Open Access Publishing and Citation Archives: Background and Controversy

Publication Date: July 2005

Publisher: Library of Congress. Congressional Research Service

Author(s):

Research Area: Education

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Abstract:

Controversies about open access publishing and archiving in science and technology confront issues of copyright, governmental competition with the private sector, and impacts upon the pace of scientific research. Different from traditional publishing which requires fee-based subscriptions, most open access systems give readers free online access to bibliographic citations or the full text of published and non-published literature. There are also free, online, peer reviewed open access scientific journals, sponsored by government or by nongovernmental publishers. Some systems provide access to information in specific scientific and technical fields, or at academic institutions, academic consortiums' websites, or on author's websites. Open access publishing is estimated to constitute between 1% and 2% of the scientific journal publishing market, which is estimated at $9 billion, annually.

Support for the open access "movement" stems from some librarians' and scientists' objections to rising costs of subscriptions to journals; peer reviewers' objections to providing free reviews for journals rapidly escalating in price; rapid technological developments in computing capabilities; and the belief that scientific collaboration, advancement, and utilization will be hastened by free access to citations and articles. Traditional commercial publishers and some scholarly scientific associations object to most open access efforts on the grounds that they duplicate what publishers sell and erode profits. Some critics seek to limit free government-run, citation repositories to include only federally sponsored research results. Some oppose open access publishers' requirements that charge authors fees in the thousands of dollars to pay the costs of publishing articles. Others say that foundation donations that sustain some open access activities are unreliable.

In 2003, a bill was introduced to encourage federal agencies to provide free access to published results of all federally funded basic scientific research. In 2004, congressional report language mandated that authors funded with National Institutes of Health (NIH) research and development (R&D) support voluntarily submit within 12 months of publication, copies of their journal articles to NIH's free access database, PubMed Central. Many publishers opposed this policy. In 2005, congressional report language on H.R. 3010 endorsed NIH's new policy to archive journal articles and mandated NIH to work with commercial publishers in expanding its open access repository, PubChem, to avoid duplication with private efforts.

Controversial issues that could draw congressional attention include modifying NIH's Public Access policy to require that, instead of allowing readers direct access to a published article, the government provide links to the original journal's website to allow publishers to charge fees; limiting federal systems to information derived from federally funded R&D; monitoring the added costs of expanding PubMed Central; determining if other agencies will use governmental nonexclusive licensing to allow access to federally funded, commercially published journal articles regardless of copyright ownership by a publisher; assessing the quality of science published in open access journals; and evaluating the economic impacts of open access publishing on traditional publishing. This report will be updated as needed.