society developed an idea for a central online portal for storing and accessing Croatian scientific and professional journals. The platform was developed and is maintained by the University Computing Centre, University of Zagreb, and it receives support from the Ministry of Science, Education and Sports of the Republic of Croatia as part of the government’s Science and Technology Policy [PDF]. The portal, which was launched to the public in February 2006, is called Hrčak, or “Hamster,” (apparently) named for that rodent’s remarkable ability to stuff its cheeks with food, which it then safely stores in its nest, to eat as needed at a later time. Not only is Hrčak intended as a portal for current access, it also serves as an archive for ongoing preservation, including journal titles no longer in publication. The Hrčak portal utilizes Open Journal Systems (OJS) publishing and peer-review management backend.

Thanks to Hrčak, publishers have a free, simple and fast tool for creating online versions of their journals, i.e. for small effort and no cost they can become OA publishers. Publishers are responsible for the regular uploading of full text articles and for inputting metadata at journal, issue and article level. Authors can see their articles’ download counters; their articles have better visibility and impact. Research and academic institutions get the chance for better dissemination of their research results. Readers (who can be scientists or the wider general public) can easily access the results of publicly funded research. Web robot software programs can disseminate information about the articles to the global scientific community. (Hebrang Grgić, pp. 48-49.)

According to Dr. Hebrang Grgić the majority of journal publishers in Croatia are not-for-profit, a status that makes them eligible for government support. According to the “Code of ethics for editors on the Hrčak portal” [PDF in Croatian], open access content is a pre-requisite for inclusion in Hrčak, with preference given to content that is immediately available (simultaneous with the release of a print or digital version). In special publishing circumstances, an embargo of up to 6 months is allowed, though issues will not be publicly displayed as published in the portal during this time. Finally, to enhance international visibility of Croatian research published through the portal, bibliographic information such as titles, abstracts, and keywords should be included in English and other languages. Conversely, inclusion of foreign-published Croatian research in Hrčak should include bibliographic information in Croatian. As of this writing, Hrčak has archived 323 journals, 7,013 issues, and 88,218 full-text articles.

UPDATE: I received further information about Hrčak from the portal’s development team at the University Computing Centre, University of Zagreb. The name “Hamster” is an acronym for HRvatski (Croatian) CAsopisi (journals). The portal was developed in-house and has been designed to be easy to use. “It does not support the whole publishing process like OJS, just the publication of ‘finished’ articles. Journal editors do all the manual work. They enter articles (each article as separate pdf) and respective metadata for their journal. We also have an OJS instance for interested journal editors, and have implemented a bridge between OJS and our back-end so there is no need to duplicate effort.”

Theological journals in Hrčak/Hamster

Calling this a portal for scientific journals is technically misleading from a disciplinary standpoint, because Hrčak also includes journals in the social sciences and the humanities. “Scientific” here is meant to encompass any systematic scholarly study of a topic or subject.

Of particular interest are 22 journal titles listed under Theology. A closer look shows 20 titles with content, including 3 titles that are apparently no longer published, but issues are included for archival access. About half the titles include coverage in theology as part of the inter- or multidisciplinary scope of the journal. Ms. Ćaran is not aware of any significant theological journal that is not included in Hrčak.

About a third of the journals are relatively new, having begun publication in the last 10 years. But several have been around for a long time, including Obnovljeni život/Renewed Life (ISSN 0351-3947), published by the Institute of Philosophy and Theology of Society of Jesus since 1919, and Bogoslovska smotra/Theological Review (ISSN 0352-3101), published by the Catholic Faculty of Theology, University of Zagreb since 1910 and is considered one of the oldest Croatian scientific journals. (I have created links to these titles in the Journal Directory.)

Kairos: Evangelical Journal of Theology

One of the relative new journals is Kairos: Evangelical Journal of Theology (ISSN: 1846-4580 (Croatian), 1846-4599 (English)), published by the Biblijski institut/Bible Institute, Zagreb beginning in 2007. (I have created a link to this title in the Journal Directory.) On the journal’s website, editor Stanko Jambrek lists four goals for the journal.

