Should Public Access go global?

The following is adapted from the January 19, 2018 issue of my newsletter: Inside Public Access.  http://insidepublicaccess.com/

Synopsis: In the long run Public Access may be the most viable form of government OA and the best way for OA to go for now.

Building on last week's discussion, it has always seemed to me that the US Public Access model might be one for other countries and regions to follow. There does not seem to be much consideration of this, but that may simply be because the OA movement is still pretty radical. In the long run PA may be the most viable form of government OA.

This issue actually arose five years ago, when Britain went one way and the US went the other. Britain opted for mandatory gold OA while OSTP went for embargoed green. I was puzzled then, and remain puzzled, why this fundamental policy choice has not been widely debated.

As I suggested last week, this absence of discussion may be because the OA movement simply does not like PA. One big wing of that movement wants to end commercial publishing, so PA does nothing for them. A related but less radical OA goal is to dramatically reduce subscription rates, which PA also does not do.

For that matter PA does little to help university librarians, other than make content OA. The problem here seems to be that basic OA does not seem to be the goal of the OA movement.

This may be a case of the perfect being the enemy of the good. A lot of what the OA movement is calling for strikes me as Utopian, especially the elimination of the journal publishing industry. As a strategic planner, I have often found that while Utopians are great at motivating change, they are less so when it comes to picking next steps. This is because their gaze is on a distant horizon, while next steps are all about the here and now.

In any case the choice still lies before the world. As a strategist I really like Public Access. It is simple, efficient and it does the job of making subscription content OA.

There are far fewer countries than there are universities. If a dozen or so major research funding countries were to adopt Public Access then a great deal, probably most, of research publication would become OA. I am pretty sure that most basic research is at least partially government funded.

Nor is there any reason why private funders, such as foundations, could not opt into government PA programs via their own mandates. Of course the government PA programs would need to be open to this, which is not presently the case with the US program. This may be an innovation waiting to happen.

PubMed Central has a nascent precedent as far as going global is concerned. They have both Canada PMC and PMC Europe. But to my knowledge neither the Canadian Government nor the EU has considered making these repositories mandatory.

The PAGES model certainly has international connections, via WorldWideScience.org and other global OSTI activities.  The other PAGES users -- NSF and DOD -- no doubt also have international contacts, as do the stand alone agency PA groups like USDA.

But I expect that the State Department would have to get involved, in order to sell the US Public Access model to the rest of the world. The OA movement is not likely to do it at this time.

Public Access going global would go a long way toward meeting the basic OA challenge.

Looking ahead at Open Access and US Public Access

The following is adapted from my newsletter -- Inside Public Access, January 11, 2018

Synopsis: The New Year is a time for reflection and Richard Poynder has provided a good hook for reflecting on the US Public Access Program. He has posted a number of structured interviews with various open access thought leaders, basically asking where do we go from here? I have added some reflections on the US Public Access Program.

One of the striking features of the Poynder interview responses (see links below) is that there is no mention of Public Access Program, despite it being by far the biggest mandatory repository system in the world. It covers a significant fraction of all physical, medical and computer science publications, perhaps 20% or more. In some research areas US federal funding is dominant.

This lack of acknowledgement, or interest, is despite the fact that Richard specifically asks about the roles of (1) funders and (2) government. Public Access is all about government funders who build and operate extensive journal article collection systems and infrastructure to provide open access. What is not to like?

So having studied both public and open access for over five years now, I thought to reflect on this striking situation.

There seem to me to be at least two different things going on. First, the US Public Access Program is distributed, unnamed and not publicized. Second it is ideologically not popular with the OA movement, for various reasons.

To begin with, I have found in numerous discussions with OA people that there is a general lack of understanding of the Public Access Program.

It does not help that this large federal program has no actual name. I call it the "US Public Access Program" but that is just me. As a result, there is no simple way to reference or even to talk about it. Attempts to do so usually involve references to the 2013 OSTP memo, which is both awkward and sounds like something that happened a long time ago.

The fact that the Program is distributed among numerous funding agencies also makes it hard to see. Individual Public Access websites and guidance are all agency focused. There is almost no sense of this being an important government wide program.

I also see the agencies doing very little to publicize their parts of the Program. This may well be because these are not separately funded. Publicity efforts are often part of the funding cycle. The agencies are more interested in publicizing their research program successes and opportunities. Plus Public Access operates on a shoestring internal budget.

Lack of interest by the OA movement also has several sources. When NIH launched Public Access over ten years ago, that was big news. Extending the Program to the rest of the Federal Government is seen by many OA advocates as something of a lateral move, not as progress.

In particular, the 12 month embargo is now often seen as an obstacle, not an accomplishment. In this regard it is puzzling that no one that I know of has petitioned an agency for a shorter embargo period. One would think that such an action, which would get lots of publicity, is a natural accompaniment to the FASTR bill's 6 month embargo mandate.

Here I think that the deeper issue is that the open access movement is largely focused on the university community, not the funders or governments. Many, perhaps most, of the activists are university librarians.

So for example the focus is on building university repositories. This stands out clearly in the Poynder interviews. That the Public Access repositories probably dwarf the US university repositories is irrelevant. It is the mechanism, not the outcome, that is the focus of the movement.

More broadly there is the ideological idea of the university community owning open access. This is a fundamental reform, to which funder or government action is something of an outsider. That open access is up to the researchers and their institutions stands out in the Poynder responses, especially those from the university sector.

Despite the apparent indifference of the open access movement, the US Public Access Program does seem to be secure for now. The biggest strategic need is inter-agency integration. Now that the agency repositories are mostly up and running, there is a tremendous opportunity to provide government wide visibility. This could be very useful, both to the agencies and to the researchers.

In fact one can argue that the universities are far too independent, numerous and distributed to undertake strategic initiatives. This is actually one of the big reasons why there are governments. If so then while the Public Access Program may not be highly regarded by the open access movement, it may well be the best way forward for open access.

Here are the Richard Poynder interviews:

Poynder says this:

I have posted a number of responses to my question asking people what they think the stakeholders of scholarly communication should be doing now to fully realize the vision outlined at the 2002 meeting that led to the Budapest Open Access Initiative.

Below are the links to those responses:

 Danny Kingsley: Open Access: What should the priorities be today? https://poynder.blogspot.co.uk/2017/12/open-access-what-should-priorities-be.html

Lisa Janicke Hinchliffe: Achieving the BOAI Vision: Possible Actions for Realization https://poynder.blogspot.co.uk/2017/12/achieving-boai-vision-possible-actions.html

Richard Fisher: Open Access and its Discontents: A British View from Outside the Sciences https://poynder.blogspot.co.uk/2017/12/open-access-and-its-discontents-british.html

Alison Mudditt: Realising the BOAI vision: The view from PLOS https://poynder.blogspot.co.uk/2017/12/realising-boai-vision-view-from-plos.html

Dominique Babini: Realising the BOAI vision: A view from the global South https://poynder.blogspot.co.uk/2017/12/realising-boai-vision-view-from-global.html

Peter Suber: Realising the BOAI vision: Peter Suber's Advice https://poynder.blogspot.co.uk/2017/12/realising-boai-vision-peter-suber.html