[OLPC library] Fwd: [bytesforall_readers] Knowledge for all

Thu Jun 19 19:58:04 EDT 2008

FYI. One of the best articles I have ever seen on the subject.

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Frederick FN Noronha <fredericknoronha at gmail.com>
Date: Wed, Jun 18, 2008 at 4:26 PM
Subject: [bytesforall_readers] Knowledge for all
To: bytesforall_readers at yahoogroups.com, Subbiah Arunachalam
<subbiah.arunachalam at gmail.com>

 Knowledge for all

By Nick Gill

In a backlash to the skyrocketing prices of academic journals,
academics worldwide are seeking ways to wrest knowledge back from the
corporations and open access to all. Following the lead of major
universities in Europe and USA, IMSc Chennai launched its open-access
repository last month

Last month the Institute of Mathematical Sciences, Chennai (IMSc)
launched its new open-access repository.[1] The repository provides
open access to research articles written by members of the Institute.
Anyone who has an Internet connection can access the server and can
read articles about physics, mathematics and theoretical computer
science written by members of IMSc.

Of course these articles are also available to anyone who subscribes
to the journals in which they are published. But herein is the key
point: journal prices have, in recent years, gone through the roof and
many journals are now so expensive that access is restricted to
universities with extremely deep pockets. For obvious reasons,
universities and scientific institutes in India, with the exception of
a few, cannot afford access.

The IMSc repository is part of a growing backlash from academics
around the world who are angry at this state of affairs. They are
seeking new and different ways to wrest back knowledge from the
corporations and to open up access for all.

The current situation

The established method for an academic to circulate her work is to
publish in a peer-reviewed journal of good repute. When an academic
sends in a paper for publication, an editor will send it out to one or
more independent and anonymous referees, chosen for their expert
knowledge in the field. The referees will write a confidential report
to the editor, on the basis of which the editor will take the decision
to publish or not to publish. In many areas of academia (including,
for instance, mathematics), the author, editor and referee all work
for free. They receive no remuneration from the publisher, a fact that
will be important later.

When a reader comes across an interesting article in a good journal
they know it has gone through this process and so they can have some
degree of trust in the veracity and quality of the work being
presented. It is here that the reputation of the journal is paramount
-- if a journal has a tendency to publish work which is later found to
be sub-standard then the peer-review process is undermined. Journals
of good standing build up their reputation by consistently publishing
high-quality work, sometimes over periods of more than a century.

In the early-'90s there were several such journals, independently
owned and publishing work in a vast array of areas. It was around this
time that several publishing houses started to grow significantly and
to buy up journals in particular fields. Perhaps the most celebrated
such publishing house is Reed-Elsevier. This giant of the field was
created in 1993 by the merger of Reed and Elsevier, two publishing
houses of more than a century's standing. Reed-Elsevier is now a FTSE
100 company with profit before tax of around Rs 8,000 crore in 2007.

Since the merger (and independently beforehand) Reed-Elsevier has
bought up academic journals from many different fields.[2] Their
health division, for instance, now publishes some 800 journals,
including the most prestigious of them all, The Lancet. Science
Direct, their online science platform, claims to provide access to
some 2,600 scientific journals. Once again, these include some of the
most prestigious journals in the field - Physics Letters B, Nuclear
Physics B, Advances in Mathematics, etc etc.

Unfortunately, Reed-Elsevier's new-found dominance of the market has
proved costly for students and academics around the world. A 2007
survey of mathematics journals found that over the last decade the
prices of many journals had increased by more than 10% per year[3].
Prices have reached a level of absurdity whereby many mathematics
journals cost more than Rs 50 per page (some have prices as high as Rs
300 per page). Reed-Elsevier is not alone in this practice Springer
also deserves a special mention) but, as the biggest scientific
publishing house, it has been instrumental in setting the trend.

And it is a trend with a hugely negative impact on academic research.
Consider the situation at IMSc, Chennai. The total annual budget for
IMSc is around Rs 13.3 crore, of which Rs 2.55 crore is spent
subscribing to academic journals. Around 55% of this Rs 2.55 crore is
paid to the two largest publishing companies - Reed-Elsevier and
Springer - for the privilege of receiving a selection of the journals
that they publish. In other words, more than 10% of the total budget
for IMSc (more than the entire budget for faculty salaries) is paid
directly to these two multi-national companies.

M Paul Pandian, the IMSc librarian, estimates that journal costs for
IMSc are increasing at an average of 8% per annum, far in excess of
inflation these past years. In the last year, this increase has been
mitigated by a weaker dollar, but in general the effect of this
increase is substantial. What is more, according to Pandian, price
increases appear to have no correlation with increased costs for the
publisher, or with better service.

Now IMSc is in the fortunate position of being one of the premier
scientific institutes in the country and, as such, it has been given a
budget to accommodate the commercial publishers. But, as Professor VS
Sunder of IMSc says, "barring a miniscule number of institutions (such
as IMSc and TIFR), the majority of universities in India (and even
some good research institutes, which do not happen to be quite so
fortunate in the funding they receive) simply cannot afford to access
many journals as they are priced today. This situation represents a
serious handicap for many Indian students and academics who wish to do
significant research."

