An unexpected package arrived on my desk earlier this year. The sender did not give a name, and the return address was false. Inside were copies of emails between senior staff at major scientific publishing houses. They were discussing a surprising topic: plans to hire , a public relations guru who has organised attacks on environmental groups, represented an Enron chief, and authored the book Nail 鈥楨m! Confronting high-profile attacks on celebrities and businesses. (See our related blog, plus the leaked proposal from Eric Dezenhall here)
Leaked emails and controversial characters like Dezenhall are not normally associated with the staid world of academic journals, but the big publishers are getting a little spooked. Over the past decade, researchers have started to demand that scientific results be set free. The majority of research is publicly funded and is reviewed, free of charge, by public-sector scientists. But it is then placed in journals where it is available only to those who pay for a subscription or belong to a library that has one. Many academics want this system replaced with one that ensures access for all.
This is not a message that all publishers want to hear. The profits from many academic journals rest entirely on subscription fees; if articles are available for free, researchers may decide they need not bother signing up. Publishing houses have ploughed millions of dollars into the infrastructure needed to keep this business going online. If everyone gets to expect free access, that investment will look misguided. The publishers hired Dezenhall because they wanted a PR campaign to counter these threats.
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It鈥檚 a shame they cannot see the bigger picture. Restricting access to journals slows down the work of everyone involved in science, not just researchers but also policy-makers, journalists and campaigners. For scientists in poorer nations, often the places where the benefits of research are most needed, access can be non-existent. Subscription barriers also hamper the integration of databases and research papers, which many see as the future of scientific publishing.
These benefits are not incompatible with the survival of commercial publishers. What is needed is a change of business model, not a revolution. Almost 3000 journals already use the new system: instead of charging people for access to journals, they charge researchers to publish in them. The fees, typically $1000 to $2000 per paper, are usually met by the organisation that funded the research, and several big funders, including the Wellcome Trust, have committed to providing the money their researchers need. The articles are then made available for free online; in other words, they are .
None of this has changed thinking at the Association of American Publishers (AAP), the organisation that hired Dezenhall (and of which the journal-publishing arm of 快猫短视频鈥榮 parent company is a member). The emails I received show that Dezenhall advised the AAP to focus on what seem to me to be emotive and highly misleading messages. Publishers were told to equate traditional journals with peer review, even though open-access publications operate peer review in exactly the same way. US government plans to boost access to papers, which include , were to be described as 鈥渃ensorship鈥� and 鈥渃opyright theft鈥�, though it is hard to see what possible basis these accusations can have.
鈥淭raditional and open-access journals operate peer review in exactly the same way鈥�
Dezenhall鈥檚 campaign launched last month. The AAP has formed a lobby group, the , and most of what it says is in line with what Dezenhall suggested. To anyone who has followed the debate on open access, the messages look pathetic, and one AAP member 鈥� The Rockefeller University Press 鈥� quickly said that it 鈥渟trongly disagreed鈥� with what the association has done.
Those who would like to see open access win out should think twice before dismissing PRISM. Its messages are designed not to win an intellectual debate but to sway people who know little about what open access means: the US senators who will soon vote on the archive plans. The proposal could easily be traded away in a bid to reach agreement on the larger and more important spending bill in which it is contained. PRISM members need only convince a few senators that open access does amount to censorship and, as they put it, risks 鈥渙pening the floodgates for non-peer-reviewed junk science to enter the marketplace鈥�.
Long-term, however, PRISM looks like a desperate move. No successful company wants to tear up its business model and start again, but change is inevitable. Open-access journals are springing up faster than ever (), and the better-established ones are already profitable. In the last eight years, 12 whole editorial boards have quit traditional journals in protest at high prices, and launched rival open-access publications. The AAP鈥檚 lobbying may delay things, but the open-access movement has a momentum that not even Dezenhall can reverse.