From: Marin Dacos <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Thu, 21 Mar 2013 09:05:36 +0100

Dear colleagues,

The French newspaper Le Monde has published a public statement, signed
by sixty members of the academic community (Presidents of
universities, Librarians, Journals, publishers and researchers) under
the title "Who is afraid of open access ?". The original paper is here
: http://www.lemonde.fr/sciences/article/2013/03/15/qui-a-peur-de-l-open-acces_1848930_1650684.html

More than 1500 people already signed this statement, calling for open
access as fast as possible and asking for HSS taking leadership in
this direction. It is now available in English :
http://iloveopenaccess.org/arguments-for-open-access/

You can sign it : http://iloveopenaccess.org/?page_id=329

Best regards,
Marin Dacos
Director - OpenEdition


Arguments for Open Access to Research Results

In July 2012, the European Commission issued a recommendation on Open
Access (i.e. free for the readers) publication of the results of
publicly funded scientific research. The Commission believes that such
a measure is necessary to increase the visibility of European research
before 2020, by gradually suppressing the barriers between readers and
scientific papers, after a possible embargo period from six to twelve
months. Latin America has been benefiting from this approach for ten
years after the development of powerful platforms for Open Access
journals. Scielo and Redalyc, which together host almost 2000
journals, have considerably increased their visibility thanks to their
Open Access policy: the Brazilian portalScielo now has more traffic
than the US-based JSTOR. Such examples show that Open Access changes
the balance of power in a world dominated by groups which hold
thousands of (mostly English-language) journals: it paves the way to
what could be called a real “bibliodiversity”, since it enables the
emergence of a plurality of viewpoints, modes of publication,
scientific paradigms, and languages.

Some French editors of journals in the Humanities and Social Sciences
(HSS) have expressed their concern with regard to this recommendation,
which they saw as a threat to a vulnerable business model. However, a
thorough assessment of the sector would be required to provide a true
cost-benefit analysis: one should shed light on its funding sources
and modes, both direct and indirect, public and private, and determine
the roles the various actors play in this field, pinpointing the added
value brought about by each of them.

To be afraid of Open Access is, in our eyes, to commit oneself to a
narrow – and in fact erroneous – vision of the future. If the HSS were
set aside in a specific “reservation” today, they would become
isolated and would ultimately become extinct. On the contrary, we
think that the HSS can be at the forefront of this opening movement,
precisely because there is an increasing social demand for their
research results (we estimate the overall traffic on Cairn,
OpenEdition, Erudit and Persée to be around 10 million visits per
month!). The fears voiced by our friends and colleagues are largely
groundless in this respect. Not only is the share of sales made
outside of higher education and research institutions very small in
the business models of HSS journals, which remain mostly directly or
indirectly funded by public money, but there exist new business models
capable of reinforcing the position of publishers without having the
authors pay, as is demonstrated by the success of the Freemium
programme developed by OpenEdition, a French initiative. Solutions to
finance a high-quality open digital publication system are being
invented and have started to prove their efficiency, as in the cases
of Scielo, the Public Library of Science (PLOS), Redalyc or
OpenEdition. It would be a disaster if the HSS were kept aside from
this powerful and innovative movement which is bound to reshape our
scientific landscape. Far from backing off, they must be among the
leading disciplines in this movement, as they are in the Spanish- and
Portuguese-speaking countries. The resistance to this evolution
advocated by some of our colleagues seems to be a short-term strategy
neglecting the potential benefits for science and education, as well
as the democratisation of access to knowledge it will enable.

According to us, this is not only an economic and commercial problem.
Although the existence of an Elsevier-Springer-Wiley oligopoly exerts
heavy pressure on university budgets and although the funding system
of academic publishing should be rethought, generalised Open Access is
first and foremost a matter of scientific policy. Knowledge cannot be
treated as a commodity and its dissemination is more than ever a vital
concern in our societies: we can work towards a revolutionary
democratisation of access to research results. Knowledge behind
barriers, which only the happy few working in the richest universities
can access, is barren knowledge. It is confiscated, though produced
thanks to public funding. In this debate, higher education and
research institutions have akey role to play. The diffusion of
knowledge and research results, their spreading among an audience as
large as possible, is one of the missions of these institutions.
Therefore a relevant scientific policy has to build public digital
infrastructures, but  also needs to support innovative publishing
policies aimed at fostering cross-disciplinary exchanges, new forms of
writing, multilingualism and the broadest diffusion.

Who is afraid of Open Access? Private access policies hinder the
dissemination of ideas and is ill-suited to the new paradigms
introduced by digital media. It is high time that we considered the
Web as a unique opportunity in terms of innovation, the diffusion of
knowledge and the emergence of new ideas.

We are not afraid of Open Access. To take knowledge out of silos and
beyond the boundaries of academic campuses is to open knowledge to
everyone, acknowledge that it has a pivotal role to play in our
societies and open up perspectives for collective growth.

Do not be afraid of Open Access! It is now possible to establish a new
scientific, publishing and business contract between researchers,
publishers, libraries and readers in order to enter for good a society
of shared, democratic knowledge.

Marin Dacos - http://www.openedition.org
Director - Centre for Open Electronic Publishing

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