Wired Science has the most in-your-face coverage of the formation of PRISM, an advocacy group formed by scholarly publishers to stem the legislative movement towards free access to government-funded scholarly research. This in and of itself is not a surprise, but Wired claims that the site is an example of astroturf advocacy, meaning an organization that tries to position itself as a grass-roots movement when in fact it is created by others wanting to appear to have grass roots support. PRISM is the creation of the Association of American Publishers, so one assumes that the roots of this organization are more likely to grow in the yards of scholarly publishers than the scientists providing the research. But is Wired's angry attitude towards PRISM justified?

The primary problem with PRISM is that it seems to be advocating on a range of issues which, while valid in their own right, are more about fear, uncertainty and doubt - those familiar sales tools - than the real issues at hand. Let's take a brief look at sme of the points that PRISM feels will result from unpaid access to government-sponsored research:

Undermining the peer review process by compromising the viability of non-profit and commercial journals that manage and fund it

This seems to be somewhat disingenuous, in that there may be alternative methods for supporting effective peer review that have not been explored by scientific publishers. Certainly a government-mandated publishing of research for free that doesn't take into account how that research is produced has the potential to be an unfunded mandate that could place an undue burden on scientific publishers. This is a real issue, but the answers to the issue may not lie with the government itself - they may lie with addressing how the peer review process is funded in general.

Opening the door to scientific censorship in the form of selective additions to or omissions from the scientific record;

There are certainly recent instances in which government research has been interfered with by political appointees in government agencies, but the bulk of this has been aimed towards communications with the public and legislators, not towards scientific papers. PRISM raises a valid concern but by conflating it with proposed government mandates to require public access to peer-reviewed publicly funded research they are playing more on sentiment than on actual evidence. Surely politics should stay out of science, but there's no indication at this time that the government would have the ability to influence the peer review process politically through these proposed mandates any more than it does today.

Subjecting the scientific record to the uncertainty that comes with changing federal budget priorities and bureaucratic meddling with definitive versions

There may be legitimate concerns raised in this point based on experience with the U.S. government's implementation of its current voluntary public access program, but PRISM seems to have conflated a number of issues under one banner. They would do better to call out the specific issues for people to understand their concerns and to reduce the emotional component of this appeal.

Introducing duplication and inefficiencies that will divert resources that would otherwise be dedicated to research.

While this is a legitimate concern also, in fairness inefficiency is nothing new to the process of producing scholarly research, as are difficulties in dealing with publicly funded research programs. What this is really saying is "It's going to cost us publishers and we're not being given a penny for it."

If the purpose of PRISM is to convince legislators that there is an advocacy group that supports the publishers' goals then my sense is that they are going to fail. The site is not very convincing and lacks information about its supporters or any input from them that would influence people into thinking that there is a broad base of support for PRISM's views. PRISM does raise some important issues that need to be addressed in the rush to make access to government-funded research public, especially in how to support the peer review process realistically in an era in which public access to research is becoming a given. But the broader outlines of the solutions to many of these problems would seem to lie in how the scholarly publishing community has resisted changes in publishing technologies that disrupt their traditional business models.

With some added focus and some sponsorship of honest debate between government research sponsors, scientists and publishers PRISM may yet serve a positive and constructive purpose as an advocacy group. But if PRISM remains little more than an "astroturf" organization that defends the commercial interests of publishers then it's not likely to gain the needed respect from any of the parties that it needs to influence in this debate. Publishers in general are reluctant to engage their markets in a more conversational manner, but if scholarly publishers can position PRISM as a tool to build an honest conversation about the future of commercial and non-commercial scholarly publishing then they may be able to make some headway. At the moment I wouldn't bet on that happening, but you never know.

Labels: open access, PRISM, scholarly publishing

Information World Review recaps the recently signed declaration of major scientific, technical and medical journal publishers regarding pending E.U. legislation pushing to move towards free and open access to scholarly research after a limited time of private publications. The "Brussels Declaration on STM Publishing" has been gaining signatories over the past few weeks from major publishing houses and academic institutions. The ten-point document is a carefully crafted list of statements that attempts to justify the value of current publishing models to the scholarly community and institutions consuming their research. The statements range from the relatively innocuous - "The mission of publishers is to maximise the dissemination of knowledge through economically self-sustaining business models" - to the provocative: "Open deposit of accepted manuscripts risks destabilising subscription revenues and undermining peer review."

In sum the intent of the declaration is to counter the movement towards government-mandated open access to papers deposited in publicly accessible online repositories. There are some compromises in the points designed to whittle away some who may be looking for ways to find some room for compromise - "Raw research data should be made freely available to all researchers" - but in sum the declaration is a statement that says, in effect, that scholarly publishers and the peer review process that supports their publishing processes work just fine and should not be challenged significantly. This is not unexpected, but it is disappointing nevertheless.

Scholarly publishers have recognized rightly that their trade is at a major crossroads given the pending E.U. legislation. Pushing forward with government-mandated open access without clear methods to support peer review processes required to generate that research may indeed pose a hazard to the integrity of academic research. But in truth this will be the case regardless of whether the E.U. open access initiative is passed or not. Existing publishing models for scholarly research may be sustainable indefinitely, but the open access movement has created already an important beachhead in the marketplace that questions not just the profit motive but the exiting peer review process. In essence the publishers are saying, "Let's keep our current inefficiencies because this is the only way that we can guarantee monies to sustain peer reviewing of papers." Yet as the demand for print journals diminishes and as more interactive peer review processes unfold through the open access initiative the necessity of high-priced journals pricing to maintain existing peer review methods is likely to be challenged strongly in the open marketplace.

Scholarly publishers are so tied to their existing revenue models that they fail to see even greater opportunities for profits in the processes that lead up to final publication. Although access to finalized juried publications is important, it's more important overall to researchers wishing to stay on the edge of important scholarly work to be a part of the discussions and modifications that lead up to the finalization of a paper. The peer review process as it exists today exposes new ideas to too narrow an audience for critique and enhancement prior to final publication. Instead of using today's print-based inefficiencies as the basis for journal pricing publishers should consider developing access to pre-publication materials through community-based online publishing as the basis for premium pricing. This will ensure better input from topic-oriented communities and relieve both publishers and governmental agencies from the need to focus on protecting copyright of finalized materials as the basis for scholarly publishing profits.

In an era in which Wikis, weblogs and other social media are demonstrating the ability of community publishing to be monetized effectively content producers of all kinds need to adjust to the idea that controlling copies of content is not as important as managing the communities that generate it and consume it. Copyright still has an important place in publishing but increasingly it will revert to a secondary role as licensing access to private communities whose communications are at least as valuable as finished works of authorship gains center stage. In the marketplace of ideas, people will gravitate towards being in on the key conversations far more than they will the minutes of those conversations. By focusing too intently on the threat to existing monetization models scholarly publishers are likely to be bypassed as other well-funded efforts move past the copyright model and towards more dynamic ways to generate value from scholarly publishing. The Brussels Declaration will to little if anything to change these realities.

Labels: Brussels Declaration, copyright, open access, scholarly publishing, Social Media, STM