Large scientific publishers tend to block the spread of scientific knowledge rather than distribute it. Criticism increases. Are open access channels a good alternative?
Paywall: the Business of Scholarship (full movie on Vimeo)
TU Delft Software engineering Professor, Arie van Deursen, introduced the video Paywall: the Business of Scholarship at a campus screening last Tuesday (30 October 2018). The angry documentary, produced by Jason Smith, accuses scientific publishers of making huge profits (30-40%) over work done for free by publicly funded researchers. Libraries pay huge amounts for subscriptions, people in the documentary say, but they are not allowed to disclose the amount.
Libraries, and sometimes whole countries, run into paywalls when they try to access information not included in their package. Effectively, whole continents outside the western hemisphere are denied access to the latest scientific developments. Librarians find themselves refusing to pass information to researchers who have left universities and who cannot access their sources anymore. They are surprised to find themselves blocking information instead of providing it.
Van Deursen is an outspoken advocate for open access publishing and he frequently blogs on the subject. Open access publishing uses no paywalls and disseminates knowledge without subscription. The logic behind it is that the research has been publicly funded, and so the results should be available to all.
‘Go for the top’
In theory most researchers will agree on the principles of open access publishing, but when it comes to publishing their own work, they tend to choose the venue with the highest impact factor, criticised as it may be. What does Van Deursen recommend to his PhD students?
“Go for the top,” he explains over the telephone. “Choose the most prestigious journal that you can get into, but besides that, make your paper available through open access through the TU Delft’s ‘pure’ repository.” Rules vary according to publisher, but by using this ‘green open access’ you at least make sure that your work is publicly available – a demand that is often a condition for national or European research funding agencies. Van Deursen has written a FAQ blog to help colleagues navigate these treacherous waters.
What does Van Deursen think about the film? “It forcefully introduces the issue of paywalls, and why something will have to change in the way we publish science. I recommend the film to anyone who is not familiar with the topic. Yet, the film doesn’t go very far in offering solutions like the Plan S by 11 European research funders. Something has got to change. Look at the music industry and how everyone is now paying for Spotify subscriptions.” If Spotify has solved its issues, we should be able to do so as well, the Professor seems to be saying.
Science editor
Jos Wassink
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