Richard,
I was going to add a comment to your Open and Shut? blog article, "Time to take the red pill", but I don't have a blogger account and I don't want to sign up just to comment. So I'm sending my comment to you.
You said: "Clearly there is a valuable potential role here for information professionals, should they choose to seize the opportunity. After all, what better way for disenchanted librarians to make themselves indispensable in a new and relevant way - not by playing their traditional role as gateways to information (putting themselves between the information and the user), but as facilitators able to help researchers and other data creators collaborate and share information. If this means abandoning some of their traditional skills for new ones then so be it. Now there's a topic for discussion at Internet Librarian International 2006!"
Yes, and if librarians want to learn how to do this sooner than late 2006, and in the context of (EPrints-based) institutional repositories, they can sign up to the new series of EPrints Training Courses.
The next one in the UK will be announced soon and will be around the turn of the year. Watch this space.
Or contact Alma Swan or Siobhain Dales for more information.
I wouldn't describe these courses as a 'red pill', but you can if you wish.
Steve Hitchcock
Wednesday, October 19, 2005
Monday, October 17, 2005
Time to take the red pill
Listening to presentations, and talking to delegates, at Internet Librarian International 2005 (ILI) last week, I was reminded of the film The Matrix. In the movie, the main character is offered an opportunity and a choice: he can take the red pill and see the truth; or he can take the blue pill and return, comfortably unaware, to the illusion that is the world of the Matrix, and life will simply carry on as before.
With the Internet continuing to challenge their traditional skills and roles, information professionals face a not dissimilar choice: embrace the reality of the new world they inhabit, or seek to deny it, clinging to a now outdated illusion of reality.
Disconcerting
For while information professionals initially welcomed the arrival of the Internet, many have become increasingly concerned that it poses a significant threat to their settled world.
This concern was all too evident at ILI, with both delegates and presenters clearly of the view that many traditional notions of information science are under attack from the Web. Long-standing classification systems, for instance, are threatened by newer notions of categorisation; hierarchical indexing is having to give way to the flat indexing of the Web; and taxonomies face growing pressure from new-fangled concepts like folksonomies.
For information professionals — who pride themselves on the many skills and techniques that they have developed over the years — this is both disorientating and distressful. If that were not enough, the Web challenges the very notion that information intermediaries have a role to play any more in a networked world.
None of these anxieties are new, of course, but the depth and intensity of the pain information professionals are experiencing was all too palpable at the London event. Certainly there was a desperate need to appear relevant. As one librarian plaintively put it, "We need to find ways to put ourselves back between the information and the user."
That said, some information professionals — generally the younger ones — are embracing the new world. Michael Stephens, a special projects librarian at St. Joseph County Public Library in Indiana, for instance, gave a presentation in which he talked with great enthusiasm about how libraries can exploit wikis, instant messaging, and podcasts to enhance the services they provide for patrons.
Stephens also bravely volunteered to defend folksonomies from the caustic tongue of UKOLN's Brian Kelly who, amongst other things, publicly critiqued Stephen's "inadequate" use of tags when labelling photographs of his dog Jake on the social networking site Flickr. Kelly's aim was to demonstrate that folksonomies are a pale shadow of traditional classification, even in the hands of a trained librarian.
Grumpy old men
All in all, it felt at times as if ILI was awash with grumpy old men muttering bad-temperedly about the good old days, and the shocking ignorance of the young.
This attitude was best exemplified in the keynote given by information industry personality Stephen Arnold. In a paper entitled Relevance and the Future of Search, Arnold complained that the traditional view of relevance in online searching was under siege on the Web.
Specifically, information science's notion of precision and recall (where precision measures how well retrieved documents meet the needs of the user, and recall measures how many of the relevant documents were actually retrieved) was being destroyed by the practises of web search engines, particularly Google.
This state of affairs, he argued, is being driven by the desire to monetise the Web, not least through Google's pioneering of advertising-driven search models. When a user does a search on Google, for instance, the resulting pages of "organic results" (i.e. the product of Google's search algorithm) are placed alongside links paid for by advertisers. Unfortunately, said Arnold, over 90% of users do not differentiate between the paid listings and organic results.
Entirely alien
The situation is aggravated, he added, because people don’t generally click through many pages of search results. This encourages owners of web sites to exploit Google's search algorithms in order to push links to their sites higher up Google's search page. Indeed, said Arnold, a large and powerful Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) industry has been created precisely in order to sell services aimed at "fixing" search results on Google and the other main search engines. As a consequence, he complained, relevance on the Web is now a concept entirely alien to anything understood by information professionals.
As the market leader, and primary innovator, it was Google that attracted the full force of Arnold's ire. “Indexing is not what you learned in library school," he said. "It’s what Google wants. Effectively, SEO is the new indexing model."
In other words, the notions of comprehensiveness and objectivity long promulgated by information professionals as central to online searching have given way to a process whose raison d’être is to falsify search outcomes to satisfy commercial interests. "The SEO market has grown up to take advantage of this new idea of relevance," said Arnold.
To underline the extent to which traditional notions of relevance have been undermined, Arnold cited research done by the UK-based Internet magazine .net, which found only a 3% overlap in search results listed on Google, Yahoo and AskJeeves when the same search term was input. "When is a hit relevant?" Arnold asked rhetorically. "Where is the boundary between SEO and ‘real indexing?'"
Worse, added Arnold, Google's dominance is growing all the time. Whereas in the previous quarter it had had a 51% share of weblog referrals in the US, for instance, this figure is now 62%. (blog referral logs collect information on who visits a website and how they arrived there).
Intellectual dishonesty
After his presentation I asked Arnold why he objected to these developments. "It's intellectually dishonest," he replied. "These shortcuts trivialise indexing." Moreover, he added, it is dangerous. "If a medical term is misused, it could affect a person's life if the appropriate article is not found. Likewise, if a company doesn’t find the right patent document it could cost that company a lot of money. So I really disapprove.”
But is it really likely that a corporate lawyer or a doctor would rely on Google for an exhaustive patent or medical search? And are information consumers really as naïve or stupid as Arnold implies?
As Arnold himself acknowledged, most users probably don’t care if their search results are paid-for ad links, or the product of Google's algorithm. If someone is looking for a restaurant, for instance, what they want to find is a good-enough restaurant, not a long list of every possible eating house available, categorised by thirty different criteria, and listed by the number of available tables! After all, most of the sponsored links turn up on pages where users are looking for products or services. In this case Google is simply acting like a yellow pages directory.
Moreover, even if it is true that web users don’t always understand the way search engines work, they are learning all the time. In fact, as a general rule, users know as much as they need to know, and this is usually more than information professionals give them credit for knowing!
All in all, it was hard not to conclude that Arnold reflects the grumpy old man school of information science. As he himself admitted. "I'm old. I'm dying out."
For all that, while deprecating SEO techniques, Arnold was happy enough to offer the audience five "cheats" they could use in order to ensure their web sites received higher rankings on Google.
He also included in his presentation what amounted to a sponsored link. After explaining his five cheats, he told the audience they could find another five in his eBook on Google (The Google Legacy, How Google's Internet Search is Transforming Application Software), and invited them to buy it ($180 to you Madam!)
Essentially, Arnold's view seemed to be that much is awry on the Web, but there is little to be done but accept it.
They're watching us!
But Arnold had a second point to make. While many still view Google as a search company, he argued, it was now far more than that. Currently offering 56 different services, he explained, Google is in the process of creating a completely new operating system — one moreover up to 40 times faster than anything that IBM or HP could offer, and based on anything between 155,000 to 165,000 servers.
This too Arnold clearly deprecated, explaining that this "Googleplex" (a term he has appropriated from the name of Google's Mountain View headquarters) now encircles the world like the carapace of a tortoise — making Google the new AT&T; an AT&T, moreover, not subject to any regulation. Clearly in likening the Googleplex to a new operating system Arnold was also portraying Google as the new Microsoft.
At this stage Arnold's presentation began to sound more like a conspiracy theory than factual exposition. Confiding to the audience that Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin had refused to speak to him once they realised his was a critical rather than adulatory voice, and referring to a series of patent thickets that Google has built around its technology (patents which his lawyer had, for some inexplicable reason, advised Arnold not to put up on the Web), he went on to complain that he had never provided his address to Google, yet the company nevertheless knew it. "Google knows where I live," he said dramatically. "I didn’t tell them. They are watching me!"
And for those librarians still harbouring any illusion that by scanning books and making them available on the Web Google represents a force for good, Arnold depicted Google Print as a smokescreen. “The scanning of books is a red herring," he said, adding that Google was like a magician into whose hand a quarter suddenly appears as if from nowhere. "Everyone looks at the quarter, not the magician.”
Fortunately, Arnold's presentational mode appeared to owe more to his predilection for drama — and a canny sense of how to market a new book — than to paranoia. It also had moments of humour. Fifteen minutes into his presentation, we were all evacuated after the hotel fire alarm was set off, giving Arnold the opportunity to yell: "You see — I'm so hot! This is what I use in bars to get women."
Later, when we were allowed to re-enter the hotel to hear the rest of Arnold's presentation, the conference organiser announced that the alarm had been triggered by an old man smoking a cigar in his bed. "And that old man," promptly quipped Arnold, "is none other Gregorovich Brin, Sergey's uncle."
Not only is Google watching Arnold, it seems, but its founders have deployed their extended family to silence him!
Real or perceived threat?
But how seriously should we take Arnold's prognostications? He is, after all, not the only commentator to depict Google as the new Microsoft, or AT&T, and thus a significant monopoly threat.
Interestingly, most now view Microsoft as somewhat grey at the temples. This more relaxed view, moreover, is a consequence not of the antitrust case against the company — after all, Judge Jackson's order to break up Microsoft was subsequently overturned by a federal court — but from the growth of new competitors like Google, and the rise of the open source software movement.
That said, Arnold is right to deprecate the growing commercialisation of the Internet, and now that Google is a public company we can surely expect its "do no evil" ethos to come under increasing pressure from shareholders keen to see the return on their investment maximised.
But leaving aside Arnold's dire predictions of an all-seeing, all powerful Googleplex encircling the world and pulling everyone into its monopolistic grasp, it is certainly worth asking how much of a monopoly threat Google represents to web searching. The answer seems to be: "Not as much of a threat as Arnold implies". Many, for instance, believe that large generic search engines are set to see their dominance diminish rather than increase.
Commenting in an EcommerceTimes article earlier this year, the associate editor of SearchEngineWatch.com Chris Sherman argued that the bigger the Web grows, the less useful generic search engines become. As a consequence, he said, "We're seeing a real rise in vertical search engines, which are subject-specific or task-specific — shopping, travel and so on." He added: "We're going to see more of that going forward as people become more sophisticated and as these specialised search engines become better at what they do."
Neither is Sherman a lone voice. Commenting in the same article Gartner Group's Rita Knox said: "People still need information on the Internet, but a more generic search capability like Google is going to be less useful."
Self-fulfilling prophecy
Time will tell. But the fundamental problem with Arnold's dark view of the future is that conspiracy theories tend to have a debilitating effect on our ability to act. We become less inclined to ward off the object of our fear if we believe it to be inevitable, creating a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy.
Arnold is not the only one to be disenchanted with the growing commercialisation of the Web. Nor is he the only one to deplore Google's role in this. In a recent paper called The Commercial Search Engine Industry and Alternatives to the Oligopoly, for instance, Bettina Fabos, from the Media Research Center at Budapest University of Technology and Economics, makes very similar points. Her conclusion, however, is very different.
Rather than portraying the situation as inevitable, and advising us to get over it, she concludes: "[T]o realize the web’s educational and non-commercial potential, educators and librarians need to move away from promoting individual skills (advanced searching techniques, web page evaluation skills) as a way to cope with excessive commercialism" and instead "address the increasing difficulties to locate content that is not commercial, and the misleading motives of the commercial, publicly-traded internet navigation tools, and the constant efforts among for-profit enterprise to bend the internet toward their ends."
In other words, rather than rushing around like Private Frazer in the BBC Sitcom Dad's Army shouting "We're all doomed", information professionals should adopt a more positive approach. Why not take the initiative and turn the technology in a more desirable direction? Why not fill the web with non-commercial content, and then build non-commercial tools to help users locate that content?
Indeed, says Fabos, some are already at work doing just this. She commends, for instance, the activities of initiatives like the Internet Scout Project, which enables organisations to share knowledge and resources via the Web by putting their collections online; she commends Merlot, the free and open resource providing links to online learning materials; and she commends tools like iVia, and Data Fountains, designed to allow web users discover and describe Internet resources about a particular topic.
Open Access
As it turns out, one of the more organised and advanced initiatives with the potential to help create a non-commercial web is the open access (OA) movement — a movement, in fact, in which librarians have always played a very active role.
For while the movement's original impetus was solely to liberate scholarly peer-reviewed articles from behind the subscription firewalls imposed by commercial publishers, there are grounds for suggesting it could develop into something grander, in both scope and scale. How come?
As scholarly publishers have consistently and obdurately refused to cooperate with the OA movement in its attempts to make scientific papers freely available on the Web, the emphasis of the movement has over time shifted from trying to persuade publishers to remove the toll barriers, to encouraging researchers to do it themselves by self-archiving their published papers, either in institutional repositories (IRs), or in subject-specific archives like the arXiv preprints repository and PubMed Central, the US National Institutes of Health free digital archive of biomedical and life sciences papers.
And to assist researches do this, the OA movement has created an impressive collection of self-archiving tools, including archival software like Southampton University's Eprints, and MIT's DSpace; a standardised protocol to enable repositories interoperate (the Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting , or OAI-PMH); and OAI-compliant search engines like Michigan University's OAIster, which harvest records from multiple OAI-compliant archives to create a single virtual archive. In this way hundreds of different repositories can be cross-searched using a single search interface — much like Google searches the Web. Essentially a vertical search engine, OAIster currently aggregates records from over 500 institutions.
But while the initial purpose of the Open Archives Initiative (OAI) was limited to scholarly papers, it has become apparent that its aims and its technology could have wider potential. As the OAI FAQ puts it, OA advocates came to realise that "the concepts in the OAI interoperability framework — exposing multiple forms of metadata through a harvesting protocol — had applications beyond the E-Print community." For this reason, the FAQ adds "the OAI has adopted a mission statement with broader application: opening up access to a range of digital materials."
How might this work? Two years ago Clifford Lynch published a paper in which he argued that there is no reason why an institutional repository could not contain "the intellectual works of faculty and students — both research and teaching materials — along with documentation of the activities of the institution". It could also contain, he said: "experimental and observational data captured by members of the institution that support their scholarly activities."
Indeed, Lynch added, repositories in higher educational establishments could also link with other organisations in order to extend and broaden what they offer. "[U]niversity institutional repositories have some very interesting and unexplored extensions to what we might think of as community or public repositories; this may in fact be another case of a concept developed within higher education moving more broadly into our society. Public libraries might join forces with local government, local historical societies, local museums and archives, and members of their local communities to establish community repositories. Public broadcasting might also have a role here."
Need not end there
And it need not end there. Why not use the OAI technology as the framework for an alternative non-commercial web; one encompassing as much as is deemed sufficiently valuable that it could benefit from being accessible outside the confines, constraints and biases of the commercial web. If users wanted to find a restaurant they could go to Google; but if they want to do a medical search then the non-commercial web would be a better choice. Data searchable within this alternative web would no doubt need to meet certain standards — in terms, for instance, of provenance, and depth and range of metadata etc.
Self-archiving purists discourage such talk, fearful that it may distract the movement from the priority of "freeing the refereed literature". But the reality is that as research funders like the Wellcome Trust and Research Councils UK begin to mandate researchers to self-archive their research papers, so the number of institutional repositories is growing. And once a university or research organisation has an institutional repository there is an inescapable logic for that repository to develop in the kind of directions proposed by Lynch.
It may be, of course, that in the end OAI technology is not appropriate for this job. It may also be wise not to distract the OA movement from its primary aim. But it is perhaps now only a matter of time before some such phenomenon develops. Initiatives like Google Print and Google Scholar have served to highlight growing concerns at the way commercial organisations are now calling all the shots in the development of the Web. And it is these concerns that are encouraging more and people to think in terms of non-commercial alternatives.
What we are beginning to see, says Fabos, is a "small but growing countervailing force to the commercialisation of 'the universe of knowledge.'" What will drive these efforts, she adds "is the understanding that, in our commercial system, educators, librarians and citizens interested in nurturing a public sphere must work together to control the destiny of the internet — or somebody else will."
Clearly there is a valuable potential role here for information professionals, should they choose to seize the opportunity. After all, what better way for disenchanted librarians to make themselves indispensable in a new and relevant way — not by playing their traditional role as gateways to information (putting themselves between the information and the user), but as facilitators able to help researchers and other data creators collaborate and share information. If this means abandoning some of their traditional skills for new ones then so be it. Now there's a topic for discussion at Internet Librarian International 2006!
The fact is, it's time for information professionals to stop bemoaning the loss of some perceived golden age, and take control of the Web. In short, it's time to reach for the red pill!
A comment has been made on this article.
With the Internet continuing to challenge their traditional skills and roles, information professionals face a not dissimilar choice: embrace the reality of the new world they inhabit, or seek to deny it, clinging to a now outdated illusion of reality.
Disconcerting
For while information professionals initially welcomed the arrival of the Internet, many have become increasingly concerned that it poses a significant threat to their settled world.
This concern was all too evident at ILI, with both delegates and presenters clearly of the view that many traditional notions of information science are under attack from the Web. Long-standing classification systems, for instance, are threatened by newer notions of categorisation; hierarchical indexing is having to give way to the flat indexing of the Web; and taxonomies face growing pressure from new-fangled concepts like folksonomies.
For information professionals — who pride themselves on the many skills and techniques that they have developed over the years — this is both disorientating and distressful. If that were not enough, the Web challenges the very notion that information intermediaries have a role to play any more in a networked world.
None of these anxieties are new, of course, but the depth and intensity of the pain information professionals are experiencing was all too palpable at the London event. Certainly there was a desperate need to appear relevant. As one librarian plaintively put it, "We need to find ways to put ourselves back between the information and the user."
That said, some information professionals — generally the younger ones — are embracing the new world. Michael Stephens, a special projects librarian at St. Joseph County Public Library in Indiana, for instance, gave a presentation in which he talked with great enthusiasm about how libraries can exploit wikis, instant messaging, and podcasts to enhance the services they provide for patrons.
Stephens also bravely volunteered to defend folksonomies from the caustic tongue of UKOLN's Brian Kelly who, amongst other things, publicly critiqued Stephen's "inadequate" use of tags when labelling photographs of his dog Jake on the social networking site Flickr. Kelly's aim was to demonstrate that folksonomies are a pale shadow of traditional classification, even in the hands of a trained librarian.
Grumpy old men
All in all, it felt at times as if ILI was awash with grumpy old men muttering bad-temperedly about the good old days, and the shocking ignorance of the young.
