In Praise of that Damn' Richard Poynder

I hate Richard Poynder. Well, not exactly "hate". I'm just continually miffed that he not only keeps interviewing the very people in the open access world that I vaguely had in mind to talk to, he has the temerity to do it better than I would have done.

Unfortunately, it seems that there are some benighted individuals that are *really* less than well inclined towards Richard. The situation is so serious that the grown-ups of OA have been forced to step in to sort things out:

Trying to suppress Richard Poynder's investigations through threats of legal action is contemptible. We hope that the friends of open access in the legal community will attest to the lawfulness of his inquiries and that all friends of open access will attest to the value and legitimacy of his investigative journalism.

Oh, OK: I attest, I attest.

The True Costs and Benefits of Open Access

One issue that has been repeatedly (and heatedly) debated since 1994 — when Open Access (OA) advocate Stevan Harnad first posted his "Subversive Proposal" — is a question that some might consider to be the most fundamental question of all for the research community in the digital age. That is, what are the essential costs of publishing a scholarly paper? To date, however, no one appears to have come up with an adequate answer.

So says Richard Poynder, who then reviews the situation with his usual thoroughness. However, he concludes:

One thing is for sure: If OA ends up simply shifting the cost of scholarly communication from journal subscriptions to article processing charges (APCs) without any reduction in overall expenditure, and inflation continues unabated, many OA advocates will be sorely disappointed. And if that were to happen, then we can surely expect to see calls for a more radical reengineering of the scholarly communication system.

Well, maybe, but this omits an important point: even if the transition to open access produced absolutely zero savings, it would still achieve something invaluable: making scholarly communications available to all, not just the lucky few at institutions with subscriptions. That alone would make the exercise worthwhile.

The Other Side of the Open Access Coin

I write quite frequently about open access - the idea that people should have free online access to research that they have paid for, and ideally even where they haven't. But alongside the issue of getting stuff out in the open, there is the problem of where you put it so that everyone can find it and access it. The answer is in what are rather off-puttingly called "institutional repositories", and it turns out that open source has been there from the start:

What was needed was a custom-built software platform to allow universities to create a dedicated repository in which faculty could archive them. And as the emphasis shifted from central subject-based repositories to smaller cross-disciplinary repositories, it was realised that a low-cost solution would be needed. In 2000, therefore, the UK's University of Southampton released EPrints. The first dedicated repository software, EPrints was made available as freely downloadable Open Source software.

If you want to find out more about the, er, exciting story of repositiories, don't miss the latest of Richard Poynder's elegant interviews - although I do wish he'd get rid of the donation bit.

Mr. Open Access Made Inaccessible

This is something I've been waiting for: an in-depth interview with Peter Suber, the person who has done more than anyone to drive the open access movement forward. Or as the interview puts it:

Philosopher, jurist, and one-time stand-up comic, Peter Suber is widely viewed as the de factor leader of the open access (OA) movement.

Even better, the interviewer is Richard Poynder, whose praises I have sung on several occasions. Just read the intro to the interview and you'll see what I mean.

Alas, the intro is all that I *can* read. Stuck rather sadly in an earlier and not very successful business model, Richard insists on asking readers of the full interview to make a donation, with $8 the suggested sum. Not unreasonable, given the quality of the interview - at least, I imagine, since I've not read it. But I won't pay it (nor will I cheat and read the interview without paying).

As a fellow freelance journalist, I appreciate Richard needs to make a living, but it's as a struggling freelance journalist (all freelance journalists are struggling by definition, since we never know where tomorrow's commission will come from) that I can't pay out $8 for the pleasure of reading it, much as I'd like to. And I imagine I'm not the only one in this situation (there are doubtless even a few non-journalists who are struggling...)

So here we have the ironic situation that what is probably the best interview with the most important person in open access is not readily accessible. Richard: do change that model, please.

