Chemical and Engineering
News
Letters -
More debate on open access
I am becoming
increasingly concerned by the actions of ACS.
First I read
that ACS is suing Google for the use of the word
"Scholar" in the Google Scholar search engine,
claiming infringement on SciFinder Scholar (C&EN,
Latest News, Dec. 10, 2004). Would House of Pancakes win a suit
against House of Carpets over a name? How many hundreds of thousands of dollars
in attorney's fees are going to be wasted on this?
Next I read in
Science (May 6, page 774) that ACS is lobbying Congress to shut down
PubChem, the new NIH-funded open-access database that
has some overlap with Chemical Abstracts Service. This ACS action is
fundamentally antiscience. New search engines and
databases stimulate creativity, innovation, and healthy competition. If Bell
Labs had kept all its information about transistors to itself, we wouldn't have
laptop computers today.
Then I read the
May 16 editorial that sees nothing good in open access and equates ACS
publishing to marketing BMWs. This comparison betrays just how far the "corporatization" of ACS has gone. The society has strayed
from its primary mission of serving chemists and chemistry, adopting the culture
of a for-profit corporation when it should be adopting the ethics of a library.
The protection of 1,200 CAS jobs in
The May 16
cover story on open access to the scientific literature nicely lays out the
choices before ACS as scientists increasingly demand freer access to their
science and libraries balk at the cost of the scientific literature. ACS has had
several opportunities to take a leadership role in this arena, for example, by
making the electronic backfile free after 12 months
(as recommended by all the editors of ACS journals). Open access in any form
increases readership; promotes the innovative use of information; and, if
practiced by ACS, could promote membership loyalty and journal subscriber
loyalty. The recent resignation of a Nobel Laureate from ACS is a warning (see
https://mx2.arl.org/Lists/SPARC-OAForum/Message/1977.html).
Unfortunately,
ACS has so far made only trivial concessions to open access. This conservatism
is increasingly making the society the target of criticism, when it is the
commercial publishers who are truly price-gouging our libraries. What the
C&EN story failed to emphasize is that the present cost of scientific
publishing is unsustainable. ACS is living off library budgets, and living
pretty high on the hog. With its greater than $1 billion in assets, ACS should
put pressure on the commercial publishers by opening up access to its backfile, making the society into one we love rather than
criticize.
Too much energy
and too many resources at ACS are being used to protect existing knowledge bases
and existing revenue streams rather than fostering innovation in the new arena
of creativity that is the Internet. I am mindful of the need for sound business
practices in a professional society, but ACS could easily change its
access/publishing business model, be more proscience,
and generate great public relations in the process.
Chris
Reed