Clubs and cliques in STM publishing and the impact on Open Access (#openaccess)

I know that one the major reasons Open Access has had a hard time getting a foothold into the publishing world is because of the clubishness of science and scientists.  People often do not know about the social aspects of scientists and their work.  This is one of the reasons that associations, societies [like clubs] and conferences play such an important part of a scientist's career.

Everybody wants to feel that they belong by being a member of a variety of social groups [clubs].  Scientists are no different, and there are differences from one club to the next.  Some are more exclusive than others.  There are clubs of scientists who were educated at Ivy League schools [a pretty small club], and clubs of those who haven't been.  There are other kinds of clubs, such as the set of people who:

• Work at an ivy league school
• Are a tenured professor at an ivy league school
• Got 1600 (or 2400) on the SAT
• Published multiple times in Science/Nature/Cell/PRL/JACS
• Were award winners in a society like the ACS or the American Physical Society
• Received a grant of $1M plus from the NIH
• Are members of the National Academy of Sciences
• Carry a public library card 
• Are short, slightly pudgy middle-aged balding men with two dogs
• Make beer at home

Some of these clubs are more prestigious than others.  (Note, I am a member of two of the clubs noted above.)  Scientists generally try to join the clubs that are the most exclusive.  In other words, they want to be members of groups that exclude the most number of other people, so that they look good in comparison.  (Side note: Some science fields don't like whistleblowers, too.  They may not be seen as playing well with others within those clubs.)

So, what does this all have to do with Open Access?

Scientists like the clubs that are prestigious and are exclusive.  Some scientists like the fact that only relevant subscribers can read their articles in toll-access journals.   If you work for a rich institution that can afford a subscription to a journal like Tetrahedron Letters ($16,773 list price for an annual subscription, or if you or your institution can afford to buy articles as needed), then you must be at a place deemed good enough to read it.  These scientists may not even post green OA versions of their articles, even though the publisher allows it.

Administrators may use value judgments to say that if you published in a 4 star journal, then your work must be good because it is difficult to get articles accepted by that journal.  Hence, you may look good simply because you are a member of that particular club.  If you have great articles that are not published in four star journals, you may have a much harder time getting your work noticed by the administrators.  However, it has been shown that simply having an article in a prestigious journal (with a high impact factor) does not mean that any specific accepted article is any good. 

Some Open Access publishing sources are trying to break down this exclusivity mindset and thought process.  Journals like PLOS ONE have a different standard of acceptance. Even with the different standard, the journal still rejects about 30% of incoming papers.  Some scientists see this as a lower standard, and hence they may think that all of the articles in PLOS ONE must be of low quality.  Of course, that is not true. (Note: if you care, PLOS ONE has an impact factor of about 4.0 which is pretty good overall.)

Scientists are trying to figure out different ways to measure quality research, but the impact factor will probably used as a proxy for article quality for many years to come, partially because people may not know about alternative metrics.

PLOS ONE is just one example.  Most Open Access journals are trying to break the mold and change the mindset of some scientists and publishers who still want to limit access to scientific research to the exclusive members of certain clubs and groups.  Will you help me change the system?

On the need for social change in the #openaccess and scholarly communication system

I have written a little bit in the past about how the culture of information sharing and dissemination is different from one discipline or field of research to the next.

Barbara Fister recently wrote in Inside Higher Ed about how we need more than just technological change to create greater access [Open Access] to scholarship, we need to create a culture where scholars are encouraged to share their research using Open Access methods. This is true for those in the sciences, the social sciences and in the humanities. She noted:

Much harder is changing the cultural practices that surround publishing, the ones that assign value to certain prestigious journals and university presses, and then assign value to scholars by proxy, relying on publishers to curate our faculties (a task university presses didn’t sign on for, I should add).

Of course, researchers and faculty are concerned with the perceived prestige of the sources they publish in.  Harvard is trying to convince the faculty that they should move the prestige to Open Access. But, that tactic may not work at all institutions and fields.  Some fields like chemistry have strong ties to industry, and there is some reluctance for many chemists to share their knowledge widely (for financial reasons, patent reasons, etc.).  [See page 20 of this PDF report.]  Some in the humanities may have concerns with others sharing (tweeting, blogging, etc.) their work that the author thinks is inappropriate.  However, most scientists would be happy to know that their work is being discussed in non-traditional scholarly channels.

The policies of tenure and promotion committees vary from institution to institution, and from department to department.  If we are going to truly promote greater access to research and the literature (and data and everything else), we (OA advocates) need to provide greater incentives for the researchers with different tenure and promotion policies.  This starts with the premise that Open Access is the default mode of scholarship (PDF), and that if they want to hide their research in a closed toll-access journal (or a journal that does not allow for green OA versions, or in a low-circulation book), then they will need to jump through hoops to submit articles/chapters to such journals and books.

This opinion piece in Aljazeera also noted the culture of some academics to hide their research from the rest of the world, because some researchers want to only share their research with a small set of other researchers through toll-access journals or books--to only those with the correct keys to that set of knowledge. Sarah Kendzior wrote:

Academic publishing is structured on exclusivity. Originally, this exclusivity had to do with competition within journals. Acceptance rates at top journals are low, in some disciplines under 5 per cent, and publishing in prestigious venues was once an indication of one’s value as a scholar.

Today, it all but ensures that your writing will go unread. "The more difficult it is to get an article into a journal, the higher the perceived value of having done so," notes Katheen Fitzpatrick, the Director of Scholarly Communication at the Modern Language Association. "But this sense of prestige too easily shades over into a sense that the more exclusively a publication is distributed, the higher its value."

When we convince tenure and promotion committees of the value of sharing research through Open Access channels, and that OA has more benefit to the institution (and the department and the individual) than hiding the research in supposedly prestigious toll-access sources, then the value of OA will go up as more and more t&p committees and funders demand it.

Scholars--Don't give away your work for free: Synthesizing many scholarly communication issues tonight

It seems like scholars and researchers are finally starting to get the point that they shouldn't be giving away their work for free to commercial publishers who then sell back that content to libraries, at often-times huge profits.  Libraries do not exist to make sure that commercial publishers can rake in huge amounts of cash for their stakeholders.

This even holds true for non-profit societies such as the American Chemical Society who act as if they are a commercial outfit.  See this Chronicle article (temporary full text access) and Jenica's posts about them on her blog and in CHMNINF.  Other bullies have also been recently outed.  [Edited to add: The ACS is scared of the new information environment (including social networking sites such as blogs and Twitter (and discussion lists?) where they can't control all of the terms and the language of librarians.  They respond with fear, uncertainty and doubt to attack librarians who dare question their position.]

In other Open Access news, the SCOAP3 deal seems to be moving along. 

I just finished reading Peter Suber's book on Open Access.  Thankfully, John wrote a great overview of the book similar to what I was going to say.  In the next day or seven, I will try to compare and contrast Suber's OA book with Walt Crawford's OA book.  As John notes, they are complementary, and do not compete for the same audience.  Both are very worthwhile reads.

[Another edit: I forgot to mention all of the stuff going on around the American Historical Association.  Fun reading.  Especially the post from Barbara.]

Good night.