the internet world of vinod scaria
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Scholarly communication in Biomedical Sciences, Open Access and the developing world Vinod
Scaria |
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Correspondence: Introduction: We
are now into the fourth decade of the serials crisis and into
just about a couple of decades into the communication
revolution brought about by the spawning Internet
technologies. The advent of Internet as a technology capable
of disseminating information faster, with a wider reach and
virtually free had been welcomed by the publishing industry
with panic. The
panic was partly due to the fact that the huge margins of
profit generated could not be possibly maintained, due to the
emergence of technology that would threaten not only the
existence of their economic frameworks, but also lead to the
widespread copyright abuse and lead to the flourishing of the
hitherto limited contraband to a global scale. Scholarly
communication and the developing world: Two
major barriers plagued scholarly communication in the
developing world. Firstly the access barrier, which meant
researchers were not able to access researches of their peers,
due to the high costs of publications, and the publication
crisis, which meant researchers had lesser avenues to
publish/disseminate their research. This evolved into a
vicious circle, draining expertise and scholarship and became
one of the factors promoting Safari Research. In
fact, many of the developing countries had adapted to their
crisis by bringing up indigenous Journals, and adapted by
creating their own circle, often prominently separated from
the International scenario, similar to the scholarly
communication in the cold-war era. Open
Access Movements
The open access movements pioneered by the Budapest
Open Access Initiative [BOAI] .The Open access movements aimed
at creating a free and barrier less access structure to
scholarly communication employing the now ubiquitous Internet.
The open access framework was created whereby the author would
pay for the peer review, and organizational expenses as well
as for permanent archival. In exchange, he would get the
rights to copy, distribute or disseminate as much as reprints
for free. Researchers could also access the research
universally for free. The
initiatives foresee that removing access barriers to
literature will accelerate research, enrich academic, share
the learning and lay the foundation for uniting humanity in a
common intellectual conversation and quest for knowledge .The
BOAI defines open access as: “…by
‘open access’ to this literature, we mean its free
availability on the public internet, permitting any users to
read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to
the full texts of these articles, crawl them for indexing,
pass them as data to software, or use them for any other
lawful purpose, without financial, legal, or technical
barriers other than those inseparable from gaining access to
the internet itself …..”[1]. The
Open Access movements are basically based on two pillar stones
of Self Archiving [2] and creation of open access journals
[3]. Economics
of Open Access: When open access is discussed, one major
question to answer is how to cover the expenses incurred in
maintaining editorial assistance and peer review, publishing
and archiving. The BOAI clearly describes the economic
strategy that is to be employed. It quotes “There
are many alternative sources of funds for this purpose,
including the foundations and governments that fund research,
the universities and laboratories that employ researchers,
endowments set up by discipline or institution, friends of the
cause of open access, profits from the sale of add-ons to the
basic texts, funds freed up by the demise or cancellation of
journals charging traditional subscription or access fees, or
even contributions from the researchers themselves. There is
no need to favor one of these solutions over the others for
all disciplines or nations, and no need to stop looking for
other, creative alternatives.”
[1] The
Open Society Institute [4] backed by philanthropist George
Soros which is behind the initiative also has plans to support
open access Journals. The Institute gives away about $ 100,000
for publication of articles of researchers of some 67
countries where the Soros foundation network is active. Open
Access Journals: A brief description of Economic Models: The
JMIR was one of the pioneer open access online only journals.
Unlike the former journals, this one was exclusively published
in the electronic form, and was free to access at its website.
The journal initially did not charge anything from the
authors, but from December 2003 charges a processing fee of
$500 per article from every author. Fee is waived as per the
BOAI support to researchers from countries where the Soros
foundation is active. BioMedCentral
[BMC] is a leading commercial open access publisher and
publishes more than 75 open access Journals that are
exclusively published electronically. All the Journals are
archived in PMC also. This open access publisher charges $1500
for every article as processing charges. The publisher also
has a policy of waiving fees for researchers in the developing
countries. It
is clear that most online only journals rely on an economic
model based on charging the authors for covering the costs and
making profit. None of these journals derive major share of
costs from third parties like advertisements, sponsorships or
provision of value added services like print copies, CD ROM
formats etc. This would mean the model would be a far cry from
what envisaged by the BOAI, and would mean the brunt would
always fall on the shoulders of researchers. Open Access and its impact on the Developing world: The impact of the open access initiatives on the developing world can be mainly discussed in the following headings. In the
sphere of information dissemination, the open access
initiatives will surely do a big job. It will create a unique
opportunity whereby researchers in these countries would be
able to access literature, which were hitherto unavailable due
to barriers to access based on economic motives. This would
surely pave way for a revolution in information access and
thus breaking the vicious circle of poverty in information,
which was a rule. It
is clear that at the costs which many of the publishers charge
authors, most authors of developing countries would find it
hard to afford publishing their articles in these Journals.
