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Open Access Debate: On the Flip Side “Open Access” has now become a familiar buzzword in scientific publication. We associate open access with the free download of published articles from scientific journals. Usually the author or a sponsor pays the necessary charges (prices range from $500-$5000 for major scientific journals) to make an individual article open access. A few journals (e.g., Nature Communications, Scientif ic Reports, PLoS One, and Chemical Sciences) are now exclusively open access journals. No doubt, open access is an effective model as long as authors, reviewers, readers, institutions, and publishers collaborate and come to a collective understanding. To date, it has been mostly the administrators and publishers determining the terms. It is important that we bring authors, libraries, and funding agencies into the open access discussion. This Viewpoint raises some key points that need to be discussed before one espouses a “rosy picture” of open access. Some Unintended Consequences. What about Archives? Until now, journals’ new material and archives were accessible via a subscription-based model. Typically, an institution would subscribe to the journals so that all current and previously published papers would be available institution-wide. In a few cases, individuals would subscribe to specific journals, although this market has dwindled in recent years. Currently, if a reader does not have access to the paper, it can be obtained through interlibrary loan or by requesting a preprint from the author. This model worked quite effectively until open access became popular. It is true that the open access platform will make newly published papers freely accessible to all readers; however, one still needs to pay for archived papers published prior to open access. Publishers maintain the collection of all archives, which are available based on subscription fees or individual article purchase. Ironically, many libraries who already had some of these articles have disposed of their bound volumes as access through the Internet became popular and no one came to the library looking for a bound volume. Who Will Bear the Cost? In many European countries, the mandatory demand for open access has caused the funding agency or the institution to bear the cost. In the U.S. and many other countries, the issue of “who bears the cost?” is still being debated. Will the funding agencies in the U.S. and elsewhere be receptive to the idea of allocating additional funds for article publication charges? Are Authors/Institutions with Limited Financial Resources at a Disadvantage? Although an open access culture brings published scientific papers for free to all readers, it puts the author at a disadvantage if he/she cannot find adequate support. Authors with unlimited resources will be able to publish in highcharging journals such as Nature Communications, but authors with limited resources have to shop around and/or ask for a waiver or a discount. A few journals like PLoS One offer nationbased open access fees. Why Should Reviewers Provide Their Service Gratis? Until now, peer review has been done on a volunteer basis because authors consider this as an important task to maintaining scientific integrity. Typically, an author is obliged to review two to three © 2015 American Chemical Society
papers per published paper to balance the workload of peer reviewing. Because the authors did not pay any charges for publishing their own work, it was fair to conduct a volunteerbased peer review process. Now that the author is paying the cost of the paper upfront for an open access article, it is not unreasonable to expect a fraction of this fee be used as a reviewer reward. In fact, in a recent announcement, the University of California Press introduced a new online journal, Collabra, which has a provision to reward the reviewers (http://news.sciencemag.org/scientific-community/2015/01/ new-open-access-journal-plans-pay-peer-reviewers). Explosion of Predatory Open Access Journals. Whereas most of us are already utilizing the open access feature of leading scientific journals, we have to face the outcome of a new breed of open access journals. Many of these journals are run through a remote server with limited credibility in editorial and publishing services. For many of these journals, not publishing a paper means lost revenue. Jeffrey Beall, a librarian at the University of Colorado Denver, tracks many of these predatory journals and has already blacklisted more than 500 such journals (http:// scholarlyoa.com/individual-journals/). An anticipated consequence is that an author who is shopping around for a lower open access fee could easily fall into the trap of a predatory journal. Explosion of Citations. The traditional scientific journals meantime have maintained their rigor and established a steady growth trend in publishing high quality papers. Given the ease with which an article can be published in an open access journal, we have seen a steep increase in the number of published papers across all the journals. In fact, the nearly exponential growth in the published papers that we see now stems mainly from open access journals. Along with the papers comes the explosive list of citations. In a recent Science magazine editorial, it was pointed out that the willingness of several open access journals to publish mediocre papers has led to the explosion of citations (McNutt, M. The Measure of Research Merit. Science, 2014, 346 (6214), 1155). As a result of these citations, citation metrics such as Impact Factor, h-index, and so forth will soon become devalued. Jeffrey Beall, in his blog, points out one such example of improving one’s own citation count by publishing in predatory open access journals (http://scholarlyoa.com/2015/01/20/did-a-romanianresearcher-successfully-game-google-scholar-to-raise-hiscitation-count/). Are There Better Options? The terms of the open access model are currently dictated by publishers and by funding agency administrators. As the authors and readers get involved in developing the terms of open access, new advancements can be expected in the near future. Some publishers, such as Nature Publishing Group, have recently announced that all subscription-based papers will be free for view but not for Received: February 19, 2015 Accepted: March 12, 2015 Published: April 2, 2015 1238
DOI: 10.1021/acs.jpclett.5b00362 J. Phys. Chem. Lett. 2015, 6, 1238−1239
Viewpoint
The Journal of Physical Chemistry Letters download and print. This feature seems to satisfy most of the demand of readers to view published articles at no cost. Perhaps this approach will soon be adopted by other publishers. In the meantime, there are several new options for authors to deposit their work in the institutional or government-managed repositories. In the U.S., funding agencies such as NIH, NSF, and DOE now require all funded research papers to be deposited in such repositories for free public access. There are also private repositories such as arXiv that are free for authors to deposit their papers prior to or after publication in a scientific journal. The Editors of The Journal of Physical Chemistry A/B/C/Letters are advocates of “green open access” in arXiv and other institutional repositories with a citation of the original publication’s version of record. Social platforms such as ResearchGate encourage authors to post their published papers; however, the site explicitly asks the author to obtain permission from the publisher to deposit such papers. Authors should exercise caution because, without proper approval or licensing agreements, such posting may not represent a legally valid option. As the publication platform is transformed into a more reader-friendly platform, new features are continually being introduced by different publishers. Although the author-paid open access platform offers no barriers to download a published work, one needs to take into account other unintended consequences. It is important that the researchers who are the creators of original work and institutions that bear the cost of publication/subscription get actively engaged in the open access discussions by voicing their opinions. The integrity of the published work is the key to the future success of all journals. So far, the peer review process has enabled us to maintain a high standard in leading publications. The explosion of OA papers, however, is putting a strain on the review system. In addition to demanding open access to published papers, we should also work toward maintaining the integrity of scientific publication.
Prashant V. Kamat*
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Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry and Radiation Laboratory, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, Indiana 46556, United States
AUTHOR INFORMATION
Corresponding Author
*E-mail:
[email protected]. Notes
The authors declare no competing financial interest.
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EDITOR'S NOTE Views expressed in this Viewpoint are those of the author and not necessarily the views of the ACS.
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DOI: 10.1021/acs.jpclett.5b00362 J. Phys. Chem. Lett. 2015, 6, 1238−1239
