Online Scientific Content Row
In a major rights row involving scientific journals,
academics demanding free access to them seem to climb down just before it's
too late, by Arthur Graaff
7 September 2001
Over the last months, some 26,000 academics have given their support to the 'Public library of Science' initiative, pleading for free access to academic publications.
But a related boycott of non-complying journals that should
have begun last Saturday, organised by www.publiclibraryofscience.org(PLoS),
seems not to be materialising.
According to the CEO of the largest publishing house in academia, Elsevier Science's Derk Haank, there is no evidence of the boycott that was anounced some six months ago.
Wolters-Kluwer, Oxford University Press and other
scientific publishers are also targeted by the revolting academics.
Mr Haank claims his company and other scientific publishers are already providing much more full, immediate access to all material than they did in
the paper era. The basic question is whether scientific information should
be completely free.
Publishers point to the cost of publishing, that used to be born by a diminishing number of subscribers, the wealthier academic institutes. Now,
Elsevier has made a deal with for instance Dutch and other universities, that they get the content electronically, and immediate access for everyone for the price they payed for the paper issues.
But academics still feel pressured into giving scientific journals full copyrights for their articles while having to pay for electronic access. The
academics want to keep some rights.
Another argument used by the academics is that only one central online content repository can make complete full text searches possible and can guarantee standardised tagging and linking.
Publishers claim that
distributed systems are no problem and neither is cross searching - already in practice by CrossRef link citations service for instance.
Elsevier Science is the world's major scientific publisher of some 1500 journals based in Amsterdam, known for titles as The Lancet and the
Journal of the American College of Cardiology, the chemical journal Tetrahedron or the Journal of Financial Economics.
The company claims it is listening attentively to the academic's requests, if only because every journal
on average has an editorial board for peer review of some 20 scientists, in total some 30,000 people.
Mr. Haank calls the PLoS an experiment not without risk, because if journals disappear because of it, they will be lost for good.
He also points to the costly but essential process of peer review and the ongoing cost of technological developments for electronic publication, in which Elsevier invests $ 45 million per year in the coming years.
The PLoS was conceived last fall. Two scientist from California, Stanford's Patrick O. Brown and Berkeley's Michael B. Eisen, set up a new site, www.publiclibraryofscience.organd published an open letter on it.
They called for free access to published academic work, especially to archives older than six months. The site should be the starting point for eventual new and free - electronic - journals, if need be.
Many leading scientist
from 170 countries signed up for the initiative, including Nobel prize laureates.
Cambridge geneticist professor Michael Ashburner also joined and is member
of the advocacy group. 'I have never seen a movement like this,' he says.
But he is not just positive.
'Scientific publishing is very complicated.
I'm all right, but for people early in their careers it's difficult,' he says.
'But I don't think Elsevier will ever move. They have been very rude to us.
They actually inspired us.' Professor Ashburner hopes that the discussion with the publishers will move forward at the Frankfurter Buchmesse in October, the yearly gathering for the international publishing industry.
An increasing number of publishers, among them Oxford University Press are
willing to address the issue and offer more access, especially now new electronic techniques have become available at a sustainable cost.
But some pivotal publications such as the British Medical Journal and the American
journal Proceedings of the National Academy Sciences are still positive about the PLoS intiative.
The American Library Association also supports a
centralised repository.
To Reed Elsevier, its Elsevier Science division is one of its prominent profit centers, with a turnover of GBP 380 million (608 euro) and an operating profit of GBP 142 million (227 euro) over the first half of
this year, up 12%.
In July, Elsevier finalised the $ 4.5 billion takeover
of US scientific publisher Harcourt, adding 300 journals to its spectrum of 1200.
Elsevier's leading web-service, the online science library ScienceDirect, offers acces to scientific, medical and technical ('STM') research,
encompassing 1.5 million articles. It can be searched by a dedicated engine,
Scirus.com.
Parent Reed Elsevier also owns Lexus Nexus, the largest juridical and news database that was implicated last June in the US Supreme Court ruling (Tasini vs. The New York Times) that freelance authors retain their copyright in case of electronic republication or storage.
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