SOPA and the AAP: Dumb and Dumber? Publishers seek to crush open access in US Congress

Happy New Year all; and if you'll indulge me I'd like to share some personal opinion on some rather troubling news to come across the pond.

As we all sidle into a new year, over in the States it seems that the season of goodwill to all men has faded faster than ever.  As you can't help to have seen in the last week or so that once again publishers in the body of the Association of American Publishers (AAP) are rattling their sabres and doing their level best to get the US Congress to push through the SOPA bill.  Bringing with it some of the worst aspects of our own lamentable Digital Economy Act 2010, SOPA seeks to strengthen copyright in such a way that will (at worst) do pretty awful things to the Internet; along the way scuppering open access to publicly funded research.

Hopefully you all had a chance to read the AAP's Christmas present "Publishers Applaud Research Works Act, Bipartisan Legislation To End Government Mandates on Private-Sector Scholarly Publishing"; and personally I'm thankful I avoid reading it to the new year, lest I have choked on my turkey with bitter disgust.  As a (kinda) librarian I think the particular phrase that stuck in my craw was the following:

Journal articles are widely available in major academic centers, public libraries, universities, interlibrary loan programs and online databases. Many academic, professional and business organizations provide staffs and members with access to such content.

That is if you can afford their vastly inflated prices of course and I would be shocked to discover any public libraries in the UK whom had the fiscal ability to purchase research journals for their readers.  On top of this once again we see the private sector, on whom so much of our economy hangs, ignored.  They don't buy journals for the most part and rely heavily on open access repositories like those you and I run to provide access to the publicly funded research our taxes pay for. 

And a Happy New Year to you too Elsevier!

Publishers it seems seem to think we live in a dream pre-internet world, where the exchange of publications could be tightly controlled through subscriptions and licensed interlending.  Repositories have actually respected the rights base of publishers for many years, seeking only to archive and share where permitted.  One can almost sense that if this bill was to become law that open access advocates would push harder than ever for academics to disregard copyright law and start freely sharing and making available articles; not in controlled institutional repositories but on file sharing sites like the Pirate Bay.  Let's see how long they would be able to defend their old world economic model then.

I am naturally, not advocating the above, but it doesn't take a large suspension of disbelief to see the scholastic publishing world going down this route.  Do we really want anarchy in the OA?  Many of the academic evangelists of open access would probably be delighted to see such a move, as they feel that those of us in the repository community cleave too closely to respecting traditional understandings of author and publisher rights. 

My initial title to this post is sadly unprintable and doubtless those of us working to unlock the IP created by our scholars in open access can only roll our eyes in horror as yet another road block seems to be placed in our way.  It does rather raise the spectre of a similar bill being brought to bear in our own Mother of All Parliaments as I'm sure we've all heard from various publishers just how important they are to the UK economy; forgetting as usual that HE and the research conducted within it is actually worth far more.

Thankfully for those of you looking for a far more knowledgeable, less irascible and more detailed debate on the subject will find that other correspondents have written some eloquent demolitions of the bill and in particular the lamentable support that publishers seem to be throwing behind it. 

• The stupidity of SOPA in Scholarly Publishing
• Update on publishers and SOPA: Time for scholarly publishers to disavow the AAP
• Research Works Act H.R.3699: The Private Publishing Tail Trying To Wag The Public Research Dog, Yet Again

Every one of you needs to make sure that you bring this potential bill and the moves by publishers to tighten their stranglehold on the intellectual publication market to the attention of the movers and shakers in your own organisation.  The academics, the ProVCs for research and if you've got the metal the VCs as well.  You might also bring it to the attention of your serials and periodical librairans, especially those with links to publisher backed bodies like UKSG. 

Frankly it's time we stopped letting the publishers have their own ways in this arena!

As an organisation UKCoRR's voice may not be overly loud (yet), but we try hard for our members!  Certainly we lack the multimillions and billions of the publishing corproations and their lobbying potential, but that doesn't mean we can't all make a noise.  Publishers might not listen to those of use in supporting services but they need to listen to researchers; without whom they wouldn't have a publication to stand on.

But as always UKCoRR members, the Committee welcome your take on this!

UKCoRR: Opposes the SOPA and the APP's Position
(And now my offical hat back on)

UKCoRR's not in the habit of making policy statements; which is perhaps something that will have to change this year (and a topic for debate at the January meeting) but I can say that with the full support of the Commitee and as the Chair of this organisation I have no hesitation in stating that UKCoRR is firmly in opposition to SOPA and the AAP's position with respect to it.

Princeton bans transfer of academic copyright

As you'll have seen from the UKCoRR discussion list Princeton University in the US has taken the dramatic step of banning academics from handing over all copyright to publishers. I think this is an interesting development, and perhaps is the next step on from institutional mandates. While I can only applaud the bravery of the faculty of the institution and wish them every success, I do think that just like mandates that a note of caution must be sounded.

Mandates, if you listen to some proponents, are the cure-all of the open access world. Those of us in UKCoRR know the practical truth though, that while they are indeed powerful statements of commitment to open access from an institution's SMT getting academics to comply with them can be a struggle. Mandates are the stick when contrasted with the carrot of open access benefits that most of us advocate to our academics. However, they are a toothless stick (if I may mix my metaphors) in most cases - I've yet to hear from any UK institution where an academic whom has ignored a institutional mandate has ended up in hot water over it.

They're also a stick that we repository managers and administrators can't wield - the image of the reaction I'd get from telling an academic to they HAVE to deposit or else...well it ends with me being unceremoniously tossed out of their office to derisory laughter. Mandates only really work for the vast majority of staff when they are applied and enforced - a role for far more senior staff to engage with.

And that's where I wonder how the Princeton policy will be applied. Will we hear of an academic, whom wanting to publish in a prestigious journal that requires the standard rights transfer flaunting the policy getting into hot water, being suspended or sacked as a result? I seriously doubt it. No institution worth its research salt is going to want to damage it's reputation in this way.

Although it seems in the case of Princeton that this policy has come from the faculty themselves, so perhaps each and everyone of them is indeed highly enlightened and switched onto the broad benefits of open access. If so, someone send me details of how to apply for a job there as it sounds like a place I want to work!

Years ago I remember Bill Hubbard quoting me a factoid that the UK HEI sector was worth more to the UK economy by billions of pounds that the UK academic publishing industry. I suspect the same may be true in the states, so perhaps this is the rousing of the sleeping giant, no longer willing to passively accede to the publishers' dominion over them. Will Yale or Harvard or other Ivy League institutions follow suit? If they do, then perhaps this trickle of affirmative open access action will become a tidal wave that may spread to Europe.

What happens over the coming months will be interesting. Will publishers, in fear of offending one of the US' most prestigious institutions bend to their will? I try to think of what would happen if Oxbridge went down the same route in the UK - I think some smaller publishers would change their policies, but the big multinationals? Doubt it, I really do.

At the end of the day as the article says, chances are the path to open access will continue to be complicated by publishers as they defend their established economic model. But at least that means for us repository types that the world we work in will continue to be a complex and engaging, if not a little frustrating, one.