by
Roderick B. Salisbury, OREA Europa, Austrian Academy of Sciences
Open Access (OA) publication, open data, open
software, and open reviewing, among others, are happening, and archaeology can
either be active on the development end or passively get whatever is foisted on
us. Archaeologists cannot afford to ignore these developments, and we need to
get involved in the discussion in order to be able to participate in shaping
the movement. Like most researchers, I work towards the advancement of
scholarship and educating the public, and think that wide access to our work is
an essential part of this. I also believe that once the public has paid for the
research, the results of that research then belong to the public. The OA
movement is based at least partly on these ideals, but the debate is often
uncritically simplified to the “public” vs. Big Corporations, and the potential
risks of OA are frequently ignored.
There are three conceivable sets of problems
(at least) with OA as it is currently being implemented: financial, scientific,
and legal. Funding agencies are constantly changing their policies, sometimes
even contradicting themselves. In particular, the requirements by many funding
bodies that grant holders both (1) publish in high-impact peer-reviewed
scientific journals, and (2) publish open access, will push researchers to pay
large fees to global, for-profit publishers (e.g. Elsevier, Springer). At the
same time, many research institutions and universities are finding it difficult
to pay the subscriptions fees for these journals and publishers. In Germany,
for example, major research institutions in the Alliance of Science
Organisations in Germany were unable to reach an agreement with Elsevier, and
therefore have no access to Elsevier journals from January 2017 (Vogel 2016).
This was in part about the prices Elsevier quoted, but the OA policy was also a
problematic point. It is completely understandable that public funding bodies
and research institutions do not want to pay for access to the results of the
research they support. On the other hand, OA
will not make these discrepancies magically go away; even if the papers are
freely available, the fees for accessing the journals and related content
remain. Furthermore, if journal impact factors and the names of publishing houses
are significant in awarding grants, jobs, and tenure, then researchers are
stuck between a rock and a hard place.
The second
potential impact is scientific, namely on which research is accessible and
cited. We are moving from a system wherein anyone can submit papers for
publication, but only some can afford to read them, to one wherein anyone can read,
but only some can publish. We are creating a new set of haves and have-nots,
where only those with large grants (that include funds for OA) or with independent
financial means, can publish in a way to ensure they meet all qualifications to
obtain future grants! Other researchers can submit manuscripts the “old way”,
but their papers will receive less attention and will not meet OA requirements.
For example, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation requires that research
they fund, including the underlying data, be published only in free,
open-access (OA) journals, freely available immediately after publication. The
foundation recently reached an agreement with the Science family of
subscription journals (published by the non-profit American Association for
the Advancement of Science, or AAAS) to allow their research to be published OA immediately. The agreement? A
100,000 USD award from the foundation to AAAS (Chawla 2017). For those research
institutions lacking the financial and political power of the Gates Foundation,
such deals are impossible.
Moreover, we run the risk of having publishers
'suggest' to editors that those able and willing to pay $/€ 2000 or more should
have the right to see their papers in print. We run the risk of delegitimizing
a peer-review process that is already weak and subject to criticism. There is
no evidence that this has happened yet, at least not with the reputable
publishers that receive so much negative press from OA advocates, and I am not
suggesting that it will happen. This question will eventually arise, however,
when paid submissions are accepted and unpaid submissions are rejected. Would
open reviewing prevent the potential for these sorts of accusations? If money
remains involved, then the answer is probably no.
The solution to accessing research has been for people to share their
papers, or to have their papers shared without their permission, and this
creates the legal impact. Researchers
are already forced to sign contracts they barely understand, bound to legal
frameworks of countries other than their own. The example of being shared by
force is Sci-Hub. As reported on Sciencemag.org (Bohannon 2016), 28 million
documents were served from Sci-Hub in the 6 months from September 2015 through
February 2016, and nearly all research is available on this platform. This is,
of course, illegal, and even if many scholars view this as a form of civil
disobedience, it is ethically questionable. In particular, not only has
copyright for intellectual labor been signed over to a for-profit publishing
house, but the same product has also been stolen from the publishing house and
redistributed. Never mind whether or not the researcher agrees with for-profit
publication of publicly funded science or with pirating of copyright media: the
views of any individual scientist are, apparently, largely irrelevant. And
there is some backlash from the publishers. A few years ago, Elsevier, which
remains the largest commercial scientific publisher, lobbied in favor of the
Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), which would have made copyright infringement a
felony in the United States (Kansa et al. 2013). SOPA failed to pass into US
law, but a precedent was established, and Elsevier currently has a lawsuit
filed against Sci-Hub. In any case, if the publishers begin to move against
individual researchers, e.g. by forcing papers off Academia, ResearchGate and
other platforms, dissemination will suffer, and financial penalties will almost
certainly be the responsibility of individuals.
So what are
the legal and financial implications of an organized OA program? Acknowledging
that this topic is too complex for one paragraph, we must consider two points.
First, this brings in the other aspects of open science that were noted in the
opening paragraph. How does archaeology, in our case, insure that the data,
software, methods, and reviews be open? How do we insure, for instance, that
images used in publications be available to other researchers to use (with
proper attribution)? Second, OA is a laudable movement, driven by good
intentions, but it is incompatible with commercial publishing. If alternative
publishing forms are adopted, we should consider the difficulties of maintaining
good science through editors, reviewers, Table of Content Alerts, citation
managers, assignment of DOI and ISBN, storage and maintenance of digital papers
and data, inter alia. None of this come without financial and legal
obligations.
We, as
academics, researchers and heritage managers, need to get involved in the
process of policy and decision-making. The EAA is the primary organization
representing archaeologists in Europe, and cooperates in several consortiums,
including the European Heritage Alliance 3.3. Further, many EAA members are
also members of national organizations. The EAA, in conjunction with
cooperation partners and affiliate organizations, is positioned to influence
policy. In essence, the voices and opinions of individual EAA members can be
amplified through the EAA as an association. But to speak on behalf of our many
members, the EAA Executive Board needs to hear from you. You are all invited to
post comments, questions and your point of view under the online version of this
article. Considering the scientific, financial, and legal impacts of Open
Access, we should all make our voices heard.
References
- Bohannon, J. (2016, April 28). “Who's downloading pirated papers? Everyone”. Retrieved January 30, 2017 from Scimag.org, doi: 10.1126/science.aaf5664
- Chawla, D. S. (2017, February 15). “Gates Foundation strikes deal to allow its researchers to publish in Science journals”. Retrieved February 17, 2017 from Scimag.org, doi: 10.1126/science.aal0767
- Kansa, E. C., S. W. Kansa and L. Goldstein (2013). On Ethics, sustainability, and open access in archaeology. The SAA Archaeological Record, September 20136: 15-22.
- Vogel, G. (2016, December 22). “Thousands of German researchers set to lose access to Elsevier journals”. Retrieved January 30, 2017 from Scimag.org, doi: 10.1126/science.aal0552
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