Association of American Publishers' Anti-Open-Access Lobby: PRISM

[Stevan Harnad <harnad@ecs.soton.ac.uk>]

     ** Cross-Posted: For a fully hyperlinked version of this posting, see:
        http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/283-guid.html

The Association of American Publishers (AAP) has just launched 
"PRISM" (Partnership for Research Integrity in Science & 
Medicine).
     http://www.prismcoalition.org/

PRISM is an anti-OA lobbying organization, to counteract the 
accelerating growth of OA and the dramatic success of the pro-OA 
Alliance for Taxpayer Access (ATA) lobbying organization in the 
US and the EC Open Access Petition in Europe.
     http://www.taxpayeraccess.org/
     http://www.ec-petition.eu/

See Peter Suber's splendid, measured critique of PRISM's 
statements in Open Access News (more to come in Peter's September 
SPARC Open Access Newsletter). 
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2007_08_19_fosblogarchive.html#3651797581%2019288416

The blogosphere is also on the case. (See especially this 
brilliant caricature of the publishing lobby's arguments here:
     http://pisdcoalition.org/

Unlike the pro-OA lobby, which has a huge and growing public 
support base worldwide, the anti-OA lobby is up against the 
problem that it has neither a public support constituency, nor 
any ethical or practical case to build one on. It is simply an 
industry trying to favor its corporate interests over the public 
interest without quite saying so.  Hence PRISM is now applying, 
quite literally, the "pit-bull" tactics recommended to them by 
the PR firm of Eric Dezenhall.
     http://www.nature.com/news/2007/070122/full/445347a.html

The recommended tactics are to pretend that OA (i) represents 
government interference in both the corporate sector and the 
research sphere and that it (ii) puts both peer-review and 
scientific quality at risk.

Although the bickering and blogging and spinning on this will be 
phrenetic, the actual issues behind it are extremely simple:

     (1) Open Access (OA) (free online access to peer-reviewed 
research) maximizes access to research findings. It thereby also 
maximizes the uptake, usage, and application of research 
findings, hence research productivity and progress.

     (2) OA is therefore in the best interests of research, 
researchers, research institutions (universities), research 
funders (private and governmental), the vast R&D industry, and 
the tax-paying public that funds the research and the research 
institutions, and for whose benefit the research is being 
conducted.

     (3) OA might, however, be in conflict with the best 
interests of the peer-reviewed journal publishing industry, as it 
might reduce their subscription revenues or even eventually force 
them to downsize and change their cost-recovery model from 
subscription charges paid by the user-institution to peer-review 
service charges paid by the author-institution. (So far none of 
this has happened, but with the growth of OA, it might.)

     (4) OA can grow in two ways:

         (4a) Researchers and their institutions can make their 
peer-reviewed research OA by self-archiving it in their 
institutional or discipline-based repositories ("Green OA") or

         (4b) publishers can become OA publishers by providing OA 
to their online versions (and/or converting to the OA 
cost-recovery model) ("Gold OA").

     (5) Researchers' institutions and funders cannot mandate the 
transition of publishers to Gold OA, but they can mandate their 
own transition to Green OA.

****(6) Hence it is these Green OA mandates, being adopted and 
proposed worldwide, that are the real target of the anti-OA 
lobby.****
     http://www.eprints.org/signup/fulllist.php
     http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/263-guid.html

     (7) The anti-OA lobby's argument against OA and OA mandates 
is that they represent (7a) government interference in 
private-sector industry and (7b) they will destroy peer-reviewed 
journals, peer-review, and the research quality that peer-review 
certifies.

     (8) The reply is very simple:

         (8a) Inasmuch as research is publicly funded, it is for 
the funders to decide the conditions under which that public 
money is spent;

         (8b) it is also up to the universities to decide on the 
conditions under which their employees publish their findings;

         (8c) peer review is done by researchers for free; 
publishers merely fund the management of the peer review process;

         (8d) if and when subscription demand can no longer 
sustain the cost of managing peer review, that cost can be 
covered through a conversion to the Gold OA cost-recovery model, 
with the OA institutional repositories themselves providing all 
the access and the archiving, and the Gold OA journals merely 
managing the peer review and certifying its outcome with their 
name.

That's all there is to it: The online era has made possible an 
obvious benefit for research, and the publishing lobby is trying 
to resist adapting to it. What needs to be kept clearly in mind 
is that research is not conducted and funded as a service to the 
publishing industry, but vice versa.

Fortunately, the very openness of the online era is to the 
benefit of the pro-OA lobby, as the specious arguments of the 
anti-OA lobby can be openly exposed and answered rather than 
being left to be voiced solely in closed corridors (lobbies), 
where their obvious rebuttals cannot be promptly echoed in reply.

     Berners-Lee, T., De Roure, D., Harnad, S. and Shadbolt, N. (2005)
Open Letter to Research Councils UK: Rebuttal of ALPSP Critique.
     http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/11159/

     ________ (2005) Journal publishing and author self-archiving:
Peaceful Co-Existence and Fruitful Collaboration.
     http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/11160/

     Harnad, S. (2005) Critique of ALPSP'S 1st Response to RCUK's Open
Access Self-Archiving Proposal.
     http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/11132/

     ________ (2005) Rebuttal of STM Response to RCUK Self-Archiving
Policy Proposal.
     http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/11168/

     ________ (2005) Applying Optimality Findings: A Critique of Graham
Taylor's Critique of RCUK Policy Proposal.
     http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/11055/

     ________ (2006) Critique of EPS/RIN/RCUK/DTI "Evidence-Based
Analysis of Data Concerning Scholarly Journal Publishing".
     http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/13100/

     ________ (2006) How to Counter All Opposition to the FRPAA
Self-Archiving Mandate
     http://users.ecs.soton.ac.uk/harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/5398.html

     ________ (2006) Critique of AAP/PSP Critique of FRPAA Proposal
     http://users.ecs.soton.ac.uk/harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/5397.html

Stevan Harnad