This attitude was best exemplified in the keynote given by information industry personality Stephen Arnold. In a paper entitled Relevance and the Future of Search, Arnold complained that the traditional view of relevance in online searching was under siege on the Web.
Specifically, information science's notion of precision and recall (where precision measures how well retrieved documents meet the needs of the user, and recall measures how many of the relevant documents were actually retrieved) was being destroyed by the practises of web search engines, particularly Google.
This state of affairs, he argued, is being driven by the desire to monetise the Web, not least through Google's pioneering of advertising-driven search models. When a user does a search on Google, for instance, the resulting pages of "organic results" (i.e. the product of Google's search algorithm) are placed alongside links paid for by advertisers. Unfortunately, said Arnold, over 90% of users do not differentiate between the paid listings and organic results.
Entirely alien
The situation is aggravated, he added, because people don’t generally click through many pages of search results. This encourages owners of web sites to exploit Google's search algorithms in order to push links to their sites higher up Google's search page. Indeed, said Arnold, a large and powerful Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) industry has been created precisely in order to sell services aimed at "fixing" search results on Google and the other main search engines. As a consequence, he complained, relevance on the Web is now a concept entirely alien to anything understood by information professionals.
As the market leader, and primary innovator, it was Google that attracted the full force of Arnold's ire. “Indexing is not what you learned in library school," he said. "It’s what Google wants. Effectively, SEO is the new indexing model."
In other words, the notions of comprehensiveness and objectivity long promulgated by information professionals as central to online searching have given way to a process whose raison d’être is to falsify search outcomes to satisfy commercial interests. "The SEO market has grown up to take advantage of this new idea of relevance," said Arnold.
To underline the extent to which traditional notions of relevance have been undermined, Arnold cited research done by the UK-based Internet magazine .net, which found only a 3% overlap in search results listed on Google, Yahoo and AskJeeves when the same search term was input. "When is a hit relevant?" Arnold asked rhetorically. "Where is the boundary between SEO and ‘real indexing?'"
Worse, added Arnold, Google's dominance is growing all the time. Whereas in the previous quarter it had had a 51% share of weblog referrals in the US, for instance, this figure is now 62%. (blog referral logs collect information on who visits a website and how they arrived there).
Intellectual dishonesty
After his presentation I asked Arnold why he objected to these developments. "It's intellectually dishonest," he replied. "These shortcuts trivialise indexing." Moreover, he added, it is dangerous. "If a medical term is misused, it could affect a person's life if the appropriate article is not found. Likewise, if a company doesn’t find the right patent document it could cost that company a lot of money. So I really disapprove.”
But is it really likely that a corporate lawyer or a doctor would rely on Google for an exhaustive patent or medical search? And are information consumers really as naïve or stupid as Arnold implies?
As Arnold himself acknowledged, most users probably don’t care if their search results are paid-for ad links, or the product of Google's algorithm. If someone is looking for a restaurant, for instance, what they want to find is a good-enough restaurant, not a long list of every possible eating house available, categorised by thirty different criteria, and listed by the number of available tables! After all, most of the sponsored links turn up on pages where users are looking for products or services. In this case Google is simply acting like a yellow pages directory.
Moreover, even if it is true that web users don’t always understand the way search engines work, they are learning all the time. In fact, as a general rule, users know as much as they need to know, and this is usually more than information professionals give them credit for knowing!
All in all, it was hard not to conclude that Arnold reflects the grumpy old man school of information science. As he himself admitted. "I'm old. I'm dying out."
For all that, while deprecating SEO techniques, Arnold was happy enough to offer the audience five "cheats" they could use in order to ensure their web sites received higher rankings on Google.
He also included in his presentation what amounted to a sponsored link. After explaining his five cheats, he told the audience they could find another five in his eBook on Google (The Google Legacy, How Google's Internet Search is Transforming Application Software), and invited them to buy it ($180 to you Madam!)
Essentially, Arnold's view seemed to be that much is awry on the Web, but there is little to be done but accept it.
They're watching us!
But Arnold had a second point to make. While many still view Google as a search company, he argued, it was now far more than that. Currently offering 56 different services, he explained, Google is in the process of creating a completely new operating system — one moreover up to 40 times faster than anything that IBM or HP could offer, and based on anything between 155,000 to 165,000 servers.
This too Arnold clearly deprecated, explaining that this "Googleplex" (a term he has appropriated from the name of Google's Mountain View headquarters) now encircles the world like the carapace of a tortoise — making Google the new AT&T; an AT&T, moreover, not subject to any regulation. Clearly in likening the Googleplex to a new operating system Arnold was also portraying Google as the new Microsoft.
At this stage Arnold's presentation began to sound more like a conspiracy theory than factual exposition. Confiding to the audience that Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin had refused to speak to him once they realised his was a critical rather than adulatory voice, and referring to a series of patent thickets that Google has built around its technology (patents which his lawyer had, for some inexplicable reason, advised Arnold not to put up on the Web), he went on to complain that he had never provided his address to Google, yet the company nevertheless knew it. "Google knows where I live," he said dramatically. "I didn’t tell them. They are watching me!"
And for those librarians still harbouring any illusion that by scanning books and making them available on the Web Google represents a force for good, Arnold depicted Google Print as a smokescreen. “The scanning of books is a red herring," he said, adding that Google was like a magician into whose hand a quarter suddenly appears as if from nowhere. "Everyone looks at the quarter, not the magician.”
Fortunately, Arnold's presentational mode appeared to owe more to his predilection for drama — and a canny sense of how to market a new book — than to paranoia. It also had moments of humour. Fifteen minutes into his presentation, we were all evacuated after the hotel fire alarm was set off, giving Arnold the opportunity to yell: "You see — I'm so hot! This is what I use in bars to get women."
Later, when we were allowed to re-enter the hotel to hear the rest of Arnold's presentation, the conference organiser announced that the alarm had been triggered by an old man smoking a cigar in his bed. "And that old man," promptly quipped Arnold, "is none other Gregorovich Brin, Sergey's uncle."
Not only is Google watching Arnold, it seems, but its founders have deployed their extended family to silence him!
Real or perceived threat?
But how seriously should we take Arnold's prognostications? He is, after all, not the only commentator to depict Google as the new Microsoft, or AT&T, and thus a significant monopoly threat.
Interestingly, most now view Microsoft as somewhat grey at the temples. This more relaxed view, moreover, is a consequence not of the antitrust case against the company — after all, Judge Jackson's order to break up Microsoft was subsequently overturned by a federal court — but from the growth of new competitors like Google, and the rise of the open source software movement.
That said, Arnold is right to deprecate the growing commercialisation of the Internet, and now that Google is a public company we can surely expect its "do no evil" ethos to come under increasing pressure from shareholders keen to see the return on their investment maximised.
But leaving aside Arnold's dire predictions of an all-seeing, all powerful Googleplex encircling the world and pulling everyone into its monopolistic grasp, it is certainly worth asking how much of a monopoly threat Google represents to web searching. The answer seems to be: "Not as much of a threat as Arnold implies". Many, for instance, believe that large generic search engines are set to see their dominance diminish rather than increase.
Commenting in an EcommerceTimes article earlier this year, the associate editor of SearchEngineWatch.com Chris Sherman argued that the bigger the Web grows, the less useful generic search engines become. As a consequence, he said, "We're seeing a real rise in vertical search engines, which are subject-specific or task-specific — shopping, travel and so on." He added: "We're going to see more of that going forward as people become more sophisticated and as these specialised search engines become better at what they do."
Neither is Sherman a lone voice. Commenting in the same article Gartner Group's Rita Knox said: "People still need information on the Internet, but a more generic search capability like Google is going to be less useful."
Self-fulfilling prophecy
Time will tell. But the fundamental problem with Arnold's dark view of the future is that conspiracy theories tend to have a debilitating effect on our ability to act. We become less inclined to ward off the object of our fear if we believe it to be inevitable, creating a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy.
Arnold is not the only one to be disenchanted with the growing commercialisation of the Web. Nor is he the only one to deplore Google's role in this. In a recent paper called The Commercial Search Engine Industry and Alternatives to the Oligopoly, for instance, Bettina Fabos, from the Media Research Center at Budapest University of Technology and Economics, makes very similar points. Her conclusion, however, is very different.
Rather than portraying the situation as inevitable, and advising us to get over it, she concludes: "[T]o realize the web’s educational and non-commercial potential, educators and librarians need to move away from promoting individual skills (advanced searching techniques, web page evaluation skills) as a way to cope with excessive commercialism" and instead "address the increasing difficulties to locate content that is not commercial, and the misleading motives of the commercial, publicly-traded internet navigation tools, and the constant efforts among for-profit enterprise to bend the internet toward their ends."
In other words, rather than rushing around like Private Frazer in the BBC Sitcom Dad's Army shouting "We're all doomed", information professionals should adopt a more positive approach. Why not take the initiative and turn the technology in a more desirable direction? Why not fill the web with non-commercial content, and then build non-commercial tools to help users locate that content?
Indeed, says Fabos, some are already at work doing just this. She commends, for instance, the activities of initiatives like the Internet Scout Project, which enables organisations to share knowledge and resources via the Web by putting their collections online; she commends Merlot, the free and open resource providing links to online learning materials; and she commends tools like iVia, and Data Fountains, designed to allow web users discover and describe Internet resources about a particular topic.
Open Access
As it turns out, one of the more organised and advanced initiatives with the potential to help create a non-commercial web is the open access (OA) movement — a movement, in fact, in which librarians have always played a very active role.
For while the movement's original impetus was solely to liberate scholarly peer-reviewed articles from behind the subscription firewalls imposed by commercial publishers, there are grounds for suggesting it could develop into something grander, in both scope and scale. How come?
As scholarly publishers have consistently and obdurately refused to cooperate with the OA movement in its attempts to make scientific papers freely available on the Web, the emphasis of the movement has over time shifted from trying to persuade publishers to remove the toll barriers, to encouraging researchers to do it themselves by self-archiving their published papers, either in institutional repositories (IRs), or in subject-specific archives like the arXiv preprints repository and PubMed Central, the US National Institutes of Health free digital archive of biomedical and life sciences papers.
And to assist researches do this, the OA movement has created an impressive collection of self-archiving tools, including archival software like Southampton University's Eprints, and MIT's DSpace; a standardised protocol to enable repositories interoperate (the Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting , or OAI-PMH); and OAI-compliant search engines like Michigan University's OAIster, which harvest records from multiple OAI-compliant archives to create a single virtual archive. In this way hundreds of different repositories can be cross-searched using a single search interface — much like Google searches the Web. Essentially a vertical search engine, OAIster currently aggregates records from over 500 institutions.
But while the initial purpose of the Open Archives Initiative (OAI) was limited to scholarly papers, it has become apparent that its aims and its technology could have wider potential. As the OAI FAQ puts it, OA advocates came to realise that "the concepts in the OAI interoperability framework — exposing multiple forms of metadata through a harvesting protocol — had applications beyond the E-Print community." For this reason, the FAQ adds "the OAI has adopted a mission statement with broader application: opening up access to a range of digital materials."
How might this work? Two years ago Clifford Lynch published a paper in which he argued that there is no reason why an institutional repository could not contain "the intellectual works of faculty and students — both research and teaching materials — along with documentation of the activities of the institution". It could also contain, he said: "experimental and observational data captured by members of the institution that support their scholarly activities."
Indeed, Lynch added, repositories in higher educational establishments could also link with other organisations in order to extend and broaden what they offer. "[U]niversity institutional repositories have some very interesting and unexplored extensions to what we might think of as community or public repositories; this may in fact be another case of a concept developed within higher education moving more broadly into our society. Public libraries might join forces with local government, local historical societies, local museums and archives, and members of their local communities to establish community repositories. Public broadcasting might also have a role here."
Need not end there
And it need not end there. Why not use the OAI technology as the framework for an alternative non-commercial web; one encompassing as much as is deemed sufficiently valuable that it could benefit from being accessible outside the confines, constraints and biases of the commercial web. If users wanted to find a restaurant they could go to Google; but if they want to do a medical search then the non-commercial web would be a better choice. Data searchable within this alternative web would no doubt need to meet certain standards — in terms, for instance, of provenance, and depth and range of metadata etc.
Self-archiving purists discourage such talk, fearful that it may distract the movement from the priority of "freeing the refereed literature". But the reality is that as research funders like the Wellcome Trust and Research Councils UK begin to mandate researchers to self-archive their research papers, so the number of institutional repositories is growing. And once a university or research organisation has an institutional repository there is an inescapable logic for that repository to develop in the kind of directions proposed by Lynch.
It may be, of course, that in the end OAI technology is not appropriate for this job. It may also be wise not to distract the OA movement from its primary aim. But it is perhaps now only a matter of time before some such phenomenon develops. Initiatives like Google Print and Google Scholar have served to highlight growing concerns at the way commercial organisations are now calling all the shots in the development of the Web. And it is these concerns that are encouraging more and people to think in terms of non-commercial alternatives.
What we are beginning to see, says Fabos, is a "small but growing countervailing force to the commercialisation of 'the universe of knowledge.'" What will drive these efforts, she adds "is the understanding that, in our commercial system, educators, librarians and citizens interested in nurturing a public sphere must work together to control the destiny of the internet — or somebody else will."
Clearly there is a valuable potential role here for information professionals, should they choose to seize the opportunity. After all, what better way for disenchanted librarians to make themselves indispensable in a new and relevant way — not by playing their traditional role as gateways to information (putting themselves between the information and the user), but as facilitators able to help researchers and other data creators collaborate and share information. If this means abandoning some of their traditional skills for new ones then so be it. Now there's a topic for discussion at Internet Librarian International 2006!
The fact is, it's time for information professionals to stop bemoaning the loss of some perceived golden age, and take control of the Web. In short, it's time to reach for the red pill!
A comment has been made on this article.
Tuesday, October 04, 2005
China Mulls Open Access
As Research Councils UK (RCUK) continues to deliberate over its policy on public access to scholarly papers (a final announcement has been delayed until November), the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) has also begun mulling over the question of open access (OA).
"According to my contact in China," says Jan Velterop, director of open access at the STM journal publisher Springer, "the Chinese Academy of Sciences is now in the process of organising a group of prominent scientists to issue an open call to Chinese funding agencies, and research and educational institutes, to promote open access."
To this end, adds Velterop, the Academy is currently working on a draft document for scientists to review. It is also in the early stages of developing institutional operating policy guidelines for CAS to enable it to support open access.
These developments come in the wake of an international meeting held at the Beijing-based CAS in June. Since then, staff at the Academy's Library — led by Dr Xiaolin Zhang — have been considering various ways of ensuring that Chinese researchers deposit copies of their research reports and journal articles in academic repositories.
For the moment, says Wu Yishan, of the Institute of Scientific & Technical Information of China (ISTIC), there is nothing specific on the table. "So far I haven't seen any concrete measure, let alone mandate, to promote open access in China," he says, "Only a lot of calling."
Many, however, are convinced that it is only a matter of time now. One of those attending the Beijing meeting was Frederick Friend, a consultant who works with the UK's Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) and the Open Society Initiative (OSI). It was quite clear, he says, that there was already a strong commitment to open access in China prior to the meeting. "Particularly striking were the words of Professor Qiheng Hu [Vice Chair of the Chinese Association for Science and Technology], who in her keynote address referred to open access as 'a necessity to promote capacity building in science and technology'"
Nevertheless, says open-access advocate Stevan Harnad, a lot of lobbying remains to be done, "both of the high-level administrators and of the researchers." It also remains unclear what kind of policy might be implemented.
The hope, adds Harnad, is that China will opt for a similar (but improved) model to that currently being considered by RCUK, rather than emulate the policy introduced in May by the US National Institutes of Health. "If China copies the flawed embargoed-access 'recommendation' along the lines of the NIH, then it will be setting open access back instead of moving it forward," says Harnad.
The NIH policy was watered down following aggressive lobbying by STM publishers. Thus where the initial proposal had been to mandate NIH-funded researchers to make their papers available six months after publication, the final wording only "strongly encourages" grantees to authorise public release of their papers "as soon as possible" after publication, and at least within 12 months of publication.
What open-access advocates would like to see, therefore, is for Chinese researchers to be mandated to self-archive their papers immediately on publication, with no embargoed period. Open-access publishers like BioMed Central and the Public Library of Science would also clearly like Chinese scientists to be told to prefer open-access journals over traditional subscription journals when they publish their papers.
Since China is watching the UK closely, says Harnad, much will depend on the final RCUK policy. "If it retains the [currently proposed] two fatal opt-out loopholes ('self-archiving is mandated only if/when your publisher allows and only if your institution already has a repository') then it too is yet another opportunity lost."
He adds, however: "I am still optimistic that the Brits will manage to sort it out — and that China will emulate a loophole-free RCUK policy. Then the other nations can follow the green lamps of Britain and China."
If China does embrace open access, says Friend, the potential benefits to research are considerable. "Open access to the vast quantity of research undertaken in China will benefit not only the people of China in their economic and social development, but also communities across the world, particularly if open access to research reports from other countries continues to grow."
Regardless of any official policy, says BioMed Central's Matthew Cockerill, Chinese researchers are already embracing OA. "Until now, China's best researchers have tended to publish in foreign subscription-only journals, which are often inaccessible to Chinese researchers. Open access has the potential to rectify this situation, and Chinese researchers are recognising this. BioMed Central has seen a rapidly increasing number of submissions from China this year, and also recently signed up its first independent open-access journals based in China."
This is not surprising, says Key Perspective's Alma Swan, who gave a presentation at the Beijing meeting. "The amount of Chinese science being published is growing rapidly but much of it remains largely invisible to the rest of the world. Although some of the best is published in 'western' journals — there has been a 1500% increase in the number of Chinese articles indexed by ISI over the last 20 years — an enormous amount of Chinese research is tucked away in Chinese journals that are hard to get at. There are 2000 Chinese university journals, for example, and the vast majority of those are not indexed by any of the major indexing services. Chinese science is hiding its light under the proverbial bushel."
In fact, the potential benefits of OA for China could be greater than might at first seem. In a self-archived preprint due to be published in the journal Research Policy, Ping Zhou and Loet Leydesdorff argue that while China is the fifth leading nation in terms of its share of the world's scientific publications, its total citation rate is still low compared to other nations. This suggests that if — as is frequently maintained — open access increases citation levels, then in embracing OA China could not only increase the visibility of its research, but the impact of that research too.
Some traditional publishers have also welcomed developments in China. "The Chinese call to funding agencies, scientists and institutions to promote open access is a most encouraging development," says Velterop. "Springer has very good contacts with the Chinese scientific community and looks forward to serving the community by offering the option of publishing with full open access in our journals." (Although it remains a traditional subscription-based publisher, in July 2004 Springer launched an "Open Choice" option for researchers wishing to embrace open access. And in August this year it recruited Velterop from BioMed Central to head up the company's open access initiative).
