Open Access: A Social Justice Movement in the Making

Janna Singer-Baefsky

Pratt School of Information

INFO 601: Foundations of Information 

Introduction

On February 14, 2002, sixteen stakeholders in the scholarly communications industry signed the “Budapest Open Access Initiative” (Green, 2017). Through empowering language, the document creates a framework for a scholarly utopian future wherein peer-reviewed articles will be shared freely across academic communities. The introductory paragraph reads:

An old tradition and a new technology have converged to make possible an unprecedented public good. The old tradition is the willingness of scientists and scholars to publish the fruits of their research in scholarly journals without payment, for the sake of inquiry and knowledge. The new technology is the internet. The public good they make possible is the world-wide electronic distribution of the peer-reviewed journal literature and completely free and unrestricted access to it by all scientists, scholars, teachers, students, and other curious minds. Removing access barriers to this literature will accelerate research, enrich education, share the learning of the rich with the poor and the poor with the rich, make this literature as useful as it can be, and lay the foundation for uniting humanity in a common intellectual conversation and quest for knowledge (Chan et al., 2002).

In theory, the Initiative aims to bridge the gap that divides the underfunded and underprivileged from the hierarchies that maintain that status quo. However, it is those very institutions that cause the Initiative to fail in practice. Indeed, Green (2017) notes that of the approximately 2.5 million scholarly papers published [in 2017], roughly 20% were freely available. This is because access to information means more than just storage and retrieval; it also means the rights to transfer that information into an accessible medium (McDowell, 2018, p. 18). It is not just enough to be self-archiving and peer reviewing, institutions must also grapple with copyright laws, especially when digitizing older articles. Moreover, there is contention around the validity of open access journals and most students are not fully educated about what open access even is. I did not know about open access until my Reference and Instruction class during my first semester at Pratt. Even with this knowledge, I still came across several articles for this paper that required payment to access them. My own experiences with inaccessible articles, while researching articles for a paper on open access, in graduate school no less, inspired me to look further into the challenges facing open access. In this paper I will discuss what open access is, analyze what has impeded its success, and assess why open access is still important to the greater academic landscape.

Defining Open Access

For this discussion of open access, I will use Peter Suber’s definition. As the Directory of the Harvard Office for Scholarly Communication and the Director of the Harvard Open Access Project, Suber has written multiple texts on the topic. Taken from his book, Open Access, open access literature is defined as digital, online, free of charge, and free of most copyright and licensing restrictions made possible through the internet and the consent of the author and/or copyright-holder (Suber, 2012, p. 4). Open access sources are designated by an orange symbol that looks like an open lock.

Most database subscriptions through schools and libraries offer varying levels of access depending on the type of subscription. Databases like the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) exist through a combination of sponsorship donations and membership fees, therein illustrating the first challenge facing open access: funding (DOAJ, n.d.). The rising cost of academic journals is becoming unsustainable for most libraries (Aulisio, 2014, p. 56).

Predatory Journals and Price Barriers

Because open access resources remove price barriers for readers such as subscriptions, licensing fees, and pay-per-view fees, scholars are often charged a one-time processing fee to submit their article to a database or journal (Suber, 2004). These fees are usually less than what many subscription journals charge, and many open access sites offer fee waivers, subsidies, or do not charge at all (“Reduce publishing costs,” n.d.). Moreover, many subscription publishers require authors to sign a copyright transfer agreement, which stipulates that the publishers owns the work and decides who can read, share, and reuse the content (“Take back control,” n.d.). Open access publishers do not require a copyright transfer agreement meaning authors retain control of their work (Ibid.). The simplicity and affordability of this system has led to the growth of fraudulent, exploitive publishing operations, also known as predatory journals (Beall, 2015). Beall (2015) explains the operation:

[Using titles] of broad scope such as the Journal of Education and sometimes duplicating the titles of established journals...they use spam e-mail to solicit manuscript submissions and have an easy or fake peer-review process. The more paper they accept, the more money they make, and...there is a low barrier to starting a scholarly publishing operation; hundreds of people with no experience in scholarly publishing have created new publishing operations.

While the Open Access Initiative posits that it has removed the access barrier for readers, the growth of predatory journals has ultimately created a production barrier for scholars and academics who now bear the weight of paying publishing fees. Both producers and consumers of scholarly literature must equip themselves with the tools to assess and diagnose predatory journals for open access to remain viable.

Discord within academic communities about peer review and citation impact factors is also hindering the success of open access journals, which rely on peer review prior to making content available (Suber, 2004). In an ideal world, peer review is performed double blind wherein neither the authors nor the readers know one another. This ensures impartiality and prevents professional repercussions in the event an author is prominent in their field (Eve, 2013, p. 75) In the sciences, however, improper review standards or an entire lack thereof has led to publications of both authentic and fabricated studies which, depending on a study’s claims, can have serious and damaging consequences (Beall, 2015). Through open access archives and repositories, authors can by-pass the peer review process entirely and freely publish unrefereed preprints, refereed postprints, or both (Suber, 2004). As a result, there is latent fear amongst academics that the rise in open access has led to a decline in review standards (Eve, 2013, p. 70). This, coupled with the realization that predatory journals are manipulating citation statistics to increase submissions, makes it difficult to assess whether a journal can be trusted. Many scholars also prescribe to the idea that academic print journal publishing holds more value and academic labor than other forms (McDowell, 2018, p. 55). Thus, scholars are reluctant to submit their articles to open access journals which many believe lack prestige and legitimacy.

