I was recently invited to write a review for a closed access journal run by a commercial publisher. The subject of the article [in confidence] was dear to my heart and the journal is largely aimed at a community of readership which does not normally read my material and can, I hope, benefit from what I write. But I have a natural reluctance to publish in Closed Access journals. (Yes I do so in chemistry, but that is because they are all Closed. And yes, before you ask, we (me and Henry Rzepa) do argue the toss with the publishers. Frequently). So what to do? As the publisher’s invitation was labelled confidential I have removed all identifying names and truncated some chunks.
- Accede to the publisher’s requirements. Take the money and run. It’s not the end of the world.
- Refuse to publish and hack some useful code instead.
- Accede to the publisher’s rules, but then put my copy in my Institutional Repository.
- Accede to the publisher’s rules, but then put the final publisher’s copy in my Institutional Repository. (c.f. the Subversive Proposal of Stevan Harnad). This breaks the formal rules of copyright, even though many people ignore this and some positively honour the breach as an act of civil disobedience.
- Negotiate with the publisher to see if they would accede to an Open publication.
Although several people urge me to break copyright I feel that as an advocate for formal change (in Open Data) I have to obey the formal rules. I want publishers to listen to arguments for Open Data (and many do) and they will be less receptive (I think) if I am not seen as an irresponsible radical. (There is, of course, a large need for irresponsible radicals). So I chose the last option:
Thanks you for your invitation. As you know I am a proponent of Open Access, and would be interested in this invitation if you would be prepared to offer the article as Open Access (author(s) retain copyright)…
I cannot reproduce the confidential correspondence in detail but we have come to a mutually acceptable solution. I shall thank the publishers in the finished article. Perhaps this is a useful model for other authors.
(1) Publish in whatever journal you like
(2) Deposit your final, peer-reviewed draft (“postprint”) in your Insititutional Repository (IR) immediately upon acceptance for publication.
(3) Set access to the postprint as Open Access immediately if the journal is one of the 69% that have already endorsed immediate deposit (see the EPrints/Romeo registry of journal self-archiving policies) — or if you like.
(4) Otherwise set access to the postprint as Closed Access (as per the Immediate-Deposit/Optional-Access ID/OA Strategy) and let the IR’s semi-automatic EMAIL EPRINT REQUEST feature take care of individual eprints requests with one extra keystroke per individual eprint request until any publisher embargo elapses (or you tire of doing the extra keystrokes).
(My “Subversive Proposal” was never to deposit the publisher’s PDF: always the author’s preprint and postprint.)
(1) Publish in whatever journal you like
(2) Deposit your final, peer-reviewed draft (“postprint”) in your Insititutional Repository (IR) immediately upon acceptance for publication.
(3) Set access to the postprint as Open Access immediately if the journal is one of the 69% that have already endorsed immediate deposit (see the Romeo registry of journal self-archiving policies) — or if you like.
(4) Otherwise set access to the postprint as Closed Access (as per the Immediate-Deposit/Optional-Access ID/OA Strategy) and let the IR’s semi-automatic EMAIL EPRINT REQUEST feature take care of individual eprints requests with one extra keystroke per individual eprint request until any publisher embargo elapses (or you tire of doing the extra keystrokes).
(My “Subversive Proposal” was never to deposit the publisher’s PDF: always the author’s preprint and postprint.)
(2) Thanks Stevan. As you know chemistry publishers do not appear in the 69%. But I will do what I can.
It might be worth adding a link to the Science Commmons, who provide various formal addenda to the copyright transfer statements we’re all forced into signing when publishing in closed-access journals. They aim to provide a better balance between the rights of the author(s) and those of the publisher.
Does anyone have any experience of how successful this approach is, particularly with chemistry publishers?
(4) Thanks Dan,
Yes, I use Science Commons and Creative Commons. I shall use CC for this article. The main point is whether the journal will allow you to keep copyright – if it does then you should certainly use CC. If it doesn’t I suspect whether you offer CC or any other license won’t help. But we are gradually winning…
I believe, If we really want to knowledge driven open society, where business models are less effective in governing the process of knowledge creation and sharing, we will have to follow the “Barter System”.
As in Barter system, in which goods or services are exchanged for other goods and/or services; no money is involved in the transaction, the knowledge society should be based on “bartering knowledge”.
I’m a great listener/ reader of Sir(s). Peter Suber and Steven Harnad and look forward to receive the pieces of “digital intellect” posted by them on the web.
Thnaks and regards.
Long Live THE Open Access.
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