Reflecting on the Open Access debate

Topic 5 provided me with the opportunity to further explore the debate around open access information, further than my own personal experiences alone, and look at the advantages and disadvantages from the content producer’s point of view – rather than just the view of my own frustrations when trying to access a journal which is blocked by a paywall!

Many of the posts this week, like my own, centred on academic journals. I did find it particular interesting to read Alysia’s blog, which instead focussed on Newspapers, which is something I did not consider in the open access debate. I also enjoyed considering Yee-Ping’s economist’s perspective on open access, and how the internet can be seen as a marketplace to buy and sell goods.

I believe that open access should be a widely adopted model, especially where the content published has been funded. As mentioned previously, Alysia’s blog brought up the issue of newspapers, and this was reiterated with a comment on my blog from Evie. It is not something I had had the chance to consider during my blog post, and having considered it I agree with Evie that ‘businesses who would usually charge for a service shouldn’t feel pressured to now supply for it free simply because it’s become digitalised’ – we would pay for a paper newspaper – why shouldn’t we pay for the online version? Therefore, my arguments on increasing the availability of open access now specifically apply to academic research journals.

There was a very clear conclusion this week that making content freely available for all would be extremely beneficial for both institutions and individuals. Considering the pros and cons in terms of the content producer’s point of view, I think the debate still remains unresolved. I think it is important to highlight some of the figures I presented this week, such as the fact that, according to the Study of Open Access Publishing (2011), when researchers publish in fee-based open access journals, most of the time the fees are paid by funders (59%) or by universities (24%). Only 12% of the time they are paid by authors. Despite this, other disadvantages remain and have been highlighted surrounding the issues of quality control, decrease in revenue and association with lower quality work. There is clearly a need for balance when content is made freely available, and controls need to be put in place to maintain high quality work, which can be made freely available to all. At this current moment in time, I would argue that it is not possible to satisfy both parties.

I still maintain my original viewpoint that, in terms of academic journals, open access should continue to grow, and I would urge anyone who hasn’t seen my tweets or comments about the open access button to download it onto their browser. It’s a tool which is being used to map the global effects of paywalls – and hopes to help enable access to more open access content! It can be downloaded at https://www.openaccessbutton.org/.