Open Access? Some Sparks Fly at ALA
-- Library Journal, 7/6/2004
On June 27, the day after the New York Times ran a major story on the trend toward open access in STM publishing and the dismay of some librarians toward publisher Elsevier, a panel met at the American Library Association Annual Conference in Orlando--and some sparks flew. "The whole debate has been turned into David versus Goliath," declared Arie Jongejan, CEO Elsevier Science & Technology, the Goliath in this market. "Parties like the Wellcome Trust [a supporter of open access] are not talking about coexistence." Though he acknowledged "we don't know" what's next, Jongejan reminded the audience of the role publishers play in organizing and disseminating research. He offered some cautions on "pay to publish," as he characterized the business model behind open access. Among his points: the move to open access may impact quality, leading to a "bias to accept" articles, and that the movement may not be financially sustainable, notwithstanding high-profile, well-funded entrants like PloS Biology from the Public Library of Science (PLoS).
Jongejan was backed up by Anthony Durniak of IEEE, who warned, "Free open access runs the risk of destroying professional societies." Durniak questioned the difference between a membership with PLoS and a subscription to IEEE's Electronic Library, which provides a far greater complement of material. Andy Gass of PLoS responded, "Genuine open access articles are those whose prospective digital use is unlimited," noting, for example, that those writing for such journals "have no interest in suing copy shops." Gass also commented on self-archiving. (Elsevier recently announced it would allow authors who submit articles for publication in its STM journals to make the research freely available on their personal or institutional web sites.) While he encouraged such self-archiving, Gass noted that such repositories may not be fully searchable and thus inefficient. As to whether the "pay to publish" system would lower quality, "Precisely what we're trying to do is demonstrate it won't," said Gass.
