What's it all about?
Once upon a time, the only way to read someone's writing was through the physical medium of books. That is no more.
Yet, new forms of electronic text distribution and use have not benefited most those who fund the majority of academic production. Public funds pay vast majority of the academic research; the results should therefore be public. Inexpensive electronic publishing should make this possible. But private publishing companies still own these results, and restrict access to them by charging exorbitant fees. In the case of academic journals, publishing companies are making huge profits by requiring publicly funded universities to pay very high subscription fees on behalf of students and academics.
We, the citizens, through the state, pay for the production of academic books and research papers twice, first through salaries and research grants, and second through the purchase of books and journal subscriptions. This is how the the most fundamental principles of academia, to study and to share its findings, are obstructed, and its operation is made far more expensive and cumbersome. Good news is that this has been partially recognised and Research Councils UK (RCUK) has pushed hard (2005) in the direction of both mandatory self archiving (2006) of all research outputs and open access in general.
When it comes to books, the argument, however, isn't as simple and as straight forwad as in the case of Guardian's campaign Free Our Data - whose name we're reusing. Nor has it been problematised widely, like it has been in the case of journals and RCUK recommendations. Significant contribution of editors, subeditors, proofreaders and other working on texts being produced (wages) and personal gain of authors of best selling works (share of sales) complicates the issue. In short, open access and self-archiving of publicly funded books, whose importance for social sciences and humanities is enormous (unlike in physics and maths) is yet to be widely discussed and there aren't immidiately obvious solutions visible. That is, unless we treat books, as we think we should, as just another form of research output - both when funded directly by one of RCUK councils, or by the individual universities.
We're not saying that printing and distributing books should stop. Nor that private companies are useless, nor that they are not needed. It is the current model, in which citizens have to pay for academic books and research papers twice, in which private companies control and profit from funding only a tiny part of the production process, that should be abolished and replaced with a new one.
Or,in the words of the recent Brisbane declaration (September 2008), which stated in their first strageic aim: "Every citizen should have free open access to publicly funded research, data and knowledge." [2] .
Here's how participants in another recent conference on copyright (Berlin, November 2008) described the issue in their collective statement: "Currently regulation via copyright is more a disabling than an enabling tool for science and education. [...] Let us consider, for instance, making copyright a means to protect science and culture as common properties and giving commercial exploiters license rights which will not hamper free access to knowledge." [3] .
Mandatory self-archiving at the time of publishing is one way to achieve this.
We envisage that this could happen through a new arrangement between the state funded academic/research institutions and private companies, which in turn will enable electronic copies of books and research papers to be available online free of charge - not unlike the conclusions of the above Berlin conference. A strong argument in support for radical moves for the Arts and Humanities was provided at the same conference from the UCL library data: "some Ph.D. dissertations are published as monographs. Good print run for such a monograph is 400 copies. But repository downloads of the same dissertations are much higher. In some UCL examples, 131, 126 and 124 downloads per month." [4] . In other words, Open Access is a very valuable way of knowledge sharing. On the basis of UCL example, far more valuable than printing a book.
This process, at least when it comes to research papers, is well under way: 27 academic institutions worldwide have already implemented a version of mandatory open access self-archiving policy, five of them in the UK: Southampton, Stirling, Glasgow, Queen Margaret Edinburgh (all 2008) and Napier Edinburgh (2009). See eprints policy detailed statistics and maps for more.
Physics and maths research communities have made huge early steps in this direction (arxiv.org) in regard to journal publishing, which is their most important publishing form:
Once upon a time, the only way to read someone's writing was through the physical medium of books. That is no more.
Yet, new forms of electronic text distribution and use have not benefited most those who fund the majority of academic production. Public funds pay vast majority of the academic research; the results should therefore be public. Inexpensive electronic publishing should make this possible. But private publishing companies still own these results, and restrict access to them by charging exorbitant fees. In the case of academic journals, publishing companies are making huge profits by requiring publicly funded universities to pay very high subscription fees on behalf of students and academics.
We, the citizens, through the state, pay for the production of academic books and research papers twice, first through salaries and research grants, and second through the purchase of books and journal subscriptions. This is how the the most fundamental principles of academia, to study and to share its findings, are obstructed, and its operation is made far more expensive and cumbersome. Good news is that this has been partially recognised and Research Councils UK (RCUK) has pushed hard (2005) in the direction of both mandatory self archiving (2006) of all research outputs and open access in general.
When it comes to books, the argument, however, isn't as simple and as straight forwad as in the case of Guardian's campaign Free Our Data - whose name we're reusing. Nor has it been problematised widely, like it has been in the case of journals and RCUK recommendations. Significant contribution of editors, subeditors, proofreaders and other working on texts being produced (wages) and personal gain of authors of best selling works (share of sales) complicates the issue. In short, open access and self-archiving of publicly funded books, whose importance for social sciences and humanities is enormous (unlike in physics and maths) is yet to be widely discussed and there aren't immidiately obvious solutions visible. That is, unless we treat books, as we think we should, as just another form of research output - both when funded directly by one of RCUK councils, or by the individual universities.
We're not saying that printing and distributing books should stop. Nor that private companies are useless, nor that they are not needed. It is the current model, in which citizens have to pay for academic books and research papers twice, in which private companies control and profit from funding only a tiny part of the production process, that should be abolished and replaced with a new one.
The direct goal of the campaign is to have
electronic copies of all the majority publicly funded research,
including all books and journal papers, available to citizens free of
charge online.
Or,in the words of the recent Brisbane declaration (September 2008), which stated in their first strageic aim: "Every citizen should have free open access to publicly funded research, data and knowledge." [2] .