Hope for the future

A research academic has two fundamental duties: to perform research
and to share that research with others. Sharing research has
traditionally been achieved through publishing, but many academics now
do not consider work to have been adequately shared if it has been
merely published in an over-priced journal. With this in mind, and
angry at the policies of Reed-Elsevier, Springer and their fellows
(such as John Wiley and Taylor & Francis), many academics are using
new, non-commercial methods to undermine the corporate publishing
houses.

Firstly institutions have started to set up open-access repositories
(like the one that has just been launched at IMSc, Chennai); this
ensures that their work is available to the public even if it ends up
being published in an expensive journal. At IMSc, the mathematics
group has gone one step further. They decided at an open meeting of
the group to make use of the repository mandatory; in other words all
members of the mathematics group are required to place a copy of all
of their papers on the repository. Such a requirement is, at this
stage, not all that common, but it is becoming more so.

In 2007, five leading European research institutions launched a
petition that called on the European Commission to establish a new
policy that would require all government-funded research to be made
available to the public shortly after publication.[4] Within weeks
more than 20,000 signatories had endorsed the petition and in January
2008 the European Research Council (ERC) announced that all ERC-funded
research was required to be put in an open-access repository within
six months of publication.[5] A month later, in a separate
development, Harvard University announced a similar policy for all
research published by academics at Harvard.[6] More universities and
institutes are expected to follow suit.

The proliferation of open-access journals is the second important
development in the move away from commercial academic publishing. As I
mentioned earlier, in mathematics at least, the peer-review part of
academic publishing is done for free by professional academics. What
is more, mathematics papers are submitted already type-set by the
author. Which means there is precious little left for the publisher to
do!

Recognising this fact groups of academics have started to set up new
journals which are free (or, at least, low-cost). They still provide
the same peer-review service and, indeed, a goodly number of the free
journals already have significant renown in the academic world. For
instance, the journal Geometry and Topology, a free mathematics
journal set up under the auspices of the University of Warwick, has
quickly become one of the premier journals in its field. The number of
such journals is increasing rapidly: the online Directory of Open
Access Journals now lists 3,315 journals.[7]

More than just setting up free journals, academics are actively
protesting corporate publishing policies. In 2006, in a move that sent
ripples throughout the mathematical community, the entire editorial
board of the prestigious journal Topology resigned in protest at
Reed-Elsevier's management of the journal since they first gained
control of it in 1994. In their resignation letter the board stated
that "we believe that the price, in combination with Elsevier's
policies for pricing mathematical journals more generally, has had a
significant and damaging effect on Topology's reputation in the
mathematical research community."[8] They go on to say that
Reed-Elsevier have undermined the legacy of a fine journal with their
policies. In 2007 the editorial board announced the launch of a new
low-cost journal, the Journal of Topology, which would not be
published by Reed-Elsevier.

Corporate publishing houses, though, are not going to sit by watching
their profits vanish in a mist of open-access.

In 2007 the scientific journal Nature reported that some of the big
houses (including Reed-Elsevier) had hired a PR expert to help them
counter the open-access revolution. The expert's advice: a smear
campaign to undermine the new trend. He advised the big houses to
focus on simple messages such as "public access equals government
censorship"; he also suggested that they attempt to equate traditional
publishing models with peer review.[9] Both of these messages are, of
course, factually incorrect, but this is hardly a hurdle for a PR
campaign.

Other, less duplicitous, methods are also available to the big houses.
On a visit to IMSc, an executive from Reed-Elsevier was challenged by
academics on the issue of pricing. He freely admitted that it is not
in Reed-Elsevier's interest to reduce prices (and therefore profits);
rather he said that Reed-Elevier were investigating methods of "adding
value" to their service. For instance, they were considering paying
referees for their work, thereby establishing a commercial transaction
in the heart of the peer-review process.

So the battle is on, and the consequences of who wins are important.
As Professor R Balasubramanian, Director of IMSc points out, "aspiring
scientists and academics in developing countries deserve a chance to
fulfil their potential. For this to happen the shift to open-access
publishing needs to be vigorously supported. It is vital that
academics and institutes take all possible steps to open up learning
and knowledge to all."

Sources
1. The IMSc open-access repository:
https://www.imsc.res.in/eprints/
2. Reed-Elsevier journals:
http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journal_
browse.cws_home
3. Mathematics journal pricing:
http://www.math.uni-bielefeld.de/~rehmann/BIB/
MS/Price_per_Volume.html
4. European petition on open access:
http://www.ec-petition.eu/index.php?p=index
5. Coverage of the ERC's open-access mandate:
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2008/01/oa-
mandate-from-european-research.html
6. Coverage of Harvard's open-access mandate:
http://www.fas.harvard.edu/home/news_and_
events/eleases/scholarly_02122008.html
7. The Directory of Open Access Journals:
http://www.doaj.org/
8. The Topology board letter:
http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/topology-letter.pdf
9. Nature article about smear campaign:
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v445/
n7126/ull/445347a.html

(Nick Gill is a mathematician currently based at the University of
Bristol, UK. He has a longstanding interest in grassroots movements
and alternative ways of organising.)

InfoChange News & Features, June 2008

--
Frederick FN Noronha * Independent Journalist
http://fn.goa-india.org * Phone +91-832-2409490
Cell +91-9970157402 (sometimes out of range)
http://www.youtube.com/user/fredericknoronha

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