Open Access in Public Libraries: a Report from the Frontline

It was announced yesterday that academic papers would be made freely accessible at local libraries. Now read on.

A small local library. In the corner a stressed young mother is trying to interest her child in a brightly coloured book about a duck. The librarian is stamping returned books and tutting occasionally. 
An elderly woman enters with a pull along shopping trolley and a handful of academic papers. She approaches the desk. The librarian looks up.

LIBRARIAN: Yes? Can I help you?
WOMAN: I want to complain.
LIBRARIAN (defensively): Oh?
WOMAN: Yes. I came in last week to get the latest Mills & Boon. I was really looking forward to it. Defence of Her Realm it was called. I like a good romance.
LIBRARIAN: And?
WOMAN: Well you didn't have it in. It was already on loan, and there was a three year waiting list.
LIBRARIAN: Well they are popular, the Mills & Boons.
WOMAN: That's as may be. Anyway, you suggested I try these instead. (She hoists up the pile of academic papers, and they slam down on the counter. The mother turns in alarm and her child starts crying).
LIBRARIAN: It's always good to broaden your horizons. Did you not enjoy them?
WOMAN (picks up the first paper and reads the title): 'Analysis of relative gene expression data using real-time quantitative PCR and the 2 -ΔΔCT method'? What do you think?
LIBRARIAN: That's one of our most popular titles! It's been cited 27,524 times! How can you say you didn't like it?
WOMAN (sniffily): Well it's not exactly Barbara Cartland is it? And this: 'Wireless Sensor Networks: a Survey'. I hoped for great things from this, what with it mentioning a 'sensor'. I thought there might a bit of sensuousness. Maybe with a robot. I like a bit of filth. But look! It's all about the convergence of micro-electro-mechanical systems technology, wireless communications and digital electronics!
LIBRARIAN: Very important in the modern world.
WOMAN: I don't care about the modern world! What I want is something set in the Regency period. Preferably between a beautiful but poor farm girl and a passing duke who becomes infatuated with her.
LIBRARIAN (picks up 'gauge theory correlators from non-critical string theory' and flicks through it): Hmm. I can see that these might not be what you're looking for, then. (To herself) Maybe this Open Access initiative isn't all it's cracked up to be. Maybe these should be - I don't know - freely accessible in a university library, or somewhere...
WOMAN: So what are you going to do about it, young lady? Don't you have any Catherine Cooksons?
LIBRARIAN: Look! Why don't you give these highly cited, cutting edge papers another go?
WOMAN (sucking her teeth): Cutting edge paper? Don't like the sound of that...I had a paper cut once. No....
LIBRARIAN: Oh, okay then. Here, you can borrow the Tilly Trotter Trilogy. Again.
WOMAN (beaming): Ooo, I do like a good Catherine Cookson. (She picks up the books and shuffles out. The Librarian sighs and carries on stamping books. The mother approaches the desk).
MOTHER: Excuse me?
LIBRARIAN: Yes?
MOTHER: Those academic papers? Can anyone borrow them?
LIBRARIAN (perking up): Yes! Isn't it wonderful? This world of knowledge, at the very forefront of discovery! And available to anyone!
MOTHER: Oh, that's great. Can I borrow these? (she picks up the whole pile).
LIBRARIAN: Of course! (She stamps the papers and hands them over). I must admit I'm surprised that you have time to study, what with a young child. I do admire you!
MOTHER: Oh, it's not for me! See, my child has trouble sleeping and I think if I read these aloud he'll be out like a light! Hugo, do come and listen to this: 'Microenvironments appear important in stem cell lineage specification but can be difficult to adequately characterize or control with soft tissues. Naive mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) are shown here to specify lineage and commit to phenotypes with extreme sensitivity to tissue-level elasticity. Soft matrices that mimic brain are neurogenic, stiffer matrices that mimic muscle are myogenic...'
CHILD: zzzz
MOTHER (whispering): Yes, Open Access is a wonderful thing! Thank you!
The Librarian tuts. 

Stat-tastic

The ARMA Conference 2012 kicked off with a two-headed plenary from Andrew Plume (Elsevier) and Sharmila Nebhrajani (AMRC). It was an odd combination: Plume gave us an overview of 'brain circulation' – that's the brain drain in old money – and Nebhrajani banged the drum for the value of the medical research charities' professional association. What did they have in common? Hmm. Availability seemed to be the uniting factor. That and an evangelical love of statistics.

