Reassessing prospects for the open access movement

College and Research Libraries

Volumn 66, Issue 6, 2005, Pages 488-495

  Schwartz, Charles A ^a  

^a FLORIDA INTERNATIONAL UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 29144509906     PISSN: 00100870     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.5860/crl.66.6.488     Document Type: Article

References (47)

1. For a general description of institutional development of academic libraries, see Charles A. Schwartz, "Restructuring Academic Libraries: Adjusting to Technological Change," in Restructuring Academic Libraries: Organizational Development in the Wake of Technological Change, ed. Charles A. Schwartz. Publications in Librarianship no. 49 (Chicago: Association of College & Research Libraries, 1997), 1-30, available online at ALA's ACRL PIL Web site.
2. For descriptions of generic open-access business models framed by the movement's advocates, see "Budapest Open Access Initiative, Frequently Asked Questions," available online at http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/ boaifaq.htm;
3. Open Society Institute, "Guide to Business Planning for Launching a New Open Access Journal," edition 2 (July 2003), available online at http://www.soros.org/openaccess/oajguides/oaj_supplement_0703.pdf;
4. Public Library of Science, "Open Access," available online at http://www.plos.org/about/openaccess.html;
5. John M. Unsworth, "The Next Wave: Liberation Technology," Chronicle Review (Chronicle of Higher Education) 50, no. 21 (Jan. 30, 2004): B16;
6. Thomas J. Walker, "Two Societies Show How to Profit by Providing Free Access," Learned Publishing 15 (2002): 279-84;
7. Wellcome Trust, "Costs and Business Models in Scientific Research Publishing," available online at http://www.wellcome.ac.uk/doc_WTD003185. html.
8. For more cautious and realistic accounts of the complexity of open-access business models, see Rick Anderson, "Open Access in the Real World: Confronting Economic and Legal Reality," College & Research Library News 65, no. 4 (Apr. 2004): 206-8, available online at http://www.ala. org/ala/acrl/acrlpubs/crlnews/backissues2004/april04/openaccess.htm;
9. B. C. Björk, "Open Access to Scientific Publications: An Analysis of the Barriers to Change," Information Research 9, paper 170 (2004), available online at http://informationr.net/ir/9-2/paper170.html;
10. Michael Clarke, "Open Sesame? Increasing Access to Medical Literature," Pediatrics 114 (July 2004): 265-68, available online at http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/cgi/content/full/114/1/265;
11. Cathy N. Davidson, "Understanding the Economic Burden of Scholarly Publishing," Chronicle of Higher Education 50, no. 6 (Oct. 3, 2003): B7;
12. Editorial, "An Open Letter to the Members of ASH: Your Membership Dues, Blood, and Open Access to the Scientific Literature," available online at http://www.hematology.org/government/policy/open_access.cfm;
13. Editorial, "Open Access and Closed Options," EMBO Reports 5, no. 10 (2004), available online at http://www.nature.com/embor/journal/v5/n10/ pdf/7400270.pdf;
14. Editorial, "Is a Government Archive the Best Option?" Science 291, no. 5512 (Mar. 23, 2001): 2318-19;
15. Victoria Stagg Elliott, "Journal Free for All: The Electronic Future of Scientific Publishing," American Medical News (Apr. 19, 2004);
16. John W. Ewing, "Open Access to Journals Won't Lower Prices," Chronicle Review (Chronicle of Higher Education) 51, no. 6 (Oct. 1, 2004): B20;
17. John W. Ewing, "No Free Lunches: We Should Resist the Push to Rush Research Online," Chronicle Review (Chronicle of Higher Education) 48, no. 7 (Oct. 12, 2001): B14;
18. Ron Fraser, "Open Access Publishing: Is It the Future for Scientific Journals?" SGM: Society for General Microbiology, available online at http://www.socgenmicrobiol.org.uk/pubs/SGMOpenAccess.cfm;
19. Lila Guterman, "The Promise and Peril of 'Open Access,'" Chronicle of Higher Education 50, no. 21 (Jan, 30, 2004): A10;
20. _, "Critics and Proponents Debate NIH's Plan to Free Access to Scientific Materials," Chronicle of Higher Education 51, no. 18 (Jan. 7, 2005): A28;
21. _, "Scientific Societies' Publishing Arms United against Open-Access Movement," Chronicle of Higher Education 50, no. 29 (Mar. 26, 2004): A20;
22. _, "The Promise of 'Open Access' Publishing," Chronicle of Higher Education 50, no. 21 (Jan. 30, 2004): A10;
23. _, "NIH Reportedly Is Weakening Its Plan for Free Access to Journal Articles," Chronicle of Higher Education 51, no. 21 (Jan. 19, 2005): A16;
