Part 1: What’s Stopping Open-Access Research?

One thing I’ve seen complained about on the internet is the pay-walling of scientific journals. It makes sense why people are frustrated. If the research is largely funded through tax dollars, why is it unavailable to the public’s benefit?

I read a Vox article that explains that this issue is largely a result of middlemen. Since journals’ business model is based upon securing rents to those interested in the research, they must charge either the producer of the goods, or the provider of the goods. Either one must pay entry to cross the wall, or pay to associate with the wall. While I think this provides a good explanation of how journals make money, I’m not sure this provides a compelling reason to continue using closed-access journals, especially at the rates that are being charged.

So, why are closed-access journals still used at the institutional level, when the Internet exists? Two reasons: prestige & inertia. Most of the journals have already established reputations and there’s well-defined processes associated with the research. Yet, fees in the realm of $9,500 to display a document on the internet seems absurd in our current era. According to Wikipedia, companies like these have profit margins of around 40%, leading me to conclude that there should be room and opportunity for arbitrage. Wikipedia also notes that the two most important inputs: articles and the peer review process are not handled by the publishers.

I think with any degree of coordination, these problems can be solved, and can significantly reduce premiums that are paid by libraries. One core challenge is that departments creating the content have little reason to impose a cost of changing procedure without receiving a benefit. Coordination of this problem is challenging, making arbitrage challenging, but definitely doable.

In a future blog post, I will expand on how specifically an open-source website can serve as an alternative to traditional journaling, how I think academics can solve this collective action/coordination problem, and how I personally will create a website and help open research up.