1 William Y. Arms Cornell University April 4, 2003 Free Access to Information Today Who Benefits? What are the Risks? Who Pays?

2 Benefits to Readers The “democratization” of Physics Benefits to Authors An anecdote from Economics A study of Computer Science Steve Lawrence. Online or Invisible? Nature, Volume 411 Number 6837 page 521, Benefits of Open Access to Scientific Material

3 Open Access Articles are Cited More (Lawrence) Open access articles are cited 4.5 times as often.

4 Advice to Authors Old “Whenever you do anything, write an article. Some journal will publish it.” Modern If you wish to pad your résumé, choose the best known journal that will accept it. If you belong to a tightly-knit community, publish where that community will read it. If you publish to be widely read, publish online and be sure to be indexed by Google.

5 Physics Restricted access: Journals, Inspec Open access: Physics ePrint arXiv, Google When Everything is Openly Available

6 Physics: the ePrint arXiv

7

8 Physics: American Physical Society

9 Physics StageWho pays Physicist(s) writes paper Research group / dept. formatted in LaTeX may have internal review Sends to arXivNSF / Cornell University Published by APSSubscriber (library) peer review copy editing printing, etc.

10 Access to Physics Literature 10

11 Strategic Study by the American Physical Society TopicStrategies PrintDeclining importance Copy editingUnnecessary Peer reviewStill important Long-term archivingImportant Note. This report is still in draft. Please do not cite the discussions until the report is released.

12 Paying for American Physical Society Journals Note. This report is still in draft. Please do not cite the discussions until the report is released. Physics is best served by open access to journals. APS should move towards open access to their journals. old:organizations, through their libraries, pay for their members to read (closed access) APS journals new: organizations, through their libraries, pay for their members to publish in (open access) APS journals

13 Computer Science Restricted access: Journals, Conferences, Inspec Open access: Local Web Sites, CiteSeer, Google When Everything is Openly Available

14 Computer Science: ACM Journal

15 Computer Science: Local Web Site

16 Computer Science: CiteSeer

17 Computer Science: Who Pays? StageWho pays Computer scientists(s) Research group / dept. writes paper formatted in PDF, etc. Posts on local Web siteResearch group /dept. Published by ACM/IEEESubscriber peer review copy editing printing, etc.

18 Computer Science: Risks of Open Access TopicStrategies Loss of local Web siteInstitutional repositories CiteSeerVulnerable, but alternatives GoogleTechnology well known, alternatives available

19 Digital Libraries and Electronic Publishing Restricted access: Conference Proceedings Open access: Online Journals, Local Web Sites, Google Open Access Journals

20 Open Access Journal

21 Costs of an Open Access Journal Cost are much the same as for closed-access journal (less the costs associated with restricting access). Must have an external source of funding: D-Lib Magazine has had grants from DARPA and NSF.

22 Journal of Electronic Publishing

23 Journal of Electronic Publishing Costs Editor and Managing Editor: volunteers Copy editing and Web hosting: $4,000 per year (University of Michigan Press) Dream budget -- pay part time Managing Editor, etc.: -- $20,000 per year (Columbia University Press) Income None

24 Risk: Failure of a Journal Example: Journal of Electronic Publishing JEP sits on a Web server at the University of Michigan Press -- chance of loss of content is small Authors can retrieve their articles and place them on local servers or institutional repositories Indexing by Google continues

25 Case Study of a Failed Journal: iMP William Y. Arms, "Economic models for open-access publishing." iMP, March Available at: Original URL Internet Archive (Wayback Machine) Personal Web site

26 Risks: Copyright Transfer Authors and publishers want different benefits from copyright. Copying with attribution is good for authors. it encourages reading it encourages many copies being archived Copying is bad for publishers. In theory, publishers enforce copyright to protect authors, but in practice only enforce copyright to protect their financial interests.

27 Risks: Peer Review Thought Experiment If all scientific publication were open access, would peer review be necessary? Thought experiment (Thorsten Joachims, Paul Ginsparg) How accurately can we predict which articles in arXiv will be published in which journals and how frequently will each be cited? Approach is to apply machine learning to terms in title, record of authors (e.g., affiliation, citation to previous papers), pattern on early usage, etc.

28 What Do Faculty Think of Electronic Resources? Kevin Guthriewww.jstor.org CNI Project Briefing Spring 2001

29 The Impact of Budget Cuts When times are tight, tough decisions are made. In the USA: Cuts in library funds are leading in cuts in old services (e.g., journal subscriptions) Cuts at university presses are leading to cuts in new services but... Federal funds for open access to scientific information are still expanding. Universities are investing in institutional repositories

30 Baumol's Cost Disease Year Price Bundle of goods and services Labor-intensive services Manufactured goods 2050

31 Baumol's Cost Disease Year Price Bundle of goods and services Labor-intensive services Manufactured goods 2050 Moore's Law

32 Some Light Reading William Y. Arms, "Economic models for open-access publishing." iMP, March William Y. Arms, "What are the alternatives to peer review? Quality control in scholarly publishing on the web." Journal of Electronic Publishing, 8(1), August