Thursday, May 16, 2002
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Journal Boycott Over Online Access Is a BustBy JEFFREY R. YOUNG
Few of the 30,000 scientists who pledged to boycott journals that don't make their content free online after six months have actually followed through on that threat, and few journals have changed their ways. Now the boycott's leaders are planning a new tactic -- starting their own journals so scientists have a viable alternative to traditional publishers. The boycott, first announced last April, is led by a group of prominent scientists calling itself the Public Library of Science. (See an article from The Chronicle, April 6, 2001.) As of Wednesday, 30,045 people from 177 countries had signed the boycott pledge, according to the group's Web site. Signers vowed that after September 2001, they would not publish in, subscribe to, or serve as an editor for any journal that didn't offer "unrestricted free distribution rights ... within 6 months of their initial publication date." If all of those scientists had lived up to the pledge, they could have seriously disrupted the current journal publishing system, sapping the content and labor of many journals. But doing so might have also disrupted those scientists' careers, since very few journals follow the practices called for in the boycott, and academics need to publish to survive. Based on interviews with signers and journal publishers, it seems that most of the people who signed the letter have made little change in their habits. "The pledge didn't have a dramatic effect," says Harold E. Varmus, a leader of the Public Library of Science. Mr. Varmus is a former head of the National Institutes of Health and president of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. "There's probably not a huge number of people who are following it literally," says another of the group's leaders, Michael B. Eisen, assistant adjunct professor of genetics and development and a staff scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. "Perhaps we were being a little naive" in thinking that publishers would change their policies because of the boycott, says Mr. Eisen. "In reality, very few publishers responded." "In retrospect, it was not an effective strategy," he adds. Although Mr. Eisen says he didn't expect commercial publishers to quickly adopt the group's suggestions, he did expect change from scholarly societies that publish journals. "The big disappointment, from my point of view, has been the lukewarm and, in some cases, hostile reaction our movement has gotten from society publishers," he says. "It certainly was disappointing to us, and I think it was the main reason why we were not successful," he adds. "I think that even the society publishers who in principle supported us were acting like businessmen rather than scientists." Scholarly publishers defend their decisions not to fully embrace the group's suggestions, however. "We're thinking like nonprofit organizations that are trying to balance" economic needs with service to the community, says Donald Kennedy, editor-in-chief of Science and president emeritus of Stanford University. Offering articles after six months is "a potential economic risk," he says, because it could prompt some institutions and individuals to drop their subscriptions, meaning less money for other activities of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, which publishes the journal. Besides, he adds, "we think we serve our community quite well" with the existing policy. Science offers its articles for free online a year after they are first published. Mr. Kennedy says the decision to do so was made before the boycott began. Mr. Kennedy adds that he hasn't noticed any evidence of a drop in submissions or subscriptions because of the boycott. "If there is an effect, it's not detectable to us," he says. But leaders of the Public Library of Science haven't given up hope that they can revolutionize scientific publishing. They are pursuing a new plan, says Mr. Eisen. "If we really want this to happen, it's something we're going to have to do on our own," he says. Over the past several months, the group's leaders have been working to start several journals of their own that will make content immediately free online, Mr. Eisen says. "The idea is there will be a series of journals that cover all of the major subdisciplines of biology and medicine," Mr. Eisen says, noting that those fields have always been the focus of the group. The group also hopes to start two high-profile journals that would be geared to compete with Science and Nature. The group plans to start publishing some of the journals as soon as January, he says. Although details about the new journals are still being worked out, the group plans to charge authors "something on the order of $500 an article" after their work is accepted by peer reviewers, says Mr. Varmus. "We think this can be a self-sustaining process," says Mr. Varmus. "What we're hoping to create are journals that are very high prestige that follow the principles and go beyond the principles" of open access that the group advocates. The boycott did have some effect, say Mr. Varmus, Mr. Eisen and others, who argue that it has forced scientists and publishers to think more seriously about the issue of open access to scientific work. "Even if a boycott was never really going to happen, the fact that so many people have signed it has to open up the eyes of publishers a little bit," says Thomas Keays, a science librarian at Syracuse University, who signed the letter. Some scientists who signed on say they that the group's leaders haven't done enough to inform them about the impact of the boycott. "I'm not really boycotting any journals at this point because ... I haven't done the research to figure out what journals are following or are not following" the proscribed policies, says Ashok Bhagwat, a professor of chemistry at Wayne State University, who signed the group's pledge. The Public Library of Science Web site does offer a list of journals who have taken steps toward the group's goals, however. Mr. Eisen says he knows of about 100 cases of scholars who have supported the boycott by refusing to submit work to a journal or serve on editorial boards. "While few people have wholeheartedly embraced the whole boycott," he says, "I think a lot of people have sort of become conscious of what journal policies are in every decision that they make."
Background articles from The Chronicle:
Opinion:
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Copyright © 2002 by The Chronicle of Higher Education