Re: OA icon

[Richard Feinman <RFeinman@downstate.edu>]

I think that would be great but rather than spend too much time 
on it, I think we should push forward to make it unnecessary as 
described in this press release from the future.

December 1, 2008

Budapest.  The quiet frozen surface of the river stands as 
counterpoint to the heated discussions in the Duna (Danube) Hotel 
where representatives of governments, libraries, universities and 
major publishing houses are trying to hammer out guidelines for 
the implementation of a Universal Open Access Protocol (UOAP). 
A normally mild-mannered group of executives and professors is 
engaged in rather animated debate; one discussant, a 
representative of the publishing wing of the American Diabetes 
Association had to be removed by hotel security.  Scheduled for 
2009, UOAP would make the contents of all scholarly publications 
free without subscription.  The UOAP operation is to be funded by 
a consortium of government agencies, private foundations and 
commercial sources and follows a period of ad hoc funding and 
substantial confusion in the world of scientific journals, a 
situation which dates to the event now known in the publishing 
world as Nature Day of which the conference is the first 
anniversary.

On Nature Day, December 1, 2007, 100 university librarians (with 
backing of their respective faculties) handed an ultimatum to 
Nature publishing, one of the larger publishers of scientific 
technical journals.  This rather strange manifesto proclaimed 
that the profit that Nature gained from providing journals to 
university libraries was excessive and rather than pay the price 
asked by Nature, the librarians offered to pay one fifth of the 
price for the print version and required that Nature be open 
access, that is, available on line without subscription.  The 
libraries agreed to support the open access version at a further 
reduced price for five years even though it would be available to 
everybody in the world. If Nature did not agree, the libraries 
threatened to cancel their subscriptions.  "It seems strange 
telling a manufacturer how much profit they can make but really 
this is what a consumer does every time they choose one of 
several competing products" said Kuan-Teh Jeang of the NIH and 
editor of Retrovirology, a journal that has been open access 
since 2003.  "Anyway, they weren't really competing.  They had 
the libraries over a barrel" said Jeang, known as the bad boy of 
Open Access because of his no-nonsense style.  In fact, sensing 
that they would be next, many big publishers responded to Nature 
Day by threatening to retaliate in one way or another but the 
libraries (and faculties) stood fast.  In the end, an undisclosed 
compromise was settled on.  Science, published by the American 
Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), was next. 
"They claimed to be not-for-profit" said Richard Feinman, editor 
of Nutrition & Metabolism, "but their journal operation was a big 
money-maker and the funds were used for other activities which, 
however worthwhile, were not what we intended to pay for when our 
libraries subscribed to the journal. I told them they should 
change their name to the American Association for the Advancement 
of the American Association for the Advancement of Science 
(AAAAAAS)."

Most remarkable in the follow-up to Nature Day was that Libraries 
offered publishers of smaller journals 5-year contracts to keep 
contents open access.  If they did not agree, subsriptions were 
cancelled and arrangements were made with editors, reviewers and 
authors to publish in existing open access journals.  Some 
publishers took the contract and some just dropped the journal. 
Remarkably, however, the authors and editors were quite 
enthusiastic. "Well, transparency was the key," said Barbara 
Starfield of Johns Hopkins, editor of International Journal for 
Equity in Health. "Once the faculty members recognized the burden 
being placed on the libraries and how unscrupulous the publishers 
were, in combination with the obvious benefits of wide 
circulation and controlling your own copyrights, everything fell 
into place."

Faced with guaranteed income at a lower price or a difficult 
battle with customers, most publishers instituted the open access 
movement.  Quite remarkably this was done, in some cases, 
literally, overnight since publishers already had the tools for 
online publication.  It was only necessary to remove the gateway. 
The pressure was, in fact, great - once battle lines were drawn, 
authors and reviewers (who are not normally paid by publishers) 
jumped to side with the libraries.  The new contracts provided 
great savings for the libraries but everyone realized that they 
had agreed to pay for the world's technical journals, and that a 
global solution had to be found.  In essence, it was recognized 
that much money flows into publishing and it only had to be 
redirected.  This lead to today's meeting in Budapest.

The meeting today, like Nature Day itself is also the anniversary 
of the 2001 meeting in Budapest of the Open Society Institute 
(OSI) which might be said to have initiated the Open Access 
movement.

= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
Richard D. Feinman, Professor of Biochemistry

(718) 871-1374
FAX: (718) 270-3316
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Publish with Nutrition & Metabolism
http://www.nutritionandmetabolism.com /home
Articles published within a day or two of acceptance.
Indexed PubMed, PubMed Central, Scopus and Embase.
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"Martha Tucker" <mtucker@u.washington.edu>
Sent by: owner-liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
04/18/06 08:41 PM
Subject: OA icon

It would be great to have an universally accepted, 
non-proprietary OA icon!

Martha Tucker, Librarian
Mathematics Research Library
University of Washington
Seattle, WA  98195-4350

----- Original Message -----
From: "Morna Conway" <mconway@infionline.net>
To: <liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu>
Sent: Monday, April 17, 2006 5:14 PM
Subject: Re: Dramatic growth of open access

> As of 4/17/06, HighWire Press is hosting 1,337,548 free full-text
> articles, see http://highwire.stanford.edu/lists/freeart.dtl
>
> If the HighWire journal publishers agreed on a common icon to
> indicate free full-text, that would probably be helpful to
> librarians.
>
> --
> Morna H. Conway, Ph.D.
> President
> Morna Conway, Inc.
> Email: mconway@infionline.net