Others, however, will be less enthusiastic, not least, perhaps, the Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers (ALPSP), which has been actively lobbying against the proposed RCUK policy, on the grounds that it would "inevitably lead to the destruction of journals"; a claim that has been refuted by open-access advocates.
Indeed, it is hard not to conclude that the ALPSP is behaving somewhat irrationally over OA. When, for instance, the Wellcome Trust — the UK's biggest non-governmental funder of biomedical research — posted details of its own mandate on the Liblicence mailing list yesterday, the chief executive of ALPSP, Sally Morris, immediately responded: "I'd like to ask how the Wellcome Trust feels about the fact that it appears to be inciting (nay, forcing) its researchers to breach the terms of the contracts some of them they may have signed with publishers."
The Wellcome Trust mandate requires that — from 1st October — all papers emanating from grants it has awarded will have to be posted on PubMed Central (PMC),the free-to access life sciences archive developed by the National Institutes of Health. The papers will also have to be made freely accessible within 6 months of publication.
It wasn’t immediately clear what Morris meant in accusing the Wellcome Trust of forcing researchers to breach the terms of their contracts with publishers, but what is surely clear is that the ALPSP's increasingly aggressive resistance to OA threatens to alienate it from the research community.
As one of the delegates who attended the Beijing meeting — speaking on condition of anonymity — put it: "Whatever the outcome of the current initiatives in the UK and China, those commercial publishers and learned societies who continue to resist open access are holding their fingers in a dyke that will, sooner or later, inevitably burst. The only issue for them now, therefore, is whether they learn to swim in the open waters, or choose to drown."
"According to my contact in China," says Jan Velterop, director of open access at the STM journal publisher Springer, "the Chinese Academy of Sciences is now in the process of organising a group of prominent scientists to issue an open call to Chinese funding agencies, and research and educational institutes, to promote open access."
To this end, adds Velterop, the Academy is currently working on a draft document for scientists to review. It is also in the early stages of developing institutional operating policy guidelines for CAS to enable it to support open access.
These developments come in the wake of an international meeting held at the Beijing-based CAS in June. Since then, staff at the Academy's Library — led by Dr Xiaolin Zhang — have been considering various ways of ensuring that Chinese researchers deposit copies of their research reports and journal articles in academic repositories.
For the moment, says Wu Yishan, of the Institute of Scientific & Technical Information of China (ISTIC), there is nothing specific on the table. "So far I haven't seen any concrete measure, let alone mandate, to promote open access in China," he says, "Only a lot of calling."
Many, however, are convinced that it is only a matter of time now. One of those attending the Beijing meeting was Frederick Friend, a consultant who works with the UK's Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) and the Open Society Initiative (OSI). It was quite clear, he says, that there was already a strong commitment to open access in China prior to the meeting. "Particularly striking were the words of Professor Qiheng Hu [Vice Chair of the Chinese Association for Science and Technology], who in her keynote address referred to open access as 'a necessity to promote capacity building in science and technology'"
Nevertheless, says open-access advocate Stevan Harnad, a lot of lobbying remains to be done, "both of the high-level administrators and of the researchers." It also remains unclear what kind of policy might be implemented.
The hope, adds Harnad, is that China will opt for a similar (but improved) model to that currently being considered by RCUK, rather than emulate the policy introduced in May by the US National Institutes of Health. "If China copies the flawed embargoed-access 'recommendation' along the lines of the NIH, then it will be setting open access back instead of moving it forward," says Harnad.
The NIH policy was watered down following aggressive lobbying by STM publishers. Thus where the initial proposal had been to mandate NIH-funded researchers to make their papers available six months after publication, the final wording only "strongly encourages" grantees to authorise public release of their papers "as soon as possible" after publication, and at least within 12 months of publication.
What open-access advocates would like to see, therefore, is for Chinese researchers to be mandated to self-archive their papers immediately on publication, with no embargoed period. Open-access publishers like BioMed Central and the Public Library of Science would also clearly like Chinese scientists to be told to prefer open-access journals over traditional subscription journals when they publish their papers.
Since China is watching the UK closely, says Harnad, much will depend on the final RCUK policy. "If it retains the [currently proposed] two fatal opt-out loopholes ('self-archiving is mandated only if/when your publisher allows and only if your institution already has a repository') then it too is yet another opportunity lost."
He adds, however: "I am still optimistic that the Brits will manage to sort it out — and that China will emulate a loophole-free RCUK policy. Then the other nations can follow the green lamps of Britain and China."
If China does embrace open access, says Friend, the potential benefits to research are considerable. "Open access to the vast quantity of research undertaken in China will benefit not only the people of China in their economic and social development, but also communities across the world, particularly if open access to research reports from other countries continues to grow."
Regardless of any official policy, says BioMed Central's Matthew Cockerill, Chinese researchers are already embracing OA. "Until now, China's best researchers have tended to publish in foreign subscription-only journals, which are often inaccessible to Chinese researchers. Open access has the potential to rectify this situation, and Chinese researchers are recognising this. BioMed Central has seen a rapidly increasing number of submissions from China this year, and also recently signed up its first independent open-access journals based in China."
This is not surprising, says Key Perspective's Alma Swan, who gave a presentation at the Beijing meeting. "The amount of Chinese science being published is growing rapidly but much of it remains largely invisible to the rest of the world. Although some of the best is published in 'western' journals — there has been a 1500% increase in the number of Chinese articles indexed by ISI over the last 20 years — an enormous amount of Chinese research is tucked away in Chinese journals that are hard to get at. There are 2000 Chinese university journals, for example, and the vast majority of those are not indexed by any of the major indexing services. Chinese science is hiding its light under the proverbial bushel."
In fact, the potential benefits of OA for China could be greater than might at first seem. In a self-archived preprint due to be published in the journal Research Policy, Ping Zhou and Loet Leydesdorff argue that while China is the fifth leading nation in terms of its share of the world's scientific publications, its total citation rate is still low compared to other nations. This suggests that if — as is frequently maintained — open access increases citation levels, then in embracing OA China could not only increase the visibility of its research, but the impact of that research too.
Some traditional publishers have also welcomed developments in China. "The Chinese call to funding agencies, scientists and institutions to promote open access is a most encouraging development," says Velterop. "Springer has very good contacts with the Chinese scientific community and looks forward to serving the community by offering the option of publishing with full open access in our journals." (Although it remains a traditional subscription-based publisher, in July 2004 Springer launched an "Open Choice" option for researchers wishing to embrace open access. And in August this year it recruited Velterop from BioMed Central to head up the company's open access initiative).
Others, however, will be less enthusiastic, not least, perhaps, the Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers (ALPSP), which has been actively lobbying against the proposed RCUK policy, on the grounds that it would "inevitably lead to the destruction of journals"; a claim that has been refuted by open-access advocates.
Indeed, it is hard not to conclude that the ALPSP is behaving somewhat irrationally over OA. When, for instance, the Wellcome Trust — the UK's biggest non-governmental funder of biomedical research — posted details of its own mandate on the Liblicence mailing list yesterday, the chief executive of ALPSP, Sally Morris, immediately responded: "I'd like to ask how the Wellcome Trust feels about the fact that it appears to be inciting (nay, forcing) its researchers to breach the terms of the contracts some of them they may have signed with publishers."
The Wellcome Trust mandate requires that — from 1st October — all papers emanating from grants it has awarded will have to be posted on PubMed Central (PMC),the free-to access life sciences archive developed by the National Institutes of Health. The papers will also have to be made freely accessible within 6 months of publication.
It wasn’t immediately clear what Morris meant in accusing the Wellcome Trust of forcing researchers to breach the terms of their contracts with publishers, but what is surely clear is that the ALPSP's increasingly aggressive resistance to OA threatens to alienate it from the research community.
As one of the delegates who attended the Beijing meeting — speaking on condition of anonymity — put it: "Whatever the outcome of the current initiatives in the UK and China, those commercial publishers and learned societies who continue to resist open access are holding their fingers in a dyke that will, sooner or later, inevitably burst. The only issue for them now, therefore, is whether they learn to swim in the open waters, or choose to drown."
Sunday, September 18, 2005
Starting a new bushfire
As the dispute between the The American Chemical Society (ACS) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) rumbles on it is becoming increasingly apparent that providing open access to publicly-funded data is more complicated, and more controversial, than anyone could have anticipated. Why else, after all, is the Open Access Movement — 10+ years after Stevan Harnad's Subversive Proposal — still struggling to make scientific research papers freely available on the Web?
On the surface the decision by NIH to create PubChem — a freely accessible database containing chemical structures of small organic molecules and information on their biological activities — seemed simple, straightforward, and eminently desirable.
The move, however, immediately pushed NIH into an apparently endless dispute with ACS, which claims that the planned open-access database would threaten ACS' revenue from Chemical Abstracts Service (CAS) — the highly profitable division of the ACS that sells access to its CAS Registry. In a public statement dated May 23rd CAS claimed that PubChem will over time "pose an insurmountable threat to CAS' survival" since it is "a mini-replica of the CAS Registry, and a replica poised to expand."
Since then there has been a continuous, and at times bitter, debate about NIH's plan, with contradictory claims over the extent to which PubChem would or would not duplicate what CAS offers, and questions raised as to whether building such a database was even an appropriate task for NIH to undertake.
One of CAS' early tactics was to argue that it was wrong for NIH to use public money to build PubChem. However, critics were quick to point out that the allegedly threatened CAS Registry database was itself built with taxpayers' money — in the form of a grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF). They also argued that as a non-profit organisation CAS has over the years benefited substantially from the public purse in the form of tax concessions — making its objections to PubChem sound somewhat hypocritical.
Presumably sensing that it was losing the PR war, in August the ACS offered to develop and support a freely available database that would include data from NIH screening centres, as well as other compounds with associated bioassay data. To support the project it pledged $10 million and 15 staff members over five years.
The offer, however, was rejected by NIH Director Elias Zerhouni. He did so for a number of reasons, not least — as he pointed out in a letter to ACS President William Carroll dated August 22nd — because under the requirements of the Federal Acquisitions Regulation, NIH "would not be able to enter into an exclusive bilateral relationship with ACS without such an opportunity being made available to other private sector suppliers of chemical information. "More importantly, the letter stated, if NIH accepted ACS' proposal "some of the most critical aspects of PubChem would be lost."
In the same letter, however, Zerhouni proposed a six-part "alternative structure". Amongst other things this would include collaboration between CAS and NIH to assign registry numbers for PubChem structures, and a promise that PubChem "will not disseminate information on chemical reactions, measured properties, methods, patents and applications, markush structures, or conference information."
In offering the patent concession, however, Zerhouni is in danger of starting a new bushfire, since the proposal is sure to inflame the passions of patent information searchers.
In a posting to the Patent Information Users Group mailing list on September 17th, for instance, self-styled patent buster Greg Aharonian — who also runs the Patnews mailing list — complained: "If this is right, the public funded NIH that is building a public funded chemical database is agreeing not to include publicly funded information from publicly available patents. This is wrong, and people (led by the PTO) should contact the NIH to lobby that they include as much information as possible from patents into PubChem."
He added: "Over time, PubMed + Pubchem will become an ever more useful tool for PTO examiners to search through [in order] to issue high quality patents. And higher quality patents is a service the government should be providing."
We should feel some pity for Zerhouni: in seeking to get ACS off his back he is in danger of attracting the wrath of one of the more voluble and argumentative information user communities.
Certainly no one would willingly put themselves in the sniper sights of Aharonian. As Wired magazine commented a few years ago, when describing Aharonian's endless battle against "crappy" software patents, "Aharonian isn't just a loose cannon — he's a carpet bomber. Patnews, a sort of Drudge Report for the patent world, targets corporations, patent attorneys, bad patents, and, invariably, the PTO for the failures of the patent system. Patnews' 3,900 subscribers, and the many more who read forwarded copies, view him alternately as a self-serving wonk, a tireless public advocate, and a pain in the ass."
On the surface the decision by NIH to create PubChem — a freely accessible database containing chemical structures of small organic molecules and information on their biological activities — seemed simple, straightforward, and eminently desirable.
The move, however, immediately pushed NIH into an apparently endless dispute with ACS, which claims that the planned open-access database would threaten ACS' revenue from Chemical Abstracts Service (CAS) — the highly profitable division of the ACS that sells access to its CAS Registry. In a public statement dated May 23rd CAS claimed that PubChem will over time "pose an insurmountable threat to CAS' survival" since it is "a mini-replica of the CAS Registry, and a replica poised to expand."
Since then there has been a continuous, and at times bitter, debate about NIH's plan, with contradictory claims over the extent to which PubChem would or would not duplicate what CAS offers, and questions raised as to whether building such a database was even an appropriate task for NIH to undertake.
One of CAS' early tactics was to argue that it was wrong for NIH to use public money to build PubChem. However, critics were quick to point out that the allegedly threatened CAS Registry database was itself built with taxpayers' money — in the form of a grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF). They also argued that as a non-profit organisation CAS has over the years benefited substantially from the public purse in the form of tax concessions — making its objections to PubChem sound somewhat hypocritical.
Presumably sensing that it was losing the PR war, in August the ACS offered to develop and support a freely available database that would include data from NIH screening centres, as well as other compounds with associated bioassay data. To support the project it pledged $10 million and 15 staff members over five years.
The offer, however, was rejected by NIH Director Elias Zerhouni. He did so for a number of reasons, not least — as he pointed out in a letter to ACS President William Carroll dated August 22nd — because under the requirements of the Federal Acquisitions Regulation, NIH "would not be able to enter into an exclusive bilateral relationship with ACS without such an opportunity being made available to other private sector suppliers of chemical information. "More importantly, the letter stated, if NIH accepted ACS' proposal "some of the most critical aspects of PubChem would be lost."
In the same letter, however, Zerhouni proposed a six-part "alternative structure". Amongst other things this would include collaboration between CAS and NIH to assign registry numbers for PubChem structures, and a promise that PubChem "will not disseminate information on chemical reactions, measured properties, methods, patents and applications, markush structures, or conference information."
In offering the patent concession, however, Zerhouni is in danger of starting a new bushfire, since the proposal is sure to inflame the passions of patent information searchers.
In a posting to the Patent Information Users Group mailing list on September 17th, for instance, self-styled patent buster Greg Aharonian — who also runs the Patnews mailing list — complained: "If this is right, the public funded NIH that is building a public funded chemical database is agreeing not to include publicly funded information from publicly available patents. This is wrong, and people (led by the PTO) should contact the NIH to lobby that they include as much information as possible from patents into PubChem."
He added: "Over time, PubMed + Pubchem will become an ever more useful tool for PTO examiners to search through [in order] to issue high quality patents. And higher quality patents is a service the government should be providing."
We should feel some pity for Zerhouni: in seeking to get ACS off his back he is in danger of attracting the wrath of one of the more voluble and argumentative information user communities.
Certainly no one would willingly put themselves in the sniper sights of Aharonian. As Wired magazine commented a few years ago, when describing Aharonian's endless battle against "crappy" software patents, "Aharonian isn't just a loose cannon — he's a carpet bomber. Patnews, a sort of Drudge Report for the patent world, targets corporations, patent attorneys, bad patents, and, invariably, the PTO for the failures of the patent system. Patnews' 3,900 subscribers, and the many more who read forwarded copies, view him alternately as a self-serving wonk, a tireless public advocate, and a pain in the ass."
Friday, September 16, 2005
Education Guardian | Open access failings 'cost UK £1.5bn'
EducationGuardian.co.uk | E-learning | Open access failings 'cost UK £1.5bn'
Jimmy Leach
The UK is losing around £1.5bn annually because of its failure to embrace open access publishing, according to an open access advocate.
Stevan Harnad, of the American Scientist Open Access Forum and professor of cognitive science at the University of Southampton, has calculated the potential return on the investment in scientific research findings that are being lost to the UK each year through what he views as the limitations of the current academic publishing environment....
Jimmy Leach
The UK is losing around £1.5bn annually because of its failure to embrace open access publishing, according to an open access advocate.
Stevan Harnad, of the American Scientist Open Access Forum and professor of cognitive science at the University of Southampton, has calculated the potential return on the investment in scientific research findings that are being lost to the UK each year through what he views as the limitations of the current academic publishing environment....
Wednesday, September 14, 2005
£1.5 billion lost annually in potential return on British science?
In a preprint archived today, Professor Stevan Harnad, Moderator of the American Scientist Open Access Forum and Professor of Cognitive Science at the University of Southampton's School of Electronics and Computer Science, estimates the potential return on the UK's investment in its scientific research findings that is being lost to the UK each year through the limitations of the current academic publishing environment are £1.5 billion annually.
Arguing that the United Kingdom is not making the most of its public investment in research, Harnad points out that the Research Councils UK (RCUK) currently spend £3.5 billion pounds annually, and the UK produces at least 130,000 research journal articles per year, but that publication alone does not maximise the return on that investment.
"Research, if it has any value, must not only be published, but used, applied, and built upon by other researchers," he explains in a Southampton University press release publicising his paper. "This 'research impact' can be measured by the number of times an article is cited by other articles — the more accurate way to regard it is as a 'citation impact'."
He adds that under the current publishing model "a published article is accessible only to those researchers who happen to be at institutions that can afford to subscribe to the particular journal in which it was published." As such, the number of times it is cited will be limited by the number of people who can gain access to it.
However, in the online age, he adds, it is now possible for authors to self-archive their publications by placing them on their own institutional website "thereby providing free access to the research to everyone who is interested."
In the abstract to his paper — Maximising the Return on UK's Public Investment in Research — Harnad explains how he has attempted to estimate the cost to researchers and the country of failing to self-archive: "The online-age practice of self-archiving has been shown to increase citation impact by a dramatic 50-250%, but so far only 15% of researchers are doing it spontaneously," he says, adding: "Citation impact is rewarded by universities (through promotions and salary increases) and by research-funders like RCUK (through grant funding and renewal) at a conservative estimate of £46 per citation"
Based on this, Harnad estimates that the 85% of the UK's annual journal article output that is not yet self-archived translates into an annual loss of £2,541,500 in revenue to UK researchers "for not having done (or delegated) the few extra keystrokes per article it would have taken to self-archive their final drafts."
He adds that if we then calculate the loss of potential returns on UK research investment the impact loss translates into a far bigger one for the British public. "As a proportion of the RCUK’s yearly £3.5bn research expenditure, our conservative estimate would be 50% x 85% x £3.5.bn = £1.5bn worth of loss in potential research impact."
The solution, he concludes, is obvious, and one that has been proposed by the RCUK. We should "extend the existing universal 'publish or perish' requirement to 'publish and also self-archive your final draft on your institutional website'."
In short, Harnad believes that the UK needs without delay to mandate all its publicly-funded researchers to deposit copies of their papers in e-print repositories — thereby maximising the return on the UK's research-investment dollars, and in the process maximising the financial gain to researchers themselves!
