Open Access – the Wrong Response to a Complex Question: The Case of the Finch Report

Finch's report argues that the Internet is a game changer, making universal access possible. The Internet is a disruptive technology: it has changed the face of the music business, and it is changing the face of publishing, witnessed by the growth in sales of e-books, retailing and more. The Internet is also changing the market dynamics of peer-reviewed scholarly journals. Challenges to academic publishing come in the form of a number of questions. First, why should libraries and companies pay subscription fees for bundles of journals, when users are only interested in a particular journal or a specific article? The analogy here is the music album, where demand has fallen dramatically because customers are not willing to pay for 11 tracks when they are only interested in one. It is also worth noting that publishers' sales models are flexible and potential purchasers can acquire individual journals or tailored collections. The Internet has also changed the way in which academics access journals. Not long ago, the only way to read an article was to go to a library and pick up a copy of the journal. Today, an academic can access a journal article anywhere in the world, provided the library through which they are accessing the paper has access rights, which are purchased with the payment of subscription fees. The current business model of the publishing houses operates with discounts for purchasing bundles of journals rather than purchase of single journals, which are priced at premium rates. Although there is the appearance of global access, access to journals is limited by the extent to which the electronic library, through which one connects from anywhere in the world, has paid subscription fees for the bundle that includes the journal in which the article one is seeking to access is published. More importantly, the Internet has reduced the costs of entry, so that many new publishers have entered the market, and many of the new entrants have embraced the OA model: for example, BioMed Central, Hindawi and PeerJ. Moreover, many traditional publishers have launched OA journals: for example, Wiley, Sage and Elsevier. A recent search of the Directory of Open Access Journals showed that there were 8,734 OA journals and 988,364 OA articles. The numbers are on the increase, indicating a high pace of change. It is no exaggeration to state that authors receive invitations on a daily basis to submit papers to these new OA journals. This type of aggressive, possibly desperate marketing is uncommon within the academic community, where scholars usually choose their target journals, rather than journals trying to lure scholars to submit. The second question that we often hear in academic circles concerns about where the profits in publishing go. A significant concern seems to be the high cost of subscription and potentially excessive profit made by publishers. So an important question is whether or not journal publishing should maintain its existing business model. If there is a need for change, what should be the direction and substance of such a change? But then market forces will drive the change, and this begs the question of why a Conservative-led coalition feels the need to intervene, when voluntarism rather than business intervention is the central ideology of Conservatism in the UK? Figure 1 shows the growth in OA publishing between 2007 and 2011. There has been a 127% growth overall in the number of papers published and a 252% growth in the number of OA papers. The rise in the proportion of OA articles from 4% of all articles published in 2007 to 9% of all articles published in 2011 is symptomatic of the pace of change. Yet, a more relevant analysis would be the extent to which OA papers are cited by others, or else it almost parallels self-publication of fiction books for vanity. Growth of OA 2007–2011 Source: Internal Wiley document. The Finch Report stipulates two roads to OA – green and gold. The green road is where authors self-archive the post-print version of the article for free public use in their institutional repository, in a central repository (e.g. PubMed Central) or on some other OA website, after an embargo period. To a degree, this is already happening, and a study published in 2010 found that approximately 20% of the pre-print version of articles (a version of articles prior to final edit and formatting) accepted for publication in the peer-reviewed journals and published in 2008 could be found in OA repositories. The version of their article authors are allowed to post on a repository depends on the copyright agreement. Where the journal operates a Copyright Transfer Agreement there are no restrictions to posting a pre-print version of a peer-reviewed article in university repositories or central repositories and, in fact, many scholars do this to attract attention to their work. Therefore, it is a sure bet that, today, a higher percentage of pre-print versions of peer-reviewed articles are available to all potentially interested users, and the trend is upwards. So why interfere in this process? The gold road refers to a situation where authors publish in an OA journal or a ‘hybrid’ OA journal, where their articles are made immediately available on publishers' websites. In this case, authors (or their institution/funder) pay an article processing charge (APC). The immediate and unrestricted access to articles is ideal, but it is difficult to see how and why any commercial publishers will adopt this model unless they can generate revenue from APC: a hybrid business model (APC plus subscription), philanthropic giving, subsidy, advertising or such adjunct activities. The Finch Report proposes a hybrid gold road, which is endorsed by Research Councils UK (RCUK), that is, OA only for those individual articles for which their authors (or their authors' institution or founders) pay an OA publishing fee. To comply with the RCUK policy, journals need to offer a gold OA option for papers resulting from the RCUK-funded research. Provided the journals comply with this policy and funds are available for OA publishing, the article will be made available on an OA basis immediately. If APC funds are not available, the policy requires green OA, that is to say, authors are required to deposit the article arising from research supported by RCUK in an OA repository after 12 months' embargo in the case of STEM research and 24 months' in the case of social sciences and arts research. The UK's four funding councils' preliminary response to the Finch Report suggests that they favour the green road. Following their preliminary response, they are consulting with stakeholders, and they plan to publish their final policy in autumn of 2013. They appear to be committed to requiring all outputs to post-2014 REF to be OA, ‘where this