There has been a flurry of activity about Development Policy Review and Disasters, journals “published” by the ODI. Last week Duncan Green on his / OXFAM blog http://www.oxfamblogs.org/fp2p/?p=15465 wrote:
Yet this week I had a depressing exchange with the (usually wonderful) ODI about their journal, the Development Policy Review (no link for reasons I’ll explain). The latest issue of DPR covers transparency and accountability initiatives, and (oh the irony!) it is hidden behind a paywall: if I want to read more than the abstract, I have to fill in online forms, pay a few $, then go through the hassle of reclaiming it through Oxfam’s expenses system and anyway, I balk at paying before I know if it’s any good. The result is (and I suspect I am fairly typical) that I move on – I either write to the author to scrounge the piece, find someone who has access eg through a university or, as in this case, read something else instead (it’s not as if development wonks are running out of reading matter).
When I complained via twitter, ODI directed me to an FAQ page on their website which explains:
“ODI does not hold copyright for articles in ODI’s two peer-reviewed journals, Development Policy Review and Disasters, so cannot directly publish these with open access.
And Nick Scott from ODI replied http://www.oxfamblogs.org/fp2p/?p=15525
…the associated Twitter conversations – included exhortations to ‘just do it’. But I wish it were as easily done as it is said. As someone who has been working hard to make ODI a leader in embracing the digital age (and other think tanks too, through the WonkComms initiative) it feels uncomfortable to be on the receiving end of barbs about a ‘legacy tail’ or belonging to bygone eras. The reality is that if we could quickly and easily move our journals to full and open access whilst maintaining their research quality and sustainability, we would’ve done it.
What the ‘pay wall‘ pays for
ODI’s peer reviewed journals curate brilliant research from around the world. Subscription costs and single article purchases cover the costs of processing, reviewing and publishing this work.
ODI uses its share of income to cover editorial and some administration – and we aim to run at cost. We review hundreds of submissions, co-ordinate a complicated peer review process, copy edit, proof and commission articles. It is not an insubstantial task.
We work with a publisher (Wiley Blackwell) to run our journals because it would be madness not to. They know what they’re doing when it comes to online publication, subscription management, the printing and mailing of hard copies for institutions and individuals – a proportion of whom don’t (and often can’t) access journals online. We wouldn’t be able to do this stuff ourselves very efficiently.
Finding a six-figure sum to cover the full editorial, production and management costs every year is not something anyone can just do. ODI and other organisations running journals cannot reduce costs without impacting quality. The essence of peer-reviewed journals is their guarantee of quality – lose that and you might as well shut them down completely.
This is an example of what I call the #scholarlypoor – the people all over the world who are not in a rich university. Of course we centre on citizens of developing countries – HINARI is not an answer – but also on many others. If you are in policy making areas (government, NGOs) climate, disease, etc you need access to this knowledge and you probably can’t get it for free – you must pay or act illegally. So the fundamental question for the ODI is:
Why are you publishing these journals anyway?
ODI says: Development Policy Review is an ODI journal focused on the crucial link between research and policy. As an international, peer-reviewed journal, it is an indispensable tool for researchers and policy-makers alike. The journal publishes single articles and themed issues on topics at the forefront of current international debate and is published in association with Wiley-Blackwell Publishing.
If it’s to reach those who ought to be reached it’s failing. It can be argued that an academic publishes for their own benefit, not the community (I don’t but some do). But a non-profit Development Organisation has a duty to reach everyone.
“It would be madness not to [work with Wlley]”. Rubbish. There are many journals published with no subscription and no author charges. It takes effort and commitment but that’s what the ODI is about, surely? It’s actually madness that the ODI, which actually publishes a lot of material other than journals, cannot publish a journal. Look at J. Machine Learning Research (jmlr.org, which has no author fees or reader fees). It’s at the top of its field (whereas yours is half way down). You have an organisation designed for managing information. You have all the advantages.
So I have the following suggestions:
Short-term. Collect all the author manuscripts you already have (since YOU manage them) and publish them as Green Open Access. You will find no shortage of repositories who will host this. If Wiley object, tell the world. This is knowledge designed to better the world.
Medium term. Create an OA journal. This is not as difficult as it sounds. The software to run it is free, there is no subscription management required, no paywall software, no lawyers to threaten people who want open knowledge. Cameron Neylon thinks it costs 250 GBP per published article to do a good job of peer-review. You have economies of scale.
You publish 6 articles/month approx. That’s, say 100 articles a year. Take Cameron’s figure that’s 25, 000 GBP/year. I think that’s reasonable.
Now canvas funders – foundations interested in open knowledge – SPARC has funded some startup initiatives, so have JISC. Talk to the new association of UK Open Access publishers. They’ll give you lots of useful advice. Talk to Cameron (sorry Cameron!). Talk to OKFN. And, if it’s any help I’ll be happy to talk.
Long term. Then set your sights high. Think of yourself as a way of making Open Access happen. You’re in the centre. Think of ODI as an OA publishing hub. You can help others to create OA outlets.
