Publishers See Pitfalls to Open Access

Open access. Two bland words that have obliged scholarly publishers, librarians, scientists, funders, and governments to rethink their most basic assumptions, and in some cases begin to tamper with a business model that has held up for more than a century... publishers worry that making manuscripts freely available would weaken the scientific peer review process, because libraries, the main source of revenue for most publishers, would no longer have to pay for subscriptions to the journals. APS Treasurer/Publisher Joseph Serene said that if many libraries cancel their subscriptions to the journals, the lost revenue could adversely affect the Society’s ability to evaluate new manuscripts.  Although reviewers of the papers do so voluntarily and without compensation, it takes a staff of about 50 full-time paid editors, most of them physics PhDs, to organize, edit and accept or reject the 35,000 manuscripts the APS receives a year.  'To do this well is a time-consuming process and it requires skilled and highly qualified people to run it.' Serene said. This is a nontrivial job.  Public policy makers, science students, and the scientific community generally need to know what parts of the publicly available scientific information… is actually sound,' Serene said. 'The only proven way of providing that insurance both to ourselves and to the community is peer review.'  He added that APS is not opposed to open access, and has enacted several policies allowing for greater public access to the journals. Procedures are in place for both public libraries and high school libraries to freely access the full content of APS journals, a benefit that many such libraries have taken advantage of. APS allows authors to post the published version of their articles either on their own websites or those of their institutions. In addition, authors can purchase open access for their papers, for a fee that reflects the costs of evaluation and publication.  In recent months, the British government announced a new policy requiring research conducted with government funds be made freely available to the public. In the US, the White House’s 'We the People' petition website has collected more than 30,000 signatures calling for federally funded research to be posted freely online. 'It’s a very powerful…populist message,' said Michael Lubell, APS’s Director of Public Affairs.  But he cautioned that there were possible unintended consequences, pointing out that the public itself is the ultimate beneficiary of the existing peer review system.  'We require the FDA to make sure drugs on the market are effective and not harmful,' Lubell said. 'The same kind of logic should apply to scientific publications. Peer review provides that public good...'”