Open Radio

After open source radio management, here's a piece by Richard Poynder about open radio itself:

I realised that KRUU is more than just a community radio station: it is also a grassroots initiative with a deep commitment to the principles advocated by the various free and open movements. Or as station manager James Moore more extensively described it during the inaugural Open Views programme, KRUU is "grassroots, community, public, non-profit, open radio."

Moore's use of the term "open radio" caught my attention. What, I wondered, did he mean?

True Open Access

One of the things that continues to amaze me about blogs is the quality of some of the writing. A case in point is this fantastic essay by Richard Poynder. It's an extremely thorough consideration of whether open access means that peer review is on the way out.

Here are a couple of ideas that were new to me:

In September, for instance, a group of UK academics keen to improve the way in which scientific research is evaluated launched a new OA journal called Philica.

Unlike both Nature and PLoS ONE, Philica has no editors, and papers are published immediately on submission — without even a cursory review process. Instead, the entire evaluation process takes place after publication, with reviews displayed at the end of each paper.

and

Philica is not the only new initiative to push the envelope that bit further. Another approach similar in spirit is that adopted by Naboj, which utilises what it calls a dynamical peer review system.

Modelled on the review system of Amazon, Naboj allows users to evaluate both the articles themselves, and the reviews of those articles. The theory is that with a sufficient number of users and reviewers, a convergence process will occur in which a better quality review system emerges.

And you're getting it all for free: true open access. I just hope you are grateful.

IBM's Open Patent Policy

IBM's announcement of a new patent policy is obviously important, if only because Big Blue has a big collection of the critters. Whether it will do much to help fix a deeply broken system is another matter:

The worldwide policy, built on IBM's long-standing practices of high quality patents and transparency of ownership, is designed to foster integrity, a healthier environment for innovation, and mutual respect for intellectual property rights. IBM encouraged others in the patent community to adopt similar policies and practices, more stringent than currently required by law.

For a good first analysis, see Andy Updegrove's blog.

Update 1: And here's a salutary reminder from Andy on why it's best to get all the facts before you express your enthusiasm.

Update 2: Richard Poynder also makes some good points about the move.

On the Commonality of the Commons

One of the central themes of this blog is that the opens - open source, open content, open genomics and the rest - share certain key characteristics, and thus form part of a broader movement, of great historical importance.

There's a fine articulation of just this viewpoint in another of Richard Poynder's splendid interviews. It's with Michel Bauwens, creator of the Foundation for P2P Alternatives. The whole thing is well worth reading, but here's a typical sample from the second part - it's a two parter:

We need to increase the scope of applications in which open and free principles are applied; we need to apply and experiment with peer governance, and learn from our mistakes; and, as I said earlier, we need to interconnect and learn from each other, in the understanding that all these efforts are related, and have a larger common purpose.

In addition, we have to defensively stop the destruction of the biosphere, and stop the new enclosures of the information commons we are witnessing. Instead, we need to be constructively building the new world, and in a way that ends and means are congruent with each other. If we do this then the P2P subsystem will continue to strengthen, and eventually reach a tipping point. At that juncture it will become the dominant model.

Ultimate OA: PLoS ONE

Thank goodness for the Web of blogs.

From a comment Pedro Beltrao kindly left on my earlier post Science Wide Open, I went to take another look at his blog, which I'd not visited for a while. And what do I find but this fascinating story about PLoS ONE, from the Public Library of Science. In my annoyance over the Wired piece on Varmus, I must have, um, missed this little nugget.

Not so much a little nugget, actually, as potentially an entire goldmine. The idea behind PLoS ONE is to create what is effectively a huge, open access, peer-reviewed blog journal for science. It is nothing if not ambitious, and on at least four counts.

Inclusiveness

The boundaries between different scientific fields are becoming increasingly blurred. At the same time, the bulk of the scientific literature is divided into journals covering ever more restrictive disciplines and subdisciplines. In contrast, PLoS ONE will be a venue for all rigorously performed science, making it easier to uncover connections and synergies across the research literature.

Personalisation

A key to navigating and unlocking the content potential of PLoS ONE will lie in powerful discovery and personalization tools. Users will be able to set up individual alerts to keep up to date in their areas of interest. Papers within PLoS ONE will contain links to related work in its own database and beyond.