Arguing that the United Kingdom is not making the most of its public investment in research, Harnad points out that the Research Councils UK (RCUK) currently spend £3.5 billion pounds annually, and the UK produces at least 130,000 research journal articles per year, but that publication alone does not maximise the return on that investment.
"Research, if it has any value, must not only be published, but used, applied, and built upon by other researchers," he explains in a Southampton University press release publicising his paper. "This 'research impact' can be measured by the number of times an article is cited by other articles — the more accurate way to regard it is as a 'citation impact'."
He adds that under the current publishing model "a published article is accessible only to those researchers who happen to be at institutions that can afford to subscribe to the particular journal in which it was published." As such, the number of times it is cited will be limited by the number of people who can gain access to it.
However, in the online age, he adds, it is now possible for authors to self-archive their publications by placing them on their own institutional website "thereby providing free access to the research to everyone who is interested."
In the abstract to his paper — Maximising the Return on UK's Public Investment in Research — Harnad explains how he has attempted to estimate the cost to researchers and the country of failing to self-archive: "The online-age practice of self-archiving has been shown to increase citation impact by a dramatic 50-250%, but so far only 15% of researchers are doing it spontaneously," he says, adding: "Citation impact is rewarded by universities (through promotions and salary increases) and by research-funders like RCUK (through grant funding and renewal) at a conservative estimate of £46 per citation"
Based on this, Harnad estimates that the 85% of the UK's annual journal article output that is not yet self-archived translates into an annual loss of £2,541,500 in revenue to UK researchers "for not having done (or delegated) the few extra keystrokes per article it would have taken to self-archive their final drafts."
He adds that if we then calculate the loss of potential returns on UK research investment the impact loss translates into a far bigger one for the British public. "As a proportion of the RCUK’s yearly £3.5bn research expenditure, our conservative estimate would be 50% x 85% x £3.5.bn = £1.5bn worth of loss in potential research impact."
The solution, he concludes, is obvious, and one that has been proposed by the RCUK. We should "extend the existing universal 'publish or perish' requirement to 'publish and also self-archive your final draft on your institutional website'."
In short, Harnad believes that the UK needs without delay to mandate all its publicly-funded researchers to deposit copies of their papers in e-print repositories — thereby maximising the return on the UK's research-investment dollars, and in the process maximising the financial gain to researchers themselves!
UK library community responds to the RCUK Proposal
Three professional associations from the British and Irish library community have sent a joint response to the Research Councils UK's published position paper on ways of improving access to research outputs. Amongst other things, the RCUK proposal recommends that publicly-funded researchers be mandated to self-archive their research papers in e-print repositories.
In a letter dated 25th August, and released publicly today, CILIP (Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals), CURL (Consortium of Research Libraries) and SCONUL (Society of College, National and University Libraries) have welcomed the RCUK's proposal and say they warmly support the principles underlying the position statement.
"We believe that the statement is a reasonable and balanced approach to current issues and has the potential to make significant improvements to research communication," the letter reads. It adds: "We would urge RCUK to adopt the statement as its policy as soon as possible."
The letter suggests, however, that the proposal could be improved by specifying that journal articles resulting from research funded by the Research Councils should be made available by deposit in an open-access e-print repository within three months of their publication.
The associations' concern relates to paragraph14b of the position paper, which they fear includes two potential "loopholes" that would allow publishers who oppose the proposal to prevent authors or institutions from complying with the RCUK policy.
The paragraph in question reads: "Where research is funded by Research Councils and undertaken by researchers with access to an open access e-print repository (institutional or subject-based), Councils will make it a condition for all grants awarded from 1 October 2005 that a copy of all resultant published journal articles or conference proceedings (but not necessarily the underlying data) should be deposited in and/or accessible through that repository, subject to copyright or licensing arrangements... Deposit should take place at the earliest opportunity, wherever possible at or around the time of publication, in accordance with copyright and licensing arrangements."
As it stands, the associations say, this paragraph raises two problems:
The first problem relates to the phrase "subject to copyright or licensing arrangements". This, the associations argue, "allows publishers simply to change their copyright transfer agreements in order to prevent deposition in e-print repositories." Although the majority of large publishers currently allow deposition, the letter adds "we have reason to believe that some are reviewing their position on this."
The second problem, say the associations, relates to the phrase that "deposit should take place at the earliest opportunity, wherever possible at or around the time of publication, in accordance with copyright and licensing arrangements."
Since no timescale is specified for deposit, the associations say "it will be possible for publishers to introduce embargoes on articles."
They add that Oxford University Press has already recently introduced a general 12 month embargo and is currently considering a 24 month embargo for some of its titles. "They can do this and still say that they are fully compliant with the RCUK policy," the associations caution. "We have reliable information," the letter adds, "that other major publishers are also considering the introduction of lengthy embargoes. If embargoes were widely introduced then there would be little change in the public accessibility of research outputs despite the introduction of the RCUK policy."
The associations urge RCUK therefore to examine seriously "the possibility of tightening up these clauses in order to avoid the possibility that deposition of articles in open-access repositories will become even more difficult for authors and their institutions than it is at present."
Research Councils UK (a strategic partnership of the UK's eight research councils) published its proposed position in June, having consulted widely with key stakeholders, including universities, publishers and learned societies. RCUK then invited further comments on its proposals. The deadline for these responses ended on 31st August.
The proposal has attracted considerable controversy. In particular, the Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers (ALPSP) wrote to RCUK warning that a policy of mandated self-archiving of research articles in freely accessible repositories, when combined with the ready retrievability of those articles through search engines (such as Google Scholar) and interoperability (facilitated by standards such as OAI-PMH), "will accelerate the move to a disastrous scenario".
In effect, the claim was that an RCUK mandate would cause libraries to cancel subscriptions, which in turn would lead to the financial failure of scholarly journals, and so to the collapse of the quality control and peer review process that publishers manage.
In response, a group of UK academics including Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the creator of the World Wide Web, wrote an open letter to RCUK, and to the UK science minister Lord Sainsbury, attacking the ALPSP letter. They cited the example of physics — where self-archiving has been carried out for years — and argued that learned societies "cannot identify any loss of subscriptions to their journals as a result of this critical mass of self-archived and readily retrievable physics articles".
Initially expected to be implemented at the beginning of October, the RCUK policy is now likely to be delayed until 1st January 2006.
In a letter dated 25th August, and released publicly today, CILIP (Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals), CURL (Consortium of Research Libraries) and SCONUL (Society of College, National and University Libraries) have welcomed the RCUK's proposal and say they warmly support the principles underlying the position statement.
"We believe that the statement is a reasonable and balanced approach to current issues and has the potential to make significant improvements to research communication," the letter reads. It adds: "We would urge RCUK to adopt the statement as its policy as soon as possible."
The letter suggests, however, that the proposal could be improved by specifying that journal articles resulting from research funded by the Research Councils should be made available by deposit in an open-access e-print repository within three months of their publication.
The associations' concern relates to paragraph14b of the position paper, which they fear includes two potential "loopholes" that would allow publishers who oppose the proposal to prevent authors or institutions from complying with the RCUK policy.
The paragraph in question reads: "Where research is funded by Research Councils and undertaken by researchers with access to an open access e-print repository (institutional or subject-based), Councils will make it a condition for all grants awarded from 1 October 2005 that a copy of all resultant published journal articles or conference proceedings (but not necessarily the underlying data) should be deposited in and/or accessible through that repository, subject to copyright or licensing arrangements... Deposit should take place at the earliest opportunity, wherever possible at or around the time of publication, in accordance with copyright and licensing arrangements."
As it stands, the associations say, this paragraph raises two problems:
The first problem relates to the phrase "subject to copyright or licensing arrangements". This, the associations argue, "allows publishers simply to change their copyright transfer agreements in order to prevent deposition in e-print repositories." Although the majority of large publishers currently allow deposition, the letter adds "we have reason to believe that some are reviewing their position on this."
The second problem, say the associations, relates to the phrase that "deposit should take place at the earliest opportunity, wherever possible at or around the time of publication, in accordance with copyright and licensing arrangements."
Since no timescale is specified for deposit, the associations say "it will be possible for publishers to introduce embargoes on articles."
They add that Oxford University Press has already recently introduced a general 12 month embargo and is currently considering a 24 month embargo for some of its titles. "They can do this and still say that they are fully compliant with the RCUK policy," the associations caution. "We have reliable information," the letter adds, "that other major publishers are also considering the introduction of lengthy embargoes. If embargoes were widely introduced then there would be little change in the public accessibility of research outputs despite the introduction of the RCUK policy."
The associations urge RCUK therefore to examine seriously "the possibility of tightening up these clauses in order to avoid the possibility that deposition of articles in open-access repositories will become even more difficult for authors and their institutions than it is at present."
Research Councils UK (a strategic partnership of the UK's eight research councils) published its proposed position in June, having consulted widely with key stakeholders, including universities, publishers and learned societies. RCUK then invited further comments on its proposals. The deadline for these responses ended on 31st August.
The proposal has attracted considerable controversy. In particular, the Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers (ALPSP) wrote to RCUK warning that a policy of mandated self-archiving of research articles in freely accessible repositories, when combined with the ready retrievability of those articles through search engines (such as Google Scholar) and interoperability (facilitated by standards such as OAI-PMH), "will accelerate the move to a disastrous scenario".
In effect, the claim was that an RCUK mandate would cause libraries to cancel subscriptions, which in turn would lead to the financial failure of scholarly journals, and so to the collapse of the quality control and peer review process that publishers manage.
In response, a group of UK academics including Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the creator of the World Wide Web, wrote an open letter to RCUK, and to the UK science minister Lord Sainsbury, attacking the ALPSP letter. They cited the example of physics — where self-archiving has been carried out for years — and argued that learned societies "cannot identify any loss of subscriptions to their journals as a result of this critical mass of self-archived and readily retrievable physics articles".
Initially expected to be implemented at the beginning of October, the RCUK policy is now likely to be delayed until 1st January 2006.
Friday, September 02, 2005
WSIS working group comment on RCUK policy
The Working Group on Scientific Information for the World Summit on the Information Society has publicly released its comment on the draft RCUK policy.
Conclusion:
From the evidences that have been brought forward in those comments, it appears clearly that RCUK proposed position on access to research outputs is not only in full agreement with the recommendations of the World Summit On the Information Society (WSIS), but also with the movement of the Berlin Declaration , the context of the Commission for Africa.
The RCUK proposed position is exactly in line with some of the recent recommendations of the UNESCO thematic meeting held recently in Saint-Petersburg.
Conclusion:
From the evidences that have been brought forward in those comments, it appears clearly that RCUK proposed position on access to research outputs is not only in full agreement with the recommendations of the World Summit On the Information Society (WSIS), but also with the movement of the Berlin Declaration , the context of the Commission for Africa.
The RCUK proposed position is exactly in line with some of the recent recommendations of the UNESCO thematic meeting held recently in Saint-Petersburg.
SPARC | Comments to RCUK
Open Access Working Group Responds to Call for Comments
Research Councils United Kingdom
Draft Position Statement on Research Outputs
This memorandum presents the views of several leading U.S. organizations concerned with the wide, affordable, and effective dissemination of scientific and scholarly research results: the American Association of Law Libraries, the American Library Association, the Association of Academic Health Sciences Libraries, the Association of College and Research Libraries, the Association of Research Libraries, the Medical Library Association, and SPARC (the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition).
We commend the Research Councils’ decision to establish a policy designed to improve access to the results of publicly funded research, and in particular, applaud the four principles upon which this policy based. We appreciate the RCUK’s decision to actively seek comments from a wide range of stakeholders. Although our organizations are not located in the United Kingdom, we offer our views because the scholarly publishing process and journals markets are highly international – involving authors, subscribers, readers, and research funding from many nations. Additionally, there is substantial cooperation among stakeholders on both sides of the Atlantic in seeking solutions. The views expressed herein are closely aligned with those of SPARC Europe (www.sparceurope.org), a coalition of European libraries based at Oxford University in the U.K., which advocates changes in the scholarly publishing market to better serve the international research community ...
Research Councils United Kingdom
Draft Position Statement on Research Outputs
This memorandum presents the views of several leading U.S. organizations concerned with the wide, affordable, and effective dissemination of scientific and scholarly research results: the American Association of Law Libraries, the American Library Association, the Association of Academic Health Sciences Libraries, the Association of College and Research Libraries, the Association of Research Libraries, the Medical Library Association, and SPARC (the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition).
We commend the Research Councils’ decision to establish a policy designed to improve access to the results of publicly funded research, and in particular, applaud the four principles upon which this policy based. We appreciate the RCUK’s decision to actively seek comments from a wide range of stakeholders. Although our organizations are not located in the United Kingdom, we offer our views because the scholarly publishing process and journals markets are highly international – involving authors, subscribers, readers, and research funding from many nations. Additionally, there is substantial cooperation among stakeholders on both sides of the Atlantic in seeking solutions. The views expressed herein are closely aligned with those of SPARC Europe (www.sparceurope.org), a coalition of European libraries based at Oxford University in the U.K., which advocates changes in the scholarly publishing market to better serve the international research community ...
BMJ | Results of publicly funded research should be available to all, says web creator
Results of publicly funded research should be available to all, says web creator
Zosia Kmietowicz
A group of eight UK academics that includes Tim Berners-Lee, who created the world wide web, has called for all publicly funded research to be made freely available on the internet.
In an open letter to the Research Councils UK (RCUK) the group is highly critical of the Association of Learned and Professional Society, which represents non-profit academic publishers and which has opposed such moves to open access. The society claimed that a proposal by RCUK—a strategic partnership of the United Kingdom’s eight research councils—that all research papers resulting from its funding should be archived on the internet "will accelerate the move to a disastrous scenario." This scenario, the society said, would bring financial ruin to many journals as librarians cancel subscriptions and would lead to the collapse of quality controls and peer review processes...
Zosia Kmietowicz
A group of eight UK academics that includes Tim Berners-Lee, who created the world wide web, has called for all publicly funded research to be made freely available on the internet.
In an open letter to the Research Councils UK (RCUK) the group is highly critical of the Association of Learned and Professional Society, which represents non-profit academic publishers and which has opposed such moves to open access. The society claimed that a proposal by RCUK—a strategic partnership of the United Kingdom’s eight research councils—that all research papers resulting from its funding should be archived on the internet "will accelerate the move to a disastrous scenario." This scenario, the society said, would bring financial ruin to many journals as librarians cancel subscriptions and would lead to the collapse of quality controls and peer review processes...
Wednesday, August 31, 2005
CORDIS News | Critiques and rebuttals continue in UK open access debate
Critiques and rebuttals continue in UK open access debate
The controversy in the UK over whether to make research papers available on the Internet free of charge has heated up over the summer, following an announcement by the UK research councils (RCUK) that it intends to make free access a condition of funding grants.
The announcement has drawn critiques and counter critiques from the research community. Leading the argument against the proposal is the Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers (ALPSP) a non-profit publishing association. RCUK has many supporters however, including leading academics such as Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the world wide web...
The controversy in the UK over whether to make research papers available on the Internet free of charge has heated up over the summer, following an announcement by the UK research councils (RCUK) that it intends to make free access a condition of funding grants.
The announcement has drawn critiques and counter critiques from the research community. Leading the argument against the proposal is the Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers (ALPSP) a non-profit publishing association. RCUK has many supporters however, including leading academics such as Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the world wide web...
Financial Times | Scientists reignite open access debate
Scientists reignite open access debate
By Clive Cookson, Science Editor
A group of computer scientists yesterday reignited the debate over access to results of publicly funded research, issuing a detailed riposte to journal publishers who oppose plans to make research freely available on the internet.
The seven computer experts - including Sir Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the worldwide web, who is a professor at Southampton University - sent their analysis to Research Councils UK, the umbrella body responsible for all publicly funded research in Britain."
By Clive Cookson, Science Editor
A group of computer scientists yesterday reignited the debate over access to results of publicly funded research, issuing a detailed riposte to journal publishers who oppose plans to make research freely available on the internet.
The seven computer experts - including Sir Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the worldwide web, who is a professor at Southampton University - sent their analysis to Research Councils UK, the umbrella body responsible for all publicly funded research in Britain."
The Guardian | Publish university science for free, urges web creator
Academics attack fee-charging publishers
Richard Wray
Tuesday August 30, 2005
A group of UK academics including Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the creator of the world wide web, has called on the government and public bodies that fund academic research to ensure anybody can view publicly funded research for free on the system he helped develop.
In an open letter to the science minister Lord Sainsbury and Research Councils UK (RCUK) - which brings together Britain's eight public backers of research - Sir Tim and seven other academics have launched a stinging attack on moves by traditional scientific publishers to prevent the public dissemination of research...
Richard Wray
Tuesday August 30, 2005
A group of UK academics including Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the creator of the world wide web, has called on the government and public bodies that fund academic research to ensure anybody can view publicly funded research for free on the system he helped develop.
In an open letter to the science minister Lord Sainsbury and Research Councils UK (RCUK) - which brings together Britain's eight public backers of research - Sir Tim and seven other academics have launched a stinging attack on moves by traditional scientific publishers to prevent the public dissemination of research...
Education Guardian | Publishers make last stand against open access
Donald MacLeod
Tuesday August 30, 2005
Guardian Unlimited
Publishers and learned societies are fighting a last ditch action to stop the research findings of thousands of British academics being made freely available online.
The UK research councils, which control billions of pounds worth of funding, have announced their intention to make free access on the internet a condition of grants in a bid to give British research more impact worldwide as it is taken up and cited by other researchers.
The move has been backed by Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the world wide web, and other academics.
But publishers who fear that open access will hit sales and damage the UK's 25% share in the £7bn worldwide learned journals market are lobbying hard against the proposal. Both sides believe the battle has reached a critical stage...
Tuesday August 30, 2005
Guardian Unlimited
Publishers and learned societies are fighting a last ditch action to stop the research findings of thousands of British academics being made freely available online.
The UK research councils, which control billions of pounds worth of funding, have announced their intention to make free access on the internet a condition of grants in a bid to give British research more impact worldwide as it is taken up and cited by other researchers.
The move has been backed by Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the world wide web, and other academics.
But publishers who fear that open access will hit sales and damage the UK's 25% share in the £7bn worldwide learned journals market are lobbying hard against the proposal. Both sides believe the battle has reached a critical stage...
Friday, June 10, 2005
Interview with Melissa Hagemann of the Open Society Institute
In 2002 George Soros' Open Society Institute (OSI) provided $3 million in funding to support Open Access. What's been achieved since then, and what remains to be done? OSI's Melissa Hagemann talks to Richard Poynder.
Q: Can you start by saying something about yourself, and your background?
A: Sure. Before joining the Open Society Institute I worked in the European Parliament in Brussels, and I have a Masters from the London School of Economics.
Q: OSI is a private foundation set up by the financier and philanthropist George Soros, and established in 1993?
A: Right, and I joined in 1994, shortly after the OSI-Budapest office opened. Initially I worked on our Regional Library Program, which I managed from 1995-1997.
Q: What was the Regional Library Program?