24. Albert Henderson, "Should Authors Pay Publishers? The Desperation of the New Paradigm," Publishing Research Quarterly 14 (winter 1998/99): 3-8;
25. Jeffrey R. Young, "Boycott over Lack of Online Access to Journals Is a Bust," Chronicle of Higher Education 48, no. 38 (May 31, 2002): A34.
26. The notion of libraries giving up acquisition funds to scholarly societies is found in John Willinsky, "Scholarly Associations and the Economic Viability of Open Access Publishing," Journal of Digital Information 4, no, 2 (2003), available online at http://jodi.ecs.soton.ac.uk/ Articles/v04/i02/Willinsky/.
27. The counterargument is by Mark J. McCabe and Christopher M. Snyder, "The Best Business Model for Scholarly Journals: An Economist's Perspective," News @ Nature.com, Apr. 14, 2005, available online at http://www.nature.com/nature/focus/accessdebate/28.html.
28. C. P. Snow, The Two Cultures: A Second Look (London: Cambridge Univ. Pr., 1969);
29. Gabriel A. Almond, A Discipline Divided: Schools and Sects in Political Science (Newbury Park, Calif.: Sage, 1990);
30. Herbert A. Simon, "How Complex Are Complex Systems?" PSA: Proceedings of the Biannual Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association 2 (1976): 7-22.
31. On laws of the network, see Patrick O. Brown, Michael B. Eisen, and Harold E. Varmus, "Why PLoS Became a Publisher," available online at http://www.plosbiology.org/plosonline;
32. Randall Collins, "Toward a Theory of Intellectual Change: The Social Causes of Philosophy," Science, Technology, and Human Values 14, no. 2 (spring 1989): 107-40;
33. Gertrude Himmelfarb, "Revolution in the Library," American Scholar 66 (spring 1997): 197-204;
34. John J. Kao, Jamming: The Art and Discipline of Business Creativity (New York: Harper Business, 1996);
35. Geoff Mulgan, Connexity: How to Live in a Connected World (Boston: Harvard Business, School Pr.), 1997.
36. For discussions of the Big Deal, see Carl T. Bergstrom and Theodore C. Bergstrom, "The Costs and Benefits of Library Site Licenses to Academic Journals," Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 101, no. 3 (Jan. 20, 2004): 897-902, available online at http://www.pnas.org/;
37. Kenneth Frazier, "The Librarians' Dilemma: Contemplating the Costs of the 'Big Deal,'" D-Lib Magazine 7, no. 3 (Mar. 2001), available online at http://www.dlib.org/dlib/march01/rrazier/03frazer.html;
38. Thomas A. Peters, "What's the Big Deal?" Journal of Academic Librarianship 27 (July 2001): 302-4;
39. Seth Shulman, "We Need New Ways to Own and Share Knowledge," Chronicle of Higher Education 45, no. 24 (Feb. 19, 1999): A64.
40. For discussion of tipping point theory, see Mark Granovetter, "Threshold Models of Collective Behavior," American Journal of Sociology 83, no. 6 (1978): 1420-43;
41. Robert P. Parks, "The Faustian Grip of Academic Publishing," Journal of Economic Methodology 9, no. 3 (2002): 317-35;
42. Charles A. Schwartz, "The Strength of Weak Ties in Electronic Development of the Scholarly Communication System," College and Research Libraries 55, no. 11 (Nov. 1994): 529-40;
43. John Willinsky and Larry Wolfson, "The Indexing of Scholarly Journals: A Tipping Point for Publishing Reform?" Journal of Electronic Publishing 7, no. 2 (Dec. 2001), available online at http://www.press.umich.edu/ jep/07-02/willinsky.html.
44. The publication typically used to buttress a tipping point of scholars' rebellion, Andrew Odylzko's "The Economics of Electronic Journals," First Monday 2, no. 8 (Aug. 1997), available online at http://www.firstmonday. org/issues/issue2_8/odlyzko/index.html, is actually far more balanced and perspective than that. Movement advocates tend to quote only part of a famous sentence: "the central problem is that scholars have no incentive to maintain [the current expensive system]" without including another part of the sentence: "they currently also have no incentive to dismantle it."
45. Blaise Cronin, "Scholarly Communication and Epistemic Cultures, Association of Research Libraries conference, Scholarly Tribes and Tribulations: How Tradition and Technology are Driving Disciplinary Change," Oct. 17, 2003, available online at www.arl.org/scomm/disciplines/Cronin.pdf;
46. Suzanne E. Thorin, "Global Changes in Scholarly Communication," Association of Research Libraries conference, Scholarly Tribes and Tribulations: How Tradition and Technology are Driving Disciplinary Change, Oct. 17, 2003, available online at http://www.arl.org/scomm/disciplines/Thorin.pdf.
47. Andy Gass and Helen Doyle, "The Reality of Open-Access Journal Articles," Chronicle Review (Chronicle of Higher Education) 51, no. 24 (Feb. 18, 2005): B13.