[A2k] More on University Presidents get behind public access...

[Manon Ress]

QUOTE:
Nancy S. Dye, president of Oberlin College, where the new letter was
organized, said that her interest was in part =97 but only in part =97
financial. =93All liberal arts colleges are finding it more and more
difficult to purchase the materials we need,=94 she said. But Dye
stressed that there is also =93a philosophical view=94 that is spreading:
=93Knowledge is made to be shared.=94 And while that may sound
idealistic, Dye said there is another =93underlying view=94 that makes
sense to her and other presidents. =93If this research is being done
with federal money, it would only seem right that the people who are
paying taxes have access to the research findings.=94
END OF QUOTE

 From "Inside Higher Education"
Sept. 6
Momentum for Open Access Research

When the Federal Public Research Access Act was proposed this year,
scholarly society after scholarly society came out against the
legislation, which would require federal agencies to publish their
findings, online and free, within six months of their publication
elsewhere. The future of academic research was at stake, the
societies said, and both their journals and the peer review system
could collapse if the legislation passed.

It is increasingly hard, however, to say that those societies reflect
the views of academe on the issue. In July, the provosts of 25
research universities came out in favor of the legislation, saying
that the current system of research publishing leads to outrageously
high journal costs that are harming libraries and making it
impossible for people to follow research. Now the presidents of 53
liberal arts colleges =97 at the behest of their librarians =97 are
issuing a joint letter backing the legislation. And while it is
unlikely that the bill will pass this year, the new letter that was
released Tuesday is part of a broader effort by open access
supporters to place higher education in a new position when the
debate is renewed next year.

Nancy S. Dye, president of Oberlin College, where the new letter was
organized, said that her interest was in part =97 but only in part =97
financial. =93All liberal arts colleges are finding it more and more
difficult to purchase the materials we need,=94 she said. But Dye
stressed that there is also =93a philosophical view=94 that is spreading:
=93Knowledge is made to be shared.=94 And while that may sound
idealistic, Dye said there is another =93underlying view=94 that makes
sense to her and other presidents. =93If this research is being done
with federal money, it would only seem right that the people who are
paying taxes have access to the research findings.=94

In another sign of the shifting debate on open access, the American
Chemical Society =97 a major journal publisher and a strong critic of
the open access legislation =97 announced that it was creating an
=93author choice=94 program where authors for its journals could pay a
fee to have their articles available online and free should the
authors =93wish or need=94 to do so.

Society officials denied that this was an attempt to compromise, but
said that the change was needed because of other shifts in journal
publishing. Pushed by the National Institutes of Health, biology
journals have been speedier to move toward open access than have
chemistry journals, and with more chemistry work these days linked to
biology, the move was seen as key to promoting healthy interaction
between the disciplines. (The fees would range from $1,000 to $3,000
and would not be discussed until after an article had been accepted,
to prevent financial incentives from entering into the peer review
process.)

The letter from the liberal arts college presidents is
straightforward. It says that their institutions can=92t afford rising
journal prices, that their faculties and students want more access to
journals than the institutions can provide, and that liberal arts
colleges play a key role in producing future Ph.D.=92s, so their
exposure to journals matters. Oberlin is among many liberal arts
colleges with unusually high percentages of graduates who go on to
earn doctorates.

=93Adoption of the Federal Research Public Access Act will democratize
access to research information funded by tax dollars,=94 the letter
says. =93It will benefit education, research, and the general public.=94

Presidents signing the letter come from all over the country. Among
them are the heads of Amherst, Barnard, Bowdoin, Coe, Dickinson,
Franklin & Marshall, Kalamazoo, Lake Forest, Middlebury, Occidental,
Reed, Rhodes, Vassar, Wabash and Whitman Colleges. They were
organized by the Oberlin Group, an organization of the libraries of
liberal arts colleges.

Ray English, director of libraries at Oberlin, said that the current
system is =93fundamentally unstable,=94 adding that =93I=92ve been looking =
at
these issues for more than a decade now, and it=92s clear that there
are problems of access to research that are such that we need
transformational strategies.=94

Diane Graves, university librarian at Trinity University, in Texas,
another of the institutions backing the letter, agreed. =93The current
model is broken so it=92s time for new models. Staying with the status
quo is unsustainable.=94

Graves said that in five years in her position, her library has
received =93generous=94 overall budget increases from the university, but
that they are never enough to keep up with journal inflation. Dozens
of journals have been cut, and she is forced each year to go to each
academic department to seek agreement on what to eliminate. What
frustrates her the most, she said, is continuing to cut off access to
information professors and students want =97 when the model being
pushed by the legislation would provide that knowledge without
increasing the college=92s costs.

As for the scholarly societies, Graves said that she knew that they
did valuable work, but questioned why that work needed to be
subsidized by journals. =93A lot of societies have relied on journals
to fund other activities. But why should libraries at colleges =97
nonprofit entities within nonprofit entities =97 fund those activities?
Shouldn=92t members be funding those activities? We need to have this
conversation.=94

Barbara Allen, director of the Committee on Institutional
Cooperation, which coordinated the letter from university provosts,
said she was thrilled to see the liberal arts college presidents
joining the effort. =93I think administrators are starting to feel
emboldened to speak out and to draw their faculty into the
conversations,=94 she said.

Not everyone is happy about the stance that an increasing number of
colleges are taking.

Allan Adler, vice president for legal and government affairs of the
Association of American Publishers, charged that colleges are looking
for short-term financial gain at the expense of journal publishers.
=93This is all very easy to explain,=94 he said of the push by liberal
arts presidents. =93They are looking to obtain for free what they now
obtain through subscription. It=92s very short-sighted.=94

Adler said that the high quality of journals depends on peer review,
and that there will not be money to support that under the open
access legislation. And while Adler said he supported the right of
the chemistry journals to try new models, he questioned where the
fees would come from to support open access. He said that they would
come from universities or research agencies =97 eating into research
support.

Finally, he rejected the idea that taxpayer financed research should
be open to the public, saying that it was in the national interest
for it to be restricted to those who could pay subscription fees.
=93Remember =97 you=92re talking about free online access to the world,=94 =
he
said. =93You are talking about making our competitive research
available to foreign governments and corporations.=94

Dean Smith, vice president for sales and marketing for the chemical
society, also made it clear that while his group is moving a bit in
the direction of open access, it doesn=92t like the movement. He said
that librarians are =93being naive=94 if they think open access will be
=93a panacea for their budget problems.=94 He said that many publishers
are working to minimize costs, and that it is tough for libraries to
balance their budgets, but that they don=92t realize how much they
depend on peer review for quality control.

Smith acknowledged that some of his members favor open access, but he
also said that many chemistry librarians share his skepticism of open
access.

Supporters of open access rejected these criticisms. Allen of the
Committee on Institutional Cooperation said that the publishers=92
arguments were =93speculative=94 and =93alarmist,=94 and that her members
didn=92t want to destroy peer review. She said that they were committed
to keeping peer review viable, and that all kinds of models could
support it =97 once people stop trying to defend the current system at
all costs.

And Dye of Oberlin scoffed at the idea that preserving the system was
somehow linked to the national interest, noting that any journal
available for a fee in the United States is hardly limited to
American readership, and that such an approach is antithetical to
science. =93My goodness, publishers are international,=94 she said. =93This
whole business is international and the scientific research is
international. I just don=92t see any national interest that would be
violated.=94

=97 Scott Jaschik


************************************************
Manon Anne Ress
manon.ress@cptech.org,
www.cptech.org

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