Research in Practice

The Open Access Conundrum

Virginia Wilson

Director, Centre for Evidence Based Library and Information Practice (C-EBLIP)

University Library

University of Saskatchewan

Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada

Received: 11 Aug. 2015 Accepted: 18 Aug. 2015

2015 Wilson. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons-Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike License 4.0 International (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly attributed, not used for commercial purposes, and, if transformed, the resulting work is redistributed under the same or similar license to this one.

Welcome to the brand new column, Research in Practice! As mentioned in the final EBL101 column in the last issue, Research in Practice is intended for those who “are using research in their practice, conducting research for their practice, and otherwise interested in the varied and vast topics pertaining to research in practice. The scope of the new column is broad, allowing for a variety of topics to be explored in a number of ways” (Wilson, 2015, p. 175).

The most common misconception of evidence based library and information practice (EBLIP) is that it only involves using research in practice. Of course, it’s not that simple, as there is more to EBLIP than research evidence, including user preference, what our library or info centre users want, need, or expect, and our professional expertise, the knowledge we bring to the table from our experience as practicing librarians. All three components need to be present before it’s really EBLIP. Still, the research evidence piece is what gives EBLIP its zing, and it’s probably the easiest piece to leave off when pressed for time. I’ve always felt it needs a little special attention.

So, where to start in a brand new column that focuses on something as broad as research in practice? How about access? Open access (OA), that is. Recently on social media, a public librarian lamented that while compiling references for a writing project, she was faced over and over again with the paywall: the vendor page indicating that the article she wanted was going to cost $XX.XX to access. She wondered why any librarian would publish in a non-OA journal. Retweets, replies, and commiserations followed, urging all librarians and library and information studies (LIS) faculty to publish in OA journals.

This got me thinking about why researchers still choose non-OA journals as publishing venues these days. I thought of the following reasons off the top of my head:

Journal prestige
Impact factor
Not fully aware of the OA option and its implications for research use
Belief that OA journals do not employ rigorous peer review or perhaps any peer review
Belief that all OA journals are predatory or that the risk of this problem is too high
Belief that all OA journals charge a fee to publish
Failure to understand what the fee is actually buying

So, if I can think of a list that long in just a few minutes, it suggests that there is still some work to be done in terms of educating researchers about the realities of OA. Of course, it begs the question, why don’t librarians and LIS faculty know better? I would suggest that we do know better, but there are those who are making the choice not to publish OA for a variety of reasons:

Prestige for tenure/promotion files
High impact factor for tenure/promotion files
Belief that a larger audience can be reached with a non-OA journal
Concerns about making a mistake and publishing in a disreputable OA journal
Author can’t afford and/or justify a potential fee for publication or won’t approach a journal to see if it will waive or reduce the fee

The second list is not intended to be a list of excuses nor am I pointing fingers. There are many folks in librarianship publishing OA or making their research available in repositories. It’s important to acknowledge that uptake of OA publishing has been slower in the humanities and social sciences than it has been in the sciences (Coonin & Younce, 2009). But, a recent study shows that more librarians and LIS faculty than ever are publishing in OA venues, although “librarians were confirmed to be the primary authors of OA articles on LIS” (Chang, 2015, p. 7). And, there are many reasons why authors are choosing to publish in OA journals:

Support for the principles of OA
Advantage of speed of publication
Most suitable vehicle for making the research widely accessible
Objections to commercial publishing models

The reality of the paywall and the choice not to publish OA hampers evidence based practice efforts. What is this research being done for? From my perspective as an evidence based practicing librarian, it’s to apply, to use, to inform, and to teach. What happens if research is not accessible except at a great financial cost? It’s not applied or used, it does not inform, and it does not teach. Or, if it does, it’s only to those who have privileged access to subscriptions. To have information stalled like that is not what librarians stand for.

And if we have no control over where researchers from other disciplines publish, surely we can look to our own discipline and make the right choices there. Librarian practitioner-researchers and LIS faculty members owe it to librarianship to make their research OA, either green or gold. As Chang points out, a “key to the success of OA journals is that authors are willing to publish in OA journals” (2015, p. 2). And when it comes to EBLIP and research informing the practice of librarianship across all library sectors, only OA makes sense.

References

Chang, Y.-W. (2015). Librarians’ contributions to open access journal publishing in library and information science from the perspective of authorship. The Journal of Academic Librarianship. Advanced online publication. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.acalib.2015.06.006

Coonin, B. & Younce, L. (2009). Publishing in open access journals in the social sciences and humanities: Who’s doing it and why. ACRL 14th National Conference Papers. Seattle, WA, 85-94. Retrieved from http://bit.ly/1htWo6s

Nariani, R. & Fernandez, L. (2012). Open access publishing: What authors want. College and Research Libraries, 73(2), 182-195. Retreived from http://crl.acrl.org/content/73/2/182.full.pdf+html

Wilson, V. (2015). EBL101: Riding into the sunset. Evidence Based Library and Information Practice, 10(2), 174-175. Retrieved from https://ejournals.library.ualberta.ca/index.php/EBLIP/article/view/24631/18435