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Nature Publishing Group Sets the Cat Amongst the Pigeons of Open Access, But Maybe We’re All Missing the Point

Important Details: Last week Nature published an article examining the financial challenges facing Public Library of Science (PLoS). It posited that PLoS has failed to meet its stated objectives of demonstrating the financial viability of pay-to-publish premium journals, and is instead now relying on PLoS One’s “light peer review bulk publishing model” to make ends meet. However factually sound, the article’s perceived provocative tone caused hackles to rise. Accusing Nature of the heinous crime of hyperbole, pro-OA supporters set the blogosphere alight with outrage, uproar and - we assume, therefore - an acute sense of irony.

In a finely judged post on Nature’s blog, Timo Hannay offered a rebuttal to NPG’s critics, suggesting that a functional economic model is key to OA’s success, and so PLoS’ problems in this area are worthy of examination. Hannay highlighted the law of unintended consequences: although intended to propagate OA, the PLoS experiment could stifle the premium journal OA market by blocking new commercial entrants which will be unable to compete against its subsidised business model. Hannay also lamented the unsophisticated nature of the debate: “the risk of [pro-OA] knee-jerk counterattacks”, whilst “[anti-OA] PRISM is just too dumb to be classed as evil; ‘brain-dead’ would be closer to the mark”.

Implications: However hotly-argued (or entertaining) the OA debate, in Outsell’s opinion it’s beginning to miss the point. The issues underlying open access are moving from those of licensing to those of workflow, reflecting much broader changes in the process of contemporary science.

Much scholarly communication takes place outside the STM publishers’ domain, via conferences, proceedings, data sets and so forth, none of which fit the process of the peer reviewed research article. Scientists have long (always?) been collaborative creatures - and the digital age means that scientists, and science itself, no longer need publishers to handle the distribution and sharing of information. Web 2.0 technology makes everyone a publisher, with free two-way access to a global audience no longer dependent on the letters page of a Great Journal, and online commentary mechanisms offering peer review on the fly. Much of the of the traditional journal publishers’ input is therefore becoming redundant. “Access” - however one defines it - is no longer a service that offers value in and of itself.

Whilst funders have yet to cohere around a common approach, they will ultimately set the scholarly publishing agenda. Archiving policies, such as those of the NIH and Wellcome Trust, suggest a pattern in which those footing the bill for scientific research insist it be made openly available via repositories, to promote its widest possible dissemination, and breaking it free from the walled gardens so beloved by publishers. Indeed, over the last few months Outsell has picked up sentiment in the marketplace that there is a sense of dissatisfaction with the scholarly publishing process, coupled with a belief that other organisations (such as national libraries or academic institutions) will move to handle the communication of research, with the peer review article a post-script to a wider process of science, rather than a central tenet. (See Insights 2 October 2006, Moving Towards Open Access: the Right Road for All Disciplines?; 11 January 2007, UK PubMed Central: National Repository in a Global Science Marketplace; 26 November 2007, US Senate Mandates Open Access - Vive La Revolution?; and 19th February 2008, Body Blow from Boston Bruiser - Harvard Mandates Open Access.)

This emerging approach suggests that funders are latching on to the discrepancy between scholarly publishers’ claimed value-add (peer review) and their business models (controlling access) and are moving to pay scholarly publishers to deliver exactly and only what publishers claim their value-add to be: a stamp of quality. In the mid term, this suggests a potential market for repository services, with the value proposition being to address the communication needs of institutions, wrapped in a service-oriented business model. But it suggests a deeper change too. Perhaps funders are not advocating the open repository as part of some grievance towards STM publishers, but in order to create new ecosystem in which the next generation of R&D productivity tools can evolve. Data and text mining techniques are coming of age, and such tools use content as raw material, suggesting a process of highly efficient knowledge discovery using algorithms and analytics. Our Insight from 9th November 2007, “CureHunter: Splitting the Atom of the Article Abstract?“, demonstrates one example of how a corpus of content can be mined for new knowledge.

Automated knowledge discovery processes require unfettered access to content, which is why the repository without walls is important to those looking to up the ante of R&D productivity. And - to anticipate the common objection - don’t think that harboring “the definitive version of the article” is necessary either! Text mining tools are increasingly capable of disambiguating multiple sources and funders too are prepared to manage disambiguation (see Insights 13 May 2008, A Dummies Guide to Implementing the NIH Open Access Mandate), so arguments about the dangers of multiple sources are all but stillborn.

As we outlined previously (see Insights 17 April 2007, Open Access: the progress of Science, but not of Scientists), the long-established process of science communication will not change overnight and there will always be room for premium journals at the top of the edifice of scientific communication. However, as the use of repositories becomes a reality, and knowledge mining tools come of age, it is clear that we have now moved beyond the mere rhetoric of change.

So we issue a warning to the proponents of the peer-reviewed journal article: beware of overstating your value to the process of science! The longer its focus on its narrow part of the scholarly communications process continues, the more the STM publishing community will seem out of touch, and the more likely that - whether it charges for access or not - it will become a prisoner in its own walled garden.

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