Many times I have received emails from friends and
colleagues asking me to chase a paper (or too many!) for them. You would think
that most of these requests come from people that do not belong to academia and
therefore do not have access to ‘free’ library services. Surprisingly, many of
these requests come from colleagues working in academia who have found out the
hard way that their institutions could not afford the affiliation to an
increasingly larger number of journals. Not good!
I think I am spoiled since my institution has managed so far
to keep up with the cost associated with access to major publications and no so
common ones as well. There have been very few occasions in which I have not
been able to find something using the online library services and when that
happens the main reason is that the material is not in digital format. Imagine!
A trip to the library where paper copies of books and magazines reside!
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| Once upon a time there was something called: A Library, where real books lived and you could cut your fingers with something call paper! |
If you are not as lucky as I am or if you do not reside in
close proximity to a major university library then you will for sure have a
bumpy or very expensive ride to obtain that paper. Online access to individual
journal articles is expensive, editorial houses ask people for a $30 fee on
average for each article. In my last paper I used 50 references so if I had to
pay to get access to them the total cost would have been $1500. Truth is that
we need to read more than 50 papers to gather the necessary references, some of
the papers we read will be useful and many others will be useless but you
still need to have access to the information.
It has been argued that editorial houses are taking unfair
advantage of the whole system for a variety of reasons: 1) They do not finance
the research or author’s salaries. Often times is the tax payer the one that
finances researchers through organizations like the National Science Foundation
(NSF) among others, 2) They do not write the papers and they provide very little
editorial support (e.g.: graphic design, format, language editors, etc). They
actually ask authors to do the heavy duty editing of electronic files so that
it complies with THEIR publication standards, 3) They do not even pay a penny
for the articles to be reviewed. The scientific editors and the reviewers are
asked to perform these duties for FREE, and 4) Times have changed and their
printing costs have decreased exponentially with the digital era. Let’s not
forget that they do not share financial gains with authors or their
institutions. Question: A $30 fee for a single article? Really?
This situation has triggered some outrage among scientists
and professionals and there is a movement that is trying to promote the concept
of ‘open access journals.’ These journals are created by a group of ad-hoc
people that act as editors and gatekeepers of these ‘new’ publications. Then the
submitted papers are sent out for review to the same reviewers that look after
the papers from the big editorial houses (they slave for free anyways!). The final product is a peer-reviewed
paper that is available for free to the wider community. Isn’t that
perfect?....Not really!
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| Free? Not that fast! |
Even though I think the movement is valid and we all should
try to contribute with this modality, there are a few ‘minor’
details that authors and readers need to take into consideration before fully
embarking into the ‘open access’ experience: 1) The majority of these
publications are relatively young so what happens if the editors decide that
they are not interested anymore on pursuing their tasks? What happens if no one
else wants to replace them on their positions? How would you feel if your paper
was published in Volume 1, Number 1 of the best free journal of the world
and…also its last issue! How do we ensure continuity? 2) Big editorial houses
have one thing that these initiatives do not have: Infrastructure! Assuming
that the open access journal will last forever. Where are they going to store
the data? Who is going to cover for the cost of backups that need to be store
on proper servers? Do they have backups? Do they have the infrastructure and personnel to
transfer formats once .pdf is not the thing to have? 3) Are the papers really
peer-reviewed? How do you know that the editor of a given open access journal
is actually sending the papers out for review? and 4) Are the journals indexed?
Implying that once your work is published and others start to cite the paper
you can track the citations. Very important stuff for academics!
Don’t get me wrong. I am not an advocate of big editorial
houses since I think they have developed a very greedy and abusive system,
however, I spend a lot of time an effort on my publications. This is my
livelihood, kind of my babies and I can’t let them loose so easily without
knowing what is going to happen to them down the road. I cannot afford that
risk at this stage on my career. That said, I think there are some partial
solutions for this issue and I think academics play an important role in trying
to implement them, here my two cents:
1) Most editorial houses ask you to sign a ridiculous amount
of paper work relinquishing copyright of your work so that they can publish it
without the risk of future legal action. However, many of them also state on
the same paper work that you are allowed to use your paper for educational
purposes (including posting a link on your own research webpage). Conclusion:
If every scientist or academic would take the time to publish only with
editorial houses or organizations holding this policy AND if everyone of them
would take the time to keep up with an updated publication list (with links)
things would be a bit easier for that scientist in Brasil trying to access a
paper on how to prevent malaria in the 21st century!
And
2) I won’t
mention which editorial houses I do not like BUT I’ll mention my three favorite
ones: Geological Society of America (GSA), American Geophysical Union (AGU) and
American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG). These three organizations
have the flexibility that I previously mentioned and I would be absolutely
shocked if they dare suing an author for publishing their own work for
educational purposes. Besides, these organizations are professional
organizations, not mere editorial houses and a big chunk of their ‘profits’ go
to support the community through conferences, meetings, grants for students and
young researchers, etc. If I have to give my money to someone, I’ll give it to
them!
I read and use open access journals and I am sure I’ll
publish on those venues once the pressures of academic promotion are lifted off
my shoulders. I just wish more senior scientists and professors would take the
time and lead the effort to promote open access publications by publishing
their own work in these venues. There are many open access journals out there
but recently these two caught my eye so I hope you find them useful as well:
The Solid Earth – An Interactive Open Access Journal of the European
Geosciences Union [Link]
Revista Mexicana de Ciencias Geologicas – Universidad
Nacional Autonoma de Mexico [Link]
Even better than that, open access heaven here: Directory of
Open Access Journals [Link]
Now that you will have access to all these wonderful papers
you will need to properly store and classify them so maybe EndNote at $249.95 will do the job for you?!
I don’t think so…
Go for ZOTERO!!! Zotero is a FREE, easy-to-use tool to help
you collect, organize, cite, and share your research sources [Link]
Finally, my publication list that I promise I’ll keep up to
date [here]
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