Open Access Musings

Abstract

I don’t have any solution, but I certainly admire the problem.– Ashleigh Brilliant Scientific journals serve three main functions. First, they are a primary means of communicating research results. Second, through the peer review process, they improve the quality of what is communicated. Third, they constitute a permanent record of created knowledge, permitting future scholars to build on prior accomplishments. In recent history, the scientific journal system has depended on publishers for the technology to print and distribute physical issues to individual subscribers and libraries. Advances in computing and communication technology have revolutionized scientific publishing. One remarkable change is improved access to scientific literature. For example, working at a major research university provides electronic access to a phenomenal range of journals. I rarely visit a library now, although I use library services almost daily. Even from home, I can access journal collections through a proxy server and download a PDF copy of a research article within minutes of identifying it. Such technological advances are accompanied by opportunities and challenges for the system of scientific publishing. One topic being vigorous debated is termed ‘open access’. For some background, see http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/scholarlycommunication/open_access.html. Indoor Air operates under a traditional model of scientific publishing. The publisher, Wiley-Blackwell, owns the journal. Following peer review, authors whose work is accepted for publication are requested to transfer the copyright to the publisher. (As described in the copyright transfer agreement, some rights are retained or licensed back to the author: http://www.wiley.com/go/ctaaglobal.) The costs for operating the journal are recovered through subscription fees paid by individual and institutional subscribers (e.g., ISIAQ members and libraries). In addition to funding the operation of the journal, a goal of the parent corporation, John Wiley & Sons, is to return profits to shareholders. (See http://www.wiley.com/legacy/annual_reports/ar_2011/shareholders.html.) Access to the contents of Indoor Air generally requires a subscription. For example, in addition to receiving a print copy, any member of ISIAQ can access the full contents at the journal’s Web site (http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1111/%28ISSN%291600-0668). By owning copyright and by limiting access, a publisher maintains economic value for their journals. However, limiting access is contrary to the goals of researchers who seek to have their work disseminated broadly. It is also contrary to goals of research sponsors who wish to see the maximum utility result from work they support. One strong alternative is an open-access publication model, in which a journal’s operating costs are recovered through publication fees paid by authors, their employers, or their research sponsor. Published articles are then freely available to all through electronic download. There are many variants of these basic publication models. Consider Aerosol Science & Technology, a journal owned by a nonprofit professional association, the American Association for Aerosol Research (AAAR). Authors are not charged a fee to publish. A commercial firm, Taylor and Francis, publishes the journal and sells subscription access. However, copyright is owned by AAAR, and after a 1-year embargo period, the contents become freely available as in the open-access model. As another example of hybridized practices, many journals that use a traditional ‘subscriber pays’ funding model allow authors (or their employers or their research sponsors) to pay for an individual article to become open access. Wiley makes such an option available for Indoor Air. However, it has been rarely used, probably because the current cost per article, $3000, is at the high end of the range of publication fees charged by open-access journals. The next few paragraphs summarize attributes of some interesting and successful open-access journals. In considering alternative models, it is important to acknowledge that there are real costs associated with publishing a journal. As an editor, I have glimpses into some of these costs through my interactions with the publisher’s representative, the editorial assistant, and the production staff. Publication fees for open-access journals provide another indicator. Any sustainable model for operating a journal must provide an income stream that is sufficient to reliably cover expenses. Environmental Health Perspectives (EHP) is a prestigious journal (2010 impact factor = 6.087) published by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS), a branch of the US government. EHP publishes news articles, editorials, and contributed, peer-reviewed scientific papers. Since 2004, the scientific papers have been published under an open-access model. Over the period 2009–2011, EHP published 275–300 scientific articles per year (about 7% of these had ‘indoor’ as a topic word). A typical current publication fee charged to authors is $1000 per article. EHP receives substantial financial support from US taxpayers. Evidence concerning the level of subsidy can be gleaned from reports about a major controversy that erupted during 2006–2007 when the then NIEHS Director David Schwartz proposed to cut EHP’s annual budget from ‘over $3 million in 2005 down to about $500 000’ (http://members.sej.org/sej/tipsheet.php?ID=1508). These figures indicate that author publication fees provide only a small fraction of EHP’s annual budget. In turn, this evidence raises a question of whether moderate publication fees at the level of $1000 per article are sufficient to fully support a high-quality open-access journal publishing 300 articles per year. Atmospheric Measurement Techniques (AMT) is a young open-access journal (publication began in 2008) published by Copernicus Publications on behalf of the European Geophysical Union. To date (late May 2012), they have published 411 articles. (None have as a topic the term ‘indoor’ or ‘indoors’.) Along with many others published by Copernicus, this journal uses an innovative open peer review process. Articles are initially considered for Atmospheric Measurement Techniques Discussion (AMTD) and are published there directly following a successful preliminary evaluation by the editors. Once the article is published in AMTD, it is subject to ordinary peer review and is also open for comment by any interested member of the scientific community. The authors are expected to publish openly their response to review comments. As judged by this review process, a revised article deemed by editors to be of sufficient quality can then be accepted for publication in AMT. The publication fee, typically about $1200, is levied on articles that appear in AMTD, with no additional fee charged for publication in AMT. In 2011, AMTD published 201 articles. Among these, 173 have been published in AMT (and 18 others are still in review). I do not know whether AMT and AMTD can be sustainably published at this scale or whether there is an aspiration and expectation to continue to grow the journal. Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics, a sister publication using the same operating model, published nearly 800 articles in 2011, having experienced continuous growth throughout the decade since its initial launch. Perhaps the best-known and certainly the largest open-access journal is PLoS One. Started in 2006, its aims were nothing less than to ‘reinvent the prevailing system of science communication’ (http://blogs.plos.org/everyone/2011/12/20/plos-one-five-years-many-milestones/). One of its innovations was the introduction of ‘article level metrics’. These measures indicate the influence of individual articles rather than, as with the impact factor, reflecting an aggregate measure of influence for all published articles. In 2011, only its fifth year of operation, PLoS One published almost 14 000 articles, an astounding total. This large scale is related to another characteristic of PLoS One: It is open to articles from any scientific discipline. The publication fee for PLoS One is $1350 per article. At this large scale, the fixed costs of maintaining the journal title should represent a small portion of the total journal cost. Hence, given that the publisher, the Public Library of Science, is a nonprofit organization, this article fee should be close to the true marginal cost of publishing an open-access article in a large journal. Both as an author and as a reader, I find the enormous scale of PLoS One to represent more limitation than strength. It is too big to regularly browse the contents. Also, one would not tend to look for articles related to indoor environmental quality and health in this journal because their presence is sparse: Only 22 (<0.2%) of the articles published in PLoS One in 2011 were on the topic ‘indoor’ or ‘indoors’. These three journals represent clear examples of strong, successful publications utilizing open-access models. However, being open access does not automatically confer strength. The Directory of Open Access Journals archives a catalog of nearly 8000 open-access journals (http://www.doaj.org/doaj?func=byCountry&uiLanguage=en). Their search engine identifies 200 journals in response to the term ‘environmental’. In this list, only a few would be considered prominent journals (most notably EHP and Environmental Research Letters). Interestingly, searches on ‘indoor’ and ‘indoors’ yielded no matches. One concern about the open-access model is whether small journals could be financially viable. Indoor Air currently publishes 50 articles per year. On the basis of recent statistics, the ten journals that have been publishing the most articles on the topic ‘indoor’ or ‘indoors’ are, in aggregate, publishing 430 articles per year. Only one of these top ten journals (EHP) is open access. Is there a large enough body of research to support a high-quality open-access journal focused on the indoor air sciences? For the model to be financially viable, the publication fee would need to be no larger than those charged by EHP, AMT, or PLoS One. The current scale of Indoor Air seems too small for this model to work. My sense is that 150–200 funded articles per year would be needed at a minimum, a level that would represent a substantial fraction of the cumulative current output in the indoor air sciences. A small community, such as ISIAQ, benefits from a journal that focuses on the topics in which members share an interest. Among other virtues, Indoor Air contributes to the validation of the indoor air sciences as an appropriate subject of scholarship that can be respected by the broader scientific community. In the university setting, that validation can encourage faculty and graduate students to pursue studies in the indoor air sciences. Losing the benefits of identity would be a high price to pay in exchange for the gains associated with open access. On the other hand, one of the subtle virtues of the open-access model financed from publication fees is the removal of barriers to growth. Indoor Air operates under an enforced annual publication page limit. If the editors accept articles at a faster rate than they can be published under this budget, then publication queues lengthen. Increased delays between acceptance and publication can erode the value of research and can thereby weaken the journal. Increasing Indoor Air’s page budget can be considered only once per year, well in advance of implementation, and would apparently trigger a rise in subscription prices. In the open-access model, with publication fees providing primary revenue, growth is not impeded. In fact, under open access, growth may even be encouraged because the economies of scale should allow for reduced costs per paper for a larger journal. Among the three open-access journals discussed above, EHP has maintained a fairly consistent publication rate for the past few years, whereas AMT and PLoS One each published three times as many articles in 2011 as in 2009. During my term as an editor, open access is the issue that has been most frequently brought to my attention by colleagues. Some have simply expressed curiosity about where we are headed, while others have advocated for evolution toward an open-access publication model. Can we aspire to a high-quality, open-access journal devoted to the indoor air sciences that has economical publication fees? For reasons summarized in this editorial, I do not see how all of these goals can be simultaneously accomplished. A more realistic goal might be a hybrid publication model similar to Aerosol Science and Technology’s in which subscription access is required for new issues but articles become freely available after an embargo period. Decisions such as these are ultimately under the control of the publisher, but ISIAQ members and other members of the scientific community can seek to influence outcomes. As we work to maintain and further strengthen Indoor Air, the editors also are deeply committed to serving the current and future communities of indoor air scientists. We invite you to share with us your thoughts.