This is the second in a series of three editorials that aim to address
recurring concerns about the benefits and risks associated with open-access publishing in
medicine and the biological sciences.
Scientific societies serve their members, their broader scholarly communities, and the
different components of their missions in many important ways. Making peer-reviewed
literature immediately accessible, searchable, and reusable to anyone in the world with an
Internet connection is a uniquely direct means of achieving a number of goals that are
common to most scholarly associations and of advancing the diverse interests of their
constituencies.
Setting aside for the moment the question of how feasible it is for societies to alter
their journals' access policies, there is by now a broad consensus that widespread open
access to scientific publications is good for scientists and good for science. Society
members want to maximize the impact of their work—and articles that are freely available
online are cited more frequently than those that are not (Lawrence 2001). Most societies
are committed to catalyzing innovations within and across scientific disciplines—and
open-access archives of full-text literature provide a valuable tool for sharing
information globally in order to accelerate the rate of scientific progress. Many societies
articulate in their mission statements the goal of communicating the benefits of their
members' discoveries with the public—and open-access publishing is a direct means to
accomplish this goal.
In addition to an interest in exploring new ways to serve their members and their
missions, societies have another compelling reason to investigate open access for their
journals: the rapidly changing landscape of scholarly publishing. From 1990 to 2000, the
average price of an academic journal subscription increased 10% per year (Create Change
2000). While society-run and nonprofit journals may not be the major contributors to those
spiraling costs, societies that rely on revenues from subscriptions and site licenses may
bear a disproportionate share of the negative consequences of skyrocketing serials prices.
As libraries are forced for a variety of reasons (including decreased budgets and the
increasing prevalence of “big deals” and journal bundling) to eliminate subscriptions,
society journals may be among the hardest hit. Journals that appeal to a relatively
specialized readership and those that are not part of larger publishing groups are
particularly vulnerable to the contraction of serials collections that has already begun
and will likely accelerate (Create Change 2000).
A Society Is More Than a Journal
The confluence of forces in favor of open access says nothing about its fiscal
implications for scientific societies. As any systemic change in research or publishing
would, the movement toward open access has generated concern about its ramifications for
the scholarly associations that often serve as the backbones of scientific communities.
However, the strength of those societies and their essential role in the communities they
serve are precisely what should allay fears about the revenue-eroding effect that some
argue would plague societies if they converted their traditional subscription-based
journals to open access.
Scientific societies perform an array of tremendously valuable functions for their
constituents and disciplines. Researchers, educators, and others join societies for the
many benefits of membership beyond simply discounted or “free” subscriptions to journals,
so the concern that open-access publications would be the death knell of voluntary academic
associations is misguided. As Elizabeth Marincola, executive director of the American
Society for Cell Biology, recently noted, her society “offers a diverse range of products
so that if publications were at risk financially, we wouldn't lose our membership base
because there are lots of other reasons why people are members” (Anonymous 2003).
While open-access publication can, in fact, be paid for in a number of different ways,
there is no question that a transition toward the elimination of online access barriers
requires most societies to restructure the business models for their journals. If journal
subscriptions generate surplus revenue that supports other society activities, then the
business model of the society as a whole may need to be examined. This is not to say that
open-access journals cannot generate a surplus or profit—simply that they do not do so by
restricting access to their primary research content.
Testing the Open-Access Waters
There are a number of societies that have already begun to take transitional steps to
wean themselves from subscription revenues. One of the earliest societies to commit to
open-access publication, the American Society for Clinical Investigation (ASCI) has since
1996 provided the
Journal of Clinical Investigation (JCI) freely online and recently
reaffirmed its commitment to open access: “The financing having been resolved, through
author charges and other means,” John Hawley, the executive director of the ASCI writes,
“the
JCI hopefully can bring the greatest benefit to its authors and readers,
regardless of who they might be. It is in this spirit that the
JCI has always been free online, and will remain so” (Hawley 2003).
In order to experiment cautiously with new access policies, several societies have
implemented hybrid models of access-restriction for their publications. The American
Physiological Society, for example, offers authors in
Physiological Genomics the option to pay a surcharge for their articles
to be made freely available online immediately upon publication. A recent survey by the
Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) in the United Kingdom suggests that many authors
would use such an option if it were more widely available: 48% of authors who had never
published in an open-access journal and 60% of authors who had done so indicated that they
would be willing to “pay a publisher of a journal sold according to the traditional
subscription model an additional fee for them to make [the author's] particular paper ‘open
access’” (JISC 2004).
JISC is also directly encouraging society and nonprofit publishers to implement hybrid
models and other open-access experiments and to launch new open-access journals by
providing grants to offset the publication charges for authors during this transitional
phase. In the long run, of course, open access will prove sustainable when more funders of
research, in addition to interested third parties, designate funds specifically for the
costs of publishing articles to be made freely available, searchable, and reusable
online.
Starting the Dialogue
Reaching a “steady-state” system of open-access publishing by scientific societies will
require three critical components: recognition that open access serves societies' members
and missions; diversified revenue streams not solely dependent on subscription or
site-license fees; and society publishers' making use of recent innovations in journal
production and dissemination, which can dramatically reduce the costs of publishing. It is,
after all, the increased efficiencies born of new technologies—from the Internet itself to
electronic journal management systems—that have made the idea of open access possible. And
while proponents of open access are confident that publication charges of around $1,500 per
article will be sufficient to cover the costs of publishing an efficiently operated society
journal, there is no question that many existing journals may need to update their
infrastructure in order to make open access financially viable (PLoS 2004).
There is also no question that many societies do not, at present, have a wealth of
revenue streams beyond the proceeds from their journals, which they often use to fund
valuable activities from education initiatives to annual meetings. As open-access journals
become more established, however, and as the benefits of open access to scientific and
medical literature become more apparent to society members, the demand for the broadest
possible dissemination of research is only likely to grow. Those societies that embrace the
developments taking place in scholarly publishing may well see their membership and
publications thrive more than societies that cling to the potentially unstable status
quo.
In any case, a constructive discussion about the pitfalls to be avoided and the benefits
to be gained through a transition to open-access publishing would be a worthy first step
for any scientific society to take—and PLoS welcomes the questions, comments, and feedback
of those who are intrigued by the potential that open access affords and want to learn
more.
