College of Education and Human Development Graduate Students’
Opinions about Open Access Journals
December 7, 2011
Most traditional academic journals, also known as toll-access journals, are accessible to the libraries that can afford to pay an annual subscription fee to a series of companies that sell journal access packages. Journal articles and subscriptions to individual journals can also be paid by either institutions or students, yet despite the possible contribution of many articles to broader society, they are not openly accessible, and this is particularly a problem for individuals who would like to contribute despite having limited financial resources or access to a subscribed institution. While information and communication technologies (ICT) has increased the reach of information, journal subscription fees have risen sharply in recent years (200% over inflation), resulting in many universities, including top tier research institutions, reducing their number of subscriptions (http://righttoresearch.org/).
Unfortunately, as subscriptions are cancelled by universities, the number of journal articles that researchers at that particular university are able to access decreases. Therefore, publishing in expensive toll-access journals can lead to a number of consequences which are both detrimental to the scholar who publishes an article and to those that are hoping to learn from the article or build on its findings. It affects the writer in terms of the visibility and impact of his or her work, while it affects the reader in the possible duplication of efforts. It can also result in the inability of the researcher to produce the most comprehensive or beneficial literature review, ignoring points of view that would have complemented the writer’s research. Fortunately, more information is becoming openly available, albeit much of it of limited quality.
To reduce these problems increasingly journals have decided to publish their articles openly by becoming an Open Access Journal (OAJ) or by allowing authors to retain some author’s rights and for the authors to be able to place a copy of the article that is accessible to the public through either their personal blog or their institution’s library website. By publishing openly, individuals across society could quickly access the scholar’s work and the benefit from understanding its implications, yet why is it that OAJ account for only ten percent of the total number of journals, according to recent Study of Open Access Publishing (SOAP) statistics (http://project-soap.eu/)? Part of the reason for the limited number of OAJs is because of the difficulties that a journal can face when trying to change its business model. Having a high quality peer review system and distributing articles to readers is very expensive. Editing is a time consuming and expensive process and should be adequately remunerated. However, because of ICTs, the cost of distributing articles to readers has been significantly reduced to the extent that they are usually only a minor expense. The rapid decrease of cost per calculation has reduced the price of hosting a site with the bandwidth needed for a journal to even less than $20 a month, depending on the journal. Being aware of the decreasing costs of running a journal, it is hard to justify the cost inflation of journal articles. In recent years, some scientist have promoted OAJ as an alternate journal business model, and have begun to campaign for increase openness within academia.
In particular the natural sciences have promoted an open access policy. The Arxiv (http://arxiv.org/) for example has over 719,000 academic pieces that are publically available and are published only months after the findings are obtained, instead of the longer periods of time of one or two year of administrative and editing processes that are needed to publish in more traditional journals. Particularly in fields such as information technologies, including the College of Education and Human Development’s (CEHD) program in educational technology, if an article takes two years to become available, that article is likely already out of date, and as such it is no longer of the highest quality or usability (For example the iPad version 1 is less than 2 years old). Unfortunately, while the natural sciences have promoted openness to increase the rate of innovation and their productivity, the social sciences and the humanities have attached more strongly to the traditional toll-access journal system. These focus groups tried to answer the why to that statement. Why would fields such as education, which hopes to improve the lives of others through their work and are not as concerned as the natural sciences in protecting patents, continue to primarily publish in traditional toll-access journals? With Open Access Week 2011 approaching, the UMN libraries decided to host a series of events (http://z.umn.edu/openaccess2011) for which I was asked to discuss my involvement on Reconsidering Development, an open access student run journal based at the University of Minnesota where I work as an assistant web-editor (http://journal.ipid-umn.org). With this in mind, to supplement my presentation, I organized a series of four focus groups to discuss in greater detail CEHD students’ opinions about Open Access Journals
Recruiting of Participants
An invitation was sent to students two weeks before the focus group with a flier (http://z.umn.edu/oa2011poster) which directed them to the Right to Research Coalition website (http://righttoresearch.org/) as well as a Doodle poll where CEHD graduate students could register to attend to one of the four focus group sessions. The three in-person focus groups were held Thursday, October 20, Friday October 21, and October 24. An internet focus group was offered so that participants could join from October 21 to the 24 and answer the same questions in an asynchronous way ( http://oafocusgroup2011.freeforums.org). Another online focus group which answered a very similar set of question had also been held online from October 11 to October 14. Having held a total of 5 focus groups with CEHD graduate students discussing their opinions of Open Access (OA), this study feels that various saturation points have been reached and a subsequent study would benefit more in asking CEHD faculty members instead of students about their opinions regarding OAJ.
