Opening the doors of knowledge

[Use the link above to access the full text article from the April 2012 issue of “Chemistry World,” published by the Royal Society of Chemistry.] “Should all journal articles be free to access online? Phillip Broadwith examines the open access conundrum... Accumulating and disseminating knowledge for the benefit of society is fundamental to the scientific dogma. Sharing discoveries fuels constructive debate and cross-fertilisation of ideas, embodied in Isaac Newton's famous letter to Robert Hooke: 'If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.'  But what if the giant upon whose shoulders you need to stand is locked behind a wall through which you have no access? This is how proponents of the open access movement view the traditional subscription model of scientific journal publishing. In the subscription model, researchers - often funded with public money - publish their research findings in journals. The publishers of these journals then charge for access to the papers, and the charges are such that some people - for example the general public - who might want to read or use that research, are effectively prevented from doing so. The alternative is to somehow make the papers available - for free - to anyone who wants to read them. This is the fundamental principle of open access. Current political pressure on governments to be more transparent about how they spend taxpayers' money, coupled with a growing resentment towards some journal publishers for perceived profiteering practices, has brought the debate to the fore in recent years.  But working out how to make this happen in a way that is acceptable and sustainable for publishers, researchers and the various libraries, institutions and other stakeholders is far from trivial. There are several sticking points, including concern from publishers over how to structure a viable business around open access, along with researchers worrying about where the money will come from to fund the publication of their work... Finding the motivation ... The vast majority of people who need regular access to journals - primarily researchers - belong to institutions or companies with subscriptions to the journals they want to read. How much would the general public actually gain from access to complex, technically written and jargon-heavy articles?   From a researcher's viewpoint the argument is mostly ethical, says Rob Stockman, an organic chemist from the University of Nottingham, UK. 'In principle, the benefit is that people anywhere in the world can read your papers; you're not excluding anyone. Science is very open - the whole ethos is to share your discoveries as widely as possible so open access fits in with that very well.'   Government funding bodies are also an important driving force behind the open access movement. In the current economic climate, being open about what their money is spent on has become more important than ever. There are also growing objections to the public paying for the research twice - once for the scientists to do the work, and then again to read the results.   This has led to mandates from some government funding bodies that all papers containing work they have funded must be open access. Funders such as the UK's Wellcome Trust, the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the UK Medical Research Council led the charge, but physical sciences bodies are now starting to enforce the same rule... Green for go... One straightforward way to comply with these mandates is to use repositories. Papers, published in subscription model journals, are deposited in repositories (run by research institutions or third-parties such as funding bodies) that are freely accessible to everyone online. This is called Green Open Access (see box below)... PubMed Central (PMC) is the most successful such repository. It is run by the NIH and stores predominantly biomedical research articles... David Lipman, director of the US National Center for Biotechnology Information, which houses PMC, says that over 75% of NIH-funded papers now comply with the policy... Going for gold... The biggest down side of Green Open Access is that researchers may be bound by an embargo period of up to two years before they can make the article freely accessible. The length of the embargo depends on the publisher - the RSC's is currently 12 months... RCUK is working with researchers and publishers to come up with an arrangement that is sustainable and acceptable to all parties. As part of this process, it is represented on an independent working group set up by the UK government to examine ways of expanding access to published research findings.  In most cases, Ryan says, this points towards Gold Open Access (see box below). In this model, the journal is paid a fee to publish the work, and then - once published - the article is freely available to everyone online.   This can either be done through dedicated open access journals - such as PLoS One from the US Public Library of Science (PLoS) - or in established subscription model journals operating a hybrid system where pai