University Libraries

Editor’s note: Throughout Open Access Week (Oct 19-23), the UI Libraries will be sharing the views of our UI colleagues on the topic of open access.

by Peter Likarish, Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Computer Science and Bridget Draxler, Ph.d Candidate, Department of English

Nicholas Carr’s “The Big Switch” argues that the internet, and computing in general, will behave increasingly like a utility: providing near universal access at a low-cost that most customers will pay without thinking. We already see the trend to no-/low-cost business models for services such as email, web hosting, data storage and etc.

With regard to Open Access, Google Scholar (and similar services) have fundamentally changed the way academics search for new and related research. The service is free, and indexes not only articles at journals and digital archives that require a subscription, but also the PDF files hosted on individual author’s websites. As with other types of digital media, there is no doubt entrenched interests will oppose Open Access but, as their customers become increasingly accustomed to thinking of online services as a utility, journals and other archives may be hard-pressed to defend the current system of charging huge fees to provide access on an institution-by-institution basis when there is no tangible cost to copying and disseminating digital information.

Editor’s note: Throughout Open Access Week (Oct 19-23), the UI Libraries will be sharing the views of our UI colleagues on the topic of open access.

by Edward Miner, Ph.D., International Studies Bibliographer

Although Open Access movements are unfolding within the legal frameworks of individual countries, their most dramatic potential benefits are really global in scale. One critical aspect of the North-South divide is structural inequality in access to current scientific and scholarly research. This disparity in access existed under the traditional (print) publishing system, and was actually exacerbated by the advent of electronic publishing technologies as not-for-profit scholarly societies in the developed world sold or outsourced their journals to for-profit commercial publishers. Scientists and scholars create and disseminate knowledge to advance their disciplines and serve the public good, and those values transcend national boundaries. Indeed, much scientific and applied social scientific research is specifically intended to combat poverty and social inequality – so the increased inaccessibility of such research to resource-poor universities and scholars in the Global South is a most grim irony.

Scholars who are concerned about the role of new knowledge in driving socioeconomic and political development have a duty to retain the rights they need to make their peer-reviewed research freely available on the Internet, either in open access journals or institutional/disciplinary repositories. But given that affordable Internet access is out of reach for many of the most resource-poor institutions and scholars in the poorest countries, open access on the Internet doesn’t go far enough. To really maximize the potential of new digital publishing technologies to level the playing field in access to current research, scholars need to disseminate their work through mechanisms like the eGranary, an offline digital library of scholarly information produced by the University of Iowa’s WiderNet Project. Through donations of content from copyright holders, the eGranary Digital Library moves a massive assortment of scholarly content onto the local area networks of institutions in Africa and elsewhere, saving significant amounts of money for institutions that have an Internet connection and providing an Internet surrogate for those institutions that have no Internet connection at all.

Editor’s note: Throughout Open Access Week (Oct 19-23), the UI Libraries will be sharing the views of our UI colleagues on the topic of open access.

by Dr. Christopher Squier, Professor, College of Dentistry and Christine White, Librarian, College of Dentistry

Traditionally, the cost of publishing articles in print journals has been borne (apart from page charges for lengthy articles or colored illustrations) by the publisher, based on income, from subscriptions from readers or libraries. This is reasonable considering the high cost of supporting the scholarship that forms the basis of a publication. With open access articles, however, there is now a movement towards freely providing the material to the reader but shifting the cost of publication on the scholar. Fees, which may range from $500 to $3000, are requested from the author, although in a few situations, voluntary donations are solicited to help support a journal (e.g., Edward H. Angle Society of Orthodontists / Angle Orthodontist), or the publication may be subsidized by a publisher’s other journals, as acknowledged by PLoS. Other mechanisms include support from advertisers, such as the Journal of Chemical Education, which notes that “advertising in the Journal plays a significant role in helping to keep your subscription affordable,” or sponsored by an open access individual/institutional membership fee, which provides discounts to authors based on the number of articles submitted for publication (e.g., Bentham Open: http://bentham.org/open/).

There are good reasons to resist moving the costs of publication from the publisher to the author, even when there may be grant or institutional funding to support this. The major objection is the temptation to base publication on the ability to pay rather than on the quality of work, as determined by peers. When costs are passed onto grants or academic institutions, the sponsor is, in effect, paying twice: once for the cost of doing the research and again to publish it, and the support available for new research is reduced. Of course, it could be argued that the institution pays when it purchases subscriptions, but because a large number of academic and industrial organizations all do this, the cost is spread over a large pool.

Should the reader be allowed free access as well as open access? Should the traditional balance be kept between authors, institutions and publishers? These are questions that we must continue to discuss.

Editor’s Note: Throughout Open Access Week (Oct 19-23), the UI Libraries will be sharing the views of our UI colleagues on the topic of open access.

by Dr. William Sivitz, Professor of Internal Medicine

I recently published an article in PlosOne (Mitochondrial Targeted Coenzyme Q, Superoxide, and Fuel Selectivity in Endothelial Cells by Brian D. Fink, Yunxia O’Malley, Brian L. Dake, Nicolette C. Ross, Thomas E. Prisinzano, and William I. Sivitz). I found the process straightforward and faster than most other journals. The peer review was thorough but fair. I hope to see this used more frequently.

by Dr. Michael Knudson, Association Professor of Pathology

We published in Plos One and found it a very satisfying experience.  Quick, insightful reviews, no charge for color figures and no copyright forms to sign.

The journal allows readers to provide feedback and ratings of each article.  I would recommend Open Access to all.

Editor’s Note: Throughout Open Access Week (Oct 19-23), the UI Libraries will be sharing the views of our UI colleagues on the topic of open access.        

by Raymond Riezman, Ph.D., Henry B. Tippie Research Professor of Economics

The Economics Bulletin is an open-access letters journal founded in 2001 with the mission of providing free and extremely rapid scientific communication across the entire community of research economists. EB publishes original notes, comments, and preliminary results. We are especially interested in publishing manuscripts that keep the profession informed about on-going research programs.

Our publication standard is that a manuscript be original, correct and of interest to a specialist. Submissions in these categories are refereed and our objective is to make a decision within two months. Accepted papers are published immediately in contrast to traditional journals that can take anywhere from 2-5 years from submission to publication. I have been involved with EB since its inception and have enjoyed being able to evaluate papers quickly and see them published immediately upon acceptance.