Call to Derestrict Access to Academic Journals

U of G Open Access Colloquium looks to the future of publishing

There you are, at your computer, desperately seeking that mythical source which perfectly complements your thesis on pre-industrial Welsh grain markets, when finally, hallelujah, you stumble across the ideal abstract. You clink the link. But wait, what’s this? “Please subscribe?”

In a world of “open access,” this wouldn’t be a problem. The near-totality of the world’s academic thought would be at your fingertips, whether you’re in school or not. As advocates argue: why should you be denied access to scholarly information when you’ve already paid for it in the taxes that fund the universities that fund the research?

To promote interest in this burgeoning concept, and to coincide with World Open Access week, McLaughlin Library hosted its first Open Access Week Colloquium on Oct. 25 in the Arboretum Centre. Academics, students and librarians from around campus and around the province attended this all-day conference to discuss opportunities for open access publishing and awareness. Understandably, the fiscal challenges posed by an open access regime were the most pressing concerns.

It is true that historically, publishing was a costly business to be in – I n some respects, it still can be. But with the advent of digitization, academic publishers are no longer obliged to physically print and distribute each volume of each journal to their customers. What is more, research indicates that journal prices have outpaced inflation by over 250 per cent over the past 30 years. In chemistry, the average price for one journal for one year is now a whopping $4,227 – and journals don’t even have to pay academics for peer reviews.

For critics of the existing system, these are signs that publishers and the scientific community must get with the times. Open access, they say, is the future.

“There is education that is needed to bring about this broader cultural shift, I think, because [open access] can’t just be a mandated policy,” said Michael Geist, Professor of Law at the University of Ottawa and author several works on open access.

The library estimates that the University of Guelph already has over 400 open access authors on campus, and graduate students are often encouraged to post their research online for free. Still, many academics are attracted to the idea of having their article in a high-profile journal, both for the intellectual cachet it brings, as well as the guaranteed readership. This demand helps keep the publishers in business.

“The biggest obstacle to open access on this campus is a lot of misinformation that is held by students and faculty who are nervous about the implications of putting their work out for free,” said K. Jane Burpee, Associate Librarian at the U of G and the Colloquium’s organizer. “People don’t understand that open access has nothing to do with the quality of the journal, it has more to do with the way the information is disseminated.”

To reconcile the doubters and the advocates, Leslie Chan, from the department of Social Sciences at the University of Toronto, proposed that we should redefine what it is the publishers do. Academics might still submit their work to journals – who will continue to print, edit, promote and polish these works – but they will also post their articles online for everyone else to use, free of charge.

Notwithstanding various copyright, privacy, accountability and funding issues, the appeal of open access is plain to see – especially for those who have been foiled, at one point or another, by a “please subscribe” notice.