Open Source Academic Journals
February 9th, 2008 Richard Posted in academics, open_source, web and new media | 10 Comments »
Not surprisingly, some people think that it’s a jip that tax payers support the National Science Foundation, Public Universities, and similar agencies that fund research; while, at the same time, this research is published in very high price journals, not easily available to most. Some would even suggest that all of this type of research information should be readily available to the public (e.g., medical journals). This is compounded by the fact that journal costs are extremely high compared to other types of publications. Some argue that this is because journal publishers take advantage of the fact that academic libraries feel obliged to carry major journals. Further, there is also almost no decrease in cost for electronic editions, despite the lower production overhead. Academics are so frustrated by this situation, that some, such as the Stanford Faculty senate, have encouraged libraries to cancel subscriptions, and academics to withhold reviews and publishing, for overly high priced journals.
As a consequence, there is growing movement in academics and elsewhere to push for open access journals, where information can be accessed for free via the web. Such an idea is not as unreasonable as it may seem on the face of it, since academics themselves do most of the work anyway. They write and review the articles, for free; and often serve as editors for little or no wages. I, personally, support this view and, in fact, my colleagues and I recently published an article in the open-access web periodical, the Journal of Learning, Technology, and Assessment; which includes traditional academic peer review, an editorial board as prestigious as any other major educational research journal, and is highly regarded in the field. In fact, there are more and more open access journals available, many of which are listed in the directory of open access journals.
This issue came to light again for me recently with this passionate blog post by Dana Boyd, a PhD candidate in the School of Information at Cal-Berkley and a Fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at the Harvard Law School. She argues a more extreme position, where she calls for academics to boycott all but open access journals, an idea that I find intriguing. Of course, it’s easy for me to be brave enough to consider such a thing when I am a tenured full professor. Not so easy for a non-tenured assistant professor whose career is dependent on publishing in prestigious journals, most of which are still not open access. Further, there are certainly pragmatic issues having to do with infrastructure costs – such as marketing, distribution, and copy editing – costs that would most likely fall to universities, or foundations in an open-access world. Many of these issues come to light in the comments/responses to the blog post cited above.
February 10th, 2008 at 4:49 pm
I don’t think costs would be as big of an issue as you might think – easily defrayed through advertising or other reasonable methods. The costs SHOULD be relatively low, I should think.
The one problem area I do see is that with publications at least you KNOW what factions or interests might be controlling information, editing, deciding what gets published and what gets killed, etc. In a more open venue, which I would certainly support, I would think that transparency of the participants would be vital to sustaining legitimacy.
I do hope professors are feeling some of my pain in buying textbooks that are ridiculously expensive and not much cheaper in electronic form even when its availalbe, though.
February 10th, 2008 at 10:27 pm
Christian, I think an open-access peer-reviewed journal would probably have all of the same transparency (such as it is) of the current peer-reviewed journals. Open publication (i.e. not peer reviewed) would be a whole nother can of worms. I know that as far as math, many people use the AMS LaTeX format and so things are already more or less typeset upon submission; not sure about other fields that use fewer symbols and foreign alphabets and more photos and stuff.
I would think that open-access journals would also be a form of subsidy to smaller towns, developing nations, etc., which might be a tiny step towards closing some of those gaps. I’ve heard a lot of comments from physical therapists, for example, that although they learn how to use all of these cutting edge research resources in graduate school, they cannot access them from their jobs with smaller clinics.
I do think the professors who do not feel the pain of textbooks probably don’t notice the pain of journals, either: all is provided. But some are frustrated, and I know as far back as 1999 I had instructors who were like, okay, none of the normal books are worth the price, so get the Schaum’s outline and we’ll have lectures and office hours and there will be supplemental texts on reserve.
February 11th, 2008 at 11:54 am
I just remembered that I used to see faculty members with little stacks of reprints and that once in a while a little postcard would come in requesting one. I don’t know much about that system–does the author pay for the stack of reprints? How widespread was the system? What kind of ideas about knowledge does it embody? Did this system die off after journals became available electronically (i.e. were the reprints replaced by PDF’s), or was there in interregnum where you could only get the article from the publisher or a bound copy?
So many times I’ve wished for a metasearch, since HCI is a multidisciplinary field. Also, I saw someone link to a new FF extension that is meant to allow you to collect a database of articles, in the manner of Reference Manager or Endnote: http://www.zotero.org/
February 11th, 2008 at 8:24 pm
I am recalling my class with Dr. Hall last semester and my struggle to find journal articles as sources for my research. It seemed every road I took, lead me to articles I had to pay to read. It was very frustrating, but the biggest problem in retrospect, is that I missed out on a lot of useful and interesting material because I am not made of money.
I do understand and respect the prestige of these publications but who does it really hurt?
February 11th, 2008 at 9:04 pm
The more I was thinking about this subject the more it occurred to me that it really gets to the heart of the struggle for the Internet and what the survey was talking about in week 2 (I think). Is it going to be ‘free’ and ‘open’ with powerful exchange of information or is it going to be a closed system where information is closely controlled to line the pockets of the established economic powers in our country/world..?
Go Dana Boyd!
February 11th, 2008 at 10:45 pm
I think it’s high time we start thinking seriously about what Dana Boyd had to say in her blog. With an increasing number of journals in each field, it’s getting increasingly harder to get hold scholarly articles. I’ve had so many instances where I searched and found the perfect journal and bam……….you need to pay for it! I can in fact ask the library to get the article but every now and then they can’t.
I don’t think there’s any problem with the authors. The obvious advantage for the authors is the increased visibility and ultimately a citation advantage. The problem we have is from the publishers. Most of the hard work is done by the authors in writing/reviewing those articles and on top of that they often serve as editors for little or no wages. If there’s transparency in the open journals like in the current peer reviewed journals, open source journals would definitely be popular in the future. Over the course of time and if the necessary criteria are met, I think an open source journal can also gain the same prestige as some of the current popular journals.
February 12th, 2008 at 2:36 pm
I agree that free is good. Open source journals should be free and we should stop asking for money every second of the day. Libraries are free, why not make all information free? Why should a person pay to read someone elses work?
February 12th, 2008 at 3:20 pm
One positive thing about being a student or a faculty member in a university; you have considerable more access to journals whether they are open accoss or not.
I am one of those tenure track assistant professor types who unlike Richard, have not received tenure yet. I definitely feel the need to publish in higher tiered journals thet typically have no access unless your in my kind of setting, academic.
However, I do know the difficulty it creates to not have information at your fingertips when you have a question. I am a professor of nursing we struggle with how to provide information to nurses at the bedside so they can make good decisions about care. The reality is that when your at the bedside; often times you make decisions based upon your own experiences and intuition; perhaps journal information feeds into this knowledge but I bet it doesn’t occur overnight.
February 13th, 2008 at 7:51 pm
Off the topic of academic journals, but still on subject of research information, being in the corporate world tends to put my focus on professional-developed research. Nielsen Norman Group is the first to come to mind, and I get to use corporate dollars to pay for it.
It’s not cheap, but thats how they make their money.
This is not to say that research in academia isn’t valuable, cause it is and leads to more and more research. The more places I can get open (free really) research and publications the better. White papers don’t tend to cut the mustard much of the time.
February 14th, 2008 at 10:22 am
Shannon…are you going to the NN usability conference in June in SF?