Mandatory Open Access « Cheap Talk

Mandatory Open Access « Cheap Talk 

Mandatory Open Access

April 2, 2009 in Uncategorized | Tags: economics, incentives, politics, publishing | by jeff

A debate is going on between Lawrence Lessig and Congressman John Conyers about a bill that Conyers is sponsoring. The bill would repeal an existing rule for NIH funding that requires funded research to be published in Open Acess journals.  In addition it would generally prevent federal agencies from imposing these restrictions in the future. A good place to start is here and here are Lessig and Conyers. (hat tip: sandeep.)

There is some debate about the legal issues but to me those issues appear to be a red herring clouding the main dispute.  There is probably one point of agreement: for-profit journals will be hurt.  The disagreement is whether or not this is a good thing.

Requiring open-access publication obviously fulfills the aim of getting the maximum social benefit from dissemination of publicly-funded research.  The marginal cost of distribution is zero, so the efficient price is zero.  But the bill’s proponents argue that a dissemination is only one of the services provided by journals.  Far more important is the evaluation and editing of submitted articles by the peer-review process.  They worry that a zero price means that open-access journals have insufficient incentive to invest in this process.  The result is that it becomes harder for outsiders to distinguish good, credible research from bad, sloppy research.

I have two points to add to this.  First, as an editor of an Open Access journal and a member of editorial boards for many commercial journals I can testify that the publisher’s revenues are not being used effectively (or in most cases, at all) in providing incentives for editors and reviewers to do a good job.  To the extent that the peer-review system works, it works because reviewers have external incentives like reputation, prestige, and plain old scientific integrity.  And these incentives work at least as well in the Open Access world.  (In fact, they seem to work even better since reviewers feel better about their work when it is serving the public interest and not the profits of publishers.)

Second, even if you disagree with the above it remains an empirical question which market structure would best provide material incentives for peer-review.  Open Access publishing prevents the use of distortionary prices for raising the funds to pay reviewers.  The alternative is a model in which authors pay for peer-review with submission fees.  Of course this is also distortionary because the social benefit of having a manuscript carefully evaluated may outweigh the author’s willingness to pay.

But let’s remember:  we are debating a policy about public funding of research.  Basic research is publicly funded precisely because the social benefit of the research outweighs the researcher’s private incentive.  Given this, the funding agency maximizes the value of its subsidy by funding not only the research itself but its dissemination.  This is achieved by requiring Open Access publishing and earmarking some of the funds to pay for peer-review.

Mandatory Open Access « Cheap Talk