Journal publishers are pioneers of Web 2.0

Eric Mockensturmhas just posted a publication agreement proposed by provosts of several universities. In structuring iMechanica, we have tried to avoid the question of open access, and simply asked the questionwhat if all papers are already openly accessible. Many mechanicians have discovered iMechanica, and theregistered users have recently passed 1000. Recentdiscussions of copyrighton iMechanica have prompted Eric to post his entry, which has just led to this one.

For some time, publisher-bashing has filled gaps in lunch-time conversations among researchers. On the surface, the situation looks rather absurd. Researchers write articles, which are then distributed by publishers, at a price, back to the researchers. Before the arrival of the Internet, this practice was easy to justify: distributing printed materials cost money. In the time of the Internet, this practice becomes questionable.

There seem to be two obvious questions: cost and accessibility. The question of cost is complex, and will be settled only when new business models equilibrate with the new technologies. Someone has to pay, if not for distribution, but for costs associated with running journals and pursuing technological innovations. As an example, open-access journals such as PloS charge authors a fee for publishing a paper. Similar options are offered by Applied Physics Letters and Journals of Applied Physics, as well as selected Elsevier journals. The price tags vary, but are on the order of $1000s. An author can pay to have her article openly accessible.

The model of open access paid by authors puts yet another burden on the researchers to raise additional money. Furthermore, I don't believe it requires a revolution to make articles universally accessible. They already are, although sometimes messy to get what you want. For every paper, the publisher offers apage like this, which is openly accessible and contains the abstract of the paper and information of the authors. If a paper belongs to a journal you or your institution subscribe to, you can download the paper. If you do not have access to the journal, you can contact the author by email to request for an electronic copy. If the paper is too old and you cannot contact the author, you can buy the article.

Of course, the process is sometimes annoyingly cumbersome. But many issues can be resolved by software engineering. For example, thisweb page of a paperdoes not allow you to download the full text of the paper, but your institution subscribes to IJSS, the journal that publishes this paper, so that you can localize the above web page byinserting a proxy string, and then download the paper. If the process sounds too technical to you, it is exactly the point: the issue can be resolved by soft engineering, which can be simplified if someone puts effort into it. No drastic change of business model is necessary. In fact,Google Scholarnow has a feature that automatically localizes a web page of a journal. One can also imagine anAmazon-like entityto sell individual papers. With one click, a researcher will download the paper, with the bill directly sent to the accounting department of her institution.

In the middle of theWeb 2.0炒作,我们往往会忘记,杂志出版商基于“增大化现实”技术e the pioneers of Web 2.0. They fit the essential characteristic of Web 2.0: Publishers providea platform for users to share content created by users themselves. In fact, the publishers have been doing just that long before the Internet. They have even long recognizedThe Long Tailof their business by creating so many journals to make sure that everything publishable do get published. They had the vision (not to mention the business interest), despite the complaints by distinguished mechanicians likeEli Sternbergabout the upcoming International Journal of Shear Stress. Also, services like the Web of Science have long been harvestingThe Wisdom of Crowds, exploiting collective behavior of users to rank contents and users.

Like all Web 2.0 businesses, journal publishers will have to yield to wishes of the users (i.e., the researchers), sooner or later. It is entirely possible that, in not too distant future, the most profitable and user-friendly business model in this space is open access. I'm optimistic that the journal publishers, in pursuing their enlightened self-interest, will continue to pioneer innovations in the Age of Web x.0.

To help our colleagues and friends in the business of journal publishing, perhaps we should act like users of any Web 2.0 services, and write a list of items that we wish that they provide. Theprovosts's agreementposted by Eric is an example of such a user-generated wish list. At this stage, there is no need to converge to a single wish list. Let all users voice complaints and offer suggestions, and let journal publishers (open or closed) compete among themselves, and innovate.

We will all eventually adjust to the new environment of the Internet. The question is how. I grew up in China, and have long known revolution often is less effective than evolution in bringing change, and that peddlers of revolution rarely have anything useful to offer.