First, to be a canal for communicating the gospel and biblical values to intellectuals, pastors, preachers, students, believers and society. Second, to be a publishing support to Croatian evangelical theologians and scientists as well as lovers and doers of the Word of God. Third, to be a Croatian Evangelical voice to the world. Fourth, to publish articles of authors from around the world who are important to Evangelical Christianity in Croatia. The academic works of Croatian authors and authors from abroad who work in Croatia or who have been, in some way spiritually connected and influential in Croatia will be published in the articles and discussions section. Articles may be from biblical, systematic and applied theology, ethics, Church history, and sociology of religion, philosophy and church life. The journal publishes academic works that are characterized in accordance with the recommendation of the Ministry of Science, Education and Sport of the Republic of Croatia. Kairos publishes articles that are reviewed and those that are not subject to review. Articles that may be categorized as “academic” or “expert” need to have at least two positive reviews. Reviews are anonymous. The journal publishes articles without review that are of relative content for Evangelical Christianity, well thought out and well written.

I gathered Dr. Jambrek’s statement that the journal publishes academic works “in accordance with the recommendation of the Ministry of Science, Education and Sport of the Republic of Croatia” is referring to standards of academic quality, peer-review, etc. But also because the journal is open access.

As it happens, librarian Matina Ćaran is the journal’s secretary. I was able to ask her about Kairos as an open access journal.

We are proud to say that Kairos has always been open access, and will continue to be so. Kairos has so far been published by the Bible Institute, and as of this year it will continue to be published jointly with the Evangelical Theological Seminary in Osijek, Croatia. It is the first Evangelical theological journal in this region of Europe. Although it is a fairly new journal, over the last six years it has become a true Evangelical voice in these parts of the world, and we are reporting both strong and diverse readership. As a secretary of the Journal, I am happy about our growing exchange with other journals in the region, and presence in various open access databases and libraries.

Ms. Ćaran is also a signatory on the Croatian Open Access Declaration. I asked her about her philosophy of open access.

I am a librarian hoping for the time when I will no longer have say to my fellow students: “This is a article you need, but we cannot get it for you.” My personal philosophy of open access rests primarily on front-line work with students, and my personal experience throughout my previous and current studies: hitting walls of restricted access, having to become skilled in all kinds of ways to get to the requested information, article or book, and trying to work with what one has. However, even before I started working as a librarian at my school, I always believed that scientific information is something that is shared and given, not possessed and bought, and that everyone honestly seeking it for the sake of good should have an equal opportunity to access it.

PLOHSS is now Open Library of Humanities

Dr. Martin Paul Eve and company has been moving with deliberate speed. As a follow-up to my recent post, “If the sciences can do it… PLOHSS: A PLOS-style model for the humanities and social sciences,” I want to report that this initiative has a new name and new online home. PLOHSS, tentatively the Public Library of Humanities and Social Sciences, is now the Open Library of Humanities.

The Open Library of Humanities is not affiliated with PLOS, the Public Library of Science, though it has derived inspiration and consulting assistance from that organization.

They have articulated a Mission Statement…

The Open Library of Humanities aims to provide a platform for Open Access publishing that is:

* Reputable and respected through rigorous peer review
* Sustainable
* Digitally preserved and safely archived in perpetuity
* Non-profit
* Open in both monetary and permission terms
* Non-discriminatory (APCs are waiverable)
* Technically innovative in response to the needs of scholars and librarians
* A solution to the serials crisis

…and the organizational structure for OLH is shaping-up, with many of the committees populated with noted scholars and veterans from academic publishing. For example, members of the Academic Steering & Advocacy Committee include such persons as David Armitage (Professor of History, Harvard University), Michael Eisen (Associate Professor of Biology, UC Berkeley, and co-founder of PLOS), Kathleen Fitzpatrick (Director of Scholarly Communication of the Modern Language Association), Peter Suber (Director of Harvard Open Access Project, and well-known open access educator and advocate), and Sanford (Sandy) G. Thatcher (former long-time Director of Penn State University Press), among others.

You can follow developments of the Open Library of Humanities on Twitter, Facebook, or signup for their email newsletter on the site.

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

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

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

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

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

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

What about the humanities and social sciences?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Enter PLOHSS, the Public Library of Humanities and Social Science

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

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

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

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

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

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

…

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

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

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

JSTOR announces free limited reading access to its journal archive

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A test drive of Register & Read

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The open access journal as a disruptive innovation

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

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

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

The economics of disruptive technologies

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

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

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

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

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

Gold and Green Open Access

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

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

Who are the customers?

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Gold open access journal as a disruptive innovation

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

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

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

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

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

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

Gold open access brings an entirely different value proposition.

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

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

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

The S-curve of disruptive innovation and its impact

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

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

Now that’s not boring.