A: We worked in 24 countries in Central and Eastern Europe and the fSU [former Soviet Union], providing assistance on a range of library issues, including library automation, preservation and conservation, collection development and management training.
Q: And you are now based in New York?
A: Yes. I moved to OSI-New York in 1998, to manage our Science Journals Donation Program (SJDP). This had formerly been part of the International Science Foundation, which provided over $100 million to support scientists in the fSU following the fall of communism.
Q: What is your current role at OSI?
A: I am the Program Manager of the Open Access Project, [OAP]which is part of OSI’s Information Program. I would add that although I work out of OSI-New York, I now travel extensively.
Q: What is the Information Program and what other projects fit within it?
A: The Information Program was formed in 2001 as a result of the consolidation of OSI’s internet, library and publishing programs. The aim of OSI is to support the development of open societies, and within this context the Information Program promotes the equitable deployment of knowledge and communications resources — providing access to content, tools, and networks — for civic empowerment and effective democratic governance.
Q: That's certainly an ambitious and broad-ranging program.
A: It is, and we focus on seven areas: internet policy; technology support for civil society organisations and networks; development of software tools for civil society and non-profit applications; library consortia for developing countries; open access to research literature; intellectual property; citizen-government communication; and translations.
Q: The OAP has earmarked $3 million in funding to support the OA movement. Why?
A: Given OSI’s long-standing support for libraries and publishing within developing and transition countries, we were quite interested in the development of arXiv, and the response that the Public Library of Science petition generated in 2001. We saw that these initiatives had the same goal of providing more efficient communication of scholarly research, so we thought we would bring together a group of leaders who were exploring alternative forms of scholarly communication.
Q: Which led to a meeting in Budapest in December 2001.
A: Right. And I’m sure it isn’t hard to imagine — given the individuals involved — the amazing discussions that took place.
Q: And no doubt lots of jostling over strategy?
A: Absolutely. But it was finally agreed that we would put forward a dual strategy, which called for the creation of open access archives and repositories, and open access journals.
Q: Right, and these two approaches are now generally referred to as the Green Road to OA, and the Gold Road to OA. The participants also produced a manifesto didn’t they?
A: We did. At one point someone suggested it would be helpful to write a manifesto and Peter Suber volunteered to take the lead in writing it. This led to a flurry of e-mail debates and discussions that lasted for about two and half months, and the end product was the Budapest Open Access Initiative.
Q: Who else within OSI is involved in the Open Access Project?
A: The director of the Information Program is Darius Cuplinskas. The member of the Sub-board who is most active within the OA movement is Jean Claude Guédon, although another sub-board member, Anthony So (who is also on the PubMed Central Advisory Committee), is quite active as well. The chair of the Sub-board is Istvan Rév and he has played a large role in shaping some of our most important projects.
Q: Such as?
A: When we first launched the BOAI, and OSI pledged its support to the open access movement, for instance, Istvan saw that it was not enough merely to advocate for the development of open access journals, but there must be a directory or index where users could find these journals. So when Bo-Christer Bjork gave a presentation on the SciX Project at the first Nordic Conference on Scholarly Communications, and mentioned a list of 300 open access journals that SciX had developed, OSI approached him and asked if SciX would be interested in maintaining such a list.
Q: I did not know about this list.
A: Well, it turned out that it was outside SciX's mandate to do what we asked, but Bo-Christer offered to give us the list if we could find someone to take on the project. So during the conference OSI mentioned that it would be interested in funding such a directory and Lars Bjørnshauge of Lund University Libraries approached us and said that Lund would like to take on the project.
Q: OK, so that became the Directory of Open Access Journals?
A: Yes.
Q: How much of the $3 million that OSI put aside for Open Access has been spent and what are the future priorities?
A: Since 2001 OSI has spent close to two million dollars to support the open access movement. In terms of our future priorities, we want to work with funding agencies, publishers, universities, and academics to understand what tools or projects they need in order for the benefits of OA to be properly understood and adopted.
Q: What are the procedures for awarding grants and who makes the decisions?
A: The grant approval process within the Information Program is the following: the program manager discusses the proposal with the director and if there is interest in the proposal the program manager prepares an executive summary of the grant for the Sub-board recommending funding. The Sub-board makes final decisions on grants.
Q: I understand it is taking longer to spend the money than you envisaged. Why is this?
A: The Sub-board determined that it would be better to spread funding out over several years instead of spending the $3 million in three years and withdrawing from the movement.
Q: There was last year some criticism of the way that the OAP money was being awarded, with complaints that there has been a greater stress on funding OA publishing initiatives (the Gold Road) rather than self-archiving projects (the Green Road). Were these complaints justified?
A: To be honest, I have only heard this comment from one person within the OA movement — one who is an ardent supporter of the Green Road. OSI has always approached our funding as supporting the OA movement as a whole, and we do not label a project as being supportive of one strategy or the other. However as those who label themselves supporters of the Green Road have pointed out, this strategy is less expensive than OA publishing, so if there has been a difference in the level of funding, this could explain it.
Q: Discussions about the relative merits of the Green Road versus the Gold Road can sometimes become a little heated, but I wonder if you could say which you personally believe to be the better route to OA?
A: I truly do not believe that one is preferable over the other, but that each needs the other in order for OA to succeed.
Q: In the wake of the UK Select Committee Report it seems to me that the Green Road appears today to have greater mindshare within the OA movement. Would you agree?
A: Maybe the Green Road advocates are more vocal. But I don’t think that the movement has necessarily sided with one strategy over the other.
Q: One active supporter of the Green Road — Stevan Harnad — asked me to put the following question to you: "How/why did Jean-Claude Guédon become a consultant on OSI OA policy?" I suspect that the question is motivated by Harnad’s disagreements with Guédon over OA strategy, but since Guédon is the only member of the OA movement to be involved in an official capacity with the OAP I wonder if you could say why he was chosen to represent the movement, rather than someone else?
A: Jean-Claude is a member of the OSI Information Program Sub-board, and not a “consultant on OSI OA policy.” Sub-board members are selected due to their expertise in a particular subject area.
Q: Beyond providing grants for OA projects what else does the OAP do to support OA?
A: We are mainly a grant-giving organisation, but in addition to providing grants, several members of the Sub-board and I are quite active within the OA movement itself.
Q: Can you say more about these activities?
A: As I mentioned, Anthony So is a member of the PubMed Central Advisory Board and Jean-Claude Guédon speaks at many, many international OA conferences. Jean-Claude is also on the organising committees of OAI2-4 and Berlin 4, and I have been on the organising committees for OAI2-4 as well as the OA policy meeting in Beijing, to be held on June 22-24.
Q: One OA advocate commented to me that they felt OAP has failed to take "ownership" of OA. Their point was that in restricting itself to being a grant funder, and not also being an advocate for OA, OSI has had less impact than it might have had. Is such criticism fair?
A: OSI never wanted to claim “ownership” of the movement. Our intention from the beginning was to provide seed funding, and to help to launch a broad-based movement. Through BOAI this is what we have done — helping, for instance, to define what Open Access is.
But I really don’t think it can be said that we have not also been an advocate for OA: we have been doing this through our grant making. Take for example our support of Peter Suber’s work: Peter is one of the most effective advocates of OA.
Q: Right. You provided funding for Suber’s Free Online Scholarship Newsletter.
A: We have also provided over $175,000 to the Open Access Project at Public Knowledge, which Peter directs. Part of this funding goes to support Open Access News.
Q:Some might nevertheless argue that, with its rolling program of "follow-up" meetings, it is the Berlin Declaration group that is mainly driving the movement today. Would you agree, and do you envisage the OAP partnering with the organisers of future Berlin Declaration follow-up meetings?
A: As I said, one of our main goals was to attract other funders and organisations to the OA movement, so OSI was very pleased when Max Planck held the first Berlin meeting in October 2003, and Jean-Claude attended. As I said, Jean-Claude is also a member of the organising committee for Berlin 4.
Q: What about the Bethesda Declaration? Nothing further seems to have come from that initiative since it was announced in April 2003. Has it now disappeared off the map?
A: Well, as you are asking about it, it clearly hasn’t disappeared. Certainly in convening the first meeting of research funders to address OA, and enabling the Bethesda Declaration, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) provided a blueprint for other funders to consider. Indeed, much of the language within the Bethesda Declaration was incorporated into the Berlin Declaration. However, since the OA landscape has changed dramatically over the past two years I can see that it might be helpful to bring the funders together again.
Q: Who would you say have been the key players in the Open Access movement to date and what have been their particular contributions?
A: There are so many people behind the OA movement (and on so many different levels) that I wouldn’t want to attempt to name them, as I could never provide a comprehensive list. Besides, I believe for OA to succeed we must all work together and not allow the movement to be divided by competing personalities.
Q: What would you say have been the big wins for the OA movement since the Budapest meeting, and what have been the big disappointments?
A: Since the launch of the BOAI, I would say there have been many more victories for the OA movement than disappointments. From OSI’s perspective, we were thrilled when the HHMI held the Bethesda meeting, as well as Max Planck’s interest in OA and the launch of the Berlin Declaration.
Also of note was the Wellcome Trust's report and Wellcome's subsequent involvement in the OA movement, the UK enquiry, the NIH proposal (although not necessarily the final policy which emerged), OUP’s adoption of the hybrid model for the Journal of Nucleic Acids, BioMed Central's launch of over 100 OA journals, and the $9 million grant from the Moore foundation to Public Library of Science, to name just a few.
Clearly the UK government’s response and the current version of the NIH policy are somewhat disappointing, but on the whole the movement has accomplished a great deal in only a few years.
Q: Were you surprised at the outcome of the UK Select Committee enquiry and the UK Government's response?
A: Of course I was very pleased with the UK Select Committee enquiry. The report itself is one of the most comprehensive and balanced studies of OA. But I was quite surprised by the level of influence that the UK Department of Trade and Industry seems to have exerted over the Government’s response. Nonetheless I believe that the enquiry has set in motion a process that will result in OA gaining significant ground in the UK.
Q: What role should governments and other research funders play in supporting OA?
A: As more and more governments begin to understand the waste of public resources which results from the old system — in which taxpayers pay once for research, and a second time for access to its results — I believe we will see a change in their positions and a willingness to explore different models.
However, it is very important that as governments begin to require that the research they fund be made available through OA, they must specify that funds will also be made available for the article processing fee.
Q: How do you think the NIH plan will be viewed when the OA history books are written?
A: I think it will be seen as a very important first step in governmental attempts to ensure that the research they fund is made as widely available as possible. I also believe it will be viewed as a learning process for all involved, and will provide information that will help other government agencies to adopt more effective policies.
Q: The initial NIH policy wording was that NIH-funded researchers would be *required* to make their research freely available *six months* after publication; the final policy only *recommends* it, and suggests it be done within *twelve months*. There is some concern within the movement that this backtracking may encourage publishers to insist that researchers embargo their papers for twelve months. Is this problematic?
A: I think it is very important for the OA movement to work closely with publishers and not get too far ahead of them. Otherwise they could be placed in a position in which they feel they have to react defensively. As I say, this is why it is very important that any requirement which is made by a funding agency to have research which it funds made freely available through OA also include provisions for the financing of the article processing fee. By ensuring that this fee will be covered we can help to try to avert a situation in which publishers feel they must impose embargoes.
Q: What else can be done to assuage publisher fears?
A: OSI and SPARC [the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition] have been working with publisher associations to hold annual roundtables to discuss the OA model with their members. This series began in September 2002 and the third roundtable was held last November.
Q: How do you feel the OA movement will impact on science in developing countries?
A: It will allow scientists and academics in these countries to not only access the material which they need to conduct their research, but also allow them to more efficiently contribute their important work to the global research community.
Q: I realise that developing countries are a priority for OSI, but how would you reply to those who might say that although providing access to medical information for people in developing countries is laudable it is not a specifically OA issue, and so should not have such a high focus within OAP?
A: Well, the work that OSI is doing in developing and transition countries goes far beyond “providing access to medical information”. As I say, through the development of institutional repositories and encouraging researchers in these countries to contribute to and launch OA journals, the global research community as a whole is greatly strengthened. The research that is being done in these countries is at the forefront of many fields — research on tropical diseases for instance. Consequently, colleagues in Western Europe and the US will also greatly benefit from having the local content that is produced in the developing world more readily available.
Q: Can you say more about OSI's OA work in developing countries?
A: Sure. OSI is working with eIFL [electronic Information for Libraries], an organisation that has developed national library consortia in over 50 developing and transition countries and negotiates and advocates for the wide availability of electronic resources for library users.
Through our eIFL Open Access Developing Country Program, we have held the first open access workshops in South Africa and Lithuania. As a result of the interest which was generated by the OA workshop in Pretoria last July, we sponsored an intensive workshop on institutional repositories in South Africa in mid-May, which directly led to the creation of three institutional repositories at universities in southern Africa, and more are planned. We are also in the process of helping to organise conferences in China, Russia, Serbia, and Slovenia.
In addition, through our national foundation in Ukraine we held a successful OA workshop in Kiev in February, the recommendations of which have been endorsed by the Ukrainian Vice Prime Minister.
Q: What are the long-term aims of the OAP?
A: To provide OA with a firm footing so that OSI can step back from its direct involvement with the movement.
Q: What are your personal hopes and expectations for the OA movement and what's the end game from your perspective: a world of 100% OA?
A: Personally, I think people will continue to experiment with the delivery of scholarly communication and OA will be one model that will provide an effective means for doing this.
Q: The two groups who seem most likely to suffer financially from a shift to OA are traditional publishers (both commercial and learned societies) and librarians (which is ironic given their historic support for OA). What is your message to each of these two groups?
A: While one recent study has mentioned this, it is more likely that these players would only be impacted financially (if they are at all) during the transition to OA. And remember that other studies have concluded that the OA model is the best model for society as a whole. I would repeat that for the transition to be successful it is imperative that funding agencies support the article processing fee.
Q: When does the Open Access Project end, and might it be extended? I note, for instance, that the BOAI web site indicates that more funds could be made available?
A: No date has been set for the end of the program. The Sub-board will decide if additional funding above the $3 million will be allocated.
Q: The website also says that achieving OA is taking longer than originally envisaged: what is your view on the current timescale?
A: Actually the statement on our site reads: “we have realised that the transition to Open Access will require a longer time commitment"; in other words, a longer time commitment from OSI than three years.
In fact, we have been pleasantly surprised that Open Access has gained such a strong foothold in such a short period of time. When you look back, we didn’t really have a term for, or definition of, Open Access before the Budapest meeting, so the fact that it is now being debated within governments, funding bodies and universities demonstrates the importance of the process that began in Budapest.
Q: What still needs to be done to achieve OA, and who should do it?
A: Clearly advocacy is very important, as more people need to be made aware of OA and this task falls upon the shoulders of all involved in the movement. In my opinion, the main target groups are governments, funding agencies, publishers, universities, and academics.
Details of open access projects supported by the OSI Information Program can be viewed here.
Q: Can you start by saying something about yourself, and your background?
A: Sure. Before joining the Open Society Institute I worked in the European Parliament in Brussels, and I have a Masters from the London School of Economics.
Q: OSI is a private foundation set up by the financier and philanthropist George Soros, and established in 1993?
A: Right, and I joined in 1994, shortly after the OSI-Budapest office opened. Initially I worked on our Regional Library Program, which I managed from 1995-1997.
Q: What was the Regional Library Program?
A: We worked in 24 countries in Central and Eastern Europe and the fSU [former Soviet Union], providing assistance on a range of library issues, including library automation, preservation and conservation, collection development and management training.
Q: And you are now based in New York?
A: Yes. I moved to OSI-New York in 1998, to manage our Science Journals Donation Program (SJDP). This had formerly been part of the International Science Foundation, which provided over $100 million to support scientists in the fSU following the fall of communism.
Q: What is your current role at OSI?
A: I am the Program Manager of the Open Access Project, [OAP]which is part of OSI’s Information Program. I would add that although I work out of OSI-New York, I now travel extensively.
Q: What is the Information Program and what other projects fit within it?
A: The Information Program was formed in 2001 as a result of the consolidation of OSI’s internet, library and publishing programs. The aim of OSI is to support the development of open societies, and within this context the Information Program promotes the equitable deployment of knowledge and communications resources — providing access to content, tools, and networks — for civic empowerment and effective democratic governance.
Q: That's certainly an ambitious and broad-ranging program.
A: It is, and we focus on seven areas: internet policy; technology support for civil society organisations and networks; development of software tools for civil society and non-profit applications; library consortia for developing countries; open access to research literature; intellectual property; citizen-government communication; and translations.
Q: The OAP has earmarked $3 million in funding to support the OA movement. Why?
A: Given OSI’s long-standing support for libraries and publishing within developing and transition countries, we were quite interested in the development of arXiv, and the response that the Public Library of Science petition generated in 2001. We saw that these initiatives had the same goal of providing more efficient communication of scholarly research, so we thought we would bring together a group of leaders who were exploring alternative forms of scholarly communication.
Q: Which led to a meeting in Budapest in December 2001.
A: Right. And I’m sure it isn’t hard to imagine — given the individuals involved — the amazing discussions that took place.
Q: And no doubt lots of jostling over strategy?
A: Absolutely. But it was finally agreed that we would put forward a dual strategy, which called for the creation of open access archives and repositories, and open access journals.
Q: Right, and these two approaches are now generally referred to as the Green Road to OA, and the Gold Road to OA. The participants also produced a manifesto didn’t they?
A: We did. At one point someone suggested it would be helpful to write a manifesto and Peter Suber volunteered to take the lead in writing it. This led to a flurry of e-mail debates and discussions that lasted for about two and half months, and the end product was the Budapest Open Access Initiative.
Q: Who else within OSI is involved in the Open Access Project?
A: The director of the Information Program is Darius Cuplinskas. The member of the Sub-board who is most active within the OA movement is Jean Claude Guédon, although another sub-board member, Anthony So (who is also on the PubMed Central Advisory Committee), is quite active as well. The chair of the Sub-board is Istvan Rév and he has played a large role in shaping some of our most important projects.
Q: Such as?
A: When we first launched the BOAI, and OSI pledged its support to the open access movement, for instance, Istvan saw that it was not enough merely to advocate for the development of open access journals, but there must be a directory or index where users could find these journals. So when Bo-Christer Bjork gave a presentation on the SciX Project at the first Nordic Conference on Scholarly Communications, and mentioned a list of 300 open access journals that SciX had developed, OSI approached him and asked if SciX would be interested in maintaining such a list.
Q: I did not know about this list.
A: Well, it turned out that it was outside SciX's mandate to do what we asked, but Bo-Christer offered to give us the list if we could find someone to take on the project. So during the conference OSI mentioned that it would be interested in funding such a directory and Lars Bjørnshauge of Lund University Libraries approached us and said that Lund would like to take on the project.
Q: OK, so that became the Directory of Open Access Journals?
A: Yes.
