"There is a problem with scientific journals that receive two payments: first from readers and then again from authors who want to publish in open access"

 

It's often assumed that we can find any piece of information online free of charge, but ongoing research is a great exception to that rule. To consult the vast majority of research, the publication of which has already been paid for, we still have to pay a fee. As such, every year these journals receive some 10 billion dollars from around the world, while institutions such as the UOC are working hard to lay the groundwork for achieving open access to research. At the beginning of Open Access Week 2019 we spoke to Alexandre López Borrull, who has bachelor's degrees both in chemistry and in information science. In addition to teaching at the UOC's Faculty of Information and Communication Sciences, he is a member of the research group Knowledge and Information Management in Organizations (KIMO), and was previously part of the group responsible for developing the University's Open Knowledge Action Plan.

 

 

It's often assumed that we can find any piece of information online free of charge, but ongoing research is a great exception to that rule. To consult the vast majority of research, the publication of which has already been paid for, we still have to pay a fee. As such, every year these journals receive some 10 billion dollars from around the world, while institutions such as the UOC are working hard to lay the groundwork for achieving open access to research. At the beginning of Open Access Week 2019 we spoke to Alexandre López Borrull, who has bachelor's degrees both in chemistry and in information science. In addition to teaching at the UOC's Faculty of Information and Communication Sciences, he is a member of the research group Knowledge and Information Management in Organizations (KIMO), and was previously part of the group responsible for developing the University's Open Knowledge Action Plan.

 

They are synonymous, but it also means that content can be reused, so long as it is not plagiarized and the author is always cited. In other words, when the content is reused, the new user makes it very clear that they are not the original author of that content.

The objectives of the international open access movement have been evolving over time. Initially our goal was for all content to be openly accessible, and only later did we start to worry about what kind of permission we would need to use that content.

Well, that 'who' is something that has evolved, as previously we only had the academic world in mind. Now, with this new perspective on open science, the aim is for everyone to have access. Researchers' responsibility is no longer just to generate new knowledge, but rather to generate knowledge that society as a whole can make use of.

As part of the first institutional declarations, such as the one presented in Budapest in 2002, or in Berlin in 2003, they spoke about scientific articles that feature an abstract summarizing their conclusions. But now the conversation is more focused on datasets, meaning the raw research data upon which the subsequent article is based.

In fact, we're no longer limiting ourselves to discussions about research. Transparency also means that government bodies are providing open data, via transfer portals or open data portals.

In the classic research dissemination model, researchers write articles that are published in leading, subscription-based journals. Therefore, in order to view research from other scientists, their university or research centre would need to have a subscription to these journals. However, if knowledge is published in open access, it can be viewed much more quickly and by anyone. In the long run, this saves us all time, and we can avoid conducting research on subjects that have already been investigated, thus avoiding duplicate projects. This means we can start to ask ourselves more ambitious questions. It also implies economic savings and an increase in visibility for the researcher, as the impact of their research is much greater.

People are looking to devise a new model, more than anything so that it's fairer in terms of public investment. As a society we pay taxes, some of which go towards funding research, so the scientific community should also be giving back to society by sharing the knowledge they generate. Hence quality knowledge will be placed in reach of the public, who pay for it.

There won't be economic incentives. The only incentive they have is to comply with the policies set by the public bodies funding the research. We're starting to see how large European projects are already requesting that research be published in open access. So, if the research's legal and financial framework deem it necessary to publish in open access, they will have to comply.

In fact, leading scientific publications are being paid by researchers who want – or who are required – to publish their research in open access, as these publications charge the researchers a fee to publish research in this way.

That's right. Given that journals are very often getting paid twice (once for publishing in open access, and then again by readers), the funding bodies would prefer a model where payment is necessary once at most, preferably for publication.

This is the principle the new Plan S is based on, which is backed by a host of European funding agencies. It's clear that publishing scientific journals incurs costs, but it has to be measured so that we don't end up devoting an excessive amount of public resources to it.

Apart from simply resisting change, researchers tend to feel obliged to publish articles in impact factor-ranked journals, as many scientific institutions use this criteria to assess their work. The thing is, in many fields, the journals with the highest impact factor rating are not open access.

But, given that research funding increasingly requires results to be published in open access, researchers across the board feel pulled in both directions.

Yes. The issue comes with the journals that have a hybrid model, which end up receiving two payments: first from the libraries who pay for researchers to be able to read them, and secondly from the authors to pay to publish in open access. The resources should be destined to one thing or another. The problem is that with both these models, the Global South ― that is to say, low and middle income countries ― are doubly excluded: they are neither able to read the content nor publish anything.

There is a resistance to change, and also the need to transition from an old model to a new one. Often, simply identifying the issues is not enough. It's like that African proverb that says, "if you want to go far, go together", but there's another Arabic proverb that says "he who doesn't want to do something will always find an excuse". So we're in the middle; and yet, as Galileo said, eppur si muove!          

The new assessment models are looking to substitute the journal impact factor for the assessment of each individual article, or a qualitative analysis of each researcher's progress or results. During this transition, one of the challenges is deciding when a researcher's current trajectory should switch models, since there are people who have been assessed many times using the previous, impact-factor based model.

Universities generate a lot of knowledge that can help a lot of people. We often complain that it's impossible to find quality information online, that there's too much fake news or simply an information overload. Offering quality open knowledge that has been generated at universities should be seen more like a responsibility rather than a possibility.

That might be the case, but it might just be a consequence of the times. The enthusiasm we feel when we fill out a registration form can easily be lost from one minute to the next. We jump from network to network, from different events to different experiences, so staying committed in cases like this is difficult. We often think that an opportunity will present itself again, but, as Heraclitus once said, "no man ever steps into the same river twice", and often, before it does present itself again, we find alternative options. Only a fraction of the students that register for the MOOCs end up making it to the end, that's just the way it is.

Teaching innovation isn't limited to open content. In my opinion it's not enough, that's the least we should be offering. Innovation involves disseminating knowledge so that it reaches people directly, via social media for example; it can also be done in smaller bite-size chunks so that it goes viral, regardless of the MOOC in question.

The MOOC on open science will be our third course of this kind, and one of our commitments is for more universities to collaborate with each time, and to share the information in more languages.