Participants did not seem to have any problems using the Doodle poll (z.umn.edu/openpoll2011). A couple of participants commented that they were attracted by the statements on the flier and having visited the included website before deciding to attend. A concern when selecting participants was that, despite regularly using open resources on the internet, participants did not generally consider themselves knowledgeable enough in the subject to openly share their opinion. Based on this concern, it is perhaps not surprising that various participants were members of the Learning Technology (LT) program within the Curriculum and Instruction (CI) department in CEHD. Purposely selecting participants, and sending every single participant a personalized email likely contributed to the high attendance rate. While there were only limited times when participants could attend a focus group and an email with a flier was sent to less than 100 students, 14 students signed up to attend the face to face (F2F) focus groups, while 10 students signed up to attend the online version of the focus group. The online focus group was held through freeforums.com. This site allows me to create user accounts and provide users with anonymity. This was mentioned to them before participating. In contrast to the online focus group, anonymity is not possible within the face to face version of the focus group. Out of the 14 scheduled face to face participants, one did not attend, resulting in 13 participants or two focus groups of 4 individuals and one focus group of 5 individuals. The online focus group had only two responses. Eight of the 10 students did not respond to the questions. However, based on the tone of their initial email response it is possible that some of these participants did not intend to participate online from the beginning. A number of them had mentioned that they couldn’t attend in person but would try to participate online. This could be interpreted as a way of expressing that they will likely be unable to participate. One of the two who participated mentioned that the questions scared him at first because being able to see all of them he felt it would take more than the time he could afford to share to answer them. However, after completing them, similar to the face to face participants, he expressed having enjoyed the focus group. Each face to face focus group lasted for two hours.
Below I summarized their responses into themes that were brought up repeatedly throughout the focus groups. In addition, for a visual overview of the different themes that were discussed in the focus group you can see or download a PowerPoint from the following link: http://www.slideshare.net/fastfonz/presentation-open-accessweek2011. It includes embedded audio clips of participants for most of the questions.
Defining Open: How do you define open, in terms of information? What qualities would you include in what it is to be open?
Students had similar opinions about the meaning of open. To them it meant that materials would get reused. A journal would be available from a computer and a mobile phone. They felt that it an article was open to the public, then it would reach a broader audience. Open access journals were also seen as helping individuals who are not academics to publish, allowing also for individuals to become a knowledge dispenser, as well as a knowledge receiver. One of the participants expressed how Open Access Journals helped increase transparency in the knowledge development process; “I can access it anywhere”. While to some participants it seemed that openness was linked mainly to greater accessibility, to others it included some of the other elements discussed within the open content literature and the benefit of being able to redistribute, remix, reuse, and revise information. Most of the participants expressed not being familiar with topics such as open education resources, open content, open data, and open courseware, but that they had found them interesting and were supportive of them after understanding them. In the online forum they were asked to visit links that explained the concepts after answering the question, then they were asked a subsequent question based on that experience.
Extent of the Influence: To what extent is the ability to access information freely on the internet influencing the type of information you consume? (not at all, some (little), a lot, a great deal)?
When asked to what extent having access influenced their research and education, most of them expressed an unwillingness to pay to read the news. While many used the Chronicle of Higher Education and the New York Times, they used the free portions of the site or accessed them through the university. Despite her interest in the paper, a student expressed her unwillingness to purchase the Wall Street Journal. By being open content was more accessible and influential. In terms of their academic work, a couple of students mentioned that they would reorganize their project if they could not access a particular source or simply dismiss it and change it for a different one. For one student, if a site required subscription, then they decided that it was not worth examining. Students use what is available, and mentioned that without a UMN ID they would not be able to have the same access.
How is Access Important: To what extent is the lack of access to information a problem? (not at all, some (little), a lot, a great deal)?
This question was somewhat related to the one above. In general lack of access led to either students borrowing access from someone or for them disregarding the source and attempt to find a similar article. They expressed how at the University of Minnesota they have more access than at smaller schools. There also seems to be a growing lack of patience with internet articles, and a student mentioned becoming frustrated after losing twenty minutes trying to get through all the security and sign up requirements when accessing an article off-site. The need to sign up to access even if the article was openly available was problematic and a source of frustration for some students. However, they felt that not having access to one article was not necessarily a major problem since; they could read more articles and find other studies. There seems to be a problem with sorting out sources and finding the best pieces of information.