Q: How much of the $3 million that OSI put aside for Open Access has been spent and what are the future priorities?
A: Since 2001 OSI has spent close to two million dollars to support the open access movement. In terms of our future priorities, we want to work with funding agencies, publishers, universities, and academics to understand what tools or projects they need in order for the benefits of OA to be properly understood and adopted.
Q: What are the procedures for awarding grants and who makes the decisions?
A: The grant approval process within the Information Program is the following: the program manager discusses the proposal with the director and if there is interest in the proposal the program manager prepares an executive summary of the grant for the Sub-board recommending funding. The Sub-board makes final decisions on grants.
Q: I understand it is taking longer to spend the money than you envisaged. Why is this?
A: The Sub-board determined that it would be better to spread funding out over several years instead of spending the $3 million in three years and withdrawing from the movement.
Q: There was last year some criticism of the way that the OAP money was being awarded, with complaints that there has been a greater stress on funding OA publishing initiatives (the Gold Road) rather than self-archiving projects (the Green Road). Were these complaints justified?
A: To be honest, I have only heard this comment from one person within the OA movement — one who is an ardent supporter of the Green Road. OSI has always approached our funding as supporting the OA movement as a whole, and we do not label a project as being supportive of one strategy or the other. However as those who label themselves supporters of the Green Road have pointed out, this strategy is less expensive than OA publishing, so if there has been a difference in the level of funding, this could explain it.
Q: Discussions about the relative merits of the Green Road versus the Gold Road can sometimes become a little heated, but I wonder if you could say which you personally believe to be the better route to OA?
A: I truly do not believe that one is preferable over the other, but that each needs the other in order for OA to succeed.
Q: In the wake of the UK Select Committee Report it seems to me that the Green Road appears today to have greater mindshare within the OA movement. Would you agree?
A: Maybe the Green Road advocates are more vocal. But I don’t think that the movement has necessarily sided with one strategy over the other.
Q: One active supporter of the Green Road — Stevan Harnad — asked me to put the following question to you: "How/why did Jean-Claude Guédon become a consultant on OSI OA policy?" I suspect that the question is motivated by Harnad’s disagreements with Guédon over OA strategy, but since Guédon is the only member of the OA movement to be involved in an official capacity with the OAP I wonder if you could say why he was chosen to represent the movement, rather than someone else?
A: Jean-Claude is a member of the OSI Information Program Sub-board, and not a “consultant on OSI OA policy.” Sub-board members are selected due to their expertise in a particular subject area.
Q: Beyond providing grants for OA projects what else does the OAP do to support OA?
A: We are mainly a grant-giving organisation, but in addition to providing grants, several members of the Sub-board and I are quite active within the OA movement itself.
Q: Can you say more about these activities?
A: As I mentioned, Anthony So is a member of the PubMed Central Advisory Board and Jean-Claude Guédon speaks at many, many international OA conferences. Jean-Claude is also on the organising committees of OAI2-4 and Berlin 4, and I have been on the organising committees for OAI2-4 as well as the OA policy meeting in Beijing, to be held on June 22-24.
Q: One OA advocate commented to me that they felt OAP has failed to take "ownership" of OA. Their point was that in restricting itself to being a grant funder, and not also being an advocate for OA, OSI has had less impact than it might have had. Is such criticism fair?
A: OSI never wanted to claim “ownership” of the movement. Our intention from the beginning was to provide seed funding, and to help to launch a broad-based movement. Through BOAI this is what we have done — helping, for instance, to define what Open Access is.
But I really don’t think it can be said that we have not also been an advocate for OA: we have been doing this through our grant making. Take for example our support of Peter Suber’s work: Peter is one of the most effective advocates of OA.
Q: Right. You provided funding for Suber’s Free Online Scholarship Newsletter.
A: We have also provided over $175,000 to the Open Access Project at Public Knowledge, which Peter directs. Part of this funding goes to support Open Access News.
Q:Some might nevertheless argue that, with its rolling program of "follow-up" meetings, it is the Berlin Declaration group that is mainly driving the movement today. Would you agree, and do you envisage the OAP partnering with the organisers of future Berlin Declaration follow-up meetings?
A: As I said, one of our main goals was to attract other funders and organisations to the OA movement, so OSI was very pleased when Max Planck held the first Berlin meeting in October 2003, and Jean-Claude attended. As I said, Jean-Claude is also a member of the organising committee for Berlin 4.
Q: What about the Bethesda Declaration? Nothing further seems to have come from that initiative since it was announced in April 2003. Has it now disappeared off the map?
A: Well, as you are asking about it, it clearly hasn’t disappeared. Certainly in convening the first meeting of research funders to address OA, and enabling the Bethesda Declaration, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) provided a blueprint for other funders to consider. Indeed, much of the language within the Bethesda Declaration was incorporated into the Berlin Declaration. However, since the OA landscape has changed dramatically over the past two years I can see that it might be helpful to bring the funders together again.
Q: Who would you say have been the key players in the Open Access movement to date and what have been their particular contributions?
A: There are so many people behind the OA movement (and on so many different levels) that I wouldn’t want to attempt to name them, as I could never provide a comprehensive list. Besides, I believe for OA to succeed we must all work together and not allow the movement to be divided by competing personalities.
Q: What would you say have been the big wins for the OA movement since the Budapest meeting, and what have been the big disappointments?
A: Since the launch of the BOAI, I would say there have been many more victories for the OA movement than disappointments. From OSI’s perspective, we were thrilled when the HHMI held the Bethesda meeting, as well as Max Planck’s interest in OA and the launch of the Berlin Declaration.
Also of note was the Wellcome Trust's report and Wellcome's subsequent involvement in the OA movement, the UK enquiry, the NIH proposal (although not necessarily the final policy which emerged), OUP’s adoption of the hybrid model for the Journal of Nucleic Acids, BioMed Central's launch of over 100 OA journals, and the $9 million grant from the Moore foundation to Public Library of Science, to name just a few.
Clearly the UK government’s response and the current version of the NIH policy are somewhat disappointing, but on the whole the movement has accomplished a great deal in only a few years.
Q: Were you surprised at the outcome of the UK Select Committee enquiry and the UK Government's response?
A: Of course I was very pleased with the UK Select Committee enquiry. The report itself is one of the most comprehensive and balanced studies of OA. But I was quite surprised by the level of influence that the UK Department of Trade and Industry seems to have exerted over the Government’s response. Nonetheless I believe that the enquiry has set in motion a process that will result in OA gaining significant ground in the UK.
Q: What role should governments and other research funders play in supporting OA?
A: As more and more governments begin to understand the waste of public resources which results from the old system — in which taxpayers pay once for research, and a second time for access to its results — I believe we will see a change in their positions and a willingness to explore different models.
However, it is very important that as governments begin to require that the research they fund be made available through OA, they must specify that funds will also be made available for the article processing fee.
Q: How do you think the NIH plan will be viewed when the OA history books are written?
A: I think it will be seen as a very important first step in governmental attempts to ensure that the research they fund is made as widely available as possible. I also believe it will be viewed as a learning process for all involved, and will provide information that will help other government agencies to adopt more effective policies.
Q: The initial NIH policy wording was that NIH-funded researchers would be *required* to make their research freely available *six months* after publication; the final policy only *recommends* it, and suggests it be done within *twelve months*. There is some concern within the movement that this backtracking may encourage publishers to insist that researchers embargo their papers for twelve months. Is this problematic?
A: I think it is very important for the OA movement to work closely with publishers and not get too far ahead of them. Otherwise they could be placed in a position in which they feel they have to react defensively. As I say, this is why it is very important that any requirement which is made by a funding agency to have research which it funds made freely available through OA also include provisions for the financing of the article processing fee. By ensuring that this fee will be covered we can help to try to avert a situation in which publishers feel they must impose embargoes.
Q: What else can be done to assuage publisher fears?
A: OSI and SPARC [the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition] have been working with publisher associations to hold annual roundtables to discuss the OA model with their members. This series began in September 2002 and the third roundtable was held last November.
Q: How do you feel the OA movement will impact on science in developing countries?
A: It will allow scientists and academics in these countries to not only access the material which they need to conduct their research, but also allow them to more efficiently contribute their important work to the global research community.
Q: I realise that developing countries are a priority for OSI, but how would you reply to those who might say that although providing access to medical information for people in developing countries is laudable it is not a specifically OA issue, and so should not have such a high focus within OAP?
A: Well, the work that OSI is doing in developing and transition countries goes far beyond “providing access to medical information”. As I say, through the development of institutional repositories and encouraging researchers in these countries to contribute to and launch OA journals, the global research community as a whole is greatly strengthened. The research that is being done in these countries is at the forefront of many fields — research on tropical diseases for instance. Consequently, colleagues in Western Europe and the US will also greatly benefit from having the local content that is produced in the developing world more readily available.
Q: Can you say more about OSI's OA work in developing countries?
A: Sure. OSI is working with eIFL [electronic Information for Libraries], an organisation that has developed national library consortia in over 50 developing and transition countries and negotiates and advocates for the wide availability of electronic resources for library users.
Through our eIFL Open Access Developing Country Program, we have held the first open access workshops in South Africa and Lithuania. As a result of the interest which was generated by the OA workshop in Pretoria last July, we sponsored an intensive workshop on institutional repositories in South Africa in mid-May, which directly led to the creation of three institutional repositories at universities in southern Africa, and more are planned. We are also in the process of helping to organise conferences in China, Russia, Serbia, and Slovenia.
In addition, through our national foundation in Ukraine we held a successful OA workshop in Kiev in February, the recommendations of which have been endorsed by the Ukrainian Vice Prime Minister.
Q: What are the long-term aims of the OAP?
A: To provide OA with a firm footing so that OSI can step back from its direct involvement with the movement.
Q: What are your personal hopes and expectations for the OA movement and what's the end game from your perspective: a world of 100% OA?
A: Personally, I think people will continue to experiment with the delivery of scholarly communication and OA will be one model that will provide an effective means for doing this.
Q: The two groups who seem most likely to suffer financially from a shift to OA are traditional publishers (both commercial and learned societies) and librarians (which is ironic given their historic support for OA). What is your message to each of these two groups?
A: While one recent study has mentioned this, it is more likely that these players would only be impacted financially (if they are at all) during the transition to OA. And remember that other studies have concluded that the OA model is the best model for society as a whole. I would repeat that for the transition to be successful it is imperative that funding agencies support the article processing fee.
Q: When does the Open Access Project end, and might it be extended? I note, for instance, that the BOAI web site indicates that more funds could be made available?
A: No date has been set for the end of the program. The Sub-board will decide if additional funding above the $3 million will be allocated.
Q: The website also says that achieving OA is taking longer than originally envisaged: what is your view on the current timescale?
A: Actually the statement on our site reads: “we have realised that the transition to Open Access will require a longer time commitment"; in other words, a longer time commitment from OSI than three years.
In fact, we have been pleasantly surprised that Open Access has gained such a strong foothold in such a short period of time. When you look back, we didn’t really have a term for, or definition of, Open Access before the Budapest meeting, so the fact that it is now being debated within governments, funding bodies and universities demonstrates the importance of the process that began in Budapest.
Q: What still needs to be done to achieve OA, and who should do it?
A: Clearly advocacy is very important, as more people need to be made aware of OA and this task falls upon the shoulders of all involved in the movement. In my opinion, the main target groups are governments, funding agencies, publishers, universities, and academics.
Details of open access projects supported by the OSI Information Program can be viewed here.
Friday, June 03, 2005
No Stranger to Controversy
Peter Suber reminds us in the June issue of the SPARC Open Access Newsletter that The American Chemical Society (ACS) is trying to persuade Congress to shut down the NIH's PubChem — a freely accessible database containing chemical structures of small organic molecules and information on their biological activities.
What the ACS fears, says Suber, is that "the publicly-funded, open-access database will threaten ACS revenue from the Chemical Abstracts Service (CAS)." [CAS is a division of the ACS].
Indeed, in a public statement dated May 23rd CAS claims that as "a taxpayer-supported resource" PubChem will over time "pose an insurmountable threat to CAS' survival" since it is "a mini-replica of the CAS Registry, and a replica poised to expand."
The CAS statement adds "We believe that taxpayers should not fund the entry of NIH into the information industry more broadly than is necessary to disseminate the information whose creation it funds."
Critics have been quick to point out that the threatened CAS Registry database was itself built with taxpayers' money — in the form of a grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF). They also argue that as a non-profit organisation CAS has over the years benefited substantially from the public purse in the form of tax concessions.
As open-access advocate Jan Velterop put it on the Liblicense mailing list "It's not just the generous tax concessions that come with a non-profit status, but also the NSF grant (I hear it was in the order of $25 million) that enabled the ACS to establish a chemical registry system."
Whatever one's views on the rights and wrongs of the ACS' complaint it is worth noting that the organisation is no stranger to controversy, and that it has itself previously been criticised for unfair practices.
Those who have followed the development of CAS over the years, for instance, will recall that on 7th June 1990 the online service Dialog made a 36-page complaint about ACS to the Washington DC Federal Court, alleging unfair competition, and seeking $250 million in damages.
The action related to CAS' "Chemical Registry Structure Database (CRSD)", and followed the withdrawal by CAS of the full Registry Structure File from Dialog on 1st January 1990, thereby denying Dialog the ability to offer graphical substructure searching on its service (a feature available on a competing online service jointly operated by CAS).
Dialog argued that CRSD "has no substitutes and thus constitutes a separate and distinct market" which CAS was monopolising in contravention of anti-trust laws.
Amongst the 10 claims made by Dialog were five alleging monopoly practices, one alleging unfair competition, and one relating to a subsidy of $15 million plus that had been provided by the NSF at the time the CAS database was being created (the same database and the same grant that critics of the ACS complaint against PubChem are now citing), and which Dialog claimed obliged ACS to license all data at a fair price. This obligation had been breached by CAS, alleged Dialog, both by its withdrawal of connection table data essential for graphical structure searching, and because CAS had for some years refused to licence its abstracts of the chemical literature.
The Dialog lawsuit also claimed that its revenues from the CAS database had fallen 45% between 1984 and 1988, partly due to steep rises in CAS licence fees and royalties, and partly because of data being withheld.
ACS responded to the lawsuit by countersuing on issues of accounting. The case was eventually settled out of court.
What the ACS fears, says Suber, is that "the publicly-funded, open-access database will threaten ACS revenue from the Chemical Abstracts Service (CAS)." [CAS is a division of the ACS].
Indeed, in a public statement dated May 23rd CAS claims that as "a taxpayer-supported resource" PubChem will over time "pose an insurmountable threat to CAS' survival" since it is "a mini-replica of the CAS Registry, and a replica poised to expand."
The CAS statement adds "We believe that taxpayers should not fund the entry of NIH into the information industry more broadly than is necessary to disseminate the information whose creation it funds."
Critics have been quick to point out that the threatened CAS Registry database was itself built with taxpayers' money — in the form of a grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF). They also argue that as a non-profit organisation CAS has over the years benefited substantially from the public purse in the form of tax concessions.
As open-access advocate Jan Velterop put it on the Liblicense mailing list "It's not just the generous tax concessions that come with a non-profit status, but also the NSF grant (I hear it was in the order of $25 million) that enabled the ACS to establish a chemical registry system."
Whatever one's views on the rights and wrongs of the ACS' complaint it is worth noting that the organisation is no stranger to controversy, and that it has itself previously been criticised for unfair practices.
Those who have followed the development of CAS over the years, for instance, will recall that on 7th June 1990 the online service Dialog made a 36-page complaint about ACS to the Washington DC Federal Court, alleging unfair competition, and seeking $250 million in damages.
The action related to CAS' "Chemical Registry Structure Database (CRSD)", and followed the withdrawal by CAS of the full Registry Structure File from Dialog on 1st January 1990, thereby denying Dialog the ability to offer graphical substructure searching on its service (a feature available on a competing online service jointly operated by CAS).
Dialog argued that CRSD "has no substitutes and thus constitutes a separate and distinct market" which CAS was monopolising in contravention of anti-trust laws.
Amongst the 10 claims made by Dialog were five alleging monopoly practices, one alleging unfair competition, and one relating to a subsidy of $15 million plus that had been provided by the NSF at the time the CAS database was being created (the same database and the same grant that critics of the ACS complaint against PubChem are now citing), and which Dialog claimed obliged ACS to license all data at a fair price. This obligation had been breached by CAS, alleged Dialog, both by its withdrawal of connection table data essential for graphical structure searching, and because CAS had for some years refused to licence its abstracts of the chemical literature.
The Dialog lawsuit also claimed that its revenues from the CAS database had fallen 45% between 1984 and 1988, partly due to steep rises in CAS licence fees and royalties, and partly because of data being withheld.
ACS responded to the lawsuit by countersuing on issues of accounting. The case was eventually settled out of court.
Monday, May 16, 2005
Cream of Science
A new Open Access initiative was launched at a meeting in Amsterdam last week. The brainchild of the Dutch national organisation on Open Access (SURF), the "Cream of Science" (Keur der Wetenschap) web site has been created to "shop window" the work of the top ten scientists at Dutch universities.
While all universities in the Netherlands now have an institutional repository in which researchers can deposit their papers, the aim of the new web site is to give self-archiving a boost.
That objective is clearly being met: all the scientists invited agreed to take part, and with the number of papers per author posted ranging from 3 to around 1,200, a total of 25,000 papers have already been archived. Where the papers were still only available in print form they have been scanned into an electronic format.
The launch event also encouraged a number of new organisations to sign up to the Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities, spurred on perhaps by the sound of a jazz band playing experimental jazz!
Amongst those signing were the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO), the Universiteit van Amsterdam, Utrecht University, the University of Leiden, and the Wageningen University and Research Centre.
Indeed, the initiative has been greeted with such enthusiasm that other authors at Dutch research institutions have begun demanding that their work also be included. Initial demand proved so great, in fact, that the web site rapidly became overloaded, and there is now a waiting list of 200 Dutch scientists clamouring to have their work showcased in this way. "At this moment extra capacity is being set up," explains a message on the web site. "We hope you understand this temporary delay and have patience or try again later."
There is, however, a more intractable long-term problem. As the web site points out, due to copyright restrictions only about 60% of the papers are currently available in full-text. As such, the Cream of Science initiative has demonstrated once again that copyright remains a significant issue for the OA movement.
For information, contact Leo Waaijers (Waaijers@surf.nl) or Annemiek van der Kuil (vanderkuil@surf.nl).
While all universities in the Netherlands now have an institutional repository in which researchers can deposit their papers, the aim of the new web site is to give self-archiving a boost.
That objective is clearly being met: all the scientists invited agreed to take part, and with the number of papers per author posted ranging from 3 to around 1,200, a total of 25,000 papers have already been archived. Where the papers were still only available in print form they have been scanned into an electronic format.
The launch event also encouraged a number of new organisations to sign up to the Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities, spurred on perhaps by the sound of a jazz band playing experimental jazz!
