Annals of Botany 95/2 © Annals of Botany Company 2005; all rights reserved
On-line Working and Open Access Publishing
If there is a theme to this year's editorial it is dealing with change as the technological, commercial and political climate in which we operate continues to evolve rapidly. This time last year, I was optimistic about replacing our existing, largelye-mail based, procedures for manuscript submission and evaluation with the latest version of a well-known web-based system. This anticipated change to our working practice was expected to bring advantages to authors, referees and to the Journal itself, not least because of its potential to shorten the time taken for evaluation work and for accepted papers to be published. But, for very good reasons, a year on finds us still using our old system; a situation that will probably remain with us for some time yet. The decision to delay implementation was taken after we found that the system fell short of the high standards for ease of use and intuitive navigation that we were hoping for; shortcomings we were reluctant to impose on our authors, referees, editors or office staff. At present, the Journal is working with the originators to develop a more user-friendly interface that will be appreciated by all the users when, finally, we make the transition to on-line working.
Another potential change that would hold greater long-term significance for Annals of Botany, and many other science journals, is ‘open access’ publishing. While not everyone agrees on what should or should not be included in open access publishing, an overarching feature is that there should be universal access to all scientific knowledge. This ideal accords with Article 1 of the UN World Summit on the Information Society that states ‘We, the representatives of the peoples of the World, assembled in Geneva ....... declare our common desire and commitment to build a people-centred, inclusive and development-oriented Information Society, where everyone can create, access, utilize and share information and knowledge, enabling individuals, communities and peoples to achieve their full potential in promoting their sustainable development and improving their quality of life, premised on the purposes and principles of the Charter of the United Nations and respecting fully and upholding the Universal Declaration of Human Rights’ (http://www.itu.int/wsis/docs/geneva/official/dop.html). Few would willingly stand against these high-minded sentiments on principle but, when decoded, they mean that access to scientific journals and papers on the web should be payment-free to the reader or to his/her employer. They also mean that the considerable costs of publication would then be borne by authors, not their readers. Payment-free reading also addresses the thorny question of why publicly funded institutions such as universities should pay for journals that publish the results of research that is almost entirely funded from the public purse in the first place. It might also moderate the sizeable and largely risk-free profits allegedly made by a small number of increasingly dominant publishing companies.
It is not my intention to debate the rights and wrongs of the arguments supporting a move to open access publishing in science overall. But, it is my responsibility to assess what might be gained or lost by Annals of Botany and by its readers and authors if the Journal switched to open access. The major gain is presumed to be greater use of the Journal's papers following unrestricted access to the full texts. But this advantage can easily be overemphasized. As things stand now, all papers in Annals of Botany enjoy universal cost-free access a year or so after they are published, while abstracts and authors' contact details are made instantly available for all papers. Furthermore, its Invited Reviews and Botanical Briefings have always enjoyed unrestricted cost-free access from first publication. In the longer term, a further perceived advantage of open access is cross-journal searching for up-to-date compatible data sets, especially in the field of molecular biology. However, despite these possible gains, the likely negative effects seem much more profound. Firstly, authors or their employers, or grant-giving bodies, would need to find in excess of £1000 for each paper appearing in the Journal. Secondly, the extra services that authors now receive cost-free would become available only on substantial additional payments. The services at risk include free colour plates, free reprints, and free printed copy to every corresponding author of the issue in which their article appears. Under open access, readers too may find the Journal less attractive and giving poorer coverage of their subject area because fewer laboratories can afford to publish. In other words, much good science might not be published in future. Cost-cutting measures to minimize author fees would inevitably also threaten our current practice of publishing additional Special Issues free of charge to subscribers and also raise the prospect of introducing a handling fee for all submissions. A further casualty could be the wider support Annals of Botany gives to the plant science community. In the past, this charitable work, overseen by the Annals of Botany Company, has included support for international conferences, sponsorship of lectures at plant science meetings in many countries, and financial help for students and schoolteachers wishing to undertake approved botanical projects.
This brief survey suggests that much of value would be lost with relatively little gained if open access was to be adopted wholesale by Annals of Botany. Under the present system the Journal is growing in popularity with authors and readers. Submissions have risen from 321 in 2000 to just over 500 in 2003, and, at the time of writing, are set to exceed 550 in 2004. Similarly, journal usage of the website has grown three-fold in the last 12 months while total citations have risen 30 % in five years. Clearly, we are satisfying a growing number of readers and authors, an unusual basis for fundamentally re-arranging our practices. However, a major proviso is that libraries continue subscribing to the Journal in sufficient numbers to cover our operating costs as a not-for-profit organization. Unfortunately this cannot be assumed, even though Annals of Botany charges one of the lowest annual subscription rates of any international plant biology monthly journal (£458/$746 for the electronic edition in 2004). There may be some advantage to be gained by allowing individual research papers open access status for a modest payment by authors. But, the creation of a two-tier system based on ability to pay strikes in the face of the principle of equality of opportunity implicit in the deliberations of the UN World Summit on the Information Society mentioned above. A fully fledged open access approach would also seem to work even more strongly against this principle since opportunity to publish would become more closely linked to ability to pay and less strongly linked to the quality and content of the science itself. The widespread adoption of open access thus risks impoverishing the creative sources of the scientific information that open access would make marginally more available. Nevertheless, Annals of Botany is keeping an open mind on the issue and remains committed to providing the most appropriate publishing service for the times.
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