It would be madness not to
As someone who’s spent the last couple of years running a campaign advocating for Open Access I have to say I do have some sympathy for the ODI’s predicament. Many research organisations like the ODI lie outside the university system, so they don’t have core funding or HEFCE money or any other financial cushions. They must sell everything they do to donors (who are increasingly strict about what their donated money is spent on). Somehow they must find a way to cover all their costs – researchers’ & administrators’ salaries included. £25,000 a year to run an OA journal is a lot of money for an organisation with zero core funding. But even this figure sounds like an underestimate to me. I’m a little skeptical about Cameron’s per article peer-review cost estimate of £250. This figure seems to imply that someone somewhere is expected to work for nothing. Good quality peer review means spending a good deal of time reading & commenting on an article. How many hours of researcher reviewing time does £250 cover? Or are researchers expected, on top of their already dangerously high workloads, to do this work in their free-time? Similarly, setting up and running an OA journal takes many hours of work which has to be done by actual human beings – human beings who should be paid for that work. Likewise canvassing funders requires many hours of staff time. Assuming a 90% rejection rate from approaches to funders (not unreasonable in the current global financial meltdown, when public funds have never been smaller), how does an organisation pay for all that time spent fundraising?
On the question of using existing publishers, I can see ODI’s point. If my domestic plumbing system breaks down I have two choices. I can either enroll on an expensive and time-consuming course to become a plumber myself or I can phone a qualified plumber to do the job instead. From experience I have to say I prefer the latter approach. So I can see why an organisation whose primary business is research, not publishing, would chose to hire a professional publisher instead of trying to become a publisher itself. And having entered into a legally binding long-term contract with a publisher, I don’t imagine my company lawyers would be too impressed if I announced we were going to suddenly publish material elsewhere in possible legal violation of that contract.
Open Access is vitally important, but it is definitely not cost-free. In fact it can be pretty expensive. So everyone has to work together – donors, researchers, research organisations, publishers, policymakers – to find sustainable & practical ways to meet those costs.
Thanks, useful points.
>> Good quality peer review means spending a good deal of time reading & commenting on an article. How many hours of researcher reviewing time does £250 cover? Or are researchers expected, on top of their already dangerously high workloads, to do this work in their free-time? Similarly, setting up and running an OA journal takes many hours of work which has to be done by actual human beings – human beings who should be paid for that work.
This is incorrect. Reviewers are not paid, they work for free and have done as part of their contribution to scholarship.
>> I don’t imagine my company lawyers would be too impressed if I announced we were going to suddenly publish material elsewhere in possible legal violation of that contract.
The feasibility depends on the contract that ODI agreed with Wiley. Some contracts would allow this, some wouldn’t. In Computer Science and physics nearly all manuscripts are openly available in arXiv.
>>Open Access is vitally important, but it is definitely not cost-free. In fact it can be pretty expensive.
Publishing is not cost-free. At present it’s paid by universities through their subscriptions. These come from (a) student fees (b) top-sliced grant-income (c) donors (d) gov grants. Many argue, including me, that OA publishing is cheaper than Closed access.
I didn’t say it was easy – I gave a number of pointers. When library budgets crumble – as they will – the ODI journals will go out of business. So now is the time to do something radically different.
I agree – now is indeed the time to do something radically different.
On specific points:
Yes I know reviewers aren’t paid. But in fairness to all my non-HEFCE research colleagues, who are not tenured, and who in many cases are really struggling to raise their own salaries these days, I think reviewers should be paid. The present unpaid system is anachronistic & won’t be sustainable for much longer, as tenured university posts disappear, so these costs will increasingly need to be taken into account in all peer-reviewed publishing.
Re: contracts – a surprisingly high number of commercial publishing contracts do indeed allow for some kind of OA publication. I believe Peter Suber called this the biggest open secret in OA: many believe that they cannot publish in Open Access when actually they often can. But it remains the case that many existing contracts do still prohibit this, and breaking contracts is not easy or cost-free. I imagine ODI would have already done this if they could.
Publishing in any form, whether Open Access or Toll Access, is never cost-free. Somebody somewhere has to pay for it. Surely this is what we need to focus on. OA is vital – so how do we finance it in a realistic & sustainable way? Removing publishers’ profit margins does remove some costs, and is therefore a good start. But you still have to meet all the other publishing costs. Staff still need to be paid for the work they do, whether their work is Open Access publishing or Toll Access publishing.
Thanks
>> agree – now is indeed the time to do something radically different.
>>Yes I know reviewers aren’t paid. But in fairness to all my non-HEFCE research colleagues, who are not tenured, and who in many cases are really struggling to raise their own salaries these days, I think reviewers should be paid. The present unpaid system is anachronistic & won’t be sustainable for much longer, as tenured university posts disappear, so these costs will increasingly need to be taken into account in all peer-reviewed publishing.
You may be right. This will presumably add the same costs to both OA and Closed.
>>Re: contracts – a surprisingly high number of commercial publishing contracts do indeed allow for some kind of OA publication. I believe Peter Suber called this the biggest open secret in OA: many believe that they cannot publish in Open Access when actually they often can. But it remains the case that many existing contracts do still prohibit this, and breaking contracts is not easy or cost-free. I imagine ODI would have already done this if they could.
People should be more active in highlighting and challenging this. Stevan Harnad moans about Elsevier forbidding Green for mandated – many others than him and me have to challenge it.
>>Publishing in any form, whether Open Access or Toll Access, is never cost-free. Somebody somewhere has to pay for it. Surely this is what we need to focus on. OA is vital – so how do we finance it in a realistic & sustainable way? Removing publishers’ profit margins does remove some costs, and is therefore a good start. But you still have to meet all the other publishing costs. Staff still need to be paid for the work they do, whether their work is Open Access publishing or Toll Access publishing.
OA publishers can be profit and non-profit…
One major saving is the apparatus for protecting closed (subscriptions, paywall machinery, lawyers, etc.) None of that is required in OA.