The power of the Internet to shake up well-established industries has
become a common theme in recent years as many businesses struggle to
compete with new entrants and technologies. While it has captured
limited attention outside of educational circles, the Internet has
facilitated the emergence of open access publishing of research,
transforming the multi-billion dollar academic publishing industry and
making millions of articles freely accessible to a global audience.
My weekly technology law column (Toronto Star version, homepage version) notes that "Open Access Week", which is used by supporters to raise awareness of
the benefits of open publishing, is being marked at university campuses
around the world this week just as a Canadian study confirmed a global
open access tipping point and Canada’s major research funding agencies
prepare to mandate open access publishing for grant recipients across
the country.
According to a European Commission-funded report
by Montreal-based Science-Metrix, more than half of all research
publications in some countries and fields of study are now freely
available online. The company found that countries such as the
United States, Switzerland, Israel, and the Netherlands have all
passed the 50 per cent mark for open access publication. Canada is
on the verge of joining those countries, falling just shy at 49 per
cent.
The shift toward open access becoming the default form of
disseminating research in many fields is a remarkable change given
that conventional publishing in expensive subscription-based
journals was the standard in many areas as recently as ten years
ago. The move toward open access means that global research is far
more accessible to everyone - scientists, researchers, and the
general public.
Canadian open access may also soon hit its tipping point if the
three federal research granting institutions - the Canadian
Institutes of Health Research, the Social Sciences and Humanities
Research Council of Canada, and the Natural Sciences and Engineering
Research Council of Canada - follow through with a proposed open
access mandate.
The three institutions, which collectively dole out hundreds of
millions of dollars in research support annually, launched a consultation
last week on a standardized open access policy. The
policy would require grant recipients to ensure that their
peer-reviewed publications are freely available online within 12
months of initial publication.
The policy sends a strong message to all researchers that the public
should not be asked to pay for access to the research that it funds.
Rather, researchers seeking taxpayer support can reasonably be
required to make their research openly available to the public.
In fact, the adoption of a standardized open access policy may open
the door to several other initiatives. In addition to the changes
for research publications, the agencies may also pursue new open
data requirements that would mandate the availability of the raw
information generated by research activities. Moreover, while the
current policy is limited to research articles, books and other
larger publications that benefit from taxpayer support may also face
pressure to adopt more open models of access.
The implications of open access policies extend far beyond shaking
up the academic journal market. Openly available articles are
already being incorporated into teaching materials, thereby
replacing conventional textbooks and removing the need for copyright
permissions and fees. Open access may also help foster greater
collaboration between researchers and the business community with
improved access leading to commercialization opportunities that
might otherwise be missed.
As the Canadian academic community celebrates open access week, it
appears that the long-awaited tipping point may be about to head
north.