Collaborative annotation

PLoS ONE will empower the scientific community to engage in a discussion on every paper and provide readers with tools to annotate and comment on papers directly.

Interactivity

A paper in a traditional journal is a static marker in an ongoing process. Authors looking back on papers written 6 months or a year ago will see things that they might now have written differently. New data may have arisen to strengthen or alter some of the conclusions. We will provide authors with ways to make those changes and so acknowledge the evolution of their ideas. This doesn't alter the scientific record—the original paper is still the original paper—but authors and readers can build upon it.

The Public Library of Science has already played a crucial role in helping to bolster enormously the academic credentials of open access; with PLoS ONE it looks as if it is going to re-make scientific discourse entirely.

Update: Richard Poynder has conducted a characteristically full and fascinating interview with Chris Surridge, the UK-based managing editor of PLoS ONE.

Get the Facts: Open Access in India

Richard Poynder offers an interesting interview with Professor Subbiah Arunachalam on open access in India, conducted with his customary thoroughness and professionalism.

What's so good about this piece is that it fleshes out all the generalities people (like me) make about how open access can be helpful for developing nations, where a huge amount of knowledge is generated, but little is let through by the traditional gatekeepers of the Western academic tradition.

This is in addition to flows in the other direction, which allow those with modest library budgets to access leading-edge research in freely-available journals like those published by the Public Library of Science.

Beyond Parallel Universes

One of the themes of this blog is the commonality between the various opens. In a piece I wrote for the excellent online magazine LWN.net, I've tried to make some of the parallels between open source and open access explicit - to the point where I set up something of a mapping between key individuals and key moments (Peter Suber at Open Access News even drew a little diagram to make this clearer).

My article tries to look at the big picture, largely because I was trying to show those in the open source world why they should care about open access. At the end I talk a little about specific open source software that can be used for open access. Another piece on the Outgoing blog (subtitle: "Library metadata techniques and trends"), takes a closer look at a particular kind of such software, that for repositories (where you can stick your open access materials).

This called forth a typically spirited commentary from Stevan Harnad, which contains a link to yet more interesting words from Richard Poynder, a pioneering journalist in the open access field, with a blog - called "Open and Shut" (could there be a theme, here?) - that is always worth taking a look at. For example, he has a fascinating interview on the subject of the role of open access in the humanities.

Poynder rightly points out that there is something a contradiction in much journalistic writing about open access, in that it is often not accessible itself (even my LWN.net piece was subscribers-only for a week). And so he's bravely decided to conduct a little experiment by providing the first section of a long essay, and then asking anyone who reads it - it is freely accessible - and finds it useful to make a modest donation. I wish him well, though I fear it may not bring him quite the income he is hoping for.

Open Access, Open Source, Open Dialogue

One of the most important facets of the blog world is the rapid and intelligent dialogue it allows. A case in point is the interview that appeared on Richard Poynder's blog "Open and Shut?". As you might guess from its title, this is a kindred spirit to the present site, and is highly recommended for anyone interested in following the latest developments in the open access and circumjacent domains.

The interview is a fairly specialist one, and concerns the some open access nitty-gritty. But what caught my attention was the response to points made there by Stevan Harnad in his own blog, which has the rather lumbering title "Publishing Reform, University Self-Publishing and Open Access" but the wonderful sub-title "Open Access Archivangelism". This is rather appropriate since if anyone has the right to be called the Archivangelist of Open Access, it is Harnad, who is probably the nearest thing that the movement has to Richard Stallman (also known as Saint IGNUcius).

In his response to the interview, Harnad comments on a point made in the Poynder interview about moving from the Eprints to a hosted system called bepress. Eprints is open access archiving software that not only proudly sports GNU in its name, but runs principally on GNU/Linux (with the odd bit of Solaris and MacOS X thrown in for good measure), but notes "There are no plans for a version to run under Microsoft Windows." Defiantly open access and open source: how right-on can you get?