Amongst those signing were the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO), the Universiteit van Amsterdam, Utrecht University, the University of Leiden, and the Wageningen University and Research Centre.
Indeed, the initiative has been greeted with such enthusiasm that other authors at Dutch research institutions have begun demanding that their work also be included. Initial demand proved so great, in fact, that the web site rapidly became overloaded, and there is now a waiting list of 200 Dutch scientists clamouring to have their work showcased in this way. "At this moment extra capacity is being set up," explains a message on the web site. "We hope you understand this temporary delay and have patience or try again later."
There is, however, a more intractable long-term problem. As the web site points out, due to copyright restrictions only about 60% of the papers are currently available in full-text. As such, the Cream of Science initiative has demonstrated once again that copyright remains a significant issue for the OA movement.
For information, contact Leo Waaijers (Waaijers@surf.nl) or Annemiek van der Kuil (vanderkuil@surf.nl).
Friday, April 22, 2005
The role of digital rights management in Open Access
Growing conviction that scientific progress will significantly benefit if scholarly articles and research papers are made freely available on the Web has given rise to the Open Access (OA) movement. While there is some awareness that OA articles may require digital rights management (DRM), there is currently only low-level interest in the topic, with many OA advocates maintaining that it has no relevance to OA.
The issue is complicated by the fact that there are currently two ways in which research papers are made OA, each of which has different implications from a rights point of view.
Richard Poynder
OA has gained a lot of traction over the last year, but it has also attracted considerable resistance from commercial and society publishers. Since they currently generate substantial incomes from selling subscriptions to their journals scholarly publishers fear that if research is made freely available on the Internet these revenues will be significantly threatened.
Given the consequent struggle simply to make Open Access happen many OA advocates argue that worrying about DRM today could prove a distraction from the more important task of "freeing the refereed literature."
Since many also view DRM as synonymous with the use of "technical measures" designed to restrict access, rather than as a broad set of tools for managing rights in a digital environment, there is a tendency to see DRM as an issue for proprietary interests alone.
The danger is, however, that if the OA movement fails to engage with the topic those proprietary interests may set the DRM agenda, to the possible detriment of OA.
Nevertheless, some preliminary work on DRM is being done by the OA movement, and the growing success of the Creative Commons may encourage OA advocates to take a greater interest in the topic.
What is DRM?
Any discussion of DRM in the context of OA has first to seek to define the term. The continuing controversy surrounding P2P and illegal file swapping, for instance, has led many to conclude that DRM amounts to little more than "locking up" content with electronic padlocks. Indeed, since this perceived emphasis on restricting access is viewed as the very antithesis of OA, DRM has become the béte noir of many OA advocates.
What this overly narrow view of DRM overlooks, however, is that digital rights management implies something broader than access control alone. It can also be used, for instance, to ensure correct author attribution, to certify document integrity and provenance, to prevent plagiarism, and indeed to enable creators assert their rights in ways that encourage — rather than restrict — access.
It may be helpful in this regard to view DRM as a two-layered cake. In this model the first layer consists of metadata that define the usage rules (rights) associated with the content. Then on top of this can be placed an (optional) second layer of software-imposed limitations on copying, printing, viewing etc. (i.e. technical measures) in order to enforce the usage rules.
Some OA advocates argue that neither layer is relevant in an OA environment. After all, they say, the aim of OA is to make research papers available to everyone, without restriction.
It may be that the use of technical measures — even for apparently harmless purposes such as ensuring document integrity — will prove "politically" unpalatable for the OA movement (although Frederick Friend's INDICARE article appears to demur on this). There are, however, strong reasons for arguing that the use of rights metadata does have an important role to play, and will for this reason be the main focus of this article.
What authors require
It is clear, for instance, that in making their research freely available on the Web researchers have no intention of giving away their IPR. Their only aim is to allow others to read and build on their work without facing the obstacle of the toll-barriers represented by increasingly expensive journal subscriptions.
In fact we know researchers want to maintain control over their work on the Web because they have told us so. In 2002, for instance, when the JISC-funded Rights MEtadata for Open archiving (RoMEO) Project asked researchers for their views 55 percent of those surveyed (both OA and non-OA authors) said they wanted to limit usage of their works to certain purposes — e.g. educational or non-commercial.
And while over 60% were happy for third parties to display, print, save, excerpt from and give away their papers, they wanted this to be on condition that they were attributed as the authors and that all copies distributed were done so verbatim.
What RoMEO made clear, says Steve Probets, a lecturer in information science at UK-based Loughborough University who was involved in the RoMEO Project, is that "authors are interested in maintaining some form of control over who can do what with their articles."
As Brian Simboli, a science librarian at Lehigh University in Bethlehem, PA puts it: "The shift from toll-access to open access may (illogically) encourage people to assume that the whole concept 'intellectual property' has or should undergo some sort of sea change. Intellectual property is still intellectual property, regardless of how it is accessed."
Some rights reserved
What the RoMEO survey also revealed, however, is that the "all rights reserved" model of classical copyright is more than most researchers want. "[T]he protection offered [to] research papers by copyright law," the report concluded "is way in excess of that required by most academics."
In other words, when releasing their work on to the open seas of the Web OA authors are interested in asserting only some of the rights of traditional copyright (e.g. the right to be named as author), while waiving other rights (e.g. the right to copy or make derivative works). That is, their wish is to make their papers available on a "some rights reserved" basis.
But if researchers don’t make clear to their readers on what basis a paper has been released, how will their readers know? They may mistakenly assume, for instance, that a paper has been made available without any restriction on its use and reuse, as if it had simply been placed in the public domain. Alternatively, they may feel constrained about using a paper in the more liberal way the author intends, for fear of legal reprisal
Consequently, if they dismiss DRM out of hand OA authors risk depriving themselves of a useful mechanism for specifying on what basis they are making their work "freely" available.
Expression of rights
For this reason, in 2002 Project RoMEO began developing an XML-based system designed to express rights and permissions in an OA environment. These issues are not unique to OA authors however. Motivated by the same desire to provide greater licensing flexibility for web-based content, for instance, in 2002 a number of intellectual property lawyers, including Lawrence Lessig and James Boyle, founded Creative Commons (CC).
By separating out the basket of rights provided by classical copyright Creative Commons aims to give creators greater flexibility to mix and match those rights they wish to assert, and those they want to waive.
Selecting from eleven different CC licences creators can, for instance, stipulate that anyone can make whatever use they want of a work, so long as the author is credited; that they can make whatever use they want, provided it is not done for commercial purposes; that they can use it, but not create any derivate works, or verbatim copies; or the work can be offered on a “share-alike” basis — thereby allowing others to make derivative works, but only on condition that the resulting work is then distributed under the same share-alike terms.
Once they have chosen a licence that meets their needs, creators can cut and paste the appropriate HTML code from the CC site and place it on their web page. This puts a visible CC logo on the page, as well as inserting machine-readable metadata into the page's HTML describing the usage conditions associated with the licence. Both passing surfers and search engines can therefore quickly establish what permissions apply to the content attached to the page without needing to contact the creator.
The applicability of Creative Commons to OA was immediately apparent to the Project RoMEO team, who incorporated CC licences into the work they were doing. Explains Probets: "[T]he feelings of the Romeo Project were that the Creative Commons licences would be sufficient to specify the majority of restrictions/conditions required by authors (e.g. that authors are attributed, or that derivative works or commercial uses are allowed)."
Probets, however, questions whether inserting rights metadata into OA papers can be classified as DRM. "I'm not sure that I would regard these licences as a DRM solution", he says. "[They] indicate the ways the work can be used; they do not technically enforce that these conditions/restrictions are applied."
This, however, is surely too narrow a view of DRM. How better to describe the process of inserting machine-readable rights information into digital content in order to control how it is used than "digital rights management"?
Others argue that utilising rights metadata without any means of enforcing their prohibitions is pointless. By the same reasoning, however, we might conclude that it is a waste of time creating any rule, or law, unless it can be physically enforced at the point of potential infringement. We also know that anyone happy to infringe copyright law can circumvent most if not all the electronic padlocks devised to date.
Two roads to OA
For researchers wanting to better manage the rights in their papers, however, there is a more immediate problem than enforcement — namely how they establish and define their rights in the first place. And since there are two ways in which researchers can make their papers OA a one-size-fits-all approach is not currently possible.
For researchers using the "Gold Road" to OA matters are relatively straightforward: they can simply publish in one of the new-style scholarly journals produced by OA publishers like BioMed Central (BMC) and the Public Library of Science (PLoS). By reversing the traditional subscription model and charging authors (or more likely their funders) a fee to publish, rather than charging readers to read, golden publishers are able to make research papers freely available on the Web without any access costs.
More importantly, by treating publishing as a service provided to the author, rather than as a property transaction in which the publisher acquires copyright in return for publishing a paper, both BMC and the PLoS are happy to use the Creative Commons Attribution Licence as a default option. The terms of this licence are printed as a copyright notice on all their articles, as well as being inserted into them as machine-readable metadata.
Why that particular licence? Because, explains PLoS' Andy Gass, the CC Attribution Licence best meets the OA criteria outlined in the Bethesda and Berlin OA declarations. These, he says, specify that in making their papers OA authors grant "to all users a free, irrevocable, worldwide, right of access to, and a license to copy, use, distribute, transmit and display the work publicly, and to make and distribute derivative works, in any digital medium for any responsible purpose, subject to proper attribution of authorship … [as well as] … the right to make small numbers of printed copies for their personal use."
But while the Gold Road is the most logical route for researchers wanting to make their papers OA there are today only 1,600 (out of a total of 24,000) golden scholarly journals in which to publish.
For this reason many researchers opt instead for the "Green Road". Rather than publishing with an OA publisher, they continue to publish in traditional subscription-based scholarly journals, but then "self-archive" an electronic copy of their papers, either on their home pages, or in an e-print archive such as their institutional repository or a centrally-based archive like PubMed Central or arXiv.
However, the rights situation on the green road is complex, since traditional subscription-based journals generally insist that authors assign copyright as a condition of publication. As a consequence, researchers relinquish all control in how their IPR is managed. The RoMEO study, for instance, found that in 90 % of cases authors are asked to transfer the copyright in their papers.
Moreover, while 92% of scholarly journals now allow their authors to self-archive it is a far from ideal solution. As authors are not permitted to use the publisher's PDF, for instance, the self-archived version may be somewhat different from the publisher's version.
More problematically, the rights status of self-archived papers is vague and frequently misunderstood. Indeed, there are reasons to believe that general confusion and uncertainty over copyright represents one of the greatest obstacles to self-archiving today, and perhaps explains why still only 15% of authors self-archive. "The fact is that copyright raises its head all the time when authors are asked about OA, and it is acting as a deterrent to self-archiving," says Alma Swan, co-founder and director of UK-based scholarly publishing consultancy Key Perspectives (KPL). "So it can’t be ignored".
The solution, suggests John Ober, director of the policy, planning and outreach office of scholarly communication at the California Digital Library, is for publishers to "turn their publication copyright policies into the appropriate 'set' of Creative Commons elements"
This would clarify the situation over self-archiving, confirm its legitimacy, and so give self-archiving authors the same transparency over rights as is currently available to those publishing in golden journals. As a consequence OA would receive a significant boost.
Reducing the value of self-archiving
Far from helping to facilitate self-archiving, however, most subscription-based publishers today appear more intent on emasculating it. The fact is that as research funders like the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and Wellcome Trust increasingly encourage researchers they fund to self-archive their papers, publishers are becoming more and more concerned that their revenues are under serious threat. In response, they are actively seeking ways in which they can hobble self-archiving.
Having succeeded in persuading the NIH to water down its policy on public access to research, for instance, more and more publishers are insisting that papers are only self-archived on an embargoed basis, demanding delays of between 6 and twelve months between publication and self-archiving. This, say critics, significantly reduces the value of self-archiving, particularly in areas like biomedicine.
Publishers are also insisting that authors provide a link from the archived version to the official version of the article on the publisher's web site, and that they include the article's unique Digital Object Identifier (DOI). The aim is to drive users away from the free version of the article that has been self-archived, to the for-fee version on the publisher's web site.
The next stage in this strategy may be for publishers to change direction and, instead of prohibiting authors to self-archive the publisher's PDF, to actively encourage it. This would give publishers an opportunity to reassert their ownership of the article, to reinforce their brand, and to charge authors in the process. But the real attraction is that the PDF file format is ideally suited to the use of second-layer DRM (technical measures) enabling publisher-determined usage rights to be incorporated into the articles.
The logic here is compelling. After all, as Chris Barlas, a senior consultant at Rightscom points out, to date scholarly publishers have seen little need for DRM. As he puts it: "[M]ost of the STM publishers currently use some kind of subscription system with password protected access to sites as their form of protection." As scholarly papers increasingly leak out of these proprietary databases, however, publishers will surely want to exploit new ways to protect their proprietary interests.
Certainly Springer Science+Business Media, the second largest STM publisher, has begun to go down this road. While it permits authors to self-archive their own versions of papers, Springer now also invites them to self-archive the final published PDF. To do this, explains Springer's executive vice president corporate communications Sabine Schaub, authors can purchase Springer's PDF file from DRM vendor Aries Systems Corporation, to whom Springer has outsourced the function. Aries will then "download the article from Springer Link [Springer's online database], wrap it with a DRM system called DocuRights, and send it to the author for posting or distribution".
Once it is encased in DocuRights, explains Aries' Lyndon Holmes, the article becomes a "pay-per-view object" with usage rules determined by the publisher. "The publisher can, for instance, specify the number of computers a particular PDF can be opened on". Amongst other things, DocuRights also allows publishers to restrict the number of times a paper is printed and/or viewed.
The attraction to researchers is that using the publisher's PDF allows them to offer the final, definitive version of their article, in a clean professional format. Moreover, since today 78 % of authors who have never self-archived are unaware of how to go about it publishers are clearly in a powerful position to persuade them that archiving a PDF reprint is a better way of providing OA.
However, while authors will still be able to provide Open Access (by themselves prepaying for usage) it is not the kind of solution envisaged by OA advocates.
Take the initiative
Confronted by continuous publisher foot dragging over OA some have concluded that, rather than accepting whatever terms publishers impose, it is time for authors to take the initiative over rights. To this end the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC) has produced a downloadable Author's Addendum that researchers can print and attach to the publication agreement publishers ask them to sign on the acceptance of their articles.
The aim of the Addendum is to modify the publisher's agreement to make explicit the fact that the author is retaining sufficient rights to self-archive, and to also require that the publisher provide a free PDF version of the article — one, moreover, with no DRM functionality incorporated into it.
More specifically, explains Michael Carroll a law professor at Villanova University who authored the Addendum, it ensures "that the author retains all rights necessary to grant a Creative Commons Non-Commercial-Attribution License". A second version of the Addendum that will allow the author to simultaneously reserve these rights and then grant the Creative Commons license is now in draft, explained Carroll in a recent post to the liblicence mailing list.
Will this prove acceptable to publishers? While agreeing that "the intent of the Addendum is entirely reasonable," Peter Banks, a publisher at the American Diabetes Association (ADA) responded to Carroll's post by cautioning that several clauses in the Addendum were unacceptable. "Were we presented with this Addendum, we would decline to publish the paper. I am quite sure a majority of publishers would do the same".
In reality it is highly unlikely that subscription-based scholarly publishers will allow authors to manage their own rights. Indeed, many have come to see copyright ownership as key to their survival. While they could adapt by converting to an OA publishing model, most publishers view this as far too risky financially, and certainly less profitable.
Publishers' efforts, therefore, appear to be focused on reducing the impact of self-archiving. Embargoes are one way to do that. A more powerful long-term strategy would be to encourage authors to self-archive the publishers' version and arm it with second-layer DRM. As such, the self-archived article would potentially become a Trojan horse capable of transforming OA articles into "pay-per-view objects".
Such doomsday scenarios are no doubt overblown. But they serve to remind us that ignoring rights issues could prove a risky strategy for the OA movement.
For the moment, however, most OA advocates appear happy to sit on their hands. It is, for instance, nearly two years since the funding for Project RoMEO ended. While its work was inherited by the Open Archives Initiative (OAI) rights group, to date most of that group's efforts have been devoted to developing rights expressions for OA records, not for the underling resources!
This means that even where OA publishers and self-archiving authors include rights metadata in their papers there is currently no OA infrastructure able to exploit those metadata to good effect.
Given the continuing scepticism over rights this is perhaps unsurprising. "It is harmless to make rights explicit in metadata, but that's not the priority", says leading OA activist Stevan Harnad. "The priority is the content (for which these metadata would be part of the decoration)".
In other words, until the number of self-archived papers increases there is no point in fussing over rights. But as Swan points out, uncertainties over rights are a major deterrent to self-archiving today — suggesting the movement may face a chicken and egg stalemate.
Moreover, since the 1,600 gold journals can at most make just 5 % of scholarly research OA such a stalemate would represent a significant obstacle to the wider movement. Harnad insists, however, that all that is necessary today is for governments and other research funders to mandate self-archiving. After that, he says, all the other dominoes will "fall naturally (and anarchically) of their own accord".
But is that enough? After all, the NIH's decision not to mandate (but merely encourage) its researchers to self-archive appears to have been partly influenced by uncertainties over copyright. This suggests that until the copyright situation is clarified uncertainty over rights — and how they are managed — will remain a serious obstacle to OA. What better reason for OA advocates to seize the DRM nettle?
Alternative view
As we've seen, one can view DRM in two ways: as a proprietary and totalising means of locking up content and forcing restrictive usage rules on users in order to maximise revenues; or as a set of tools to help creators maximise usage of their work (without ceding ownership) by specifying what rights they wish to retain and what rights they are happy to waive.
While some question whether the use of Creative Commons licences can be classified as "digital rights management" their heavy reliance on machine-readable metadata to control usage suggests it is entirely reasonable to use the term DRM. After all, why should proprietary interests bent only on locking down content have a monopoly on the term? Why should not this overly proprietary definition be challenged?
More importantly, perhaps, the OA movement faces the clear danger that if it does not more actively promote an alternative view of DRM, then proprietary interests may succeed in foisting a more restrictive model on scholarly publishing, with the risk that some of the OA movement's recent gains could be lost.
With luck, the growing success of the Creative Commons — and the recent founding of the Science Commons — may help OA advocates see the relevance of DRM, and encourage them to promote a broader definition of rights management.
At the very least, by assisting researchers to utilise more liberal Creative Commons licences when publishing in traditional journals, OA advocates could introduce greater certainty about the legitimacy of self-archiving. Not only would this provide a boost to the movement, but it would help to demonstrate that digital rights management is not just about "monetising" content, but is part of a larger initiative focused on creating a rights management regime more suited to a networked environment.
