Article on Open Access in *Science Editor*

From: Lee Miller <lnm2_at_CORNELL.EDU>
Date: Sun, 8 Aug 2004 21:31:18 -0400

Dear Stevan,

"Open Access and the Future of Scientific Publishing" by Carrie Lock,
recently appeared in *Science Editor*, vol. 27, no. 4, pp. 22-23. This
article, like many in the popular press, deals exclusively with open-access
journals. The BioMed Central, PubMed Central, and PLoS models are briefly
described. It does not once mention the possibility of placing an article
in an open-access personal, institutional, or discipline archive while also
publishing it in a peer-reviewed toll-access journal. Institutional
archives are mentioned only in the context of some future model of
publishing wherein journals will exist only to offer a Seal of Approval to
archived articles.

What bothers me about this article is that it did not appear in the popular
press. It appeared in a professional journal for editors, published by the
Council of Science Editors. This is an organization for which you presented
a Keynote Address on self-archiving at their annual meeting in 2003. A
report of that address appeared in the same journal last October:

Miller, Lee. 2003. Author/Institution Self-Archiving and the Future of
Peer-Reviewed Journals.
A Report on the Keynote Address by Stevan Harnad at the 2003 Annual Meeting
of the Council
of Science Editors. Science Editor 26 (5): 150-151.

As you and David Prosser have pointed out in this Forum, 84% of the 8242
journals surveyed to date have given their authors the green light to
self-archive their articles in open-access archives. It astonishes me that
authors of articles on open access continue to pretend that open-access
journals provide the only way to offer free world-wide access to their
articles.

When are authors going to wake up? They can increase the impact of the
articles they publish in respected, well-established print journals simply
by making those articles instantly available in open-access archives. The
increased impact inevitably will increase the stature of the journals that
published those articles. That's the message that many editors and
publishers ... and authors of articles on open-access publishing ... seem
to be missing.

Lee Miller





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Lee Miller
185 Midline Road
Slaterville Springs, NY 14881 USA

(607) 539-7508
lnm2_at_cornell.edu
Received on Mon Aug 09 2004 - 02:31:18 BST