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Editor, Protein Science, August 2, 2004
For more than a year there has been widespread discussion of a new publishing model for scientific papers, generally referred to as "open access." Although there are several definitions of this term, all revolve around two basic principles: that authors retain copyright of their own research papers and license to publishers only the rights required to distribute those papers; and that research papers are made freely available in publicly accessible databases such as PubMedCentral, immediately or soon after publication.
In an open access publishing model, there are no subscriptions that limit access to those who pay to read. The cost of publishing a journal online is instead supported by other means. The most discussed of these mechanisms is that direct payments of publication fees should be made by authors whose papers appear in the journal, using funds drawn from their grants. Several prominent funding agencies, including the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and The Wellcome Trust, have publicly stated their support for open access publishing and their willingness to allow their grants to be used to pay such publication fees.
Prominent scientists have been leading the effort to force NIH and other agencies to adopt the open access model as policy, and there is a considerable lobbying effort in Congress and in NIH Director Elias Zerhouni’s office to win their support.
The open access/"author-pays" proposal is a direct challenge to the business models employed by essentially all scientific journals. Many non-profit journals of scientific Societies, such as Protein Science, already levy some charges on authors, typically in the form of page fees and and color art charges, but they depend most heavily on a combination of subscription revenue, advertising income, and offprint sales to meet the costs of producing the journal. If subscription revenue were eliminated, the charges to authors would dramatically increase. The exact amount of the increase is difficult to predict but estimates of the total cost of a paper to publish range from $3000 to $5000.
Most journals, including Protein Science, have been moving toward earlier and earlier free access for non-subscribers and selling institutional site licenses to University and corporate libraries for immediate access for their patrons. Six- or 12-month release times for non-subscribers are very common now (and usage data indicate that the most intense period for accessing a paper is within the first six months of its appearance in the journal). In addition, many journals, including Protein Science, have arrangements to provide immediate access to scientists in developing countries at substantially reduced cost or no cost. It is my belief that few scientists who wish to read Protein Science are restricted in their access by the current publishing model.
Martin Frank, the Executive Director of the American Physiological Society, has spearheaded the formation of the DC Principles Coalition, representing over 50 non-profit publishers of scientific journals (http://www.dcprinciples.org). Protein Science is a charter signatory to the DC Principles. Dr. Frank, Peter Banks (publisher for the American Diabetes Association), and Lenne P. Miller (The Endocrine Society) wrote to Dr. Zerhouni on April 23 of this year expressing the concerns of the Coalition related to many of the issues involved with a mandated open access policy (see the Web site for the text). Dr. Zerhouni’s response in early July left the possibility of such a mandate open, so at Dr. Frank’s request I added my special concern to the letter of April 23 in a letter to Dr. Zerhouni. In brief, that concern is that Protein Science receives half its submissions from places other than the North American continent. Many authors outside the US and Canada have great difficulty meeting just the page and color charges and simply wouldn’t be able to publish in a journal which required full publication charges of $3000 or more. This would result in their publishing the work in national journals and actually make access to the work more difficult for their colleagues around the world.
Nicholas R. Cozzarelli polled authors of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences to determine how much they would be willing to pay in addition to current charges if PNAS were to institute an open access policy (Proc. Nat Acad. Sci. 101: 1111 [2004]). Only 6% said $1500 or more! Clearly scientists want their work to be available to anyone who needs it as soon as possible after it is published, but few seem willing to accept the additional financial burden required by the proposed radical change in the funding of publication costs.
Dr. Zerhouni has implied that he and Congress are receiving substantial lobbying efforts from patient advocacy groups, who assert that the current system impedes progress toward cures for their disease of interest. Last month, language in a report from the NIH Appopriations Committee appeared to be aimed at forcing the NIH to adopt the open access model and to fund it through their extramural research grant awards. The major advocacy organizations, such as the Cancer and Diabetes societies, vehemently deny supporting the movement and, in fact, are supporting the DC Principles. They suspect that the main sources of such lobbying are organizations devoted to very rare genetic diseases.
I urge Protein Society members to write to their Representatives and Senators and also to Dr. Zerhouni, to oppose any bills that would mandate a change in publication policies beyond those advocated by the DC Principles (and copy Dr. Frank with your thanks for his outstanding leadership on this issue at Mfrank{at}The-APS.org). The non-profit publishers and journals are the backbone of biomedical science, and while things in the publishing world are changing very fast due to electronic delivery, it is essential that the fiscal viability of the most valued journals and their publishers are not threatened by ill-conceived models that don’t take the real costs of publication into account or discriminate between scientists from rich and not-so-rich countries.
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