Access to scientific publications should be a fundamental right

In my last post I reviewed a paper in Nature and gave a précis for the “scholarly poor” the internet citizens who are not employed by rich universities. (Universities have an arrogant attitude that access to the literature only matters for them, and they spend billions of taxpayers’ money in their libraries just for themselves). One of my commenters and ex-colleague (@walter blackstock) commented that it would cost 32 USD to read the Nature article (2 pages, rented for 1 day). He’s a scientist – he just doesn’t happen to work in universities – so no access to the scientific literature.

The lack of access to scientific literature is now a global shame.

Think of all the people (in all countries, not just the rich west) who cannot read the literature:

• Patients and patient groups
• Government and policy makers (e.g. in NGOs)
• Environmental groups
• Many practitioners of medicine who do not have access to (say) a national service (e.g. NHSNet)
• Retired people (many of whom are actively involved in changing the world)
• Schoolchildren (yes, much of the literature is – or should be – understandable by them)
• Interested citizens who want to understand the world we live in

And, starkly, people die because of lack of access to scientific information. That sounds sensationalist, but it’s self-evidently true. If a patient group cannot read the medical literature they cannot make informed decisions. The conventional wisdom that patients are incapable of understanding their literature is no longer true in this century. The Open Source Drug Discovery project in India is more concerned with stopping people dying than their precious h-index from closed access journals. The countries which see sea levels increasing and changing weather patterns have a right to know what the scientific world is doing and saying – and indeed to be a full part of it.

I have blogged at length on this /pmr/2011/07/09/what-is-wrong-with-scientific-publishing-and-can-we-put-it-right-before-it-is-too-late/ and subsequent. I have been catalysed to continue by

• An article by Mike Taylor in Times Higher Ed (http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?storycode=417576 ) where he argues we should refuse to give reviews for closed access journals (I already refuse – no surprise). Some of the discussion centres round alternative models
• A blog post by Ben Goldacre (http://bengoldacre.posterous.com/how-pubget-could-be-better-add-free-open-repo ) where he suggests we could create a collection of free articles. I’ll blog this later.

So I am arguing that Access to scientific publications should be a fundamental right

That may sound dramatic so I will put it in context. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights lists substantive human rights to include:

• 9.1.1 Environmental rights
• 9.1.2 Future generations
• 9.1.3 Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender (LGBT) rights
• 9.1.4 Trade
• 9.1.5 Water
• 9.1.6 Crime and Punishment
• 9.1.7 Fetal rights
• 9.1.8 Reproductive rights
• 9.1.9 Information and communication technologies

Note that this not mean they are free-of-cost, free-as-in-beer. Water costs money. But it is a fundamental right:

In November 2002, the United Nations Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights issued a non-binding comment affirming that access to water was a human right:

the human right to water is indispensable for leading a life in human dignity. It is a prerequisite for the realization of other human rights.

—United Nations Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights

This principle was reaffirmed at the 3rd and 4th World Water Councils in 2003 and 2006. This marks a departure from the conclusions of the 2nd World Water Forum in The Hague in 2000, which stated that water was a commodity to be bought and sold, not a right.^[99] There are calls from many NGOs and politicians to enshrine access to water as a binding human right, and not as a commodity.^[100][101] According to the United Nations, nearly 900 million people lack access to clean water and more than 2.6 billion people lack access to basic sanitation. On July 28, 2010, the UN declared water and sanitation as human rights. By declaring safe and clean drinking water and sanitation as a human right, the U.N. General Assembly made a step towards the Millennium Development Goal to ensure environmental sustainability, which in part aims to “halve, by 2015, the proportion of the population without sustainable access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation”.

Note “access to water as a binding human right, and not as a commodity“. We pay for our water in the UK, and I am (generally) happy to do this. The condition is that we must be free of monopolists, or cartels, of indiscriminate and arbitrary sanctions. In the UK water is managed in a capitalist manner and it’s therefore regulated politically and there is a water regulator (Ofwat). There are flaws in this but the system at least removes the appalling monopoly control imposed by capitalist publishers. Making water a right commits the world to finding a solution, not building individual riches.

Then there is the Internet.

The United Nations has proposed to make Internet access a human right. This push was made when it called for universal access to basic communication and information services at the UN Administrative Committee on Coordination. In 2003, during the World Summit on the Information Society, another claim for this was made.^[1][2]

In some countries such as Estonia,^[3]
France,^[4]
Finland,^[5]
Greece^[6] and Spain,^[7] Internet access has already been made a human right. This is accomplished by authorizing universal service-contracted providers with the duty to extend a mandatory minimum connection capability to all remaining desiring home users in the country.

This does not mean that access to the internet is free of cost. I pay my broadband willingly enough. But it means that in countries more enlightened than Britain I cannot be cut off by publishers.

Publishers could cut off my broadband??

Three strikes

Main article: Graduated response

In response to copyright infringement using peer-to-peer software, the creative industries, reliant on copyright, advocate what is known as a “graduated response” which sees consumers disconnected after a number of notification letters warning that they are infringing copyright. The content industry has sought to gain the co-operation of internet service providers (ISPs), asking them to provide subscriber information for IP addresses identified by the content industry as engaged in copyright infringement.^[9] The proposal for internet service providers to cut off Internet access to a subscriber who had received three warning letters of alleged copyright infringement was initially known as “three strikes”, based on the baseball rule of “three strikes and you’re out“. Because “three strikes” was understood to refer to physical assault,^{[citation needed]} the approach was later termed “graduated response”. Media attention has focused on attempts to implement such an approach in France (see the HADOPI law) and the UK (see the Digital Economy Act 2010), though the approach, or variations of it, has been implemented in a number of other countries, or attempts are made to do so.^[10]

Yes – if they think that I have been violating “their” copyright they can – without judicial process get me cut off. It is they, not a court, who decide on whether it’s a violation. Wiley pursued Shelley Batts with legal threats for posting one graph from a scientific article. (Yes Wiley, until you change the rights of access to your material I shall keep dragging up this appalling violation of scientific rights). If she had done it three times they could have had her cut off .

So I am proposing that we should press for

Access to scientific publications should be a fundamental right

This makes simple sense. If justification were needed:

• Scientific publication is a vital tool in improving the quality of (or even saving) humankind.
• Scientific publication is largely funded by the public purse and non-profit institutions. These institutions wish the widest possible dissemination of their research.
• Scientific publications are created by scientists and others with no intention of monetary reward. Scientists also wish the widest possible dissemination of their research.
• The culture of this century expects information to be freely available.

If we are able to adopt this simple principle, then much else follows. It follows that cost of access should be regulated, or subsidised wholly or partly. It follows that there should be no restrictions on the flow or re-use of scientific information (the dissemination cost is near zero).

We have – through decades of academic indifference – landed ourselves with a band of publisher robber-barons and it will be a struggle to escape. But there is much experience of how to do this. There is – in many countries – strong political will. It can and must happen.