Impact of Open Access Outside of Academia
While it was not its own question, many students expressed a concern about the impact that open access could have outside of higher education institutions. One of the participants mentioned how her father was able to learn more about her mother’s medical condition thanks to Open Access articles. A student from Africa mentioned his frustration of only being able to share a few articles with students. With internet being a privilege where he worked as a teacher abroad he would print a couple of openly accessible articles and share them with his students. Various of the students attending worried about not being able to access articles once they graduated and how important and helpful it could be to access these materials as an educator, a researcher, or an employee of an NGO. Organizations with a smaller budget will be more handicapped as into what they can afford to purchase. A student from Asia mentioned how there is a black market for articles in his home country and how it was more important for him, and more beneficial for society, if people were able to pursue their interests and satisfy their curiosity instead of limiting themselves to whatever the local institution can purchase. As mentioned before, there was also a concern regarding what could be accessed at a smaller university and how it was probably impacting students’ quality of education.
Generational Differences: To what extent do you think there is a generational difference in the support for openness, and open access journals?
While students seem to think that professors were not against the idea of open access, they argued that they seemed to be less aware of how it works or less optimistic about open access journals’ potential. However, students did not think of it so much as a generational issue, but perhaps also a disciplinary issue. Students then mentioned some of their problems with open access, including the difficulty of finding quality articles. A student mentioned how her professor warned her against using open articles. Another student wondered if younger students who grew up with the internet would be supportive of the toll-access model. In general, they felt that professors within CEHD were not very supportive of open access journals but that they encouraged students to publish in traditional journals. Trying to improve their marketability and obtain a tenure track job, many doctoral students feel that therefore it may be best to primarily focus on toll-access journals because of their prestige and because of the recommendations of their professors. One student, however, argued that it was important for students and professors to know that they can reserve most of their copyright and that many publishers are allowing faculty members who want to to publish while retaining many of their author rights.
Sustainability of OAJ: To what extent do you consider Open Access Journals to be sustainable? What do you think needs to happen for them to be sustainable?
One of the most common critiques of OAJ was their quality. To many students this is linked to them being free and a sense that they would accept articles that would not be accepted elsewhere. For OAJ to be sustainable it is therefore important to develop a funding model that allows them to pay for the staff needed in order to retain the quality of the journal. While in many journals the editing staff is composed largely by some of its readers who work pro-bono, understanding the importance of editing the work of their colleagues, journals have other expense such as calling for articles and organizing who need to edits which article. In some cases reviewers are paid. For the quality to be maintained and for OAJ to be sustainable, one student argued that perhaps OAJ could imitate internet games that function under the 1% or 2% models and obtain valuable funds and human resources in this way. Other students wonder if OAJs could sustain themselves by asking individuals for donations. Overall, they felt that money needs to come from somewhere and that asking individuals to pay to publish does not seem fair, “they should pay us to publish”.
Public vs. Private: Is there a difference between privately sponsored research and publically sponsored research in terms of access by the public?
Whereas some companies sponsor their own research, participants felt that if the public is paying for research then it should be available to them. A few students argued, that in their opinion, the medical field had done a great job in becoming as open as possible. NIH grants require that findings are released publically. A couple of participants were aware of this change and felt that education research, and research in other fields should be open to the public. A student joked about why restricting access to education research seemed ridiculous and to go against the accepted aims of the field; “We have to keep our secrets about teaching and learning, nobody can know.” One participant turned the question around and asked, “In terms of access, should anything be private?” while another participant asked “is there anything that shouldn’t be public?” In addition, another participant mentioned that even sensitive data should be public because criminals will likely obtain access regardless of official controls on access. One participant mentioned that if private research is not open then companies could simply discard trials that were not positive and publish only the trials that were beneficial for them.
To what extent do you feel openness increases the quality of scholarship? (strongly agree, agree, neutral, disagree, strongly disagree)
Concerns about quality were likely the most negative attitudes students had regarding Open Access Journals. “The internet is filled with junk” was a common opinion and filtering this junk was a common concern. A student from Eastern Europe mentioned how she had difficulties accessing articles back home. In one instance, she found an archive with articles, but as she read through it, she noticed that it had not been accurately translated. This concern with accuracy and reliability was very common and led to one student repeating the advice given to her by her undergraduate instructor not to trust open access journals. However, a few students pointed out that they had used open access articles for their recent presentations and how some open journals have the same level of quality as toll-access journal articles. On a related theme another student argued that “if everybody was doing it, then there would be quality control. You want your stuff to look good anyway.” Another student also pointed out that while some online publications may publish anything they obtain, other open access journals have a very traditional peer review system. Because of the ease with which a site can be hosted, a journal with low quality can exist despite having a low quality product, yet other open journals can and do have the same level of quality as traditional toll-access journals. However, participants felt that many OAJ do not have the same level of credibility as traditional toll-access journals and, when most or all of the major journals in a field are subscription based, it is more likely that the faculty members, particularly older faculty members, will continue to publish in and advocate the use of these journals.
Moral Obligation: To what extent do you feel opening or increasing access to information is a moral obligation for educators, for the CEHD?