"Personally, I think DRM is really important in the context of OA", says Herbert Van de Sompel, a member of the OAI rights group. "It can, indeed, be about protecting authenticity of works, and avoiding plagiarism … [and] … and even CC licences would cover this. But there is another increasingly important aspect. Readers of the future will more and more be robots that will try and make sense of what they 'read' (by mining content), and present their analysis to humans. It is important that such use be explicitly allowed; in the current environment, one really doesn't know whether it is OK to mine content from OA repositories".
Until there is much greater clarity over rights, and how they are managed, the OA movement may struggle to make significant progress. Increasingly it appears that only by grappling with these complex issues can the movement hope to achieve its objectives.
If you would like to comment on this interview please e-mail your views to me at richard.poynder@journalist.co.uk, or to comment publicly hit the comment button below.
This article was commissioned by INDICARE, and is also available on their web site.
The issue is complicated by the fact that there are currently two ways in which research papers are made OA, each of which has different implications from a rights point of view.
Richard Poynder
OA has gained a lot of traction over the last year, but it has also attracted considerable resistance from commercial and society publishers. Since they currently generate substantial incomes from selling subscriptions to their journals scholarly publishers fear that if research is made freely available on the Internet these revenues will be significantly threatened.
Given the consequent struggle simply to make Open Access happen many OA advocates argue that worrying about DRM today could prove a distraction from the more important task of "freeing the refereed literature."
Since many also view DRM as synonymous with the use of "technical measures" designed to restrict access, rather than as a broad set of tools for managing rights in a digital environment, there is a tendency to see DRM as an issue for proprietary interests alone.
The danger is, however, that if the OA movement fails to engage with the topic those proprietary interests may set the DRM agenda, to the possible detriment of OA.
Nevertheless, some preliminary work on DRM is being done by the OA movement, and the growing success of the Creative Commons may encourage OA advocates to take a greater interest in the topic.
What is DRM?
Any discussion of DRM in the context of OA has first to seek to define the term. The continuing controversy surrounding P2P and illegal file swapping, for instance, has led many to conclude that DRM amounts to little more than "locking up" content with electronic padlocks. Indeed, since this perceived emphasis on restricting access is viewed as the very antithesis of OA, DRM has become the béte noir of many OA advocates.
What this overly narrow view of DRM overlooks, however, is that digital rights management implies something broader than access control alone. It can also be used, for instance, to ensure correct author attribution, to certify document integrity and provenance, to prevent plagiarism, and indeed to enable creators assert their rights in ways that encourage — rather than restrict — access.
It may be helpful in this regard to view DRM as a two-layered cake. In this model the first layer consists of metadata that define the usage rules (rights) associated with the content. Then on top of this can be placed an (optional) second layer of software-imposed limitations on copying, printing, viewing etc. (i.e. technical measures) in order to enforce the usage rules.
Some OA advocates argue that neither layer is relevant in an OA environment. After all, they say, the aim of OA is to make research papers available to everyone, without restriction.
It may be that the use of technical measures — even for apparently harmless purposes such as ensuring document integrity — will prove "politically" unpalatable for the OA movement (although Frederick Friend's INDICARE article appears to demur on this). There are, however, strong reasons for arguing that the use of rights metadata does have an important role to play, and will for this reason be the main focus of this article.
What authors require
It is clear, for instance, that in making their research freely available on the Web researchers have no intention of giving away their IPR. Their only aim is to allow others to read and build on their work without facing the obstacle of the toll-barriers represented by increasingly expensive journal subscriptions.
In fact we know researchers want to maintain control over their work on the Web because they have told us so. In 2002, for instance, when the JISC-funded Rights MEtadata for Open archiving (RoMEO) Project asked researchers for their views 55 percent of those surveyed (both OA and non-OA authors) said they wanted to limit usage of their works to certain purposes — e.g. educational or non-commercial.
And while over 60% were happy for third parties to display, print, save, excerpt from and give away their papers, they wanted this to be on condition that they were attributed as the authors and that all copies distributed were done so verbatim.
What RoMEO made clear, says Steve Probets, a lecturer in information science at UK-based Loughborough University who was involved in the RoMEO Project, is that "authors are interested in maintaining some form of control over who can do what with their articles."
As Brian Simboli, a science librarian at Lehigh University in Bethlehem, PA puts it: "The shift from toll-access to open access may (illogically) encourage people to assume that the whole concept 'intellectual property' has or should undergo some sort of sea change. Intellectual property is still intellectual property, regardless of how it is accessed."
Some rights reserved
What the RoMEO survey also revealed, however, is that the "all rights reserved" model of classical copyright is more than most researchers want. "[T]he protection offered [to] research papers by copyright law," the report concluded "is way in excess of that required by most academics."
In other words, when releasing their work on to the open seas of the Web OA authors are interested in asserting only some of the rights of traditional copyright (e.g. the right to be named as author), while waiving other rights (e.g. the right to copy or make derivative works). That is, their wish is to make their papers available on a "some rights reserved" basis.
But if researchers don’t make clear to their readers on what basis a paper has been released, how will their readers know? They may mistakenly assume, for instance, that a paper has been made available without any restriction on its use and reuse, as if it had simply been placed in the public domain. Alternatively, they may feel constrained about using a paper in the more liberal way the author intends, for fear of legal reprisal
Consequently, if they dismiss DRM out of hand OA authors risk depriving themselves of a useful mechanism for specifying on what basis they are making their work "freely" available.
Expression of rights
For this reason, in 2002 Project RoMEO began developing an XML-based system designed to express rights and permissions in an OA environment. These issues are not unique to OA authors however. Motivated by the same desire to provide greater licensing flexibility for web-based content, for instance, in 2002 a number of intellectual property lawyers, including Lawrence Lessig and James Boyle, founded Creative Commons (CC).
By separating out the basket of rights provided by classical copyright Creative Commons aims to give creators greater flexibility to mix and match those rights they wish to assert, and those they want to waive.
Selecting from eleven different CC licences creators can, for instance, stipulate that anyone can make whatever use they want of a work, so long as the author is credited; that they can make whatever use they want, provided it is not done for commercial purposes; that they can use it, but not create any derivate works, or verbatim copies; or the work can be offered on a “share-alike” basis — thereby allowing others to make derivative works, but only on condition that the resulting work is then distributed under the same share-alike terms.
Once they have chosen a licence that meets their needs, creators can cut and paste the appropriate HTML code from the CC site and place it on their web page. This puts a visible CC logo on the page, as well as inserting machine-readable metadata into the page's HTML describing the usage conditions associated with the licence. Both passing surfers and search engines can therefore quickly establish what permissions apply to the content attached to the page without needing to contact the creator.
The applicability of Creative Commons to OA was immediately apparent to the Project RoMEO team, who incorporated CC licences into the work they were doing. Explains Probets: "[T]he feelings of the Romeo Project were that the Creative Commons licences would be sufficient to specify the majority of restrictions/conditions required by authors (e.g. that authors are attributed, or that derivative works or commercial uses are allowed)."
Probets, however, questions whether inserting rights metadata into OA papers can be classified as DRM. "I'm not sure that I would regard these licences as a DRM solution", he says. "[They] indicate the ways the work can be used; they do not technically enforce that these conditions/restrictions are applied."
This, however, is surely too narrow a view of DRM. How better to describe the process of inserting machine-readable rights information into digital content in order to control how it is used than "digital rights management"?
Others argue that utilising rights metadata without any means of enforcing their prohibitions is pointless. By the same reasoning, however, we might conclude that it is a waste of time creating any rule, or law, unless it can be physically enforced at the point of potential infringement. We also know that anyone happy to infringe copyright law can circumvent most if not all the electronic padlocks devised to date.
Two roads to OA
For researchers wanting to better manage the rights in their papers, however, there is a more immediate problem than enforcement — namely how they establish and define their rights in the first place. And since there are two ways in which researchers can make their papers OA a one-size-fits-all approach is not currently possible.
For researchers using the "Gold Road" to OA matters are relatively straightforward: they can simply publish in one of the new-style scholarly journals produced by OA publishers like BioMed Central (BMC) and the Public Library of Science (PLoS). By reversing the traditional subscription model and charging authors (or more likely their funders) a fee to publish, rather than charging readers to read, golden publishers are able to make research papers freely available on the Web without any access costs.
More importantly, by treating publishing as a service provided to the author, rather than as a property transaction in which the publisher acquires copyright in return for publishing a paper, both BMC and the PLoS are happy to use the Creative Commons Attribution Licence as a default option. The terms of this licence are printed as a copyright notice on all their articles, as well as being inserted into them as machine-readable metadata.
Why that particular licence? Because, explains PLoS' Andy Gass, the CC Attribution Licence best meets the OA criteria outlined in the Bethesda and Berlin OA declarations. These, he says, specify that in making their papers OA authors grant "to all users a free, irrevocable, worldwide, right of access to, and a license to copy, use, distribute, transmit and display the work publicly, and to make and distribute derivative works, in any digital medium for any responsible purpose, subject to proper attribution of authorship … [as well as] … the right to make small numbers of printed copies for their personal use."
But while the Gold Road is the most logical route for researchers wanting to make their papers OA there are today only 1,600 (out of a total of 24,000) golden scholarly journals in which to publish.
For this reason many researchers opt instead for the "Green Road". Rather than publishing with an OA publisher, they continue to publish in traditional subscription-based scholarly journals, but then "self-archive" an electronic copy of their papers, either on their home pages, or in an e-print archive such as their institutional repository or a centrally-based archive like PubMed Central or arXiv.
However, the rights situation on the green road is complex, since traditional subscription-based journals generally insist that authors assign copyright as a condition of publication. As a consequence, researchers relinquish all control in how their IPR is managed. The RoMEO study, for instance, found that in 90 % of cases authors are asked to transfer the copyright in their papers.
Moreover, while 92% of scholarly journals now allow their authors to self-archive it is a far from ideal solution. As authors are not permitted to use the publisher's PDF, for instance, the self-archived version may be somewhat different from the publisher's version.
More problematically, the rights status of self-archived papers is vague and frequently misunderstood. Indeed, there are reasons to believe that general confusion and uncertainty over copyright represents one of the greatest obstacles to self-archiving today, and perhaps explains why still only 15% of authors self-archive. "The fact is that copyright raises its head all the time when authors are asked about OA, and it is acting as a deterrent to self-archiving," says Alma Swan, co-founder and director of UK-based scholarly publishing consultancy Key Perspectives (KPL). "So it can’t be ignored".
The solution, suggests John Ober, director of the policy, planning and outreach office of scholarly communication at the California Digital Library, is for publishers to "turn their publication copyright policies into the appropriate 'set' of Creative Commons elements"
This would clarify the situation over self-archiving, confirm its legitimacy, and so give self-archiving authors the same transparency over rights as is currently available to those publishing in golden journals. As a consequence OA would receive a significant boost.
Reducing the value of self-archiving
Far from helping to facilitate self-archiving, however, most subscription-based publishers today appear more intent on emasculating it. The fact is that as research funders like the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and Wellcome Trust increasingly encourage researchers they fund to self-archive their papers, publishers are becoming more and more concerned that their revenues are under serious threat. In response, they are actively seeking ways in which they can hobble self-archiving.
Having succeeded in persuading the NIH to water down its policy on public access to research, for instance, more and more publishers are insisting that papers are only self-archived on an embargoed basis, demanding delays of between 6 and twelve months between publication and self-archiving. This, say critics, significantly reduces the value of self-archiving, particularly in areas like biomedicine.
Publishers are also insisting that authors provide a link from the archived version to the official version of the article on the publisher's web site, and that they include the article's unique Digital Object Identifier (DOI). The aim is to drive users away from the free version of the article that has been self-archived, to the for-fee version on the publisher's web site.
The next stage in this strategy may be for publishers to change direction and, instead of prohibiting authors to self-archive the publisher's PDF, to actively encourage it. This would give publishers an opportunity to reassert their ownership of the article, to reinforce their brand, and to charge authors in the process. But the real attraction is that the PDF file format is ideally suited to the use of second-layer DRM (technical measures) enabling publisher-determined usage rights to be incorporated into the articles.
The logic here is compelling. After all, as Chris Barlas, a senior consultant at Rightscom points out, to date scholarly publishers have seen little need for DRM. As he puts it: "[M]ost of the STM publishers currently use some kind of subscription system with password protected access to sites as their form of protection." As scholarly papers increasingly leak out of these proprietary databases, however, publishers will surely want to exploit new ways to protect their proprietary interests.
Certainly Springer Science+Business Media, the second largest STM publisher, has begun to go down this road. While it permits authors to self-archive their own versions of papers, Springer now also invites them to self-archive the final published PDF. To do this, explains Springer's executive vice president corporate communications Sabine Schaub, authors can purchase Springer's PDF file from DRM vendor Aries Systems Corporation, to whom Springer has outsourced the function. Aries will then "download the article from Springer Link [Springer's online database], wrap it with a DRM system called DocuRights, and send it to the author for posting or distribution".
Once it is encased in DocuRights, explains Aries' Lyndon Holmes, the article becomes a "pay-per-view object" with usage rules determined by the publisher. "The publisher can, for instance, specify the number of computers a particular PDF can be opened on". Amongst other things, DocuRights also allows publishers to restrict the number of times a paper is printed and/or viewed.
The attraction to researchers is that using the publisher's PDF allows them to offer the final, definitive version of their article, in a clean professional format. Moreover, since today 78 % of authors who have never self-archived are unaware of how to go about it publishers are clearly in a powerful position to persuade them that archiving a PDF reprint is a better way of providing OA.
However, while authors will still be able to provide Open Access (by themselves prepaying for usage) it is not the kind of solution envisaged by OA advocates.
Take the initiative
Confronted by continuous publisher foot dragging over OA some have concluded that, rather than accepting whatever terms publishers impose, it is time for authors to take the initiative over rights. To this end the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC) has produced a downloadable Author's Addendum that researchers can print and attach to the publication agreement publishers ask them to sign on the acceptance of their articles.
The aim of the Addendum is to modify the publisher's agreement to make explicit the fact that the author is retaining sufficient rights to self-archive, and to also require that the publisher provide a free PDF version of the article — one, moreover, with no DRM functionality incorporated into it.
More specifically, explains Michael Carroll a law professor at Villanova University who authored the Addendum, it ensures "that the author retains all rights necessary to grant a Creative Commons Non-Commercial-Attribution License". A second version of the Addendum that will allow the author to simultaneously reserve these rights and then grant the Creative Commons license is now in draft, explained Carroll in a recent post to the liblicence mailing list.
Will this prove acceptable to publishers? While agreeing that "the intent of the Addendum is entirely reasonable," Peter Banks, a publisher at the American Diabetes Association (ADA) responded to Carroll's post by cautioning that several clauses in the Addendum were unacceptable. "Were we presented with this Addendum, we would decline to publish the paper. I am quite sure a majority of publishers would do the same".
In reality it is highly unlikely that subscription-based scholarly publishers will allow authors to manage their own rights. Indeed, many have come to see copyright ownership as key to their survival. While they could adapt by converting to an OA publishing model, most publishers view this as far too risky financially, and certainly less profitable.
Publishers' efforts, therefore, appear to be focused on reducing the impact of self-archiving. Embargoes are one way to do that. A more powerful long-term strategy would be to encourage authors to self-archive the publishers' version and arm it with second-layer DRM. As such, the self-archived article would potentially become a Trojan horse capable of transforming OA articles into "pay-per-view objects".
Such doomsday scenarios are no doubt overblown. But they serve to remind us that ignoring rights issues could prove a risky strategy for the OA movement.
For the moment, however, most OA advocates appear happy to sit on their hands. It is, for instance, nearly two years since the funding for Project RoMEO ended. While its work was inherited by the Open Archives Initiative (OAI) rights group, to date most of that group's efforts have been devoted to developing rights expressions for OA records, not for the underling resources!
This means that even where OA publishers and self-archiving authors include rights metadata in their papers there is currently no OA infrastructure able to exploit those metadata to good effect.
Given the continuing scepticism over rights this is perhaps unsurprising. "It is harmless to make rights explicit in metadata, but that's not the priority", says leading OA activist Stevan Harnad. "The priority is the content (for which these metadata would be part of the decoration)".
In other words, until the number of self-archived papers increases there is no point in fussing over rights. But as Swan points out, uncertainties over rights are a major deterrent to self-archiving today — suggesting the movement may face a chicken and egg stalemate.
Moreover, since the 1,600 gold journals can at most make just 5 % of scholarly research OA such a stalemate would represent a significant obstacle to the wider movement. Harnad insists, however, that all that is necessary today is for governments and other research funders to mandate self-archiving. After that, he says, all the other dominoes will "fall naturally (and anarchically) of their own accord".
But is that enough? After all, the NIH's decision not to mandate (but merely encourage) its researchers to self-archive appears to have been partly influenced by uncertainties over copyright. This suggests that until the copyright situation is clarified uncertainty over rights — and how they are managed — will remain a serious obstacle to OA. What better reason for OA advocates to seize the DRM nettle?
Alternative view
As we've seen, one can view DRM in two ways: as a proprietary and totalising means of locking up content and forcing restrictive usage rules on users in order to maximise revenues; or as a set of tools to help creators maximise usage of their work (without ceding ownership) by specifying what rights they wish to retain and what rights they are happy to waive.
While some question whether the use of Creative Commons licences can be classified as "digital rights management" their heavy reliance on machine-readable metadata to control usage suggests it is entirely reasonable to use the term DRM. After all, why should proprietary interests bent only on locking down content have a monopoly on the term? Why should not this overly proprietary definition be challenged?
More importantly, perhaps, the OA movement faces the clear danger that if it does not more actively promote an alternative view of DRM, then proprietary interests may succeed in foisting a more restrictive model on scholarly publishing, with the risk that some of the OA movement's recent gains could be lost.
With luck, the growing success of the Creative Commons — and the recent founding of the Science Commons — may help OA advocates see the relevance of DRM, and encourage them to promote a broader definition of rights management.
At the very least, by assisting researchers to utilise more liberal Creative Commons licences when publishing in traditional journals, OA advocates could introduce greater certainty about the legitimacy of self-archiving. Not only would this provide a boost to the movement, but it would help to demonstrate that digital rights management is not just about "monetising" content, but is part of a larger initiative focused on creating a rights management regime more suited to a networked environment.
"Personally, I think DRM is really important in the context of OA", says Herbert Van de Sompel, a member of the OAI rights group. "It can, indeed, be about protecting authenticity of works, and avoiding plagiarism … [and] … and even CC licences would cover this. But there is another increasingly important aspect. Readers of the future will more and more be robots that will try and make sense of what they 'read' (by mining content), and present their analysis to humans. It is important that such use be explicitly allowed; in the current environment, one really doesn't know whether it is OK to mine content from OA repositories".
Until there is much greater clarity over rights, and how they are managed, the OA movement may struggle to make significant progress. Increasingly it appears that only by grappling with these complex issues can the movement hope to achieve its objectives.
If you would like to comment on this interview please e-mail your views to me at richard.poynder@journalist.co.uk, or to comment publicly hit the comment button below.
This article was commissioned by INDICARE, and is also available on their web site.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)