Though at present the BOAI has a policy of waiving publishing
costs, the policy is not to be regarded as an everlasting one,
but rather as charity with no guarantee that it would
continue. This would mean one needs to look at other
opportunities for funds to sustain the policy of open access. The
most devastating impact of the policy would be perhaps on the
publishing infrastructure in the developing world. This
publishing infrastructure that supported and sustained the
scholarly thinking in the developing world and supported open
access which was sustained at the meager profit these journals
generated would find themselves at sea when they find their
subscriptions being cancelled due to the huge influx of free
literature. Most of these journals, supported by
advertisements and subscription charges would find it
difficult to reorient themselves to the e-economy. Toeing in
line to the trend by charging authors would be devastating, as
authors would find it economical to try out international
journals rather than constrain to regional boundaries. The
movement has also the potential to destabilize the existence
of smaller journals. Large commercial firms like the BMC may
be able to drastically cut their costs, since they need to
maintain a supporting team, which would be shared by all their
journals. But this is certainly not the case of small journals
that need to maintain the team, irrespective how much papers
they receive. The
new economy would also have its impact on the cost of research
also. Though researchers who would have the extravagance of
adequate funding to cover their publication costs would find
it interesting and efficient mode of publication, most of the
researchers in developing countries, who often undertake
research by funding from their pay cheques would find it hard
to stomach the fact that they need to shell out more than ever
to see their work being published. Conclusions: The
Open Access Initiative is something that we can hardly afford
to miss, given the immense potential the movement offers at
freeing scholarly communication, utilizing the Internet as a
technology for mass change. At the same time we need to keep
in mind that any policy that does not take into consideration
or that does not seek the opinion of the majority of scholars
involved will surely make no significant impact. It
is also the need of the hour to shift our vision beyond just
Journals. Internet offers potential to drastically change how
we view peer-reviewed literature. We need to harness the
enormous potential of E-prints. The Open archives initiative
[7] has done much at creating an interoperable repository of
scholarly communication. Systems for open peer review of such
e-prints utilizing Internet is a potentially plausible
framework. This would impart transparency to peer review as
well as create a cost effective method of quality assurance.
More thoughts need to be directed in this direction. While
the open Access initiatives will do much at creating equity in
distribution of scholarly communication, especially in the
developing world, much has to be done to protect and sustain
the existence of small and regional journals, which are very
much essential at maintaining the health of that population,
since region specific health information is essential and
inseparable for maintaining the quality of health in each
geographical area. Similarly the interests of smaller journals
should be also taken into consideration. References: [1]
Budapest Open Access Initiative WebPage URL:http://www.soros.org/openaccess/read.shtml [2]
Steven Harnads Article on Self Archiving URL: http://www.cogsci.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Tp/nature4.htm [3]
Budapest Open Access Initiative WebPage URL: http://www.soros.org/openaccess/journals.shtml [4]
Open Access Intstitute Homepage URL: http://www.soros.org/
[5]
Journal of Medical Internet Research URL: http://www.jmir.org [6]
BioMedCentral URL: http://www.biomedcentral.com [7]
Open Archives Initiative URL:http://www.openarchives.org/ Competing
Interests:
The author owns VirtualMed and MedPub, which publishes and
offers consultancy to many Indian online journals in
Biomedical domain. Source
of Funding: None ©Vinod
Scaria. This article was written on April 12, 2003. Verbatim
copying and publishing of this article is permitted in any
media provided the access is not restricted in any sort. The
author welcomes critical appraisal of this article. Please
contact him at vinodscaria@yahoo.co.in
.
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