A frequent question I hear about
Communications, and about ACM publishing
in general, involves its access model.
I am asked: “Why don’t you adopt the
open-access model?” Good question!
Why don’t we?
Wikipedia defines open access pub-
lishing as “the publication of material
in such a way that it is available to all
potential users without financial or
other barriers.”
The Open Access movement began
brewing in the 1990s, becoming fully
formed with the October 2003 Berlin
Declaration on Open Access to Knowl-
edge in the Sciences and Humanities.
Since then, the idea has become a hot
topic in the scientific community. The
Directory of Open-Access Journals con-
tains over 4,000 publications. Indeed,
the idea of unfettered access to scien-
tific knowledge naturally resonates
with many researchers, including me.
So why doesn’t ACM become an open-
access publisher?
First, a point of precision. Open-ac-
cess experts distinguish between “Gold
OA,” described earlier, and “Green
OA,” which allows for open access self-
archiving of material (deposit by au-
thors) that may have been published as
non-open access. ACM Copyright Poli-
cy allows for self-archiving, so ACM is a
Green-OA publisher. Still, why doesn’t
ACM become a Gold-OA publisher?
The problem with the “information
wants to be free” principle is that “free,”
per se, is not a sound business model.
The current implosion of the U. S. news-
paper industry certainly testifies to that
claim. Having been personally involved
with an open-access publication for
about five years now, I have come to re-
alize that publishing has real costs. Any
publishing business model must ac-
count for these costs. Even “free” must
be monetized! Google uses advertising
to monetize open access, but that does
not seem a viable option for scholarly
publishing. Many open-access publica-
tions have adopted the “author-pays”
model, requiring authors to pay thou-
sands of dollars for each published ar-
ticle. The argument in favor of “author
pays” is that it maximizes access to pub-
lished articles, but at the same time this
is simply a shifting of costs from readers
to authors. Is our community ready for
the author-pays model? Would this not
create a new inequity between “have”
and “have not” authors?
My perspective is that what really
propelled the open-access movement
was the continuing escalation of the
price of scientific publications during
the 1990s and 2000s, a period during
which technology drove down the cost
of scientific publishing. This price es-
calation has been driven by for-profit
publishers. In the distant past, our
field had several small- and medium-
sized for-profit publishers. There was
a sense of informal partnership be-
tween the scientific community and
these publishers. That was then. To-
day, there are two large and dominant
for-profit publishers in computing.
These publishers are thoroughly cor-
poratized. They are businesses with
one clear mission—to maximize the
return on investments to their owners
and shareholders. At the same time,
the scientific community, whose goal
is to maximize dissemination, contin-
ues to behave as if a partnership exists
with for-profit publishers, providing
them with content and editorial ser-
vices essentially gratis. This is a highly
anomalous arrangement, in my per-
sonal opinion. Why should for-profit
corporations receive products and la-
bor essentially for free?
As for ACM’s stand on the open-ac-
cess issue, I’d describe it as “clopen,”
somewhere between open and closed.
(In topology, a clopen set is one that
is both open and closed.) ACM does
charge a price for its publications, but
this price is very reasonable. (If you
do not believe me, ask your librarian.)
ACM’s modest publication revenues
first go to cover ACM’s publication
costs that go beyond print costs to in-
clude the cost of online distribution
and preservation, and then to support
the rest of ACM activities. To me, this
is a very important point. The “profits”
do not go to some corporate owners;
they are used to support the activities
of the association, and the association
is us, the readers, authors, reviewers,
and editors of ACM publications. Fur-
thermore, ACM operates as a demo-
cratic association. If you believe that
ACM should change its publishing
business model, then you should lob-
by for this position.
The bottom line is there are two dis-
tinct issues here. The first is the issue
of for-profit vs. association publish-
ing. The current relationship between
the scientific community and the for-
profit publishers makes no sense to
me. The second issue is the business
model of association publishing, for
example, “reader pays” vs. “authors
pays.” This is a legitimate topic of dis-
cussion, as long as we understand that
it cannot be separated from the over-
all business model of the association.
Just remember, “free” is not a sound
business model.
References:
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