is reasonably achievable’. The funding councils' proposal requires the final peer-reviewed text of all papers to be deposited upon publication in an institutional repository, even if they are not made OA until an embargo period has passed. The diametrically opposite views of RCUK and the funding councils speak volumes for joined-up thinking. The readers of this journal are aware of how difficult it is to get published in the top journals. The rejection rates are often over 95%, and it is usual to go through three rounds of revisions. The lead time for publishing in a top journal from submission to print can be anything between two and four years. As an academic, you need to plan two or three years ahead. With the current uncertainty, how can the UK's social science academics plan? Should they target the untried, less prestigious and rarely cited OA journals or should they go for the top, established journals. If the past Research Assessment Exercises and REF are anything to go by, they are highly unlikely to score three or four stars, because research shows a high degree of correlation between top journals and REF score (Mingers, Watson and Scaparra, 2012). What if they target top journals and copyright issues prevent them from posting the final version of their articles in their institutional repository? Would they be considered as an exceptional case by the funding councils and accepted for submission or would they fall foul of their policy? But of course they can go down the gold road and pay APC fees to publishers of top journals. There is only one snag with this strategy – affordability – as well as that, it may give journal owners even more income at the expense of public funding. It is also important to point out that responsible publishers are working on ways to prevent ‘double-dipping’ for institutions subscribing to hybrid journals. This while helpful undoubtably will add to complexity for both suppliers and purchasers. The fees for opening access to a single paper in the field of management is close to the net monthly salary of a new lecturer in the OECD countries, possibly annual salary in many developing countries. As such, it is prohibitively expensive for an individual academic to buy OA rights for single papers. In terms of institutional funding, the situation is not less challenging. Who is going to decide which ideas are worthy of financial sponsorship for OA publishing and, more importantly, who will monitor or hold accountable the academic managers who make such financial decisions? We find it difficult to see how either policy can work in practice for the producer and user communities. University repositories do not make locating articles easier. On the contrary, fragmentation would make locating an article more difficult. The green road, with an embargo period of 12/24 months, is not significantly different from the current situation. Equally, it is difficult to understand the benefit of the mixed economy proposed by RCUK. The public will end up paying twice, and it will be a source of confusion for years, because no one else seems to be rushing to embrace the principle. Open access publishing requires a Creative Commons Attribution Licence (CC-BY). A CC-BY allows anyone to copy, distribute and transmit the work, adapt the work and make commercial use of the work. It is unlikely that a US-based journal will agree to grant CC-BY licences, disadvantaging UK researchers wishing to publish in US-based journals. It is not certain that journals published elsewhere or even in the UK will all agree to this licence, disadvantaging UK academics further. The mixed economy is likely to weaken UK higher education, which is world class, but not necessarily spark off innovation arising from research. There are disciplinary considerations, which are ignored in the current proposals. Government proposals are geared towards meeting the needs of natural science, and there are several arguments in favour of OA when it comes to the natural sciences. First, the short shelf life means that the results will become dated and lose value quickly. Second, the publishing cycle is more rapid. Third, scientific research is costly and almost invariably paid for by the state or charitable trusts. This is not the case in most social sciences. Research does not date at the same rate in social sciences, it attracts lower levels of funding, and it has a much longer publishing cycle. Consequently, a general costing strategy for opening access to individual scholarship can have a devastating effect on social science scholarship, stretching research budgets. Similarly, the length of embargo period before an article is made OA via the green route is discipline sensitive, and a single embargo period is unlikely to meet all disciplines' needs. Social sciences in general need a longer embargo period than natural sciences do. The proposed system also radically changes the business model of publishers. The current model relies on subscriptions paid by users. The open system requires researchers to pay a fee once a paper is accepted. We agree that there is a need for vigorous discussion, and one can argue whether the current costing is fair and sustainable. The proposed system will result in three problems. First, it will reinforce the current journal standings and more prestigious journals can levy high fees. Second, librarians are more likely to cancel subscriptions to niche and mid-ranking journals, or they may not be deemed suitable outlets for funding by institutions. In either case, we believe that the current proposals will result in the demise of a large number of mid-ranking UK journals, often publishing innovative research. This will leave a major hole in the publishing ecosystem and niche fields of scholarship, which are very important for the advancement of academic knowledge. Third, high-quality research not sponsored by research councils is unlikely to see the light of the day. We are neither defending the current publishing business models nor do we think there is no need to examine the current business models or that the current costing is fair and sustainable. However, we think that OA will exacerbate rather than resolve these issues. Under OA, praised by the Finch Report, the cost of publishing will be borne by academics and their universities. This is likely to result in further deterioration and commercialization of the service logic of the process of knowledge creation in social sciences. Journal brands are likely to gain more value than substance. If the journal brand is not recognized, many scholars will shy away from submitting their papers, draining submissions to journals that are willing to take a risk and publish innovative research. The stronger journals are often risk averse and less welcoming of papers that do not follow the journal's trend. 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