Academic journal publishing reform
Since the rise of the Internet, people have organized campaigns to change the relationships among and between academic authors, their traditional distributors and their readership.
[1] Historically publishers performed services including proofreading, typesetting, copy editing, printing, and worldwide distribution.
[1] In science journal publishing, Internet technology enabled the Big Five major scientific publishers—Elsevier, Springer, Wiley, Taylor and Francis and American Chemical Society—to cut their expenditures such that they could consistently generate profits of over 35% per year.
[7][8][9] The barriers to free access for recent scientific research became a hot topic in 2012, after a blog post by mathematician Timothy Gowers went viral in January.
Referring to work by the biophysicist Cameron Neylon, he says that, because modern science is now more dependent on well-functioning networks than individuals, making information freely available may help computer-based analyses to provide opportunities for major scientific breakthroughs.
[19][20] Some universities reported that modern "package deal" subscriptions were too costly for them to maintain, and that they would prefer to subscribe to journals individually to save money.
[21] The problems which led to discussion about academic publishing reform have been considered in the context of what provision of open access might provide.
[22] Critics of open access have suggested that by itself, this is not a solution to scientific publishing's most serious problem – it simply changes the paths through which ever-increasing sums of money flow.
[23] Evidence for this does exist and for example, Yale University ended its financial support of BioMed Central's Open Access Membership program effective July 27, 2007.
In their announcement, they stated, The libraries’ BioMedCentral membership represented an opportunity to test the technical feasibility and the business model of this open access publisher.
While the technology proved acceptable, the business model failed to provide a viable long-term revenue base built upon logical and scalable options.
[24]A similar situation is reported from the University of Maryland, and Phil Davis commented that, The assumptions that open access publishing is both cheaper and more sustainable than the traditional subscription model are featured in many of these mandates.
The Partnership for Research Integrity in Science and Medicine (PRISM), a lobbying organization formed by the Association of American Publishers (AAP), is opposed to the open access movement.
[28] PRISM and AAP have lobbied against the increasing trend amongst funding organizations to require open publication, describing it as "government interference" and a threat to peer review.
[41] In January 2012, Cambridge mathematician Timothy Gowers, started a boycott of journals published by Elsevier, in part a reaction to their support for the Research Works Act.
An online petition called The Cost of Knowledge was set up by fellow mathematician Tyler Neylon, to gather support for the boycott.
In May 2012, a group of open-access activists formed the Access2Research initiative that went on to launch a petition to the White House to "require free access over the Internet to journal articles arising from taxpayer-funded research".
2013 Nobel Prize winner Randy Schekman called for a boycott of traditional academic journals including Nature, Cell, and Science.
Under this model, neither the authors nor the readers pay for access or publication, and the resources required to run the journal are provided by scientists on a voluntary basis, by governments or by philanthropic grants.
