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Open Access
Conceived a little less than a decade ago, this initiative is gaining strength, even more so in the past six months. This year Senator John Cornyn (R-TX) pledged to resurrect the Federal Research Public Access Act, which he originally introduced last year with Senator Joseph Lieberman (I-CT). If passed, it would require that federally funded research from 11 government agencies with annual external research budgets of more than $100 million become publicly available online within six months of publication. 3 Many associations embrace Open Access and welcome greater access to research. Many others are singularly opposed and fear that, even with a six month embargo, Open Access would seriously erode significant revenues obtained from journal subscriptions. Given this momentum, association executives and their boards will do well to pay proactive attention to this issue and consider how Open Access may enhance or detract from the central mission of the organization. Regardless of where you stand, this issue is especially important in advocating a substantially new way of thinking about how information, the lifeblood of every association, is created, distributed, and maintained. What follows is a discussion about what Open Access is, why it came to the fore, its pros and cons, what business models apply, and some resources for further education and discussion.
An Overview of Open AccessThe Open Access movement began in late 2001 with a meeting convened in Budapest by George Soros’ Open Society Institute. This meeting resulted in the first major international statement addressing the issue of public access to scientific literature: the Budapest Open Access Initiative. 4 The statement, to date5 signed by 4,423 individuals and 395 organizations, says in part, "The literature that should be freely accessible online is that which scholars give to the world without expectation of payment. Primarily, this category encompasses their peer-reviewed journal articles, but it also includes any unreviewed preprints that they might wish to put online for comment or to alert colleagues to important research findings. There are many degrees and kinds of wider and easier access to this literature. By ‘open access’ to this literature, we mean its free availability on the public internet, permitting any users to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of these articles, crawl them for indexing, pass them as data to software, or use them for any other lawful purpose, without financial, legal, or technical barriers other than those inseparable from gaining access to the internet itself. The only constraint on reproduction and distribution, and the only role for copyright in this domain, should be to give authors control over the integrity of their work and the right to be properly acknowledged and cited." 6Not long after the Budapest Initiative was released, Lawrence Lessig, professor of law at Stanford University, launched Creative Commons, with the intent of creating a means for content creators to share their work with (if desired) some rights reserved. 7 Shortly afterward The Public Knowledge Project developed Open Journal Systems, an open-source journal management and publishing software package, and the Public Library of Science received a $9 million grant from the Moore Foundation for open-access publishing. They immediately announced their first two open-access journals. 8 Also in 2002 the Association of College and Research Libraries, a division of the American Library Association, announced a three-year scholarly communication initiative. According to a press release, "Broad goals of the initiative include creating increased access to scholarly information; fostering cost-effective alternative means of publishing, especially those that take advantage of electronic information technologies; and encouraging scholars to assert greater control over scholarly communications." 9 In all, 2002 had 29 open-access-related events of note. In 2003 there were 32, 2004 had 41, 2005 had 33, and 2006 an astounding 84 events including statements, reports, conferences, endorsements, and policies.10 Clearly, this movement has traction and will not dissipate anytime soon. 
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More Articles From Fall 2007 Issue
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Fall 2007
