arguments in favor
Note: This piece of writing is taken from a debate done in my work in Information Policy (IST-618), a course at Syracuse University.
These arguments are in defense of scientific publications (rather than private research developed by companies, entertainment publications, and those produced outside of the purpose of expanding scientific knowledge.)
“Open access”is in reference to the publishing of scientific articles that are free to view, and free to re-use—rather than any standard business model like pay-for-access.
Introduction
There are numerous reasons why publishing in open access journals is more beneficial to the researcher, and society as a whole, than in traditional publication models.
Open access increases use and readership, and in turn strengthens the knowledge economy and re-enforces the scientific method.
Open Access is often the direct result of taxpayer dollars, and it would be more fair for the taxpayer to be able to access government-funded research available.
OA can contribute to lessened economic inequalities globally.
OA also averts negative motivations that stem from the subscription model, including incentive towards exaggeration and openness in favor of prestige and profit. (n of 1 or testing in mice, non-diverse sample, no control)
Argument 1: Allows Scholarly Research to be Disseminated More Rapidly and Widely
Betters the scientific method by opening up niche areas of scientific research and seemingly-breakthrough studies to more tests of reproducibility.
OA papers were opened 89% higher, with downloads 42% higher than subscription-access articles according to a study in the BMJ.
Recent analysis of 19 million journal articles that are OA showed on avg those publications receive a minimum of 18 percent more citations.
According to a Physics Today analysis, in the 15 years since OA journals began, they’ve experienced double-digit growth, and are expected to experience continued strong growth.
Betters scientific research through opening up disparate fields to previously unthought of connections. Usually due to overwhelming costs associated with journal subscriptions, you’d rarely have access to journals unrelated to your field—even when useful/insightful similarities could be drawn to produce more grounded, well-rounded research.
Data mining of scientific articles can pull together more complete data sets, IBM’s Watson does just this in trying to come up with new areas of hypothesis.
Businesses can have broad access to most recent scientific ideas to build on, contributes to the knowledge economy and provides an economic boost.
Argument 2: Diminishes Economic Inequalities
Diminishes economic inequalities impact on science. As much as we want to believe that academia is a fully meritocratic system, oftentimes funding is given to researchers at “better” universities and to get into those universities connections and wealth often outweighs pure meritocratic worth.
People who would otherwise not be able to access that information due to affordability can now benefit without trying to draw insight solely from a short abstract or press releases coming out about the article.
Veil of ignorance: in a global society with global telecommunications networks, society is becoming less and less a nation-based concept. Great disparity in current publications shouldn’t limit access to the research results. In deciding what society we would want to live in under no knowledge of where we’ll be born or who we will be, it’s clear that anyone would want to live in a world with access to scientific knowledge.
Access in developing countries. Open access applies the world over, subscription based journals often lack funds to supply low-income countries access.
Argument 3: Traditional Publishing is an Outdated Model Based on Old Publishing Methods
Traditional Publishing is an outdated model based on the cost of physically publishing, reviewing, and printing scientific article.
Digitization and Price increases has made this model obsolete.
Outpaced inflation by over 250%, average price is over $1k in over 15 disciplines, one journal costs $40k a year.
BUT the journal employs neither the researchers nor the reviewers.
The business model of Traditional Publishing journals (subscriptions or advertising) risks bias in that there is a profit motive for presenting new research as more groundbreaking as it actually may is—as is seen in journals news alerts and titles, often not noting immediately that, say, the promising cancer trial was conducted on rats, or the experiment sample was conducted on 15 affluent college-aged males.
Traditional model limits reach of science In favor of maintaining high profit margins and prestige.
It’s important to also note that government funded research is paid for by the public, it is not fair that the public has to pay for access to the research in addition to the funding that produced it.
Rebuttals:
It will cost more:
A study on the “Costs and Benefits of Research Communication” in the Netherlands by Victoria University found that while this may be true in the short term, during the transitional phase, open access will provide cost-savings in the long run.
How to pay for Author Processing Charges? Cost to researchers.
While traditional journals commonly charge per page, OA journals charge a flat processing fee that ranges from $8 to $5000. In comparison, traditional journals commonly charge per page ($100-250). So if your article is 20 pages or longer (which is more the rule than exception) you’ll be paying more than the most expensive open access journal.
Some libraries, after facing rising subscription costs for an ever-growing number of journals, underwrite researcher’s costs for publishing in OA journals cause it saves them money in the long run.
“post-acceptance fees”of $1,00-$3,000 still minimal and can be compensated through grants, with subsidies or waivers to self-funded research and in cases when the author cannot cover the fee.
How to know if the open access journal is reputable?
Same way you know non-open access ones are, often journals are scored by databases (QOAM, Scirev, DOAJ) which can provide a check on quality.
Prestige!
Highly scored OA journals are available in most fields, some of which rank 1st (PLOS computational Biology) in their field.
Faster review doesn’t mean worse review, and open access doesn’t mean faster review.
Pay for peer review?
It’s almost always on a volunteer basis of experts in the field, board of editors/reviewers on a specific journal is an unpaid position.
Predatory Journals:
Bad actors shouldn’t dissuade users from good services. It’s actually an argument for making all publications open access-as increased use of and publication through these OA platforms provides the funding and backing to increase third party verifications/reviews of journals.
Final Point:
Overall, maintaining the current subscription model would save costs as opposed to changing to a fully OA model, but in the long-run better and more science research could be done from a more diverse pool of researchers, giving back to society rather than just those who can pay. It’s clear that if publications are freely available, they’ll be cited and read more often. In the long run switching All publications to this model would increase the viability of the OA model and give the public a clear, accessible, return on their tax dollars investment.
Pulling it back to the information and food analogy. If you go to a reasturaunt and don’t enjoy your meal, often you’ll get a refund, or a server will comp your appetizer or drinks, or some sort of compensation for your bad experience. But buying access to a particular paper that doesn’t answer your question due to a misleading abstract, you don’t get a refund.