Digital Literacy and Open Access

It is unknown whether the open access community foresaw this kind of corruption when the Initiative was drafted. However, it has failed to combat this at every level. In its current form, open access privileges a white, western, and wealthy academic community. Indeed, researchers must be digitally literate, in English, as most sources are published by English speaking communities. Digital literacy, is the ability to access, understand and participate or create content using digital media and is quickly becoming a necessary skill to engage in the ever-growing digital economy (Healey, 2011). As technology is brought into classrooms, Elizabeth Dalton of the University of Rhode Island explains that, "development of digital and media literacy provides students with tools and contexts to better understand and personalize their connections to culture, society, and the democratic process, which often leads to greater effort and persistence in learning (Dalton, 2017, p. 17). Having access to these resources is the crux of higher education, but many developing nations have minimal access to much of the scholarly literature published in subscription journals due to the high subscription costs (Aulisio, 2014, p. 69). Communities with limited internet availability and poor digital media literacy skills are at a much greater social disadvantage when they are denied open access journals, archives, repositories, and databases.

As a result, open access publishing perpetuates and reinforces the hierarchies it seeks to dismantle. In Toby Green’s article for the London School of Economics Blog, he outlines steps that these publishers can take to increase accessibility, such as thousand-word summaries of publications written for a broader audience and translations into over twenty languages (Green, 2017). The Open Access Initiative fails to recognize that readers are approaching research from unique backgrounds and skill sets, and therefore needs to accommodate for a more varied range of researchers.

Combatting Predatory Journals

Vital to the success of open access is a system of checks and balances to flag predatory journals, inform readers how to spot them, and remove articles that have been published on those sites.  A LibGuide on Evaluating Journals from Reyerson University’s Library and Archive is one such source which provides questions researchers should ask themselves to assess a journal’s credibility. They also include signs that a journal might be predatory which include:

A publisher that has a high number of journals (50+) and is recently established may be more questionable in terms of their ability to do high-quality peer evaluation of submitted materials.

Sometimes, publishers will send out notices to students or academics offering to publish their work for a fee. While this practice is sometimes used by reputable open access and traditional publishers, direct e-mail solicitations are a possible sign that one should spend some time researching the publisher before responding.

Too quick acceptance of a paper and a timeline that would not allow enough time for quality peer review may be cause for more investigation. (Cameron, n.d.)

Another site, “Think Check Submit,” is an international organization that helps researchers identify legitimate open access journals and databases. While these resources are a step in the right direction, they were not easy to find. I found both webpages through the Directory of Open Access Journal’s “Open Access Resources” link, and they were the only two available. If open access wants to be considered a viable publishing option, members of the Open Access Initiative and scholarly communication community must do more to mitigate the influx of deceptive publishers. Moreover, librarians, professors, and scholars must work together to teach students and fellow researchers how to evaluate a journal’s integrity.  

Open access is essential to the larger picture of accessibility within education and research. It is important for students to grow as informed and reflective participants and that starts with having access to a wide range of sources from diverse authors (Dalton, 2017, p. 17). Scholars, professors, and academics are, themselves, researchers so it is equally as hindering to them as it is to students to be limited in their sources. Moreover, academia has not traditionally been a platform for minority voices. The voices of power – namely cisgendered, heterosexual, and wealthy white men and (occasionally) women – shape the academic community by privileging certain histories and experiences above others.

Conclusion

The American Library Association is working to shift this narrative, committing themselves to the principles of freedom of access to information and the belief that universal and equitable access to information is vital for the social, educational, cultural, democratic and economic well-being of people, communities, and organizations (Aulisio, 2014, p. 55). Open access is a much a type of publication as it is a social movement (Ibid.). That open access is the most cost-effective method of publishing research, allows underrepresented communities – which are statistically underfunded or impoverished – to have a larger platform to share their voices (“Ethnic and Racial Minorities & Socioeconomic Status,” n.d.). Researchers using open access journals are privy to a diverse range of authors which, when cited and shared amongst peers and in classrooms, will enable them to start shifting the hierarchies that comprise the academic landscape. Open access is a first, necessary step to breaking down the barriers of educational poverty.

Works Cited

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Beall, J. (2015). What the Open-Access Movement Doesn’t Want You to Know | AAUP. Retrieved November 17, 2018, from https://www.aaup.org/article/what-open-access-movement-doesn%E2%80%99t-want-you-know#.W_CNaehKjIU

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Dalton, E. (2017). Beyond Universal Design for Learning: Guided Principles to Reduce Barriers to Digital & Media Literacy Competence. Journal of Media Literacy Education, 9(2), 17–29. https://doi.org/10.23860/JMLE-2019-09-02-02

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