A position paper of the EPS

European Physical Society more than ideas OPEN ACCESS

Executive Summary

Scientific isn’t what it used to be. Or The opinions about Open Access are many and is it? Some things have changed, but how funda- widely differing, among scholars, publishers and mental have these changes been, or how librarians, and stated opinions are sometimes fundamental should they be? one-sided and not always well informed. The A common opinion among physicists is that Executive Committee of EPS has decided to take “reading scientific articles should be for free”. its position in a paper on Open Access, where However, just as there are no free lunches, scien- minimum criteria for scientific publishing are tific publishing will never be for free.Trustworthy indicated, in order to safeguard the scientific systems for and for archiving are quality of the publications. adamant. Publication costs are to a great extent The so-called Berlin declaration states that, e.g., generated by the editorial process,independent of scientific results should be made as accessible as the publication form. A change of a business possible to as wide an audience as possible, model does not necessarily lead to lower costs for regardless of the financial strength of the reader. production or distribution. EPS is in favour of this general objective and sup- The advent of Internet and electronic media has ports the Berlin declaration.Going a step further, certainly had an impact.When we need a scientif- EPS insists on maintaining and nurturing mech- ic article,we rarely go to the library these days; we anisms for the upkeeping of scientific quality, get it off the Internet.What has not changed so which in practice means peer review systems. much is that a vast majority of journals are still EPS does endorse posting of published scientif- based on peer review.Non-peer-review electronic ic papers on freely accessible electronic archives. archives,or self-archiving,are mainly seen as com- EPS is not in favour of a shift of the entire sci- plements, facilitating access. Another thing that entific publication industry towards a has not changed so much is that most of scientific business model where the publication of publishing is still financed by business models results has to be paid for. In such an environ- based on paid subscriptions. ment, journals would have conflicting Open access as a social movement has very incentives in terms of maintenance of scien- early roots, but it mainly gained momentum tific quality. Accepting fewer papers would with the development of the Internet. Physics as give higher prestige and higher quality, but a subject has been at the forefront, with self- accepting more would give a better cash flow. archiving at arXiv.org starting already in 1991, No convincing solution to this problem has and now being well established in the physics yet been presented. community. But open access can reach further Novel solutions have to be found in order to than voluntary self-archiving. A wide spectrum create a just and sustainable business model of suggestions have emerged, including making for overall Open Access. The EPS Executive the electronic archiving compulsory, and also Committee has proposed a set of boundary totally new business models, where the publi- conditions for this. cations are not financed by traditional The full text of the EPS position paper is pub- subscriptions. For example, a few journals offer lished on the EPS webpage (free of charge!). the possibility of free reading to everybody if the author pays for the publication of his/her The Executive Committee results (“author pays”). of the European Physical Society

EPS POSITION PAPER 01 OPEN ACCESS

The European Physical Society is an independ- access models are mainly discussed today. Fol- ent body funded by contributions from Na- lowing the Budapest Open Archive Initiative tional Physical Societies, other bodies and 2001, level 1 means auto-archiving of articles individual members. It has over 100,000 mem- in open repositories (“green access”), while bers and can call on expertise in all areas where level 2 aims at maintaining traditional publish- Physics is involved. One declared aim of EPS is ers, but using novel business models to finance to strengthen Physics and Physicists in Europe. subscriptions (“gold access”). Various levels of mixed publication landscapes are also possible, The Object of this Position Paper and indeed the current dominant model for The Executive Committee of the EPS supports physics is subscription-based journals, with the Berlin Declaration on Open Access to voluntary open access and voluntary simulta- Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities neous publishing in an open repository. (http://oa.mpg.de/openaccess-berlin/berlin- Traditional subscription based journals have declaration.html). With this position paper, evolved in the course of the last decade, with a EPS takes a first step towards formulating a decrease in classical print editions in favour of policy on Open Access. In particular, the aim the more rapid publication in electronic form. of the paper is to indicate criteria for main- Moreover, researchers are largely involved in taining a high quality for scientific publica- the publishing process: as authors who will tions, independent of the business model also take over part of the typesetting and for- financing their production costs. The text is matting work necessary for a standardised written with the aim of particularly looking at publication, as scientific editors, responsible the need for publications in physics and for the for the reviewing process and the proposal of physics community. scientific topics, as reviewers, guaranteeing the quality of the scientific content, and as dele- Introduction gates in steering committees of the journals. Publications are an integral part of scientific Even with these non-remunerated contribu- work. They allow dissemination of results, in tions and electronic distribution, journal order for these to be discussed, repeated and subscription prices have grown faster than in- approved by the scientific community. They are flation. With the bundling of journals in the- the basic building blocks of extended scientific matic “packages”, university libraries have to knowledge, and they open the way for possible make a choice among different scientific pub- developments and applications. To a large ex- lishers, limiting the access to researchers, tent, scientific publications are also used today while the civil society does not access results as a tool to judge the quality of researchers, of of public-funded research at all. Even without research projects, and of research institutions. print-editions and with a non-paid peer-re- Easy Internet access allows broad and fast dis- viewing process, scientific publication still has semination of scientific results. For a number a price: formatting, administrative, and archiv- of years now, the scientific community has been ing costs have to be covered; maintenance and discussing open access models for scientific technical evolution have to be financed. Open publications, with the main goal being the cre- access does not mean that the production is ation of free public (and non-rewarded) access entirely free, or even necessarily cheaper. to results of research. Open access proposes ways to allow free read- In the following we will use the Public Library ing access to scientific results for as wide a of Science’s definition of open-access publica- public as possible, which sometimes includes tions - those that have "free availability and un- alternative business-models for covering restricted use". Two different levels of open production expenses.

