This presentation/discussion, on 14 June, focussed on the work by Brad and colleagues to improve Open Access (OA) routes to publishing academic work. Brad is, among other things, an Associate Professor at the UNC School of Information and Library Science (SILS). His current research interests are focused on developing new paradigms for scholarship, publishing, information seeking and use by academics in this digital age.
Before joining SILS, Brad encountered a publishing problem: he could not freely share a paper he had written with his students, because the journal had copyright of that paper. This got him interested in the ‘serials crisis’. It also led to Brad’s interest in proactivity and publication of e-theses and e-dissertations such that institutions retained copyright.
Scholarly communication relies in part on the ability of research libraries to purchase published works. The marketplace for scholarly publishing has developed in ways that challenge libraries’ ability to acquire the works needed by their users. Commercialization of publishing in both the for-profit and nonprofit sectors has led to egregious price increases and unacceptable terms and conditions of use for some key research resources needed by the scholarly community. (Tufts University, n.d.)
Brad stated that the cost of subscriptions to journals is increasing rapidly but library budgets are falling. Journals make 36% to 39% profit. (This matches Bruce’s recollections of UK educational publishing, where 40% profit per title was expected.)
Side-bar: An attendee stated that Napier has a rather basic OA policy: it requires Napier people to deposit manuscripts within 3 months of acceptance, to comply with REF requirements. Napier’s policy does not mention gold OA. (See slide 4 for the different types of OA.)
These cost issues are related to publishers bundling journal subscriptions, i.e. for an institution to subscribe to a journal it wants, it may well need to subscribe to other journals it does not want. This has led to a movement for ‘breaking bad deals’. Another contributing factor is coalescence of academic publishing to around 5 big companies, leading to monopolies and enforced bundling.
Open Access is a reaction to these issues, but publishing still costs (servers, staff etc), leading to publishers/journals charging ‘article processing charges’. In effect, institutions are still paying large amounts to access journals – see below. The Gold form of OA tried to deal with such issues by making access free – but with embargos of a few months. However, funders are pushing for everything to be [immediately] open.
Further, APCs for journals such as Nature may be £8000 per article, according to Brad. He maintains that APCs also lead to inequities. That is, an established researcher with large budgets or personal resources may be able to afford APCs, while researchers who have yet to establish themselves (e.g. by publishing in prestigious journals) cannot afford to do so.
Another associated issue is that many journals rely on free labour for copy-editing, proofreading etc. Brad stated that this works for ‘small’ journals but doesn’t work for high-quality journals. Instead, these may well outsource their work to countries where labour costs less.
Asked about the impact of APCs and lack of funding on journal papers, Brad stated that this is hard to measure. However, as above, it could affect researchers’ reputations and careers if they cannot get into prestige journals.
Side-bar: libraries may not know the total costs of APCs, because they may be paid from individual grants or schools, rather than by the library. However, databases such as Scopus and OpenAlex enable. Using OpenAlex and other tools such as unsub, Brad calculates that Napier may be paying £333,000 per year, and that UNC may be paying between $2·6 million and $7·7 million. These costs are a further impetus to ‘break bad deals’.
Brad’s answer to these issues it to enable institutions to create their own journals. (See slides 20 to 22.) For the cost of one bundle, an institution could run 5 such journals – and (maybe) pay copy-editors etc. (Brad intends to undertake a survey about levels of free labour in academic publishing.)
There are questions of sustainability, i.e. what will happen if a key person moves on? To combat this, Brad suggests creation of ‘capacity centres’ – again using the funds saved from subscriptions and APCs. Part of the technical answer is to use XML publishing, or use tools such as Overleaf. Complete publishing tools such as Janeway or Open Journal Systems will also be part of the answer. In the UNC journals, Brad is making sure that all outputs are scrapable by Google and its ilk, because people may well use these rather than Library searches (e.g. Davies & Larkin, 2024). To ensure the new journals aren’t seen as ‘predatory’ or low-quality, Brad recommends collaborations such as the ARC Alliance.
Here is a story of how Brad has been able to do this (slide 15), and go for Diamond OA.
A further question was about referencing items in arXiv and other pre-print archives: how can readers be sure that articles aren’t referencing untrue or unsubstantiated material. Brad’s system will use tools based on DOIs to make sure that the final versions of ‘his’ papers do reference validated materials.
Overall, Bruce’s impression is that while the ‘war’ against overcharging, lack of open access to knowledge (and slave labour) may not have been won yet, this seems to be preparation for a winnable fight.
People with Napier email addresses can access Brad’s slides.
References
Davies, R., & Larkin, J. (2024). “Never have I ever used Google Scholar”: hypocrisy and authenticity in library and academic skills teaching – Rachel Davies | PPT. Slides from LILAC 2024. https://www.slideshare.net/slideshow/never-have-i-ever-used-google-scholar-hypocrisy-and-authenticity-in-library-and-academic-skills-teaching-rachel-davies/266750751.
Tufts University. (n.d.). Tufts Policies – Copyright, Open Access & Publishing Support. Retrieved June 14, 2024, from https://sites.tufts.edu/scholarlycommunication/tufts-policies.
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