Where’s the Money, Lebowski? Open Access and the Gift Economy in Research Publication

Should all scholarly research be open to the public?  This is an excellent question that goes beyond academia. The bigger question is: Should academic literature should be part of the gift economy” or should it remain in the “market economy?”  In the gift economy, the one who comes out on top is the one who gives the most away.  Its focus is not making money, but instead people donating their time, lending their knowledge, collaborating intelligence and pooling resources for both the betterment of the discipline and improving public knowledge.  On the surface, it appears to be crazy people who are working for free.  But in reality, there is a commodity exchange.

In John Willinsky’s, “The Access Principle: The Case for Open Access to Research and Scholarship,” Willinsky makes the case for open access in scholarly research.  According to Willinsky, the open access movement “is concerned with increasing access to more of the research literature for more people, with that increase measured over what is currently available in print and electronic formats. The open access movement is acting on a scholarly tradition that has long been concerned with extending the circulation of knowledge.”  Willinsky argues that open access is about human rights, greater circulation of knowledge, and increasing the impact of research.   He says that open access models of scholarly publishing will lead to the expanding circulation of knowledge, which will mean that research will be shared with more people.  This will move research from being only available to those on campuses with paid subscriptions, to people of every economic status worldwide.

As pointed out in the article, the print industry’s woes cannot be attributed to the rise of the internet.   People didn’t stop buying print because of the internet.   The problem was already there.  The internet only accelerated the industry’s downward spiral.  Willinsky notes that commercial publishing houses acquired new debt in an effort to make more money.  These publishing houses bought up other titles or created new ones in order to turn scholarly research into a purchasable commodity.  In order to make money off of this newly acquired debt, journal subscription prices were raised in order to pay for this, leading to numerous libraries canceling their subscriptions.

Willinsky, and others in the open access movement, are attempting to put the publishing back into the hands of the people who produce the scholarship.  He brings up an interesting issue of research production and copyright.  With the current state of academic journals, operating within the market economy, copyright is used to protect the publishers right to make money.   This would make sense if the academic was making money off their article’s publication, but that is note the case.  Authors hand their work over to publishers, in hopes of increasing their reputation and advancing their career.  They are not financial partners and not receiving royalties from their published work.  This is a contradiction to copyright laws, which were enacted in order to protect the creator’s right to make money off of their creation.

If authors are not making a dime off their work and the circulation of their work is decreasing as a result of the market economy’s ever-increasing subscription rates, would it not be more beneficial to submit your work to an open access journal?  You are still not making a dime off of the publication and you are almost guaranteed more views, thus helping advance your career.  According to Willinsky, “copyright interests of researchers are to have their work reproduced, read, and accurately cited among as wide a readership as possible. The economic interests of faculty are not hurt, for example, as are those of publishers, by the distribution of free copies of their published work.”  Due to the atmosphere of publishing in the market economy, researchers have no choice but to severe themselves from that industry.

In addition, Willinsky makes an ethical case for open access.  He says that it opens up the research field to universities in developing countries and that it can improve democracy by providing “a check and balance to the one-sided representations of interest groups, political parties, and governments.”  Greater circulation of research among the public could “encourage people to explore issues of interest in more depth, checking out the facts for themselves, asking questions and pushing for more work on a topic, rather than simply leaving such work to pundits and panels of experts.”  Why just rely on scholars, television pundits, or elite journalists to tell us “how it is?”  If research is available, people can test what is said, creating a more democratic system of information.

There is already successful and widely used open source software to help nonprofits, universities, and scholarly associations move to open access.  As reported in a 2002 New York Times article, these new web-based technologies eliminate other costs (in addition to the obvious publishing costs) and make global collaboration more efficient.

Are advocates for subscription paywall journals carrying the water for commercial publishers who only seek a buck?  Is there a vanity issue with supporters of commercially published journals, where some believe that only those at universities are privileged enough to access them?  Willinsky argues that it is the responsibility of the scholar to share their knowledge with as many people as possible.  Others have already benefited from embracing principles of the gift economy, isn’t it time for academia?