Plume started by dispelling some myths. Rather than being a negative, the movement of talent brings enormous benefit. Not only do those who leave the UK usually return with additional skills, knowledge and experience, but the country also benefits from the 'inflow' of talent. Those coming are, according to Elsevier, more productive. Plume floated his proposition on a raft of numbers. The UK has the lowest number of 'stay at home' researchers: only 37% of British academics don't, at some stage in their career, move abroad, compared with 55% of Americans and 75% of Chinese academics. Elsewhere he produced graphs which showed the number of publications involving overseas partners. The UK has the largest proportion, but interestingly the EU27 graph looks very similar to the USA's, which might suggest that continent-wide collaboration makes it unnecessary to look further afield.

He then handed over to Nebhrajani, who executed a nifty hand brake turn to take the delegates in a completely different direction. The Association of Medical Research Charities (AMRC) is an umbrella organisation that represents a huge variety of funders, including the behemoth that is Wellcome on one end of the spectrum to the likes of the CGD Society on the other. All have to have rigorous peer review of funding applications if they want to be a member, and some 94% of charitable giving to medical research in the UK is to an AMRC member. The benefits of membership are that AMRC can act as a 'kitemark' to reassure the public that they're the real McCoy, and not some fly by night outfit, but it also allows the members to access some Dept of Health support.

Nebhrajani did raise a couple of more general points. Firstly, she made the point the the research community has to start thinking now about how to justify the 'ringfence' that the government provided in the last Comprehensive Spending Review (CSR) in readiness for the next one  in a couple of years' time.  Secondly, she noted that charitable funding is beginning to fall: it fell by 1% in 2011-12 after rises of between 5-20% in the preceding four years. She finished by admitting that she was 'very worried' about cuts to NHS research funding, and the new landscape in which GPs would hold the purse strings. Not only did none of these locally-based commissioning groups currently talk about research, but in England and Wales the NHS was hamstrung by bureaucratic approval processes, meaning that projects took four times as long to get the nod than they did in Scotland or Germany.

Open Access 'Snowball' Continues to Roll

Two interesting news items dropped into my inbox today.

1: The Times Higher reported that the European Commission will back open access publishing in Horizon 2020. Details of the proposal will be published at an event in Brussels on 20 June. The Director General for Research and Innovation, Robert-Jan Smits, was quoted as saying that it could make 'one hell of a difference.'

2: The Guardian reported that Winston Hide, associate editor of the Elsevier journal Genomics, has resigned from the editorial board. 'No longer can I work for a system that provides solid profits for the publisher while effectively denying colleagues in developing countries access to research findings,' he said.

It's an interesting coincidence, and suggests that (to quote Prof Tim Gowers in the THE article) 'the snowball is getting bigger'. However, some (ok, I mean the publishers of paid-for journals) question the desirability of open access. Income from subscriptions, they argue, allows them to spend more on selecting papers, editing and production.

I think this is a fair point, and worth bearing in mind. If funding does not come through subscriptions, they will need to be reimbursed for these costs from other sources. These could well be the funders of the original research, which would, in turn, mean that there is less money available to fund other research.

I'll continue to watch this snowball's progress with interest.

Profoundly in Love with Pandora

The Guardian reported last week on the squall that has blown up around Elsevier because of its support for the retrograde legislation that is currently making its way through the US Congress. The Research Works Act, in the words of Wikipedia, 'contains provisions to prohibit open access mandates for federally funded research [and] would also severely restrict the sharing of scientific data.'

3000 academics have already signed a petition pledging to boycott Elsevier. They are objecting not only to Elsevier's support for the legislation, but also to the business model that the company uses, which is based around charging 'exorbitantly high' subscription bundles, which include titles that many libraries don't want.

This isn't an issue confined to America. Open access has slowly been making inroads in the UK. Wellcome now expects all funded investigators to make their outputs freely accessible, and the Research Councils have a similar expectation.

This week Prof Stephen Curry of Imperial added to the storm by refusing to review an article for Elsevier. Interestingly Elsevier themselves commented on his blog post, and one can understand their point of view: 'putting an article online for free has economic consequences for the publisher because it effectively takes away returns that a publisher earns from all the value it has added and the investment it has made. So it does have the potential to make a journal unsustainable, and thus negatively impact the research community that relies on it.'

However, in this information age I'm not sure this Pandora's Box can be repacked. Maybe Pandora's Box is the wrong analogy; it suggests the release of evil, whereas Open Access is, I think, the release of good. Like the internet it offers unparalleled openness and freedom, a potential for knowledge and advances that would have been the stuff of dreams for previous generations. Of course, there will be losers as well as winners in this, victims as well as beneficiaries. But it doesn't make sense for Elsevier or the US Congress to try and stand in the way of this and - to use another analogy - act like Cnuts and hold back the tide.