Here's how participants in another recent conference on copyright (Berlin, November 2008) described the issue in their collective statement: "Currently regulation via copyright is more a disabling than an enabling tool for science and education. [...] Let us consider, for instance, making copyright a means to protect science and culture as common properties and giving commercial exploiters license rights which will not hamper free access to knowledge." [3] .
Mandatory self-archiving at the time of publishing is one way to achieve this.
We envisage that this could happen through a new arrangement between the state funded academic/research institutions and private companies, which in turn will enable electronic copies of books and research papers to be available online free of charge - not unlike the conclusions of the above Berlin conference. A strong argument in support for radical moves for the Arts and Humanities was provided at the same conference from the UCL library data: "some Ph.D. dissertations are published as monographs. Good print run for such a monograph is 400 copies. But repository downloads of the same dissertations are much higher. In some UCL examples, 131, 126 and 124 downloads per month." [4] . In other words, Open Access is a very valuable way of knowledge sharing. On the basis of UCL example, far more valuable than printing a book.
This process, at least when it comes to research papers, is well under way: 27 academic institutions worldwide have already implemented a version of mandatory open access self-archiving policy, five of them in the UK: Southampton, Stirling, Glasgow, Queen Margaret Edinburgh (all 2008) and Napier Edinburgh (2009). See eprints policy detailed statistics and maps for more.
Physics and maths research communities have made huge early steps in this direction (arxiv.org) in regard to journal publishing, which is their most important publishing form:
"on the one- to two-decade time scale it is
likely that other research communities will also have moved to some
form of global unified archive system without the current partitioning
and access restrictions familiar from the paper medium, for the simple
reason that it is the best way to communicate knowledge and hence to
create new
knowledge."
[2] .
What can we do about it?
We have a unique historic chance of reversing the trend of privatization of publicly funded knowledge production. Our strongest arguments are public funds behind our work and our departments and collective work within them.
In February 2008, Harward's Faculty of Arts and Sciences made open publishing default policy for all of their staff, creating a new, University Licence, which applies prior to any other copyright agreements with publishers:
In UK, we can use the experiences of Free Our Data campaign. Most importantly, we need to get our institutions to commit to a self-archiving policy. On the Europeran level, we should sign the EC petition which mandates open access self-archiving, stating: "RECOMMENDATION A1. GUARANTEE PUBLIC ACCESS TO PUBLICLY-FUNDED RESEARCH RESULTS SHORTLY AFTER PUBLICATION".
We have a unique historic chance of reversing the trend of privatization of publicly funded knowledge production. Our strongest arguments are public funds behind our work and our departments and collective work within them.
In February 2008, Harward's Faculty of Arts and Sciences made open publishing default policy for all of their staff, creating a new, University Licence, which applies prior to any other copyright agreements with publishers:
"The Harvard policy is
an important turning point in the movement toward open access. It
demonstrates that faculty can agree on the need to retain control over
their intellectual property and create worldwide access to their
work. It shows how faculty can commit to depositing their work in
their institutional repositories and to ensuring that their work can
be freely accessed over the Internet consistent with copyright
law."
Their rest of the Open Doors,
Open Minds paper is written to provide information on What
faculty authors can do to ensure open access to their work through
their institutionIn UK, we can use the experiences of Free Our Data campaign. Most importantly, we need to get our institutions to commit to a self-archiving policy. On the Europeran level, we should sign the EC petition which mandates open access self-archiving, stating: "RECOMMENDATION A1. GUARANTEE PUBLIC ACCESS TO PUBLICLY-FUNDED RESEARCH RESULTS SHORTLY AFTER PUBLICATION".
Events & Propaganda
Saturday 14th March 2009, campaign alpha (v0.1) launch: Leaflet, pdf, 2xA5, Leaflet, pdf, A4, Jpeg, raw 300dpi
Saturday 14th March 2009, campaign alpha (v0.1) launch: Leaflet, pdf, 2xA5, Leaflet, pdf, A4, Jpeg, raw 300dpi
Recommendations for UK OPEN-ACCESS provisional policy
In favour of self-archiving, taking apart arguments of a learned publishers' association (ALPSP),
Scholarly Monograph Publishing in the 21st Century: The Future More Than Ever Should Be an Open Book
Creating a global knowledge network, Paul Ginsparg, Paris, 19-23 Feb 2001, Second Joint ICSU Press - UNESCO Expert Conference on Electronic Publishing in Science
RoMEO - Use this site to find a summary of permissions that are normally given as part of each publisher's copyright transfer agreement.
Registry of Open Access Repositories (ROAR) for self-archiving: UK repositories, sorted by numner of records and by country.
Eprints FAQ on Self-archiving with lots of links.
University of Stirling was first in UK to adopt mandatory open access (collections in repository).
Brisbane Declaration on Open Access (Sept 2008) stated:
Therefore the participants resolve the following as a summary of the basic
strategies that Australia must adopt:
1 Every citizen should have free open access to publicly funded
research, data and knowledge.
2 Every Australian university should have access to a digital repository
to store its research outputs for this purpose.
3 As a minimum, this repository should contain all materials reported in
the Higher Education Research Data Collection (HERDC).
4 The deposit of materials should take place as soon as possible, and
in the case of published research articles should be of the author's
final draft at the time of acceptance so as to maximize open
access to the material.
Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities, Oct 2003.
Scottish Declaration on Open Access, October 2004.
Peter Suber's Open Access News
Toni Prug
toni@irational.org
toni@irational.org