This question originated organically from the first focus group and was asked to the rest of the focus groups afterwards. One participant repeated various times during the focus group that access to education and knowledge should be a basic human right. In her opinion, without open access we are contributing to social reproduction as only the institutions where individuals with wealthier backgrounds attend will be able to access the most recent and relevant information. In her opinion piracy sometimes is warranted because we all have a responsibility to serve the common good. Another participant argued that if people felt that “they needed to follow unethical avenues; we need to restructure the way information is accessed.” During the focus group, information piracy was discussed as a social ill rather than an individual ill. Participants concluded that they needed “to make it possible for anyone who is seeking information to do so ethically… reworking the way we think…” Because of the moral benefits of openness and its relationship to the institutional goals of the University of Minnesota and the College of Education and Human Development one participant felt that the university itself should lead this transformation by encouraging faculty members and students to use and publish in Open Access Journals; “Academic institutions, humans, have a moral obligation to connect with each other and tell their stories”.
Innovation: To what extent do you think open access encourages or discourages innovation?
For most students open access would increase innovation because researchers could more easily develop accurate literature reviews and build upon the work of others rather than reinventing the wheel. One of the participants, explained it in the following way: “You see, we are doing something funny, we are trying to discover really good things, but then we put them in a box and lock them up. There are very wonderful things that haven’t been read…. I tried to access this article, and couldn’t access it. I thought this guy did a very good job, but what does that mean, I just forget it. I can’t pay the 39 dollars.” In this sense he and other students argued that open access contributed to innovation. Other students argued that it would increase competition and, as a consequence, journals would have to find ways to be innovative in order to increase their audience. Another student mentioned that capitalism and innovation thrive on competition so there would not only be innovation but that would also allow them to generate revenue and become sustainable. In conclusion, “if authors aren’t innovative (and if publishers aren’t innovative), readers will gravitate to other authors/publishers” Related to innovation, another student felt that open acess would result in a greater number of voices that would be heard internationally. Currently the World Bank and other major international organizations publish their voice, their viewpoint openly, but other voices are more silent. Openness would increase the visibility of other voices and, as a consequence, more countries may enact innovative policies and be themselves more innovative.
Future: Projecting yourself two, five and ten years into the future what role do you see open access playing for academia and society?
When discussing the future of OAJ, a few students pointed to how the natural sciences are at the forefront of the Open Access Movement, while the humanities, social sciences, and fields such as education are behind the curve. They argued that this is common with these fields as they are less technology oriented. However, in the future, they seemed to think that open access would likely be more commonplace. One of the students mentioned the rate of change would depend on key players in the various disciplines and their choices. Regarding quality concerns, students generally agreed that over time the quality of open access journals would likely increase. They questioned each other about how this could be done. “How were the other journals doing it… I just don’t know but it’s doable.” To various students it seemed as if the rate of change could snowball if more and more prestigious journals changed their financial structure or if authors increasingly became worried about being less cited if they only published in toll-access journals. “If everyone is invested in it, there would be a quality control. You want your stuff to look good anyway.” According to various participants, open access will probably develop layers or levels and through this system, some layers would use terms that are accessible to all while other layers would be more complex in terminology.
Choices: Which one of these three journals would you choose as the site through which to submit your article and what are some of the reasons you would chose this journal (please indicate what would be the most important aspect in making this decision)?
Despite the frequently expressed support for open access, CEHD graduate students were mostly concerned with publishing in a high impact journal or a “quality” journal at least during the first years of their careers. After obtaining tenure, they felt that they could more easily publish in open access journals. This was a very common statement, even among those that felt that open access should be a right. One of the few students that preferred an alternate route argued that her alternate route was not just in terms of publishing but because of the “academic game” and that she felt that she could accomplish more with her career elsewhere. To her, education should be about serving people, but writing for journals rather than the broader public was, she felt, a poor time investment. While she had been interested in academia before, the linking of success to publishing in prestigious journal steered her away from the profession.
Most other students, however, planned on becoming academics or publishing in their future careers. It is therefore important to create a strong professional image. One student mentioned that she would likely look at what the tradition is in a field. In a field with well-established traditions, even if it saddened her, she would likely publish in traditional toll access journals. Students expressed their interest in supporting open access journals, but at the same time were conscious of how important it is strengthen their CV. They stated that perhaps, over time, as the general trend changes, they will be able to publish more in open access journals, thereby supporting the initiative while not hurting their careers. Should open access journals become more accepted and gain prestige, students felt confident about the future of open access publishing and their ability to participate in it; “A hierarchy of journal prestige always exists. Researchers are always trying to get their articles accepted by the most prestigious journal they can.”
