Open Access: A Movement, a Policy, a State of Mind

[editor's note: re-posted as our most popular column in the month of August]

by Lana Brand on August 10, 2012

“An old tradition and a new technology have converged to make possible an unprecedented public good. The old tradition is the willingness of scientists and scholars to publish the fruits of their research in scholarly journals without payment, for the sake of inquiry and knowledge. The new technology is the internet.”

– Budapest Open Access Initiative (2002) 

Each time I read this my heart swells. The possibility. The hope. The sheer logic. Yes, yes, of course the internet will be the savior of scholarly communication. We shall all find the information we need to learn, to help people, to effect change. With one click, we shall access data, share ideas, find answers, solve problems. Yes, leveraging technology will remove the physical and cost constraints that print brings. We’re wide open!



The statement above is the backbone of “open access” (OA), a term born of the Budapest Open Access Initiative (BOAI). OA’s purpose and definition was set forth more than 10 years ago in a document endorsed by thirteen minds set on improving the state of scholarly communication. They knew the free and unrestricted availability of peer-reviewed scholarly journal content on the public Internet would tear down the barriers that had previously limited the sharing of research ideas and findings. Instead of signing over exclusive copyright to a publisher, the author could maintain control of his work, disseminating it on his own terms. With OA, the author could claim the right to protect the integrity of his work and to be properly acknowledged while also allowing unfettered electronic access. Access means reading, downloading, copying, distributing, printing, searching, linking, crawling, extracting – anything that increases the likelihood that this work will be seen and used by more inquiring minds, which is the primary intent of academics who publish their work in journals anyway.

Thus OA seems ideal. Authors and peer-reviewers don’t get paid, never have. Their reward is in the impact of their work. The bulk of the cost has always come from the printing. That cost is gone. For very little money articles can be formatted and stored online. Views and downloads can be plainly measured and made transparent. But then why is it that most of the time I click “full-text” only to find a prompt for my credit card number? Why does downloading an article cost as much as a hardback book? 

The long answer lies in the incongruity between the spirit of free flowing knowledge creation/ exchange within academia and the profit-driven dissemination model of academic publishers predicated upon restricting this flow of knowledge. For hundreds of years small publishing houses run by academic societies simply wanted to provide researchers a channel to reach their distant colleagues, but the late 20th century saw corporate conglomerates absorbing these smaller presses and claiming a monopoly on the market. And what a market it has become. In recent years, leaders in academic publishing like Elsevier, a sprawling scientific press, have reported annual profits of more than 35% on revenue topping $3 billion. This return of revenue is unheard of even among even the topmost industries – more than 10% higher than the average in oil, pharmaceuticals and banking. Even while the move to digital has dramatically reduced publication costs as demonstrated by thriving OA journals, electronic journal subscription prices have spiked in the past five years, rising well above the consumer price index. Essentially, we are paying academic publishers astronomical prices to access and use the same work we handed over to them for free. 

OA can rectify this misplaced focus on monetary gain. Although I’d like to see the academic publishing regime topple because I find its business practices repugnant, I don’t think that is the primary intent of the OA movement, just an added bonus. Instead, it is simply to reclaim the conversation among the curious; to fuel the discussion with the most current evidence, most rigorous arguments and latest technologies available; to ensure that no one is excluded from participating because they cannot pay to listen to their peers. Sure, taking on the burden of publisher as well as writer and reviewer means more work for librarians like me and for my friends who are diligently and passionately carrying out their research, but in a sense, we’re already doing this. Managing a blog or website certainly does not require the same commitment as managing a peer-reviewed journal, but I’m convinced that it’s not that far off from existing online collaborations.

You may not be ready to establish a journal just yet, but fortunately the Directory of Open Access Journals already indexes 8,000 OA journals, adding more everyday. While the number of OA journals is steadily growing, the shift to OA is occurring in a complex environment, and much like the efforts to improve our intricate physical ecosystems, even the smallest actions can improve the systems in which we share our ideas. Each small step contributes to cultivating an open state of mind in academia:

● Adding OA journals in your field to your RSS aggregator 

● Linking to OA articles on your social networking sites 

● Assigning OA articles to your classes 

● Citing OA articles in your own scholarly work 

● Submitting your work for publication in OA journals 

● Negotiating your copyright with traditional publishers 

● Voicing your opinion to your congressmen about legislation like the Federal Research Public Access (FERPA) and the Research Works Act 

● Getting involved with the Scholarly Publishing & Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC) and other OA advocacy organizations 

● Participating in Open Access Week (October 22-28, 2012) 

● Starting a scholarly communication interest group in your chosen professional association

Whatever you can commit right now, perhaps only the promise to learn more about the movement or to debate the topic with your peers, please do. Every dialogue about OA makes it more likely that the BOAI’s vision of “uniting humanity in a common intellectual conversation and quest for knowledge” will be realized.

Lana Brand is a librarian with a graduate degree from the University of South Florida. She is currently working as a hospital librarian serving rural Northeast Georgia health care providers and their patient community. Her research interests lie in information access and information literacy, along with the culinary arts and yoga.