02 EPS POSITION PAPER OPEN ACCESS

In the case of scientific publishing, the scien- format, compatible with an “open access” soft- tific community is typically both writer and ware such as pdf or ps and established in a form reader of the scientific work. In the traditional to preserve the uniqueness of the document. subscription model, we pay for reading, via Metadata should be extractable to allow search subscriptions, whereas in the most far-reach- engines to be efficient. ing open access models, we pay for getting The interoperability of open archives has to be our work published, and we read for free. The guaranteed in order to enable overall searches. successful realisation of open access will rely The continuity of the archives must be assured on novel business models; the overall cost for to accommodate all changes of software and the scientific community will not necessarily hardware; technical evolution has to be taken be different. into account. The creation of new journals and the appear- Necessary conditions ance of new publishers must be possible. The EPS Executive Committee insists on some Copyright must be guaranteed to the publishing criteria that must be met by any open access authors to protect the results of their research. business model, if scientific publications are to The applied business models must be balanced maintain a high quality. enough to assure a sustained development even The scientific quality of the published research with a varying number of member associates must be recognised by experts in the domain. and changing economic boundary conditions. The widely applied peer-review process has They also have to assure the continuity of been proven to guarantee a high scientific stan- archives should a scientific publisher or a fund- dard and must be maintained for open access ing institution cease to exist. publications. Peer-reviewing is also a defence Emerging countries should be awarded free-of- against misconduct and repetition.With a pos- charge access for reading and publication. sible shift towards open access based models, The EPS Executive Committee strongly sup- there must be guarantees that the peer review ports the PERii initiative (Programme for the process will remain at a high level, and that it Enhancement of Research Information phase will be broadly trustworthy. This is an area 2) of the International Network for the avail- where a particular focus is needed. ability of Scientific Publications (INASP, An author or a group of authors should be free www.inasp.info). to submit to a journal of his/their choice inde- Various business models and approaches for pendent of the business-model his/their or- the realisation of open access may exist in dif- ganisation/s has/have adopted. ferent scientific domains, depending on the Publication of a scientific must ex- habits of the concerned scientific community, clusively depend on its scientific content and be the landscape of thematic journals and the pol- completely independent of the public accessi- itics of funding agencies. PubMed Central, bility of the journal and the form of payment Citeseer, Revues.org or SCOAP are examples made by the author’s institution. It should not influenced by, and adapted to, their thematic re- be possible for authors or their institutions to search environment. enhance their scientific reputation by using commercial means to ensure publication in Discussion journals with high impact factors. Publishers and researchers will benefit from Publications in electronic format need to fulfil open access journals due to the increase in the certain conditions in order to constitute a freely visibility and the effective audience of scientific accessible, searchable and permanent database. papers. Libraries will benefit by making more They must be edited in a universally readable journals available to their public.

EPS POSITION PAPER 03 OPEN ACCESS

However, EPS wants to insist on certain points, Addendum which may put the high scientific quality of the Following enquiries by EPS member societies, existing publishing landscape at risk and which the Executive Committee wishes to expand on we therefore can not support. the following two points: It appears that the necessary conditions needed in order to guarantee high scientific quality of articles • The Berlin Declaration on Open Access to will not be achieved by a model of open access, Knowledge in the Science and Humanities which is not accompanied by a review process and was first formulated and proposed in 2003 an editorial decision.Reviewing,and in particular and since that time this ideal has received the peer-reviewing,is an indispensable requirement. support of numerous organizations through- The“author pays”model – where the publication out the world. To date however progress to- of results is paid for -has an inbuilt conflict,since wards implementation has been steady but the publishers’ profits scale with the number of slow. This is mainly due to the fact that ful- accepted articles while the scientific quality is in- filling the OA ideal requires, amongst other versely proportional to this number.The existing things, a complete upheaval of academic pub- initiatives to introduce this model should be re- lishing. There are for example significant im- garded as experimental prototypes and be lim- plications for the established financial ited to very few journals. An exclusive "author structure of as well as pays" scheme for all journals should be avoided. the intellectual property rights of contribut- With the advent of novel business-models, EPS ing authors.A recent roadmap and guide can and other bodies should strive to ensure that lim- be found at http://oa.mpg.de/openaccesss- ited publication costs in one domain (or journal) berlin/roadmap.html will not be“counter-balanced”by increasing sub- scription costs in a different domain (journal). • One of the main concerns of this position The continuity of archives has to be guaranteed paper has been the problem of ensuring sci- by one (or several) non-commercial, inde- entific quality within an OA framework. It is pendent organisations. Even though publishers the firm belief of the EPS Executive Commit- should be encouraged to build lasting archives, tee that the quality of journals can indeed de- independent organisations must build perma- grade where market forces shift the emphasis nent “over-all” databases. towards the enhancement of commercial profit by maximising the acceptance of author Conclusion paid papers. The EPS Executive Committee is EPS supports the Berlin declaration and its pro- also of the opinion– as formulated and dis- motion of wider access to scientific results. cussed during the most recent EPS Council – However, strict demands of quality are essen- that this problem is less critical for Learned tial, and peer review must form the basis of any Society publishers where the priority of the publication process. Open access models scientific quality is undisputed and ensured should fulfil all of necessary conditions cited by the ownership. above, and great care must be taken to ensure that quality criteria are not compromised. Mulhouse, 9 November 2009 In this case, open access will certainly be of benefit to the whole scientific community (stu- dents, researchers, publishers, libraries) as well as to the general public.

Aarhus, june 2009

04 EPS POSITION PAPER European Physical Society

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