AAP-PSP on FRPAA

[Heather Morrison <heatherm@eln.bc.ca>]

Further to the AAP-PSP Statement in opposition to the Cornyn- 
Lieberman Bill, at: 
http://www.library.yale.edu/~llicense/ListArchives/0605/msg00067.html

Peter Suber has written a thoughtful and thorough response to all of
the points brought forth by AAP-PSP, on Open Access News at:
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/
2006_05_07_fosblogarchive.html#114726726169346460

Following is the text of Peter's comments.  For further information,
please see the blogpost, which contains links to sources for
verification or elaboration.

Comments. Let's look at the major claims here one at a time.

1. On the feared loss of revenue, my response is two-sided. On 
the one hand, there are good reasons to think that the FRPAA will 
not harm subscriptions. On the other hand, if it does, the public 
interest takes precedence. The mission of the publicly-funded 
research agencies is to advance science and research, not to 
protect the revenues of private-sector businesses.

2. The claim that FRPAA is "duplicative" is simply false. Some 
publishers are providing OA to some content when it's 
sufficiently old. But this is a far cry from providing OA to 
virtually all federally-funded research within six months of 
publication. If publishers are saying that over time their 
voluntary efforts will approach what FRPAA would mandate, then 
they have to give up their claim that this will harm journals. 
They can't have it both ways.

3. The claim that "[f]ull public access to scientific articles
based on government funding has always been central to our mission" --
if it refers to open access and not to toll access-- is simply false.
It hasn't been the AAP/PSP policy and it's not its policy now.

4. The claim that peer-reviewed journal literature is available 
in public libraries is generally false. Very few public libraries 
carry scholarly journals. FRPAA is necessary because even 
academic researchers don't have sufficient access to the 
literature through academic libraries.

5. The claim that FRPAA would "create unnecessary costs for 
taxpayers" begs the question. The Senators, university and 
library groups, and scientists think this expense is necessary 
--even to give full effect to the existing investment in 
research. Only publishers with a conflicting economic interest 
think it's unnecessary. In any case, how much are we talking 
about? The NIH estimates that the cost of its public-access 
program (even at 100% compliance) is only $2-4 million/year, 
about 0.01% of its annual budget. By contrast, the NIH spends $30 
million/year on page charges and other subsidies to 
subscription-based journals. It's unseemly --and imprudent-- for 
the private-sector beneficiares of this largess to complain that 
a comparative pittance spent in the public interest is wasted. 
They might trigger an inquiry showing that the subsidy to 
journals that lock content away from the public is the truly 
unnecessary cost for taxpayers.

6. The claim that FRPAA would "expropriate the value-added 
investments made by scientific publishers" is false. FRPAA only 
applies to the final version of the author's peer-reviewed 
manuscript, not to the published version. It's very true that 
peer review is added value, but the bulk of that value is added 
by scholars donating their time and labor. No other form of added 
value is at stake here. Publishers add value through copy editing 
and mark- up, but under FRPAA they retain the exclusive right to 
distribute the articles with those enhancements --not just for 
six months but for 95 years (the life of copyright).

7. The claim that any threat to publisher revenue is a threat to 
peer review is an old canard. First, as noted, the critical parts 
of peer review are performed by uncompensated scholars. Second, 
peer review is performed by a growing number of high-quality OA 
journals, not just by subscription-based journals.

8. The claim that the NIH policy is doing fine without a mandate 
is simply false, as is the claim that we haven't given it enough 
time. After one year of operation, the compliance rate is below 
4%. The glass isn't even half full. There's no room for hopeful 
spin here. Publishers want the voluntary policy to work well 
enough to head off a mandate, but when groups without the same 
axe to grind look at the evidence, groups like the NIH's own 
Public Access Working Group and the National Library of 
Medicine's Board of Regents, they conclude that the voluntary 
policy has failed and that a mandate is necessary to raise the 
compliance rate.

9. The AAP calls for another study. But it knows very well that 
there's no empirical evidence, outside physics, on how 
high-volume OA archiving will affect journal subscriptions. And 
in physics, publishers themselves acknowleldge that OA archiving 
has not caused journal cancellations. In fact, two journal 
publishers in physics, the Institute of Pysics and the American 
Physical Society, host mirrors of arXiv, the OA repository that 
is supposed to threaten them. The only way to generate the kind 
of evidence that the AAP wants is to stimulate high-volume OA 
archiving in fields outside physics --for example, by adopting 
the FRPAA-- and study the results. In the absence of that, the 
call for another study is just a delaying tactic.

10. Moreover, Senators Cornyn and Lieberman are not acting in an 
information vacuum. There's ample evidence that the current 
subscription system is dysfunctional. When the University of 
California studied the evidence in 2004, it concluded that "[t]he 
economics of [subscription-based] scholarly journal publishing 
are incontrovertibly unsustainable."

Heather Morrison
http://poeticeconomics.blogspot.com