Schimmer, R.

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Chapter 4Political PerspectivesControversial Issues in the Context of Open AccessBy Ralf Schimmer, Max Planck Digital LibraryWhere there is smoke, there is fire. If this clichécontains some truth, the dense smoke (the fre-quency and tone of the current debate on OpenAccess) must conceal a fire that is burning quitefiercely. The discussions and arguments on thistopic are intense and bitter, not only in Germany.The typical munitions from the arsenal of politicallobbying are deployed more and more openly:one expert opinion on the tail of another, oneposition statement quickly followed by the next.A competition of appeals, resolutions, dec-larations and petitions can be observed.In the Open Access debate, there is a collisionbetween the interests of large and powerful col-lective actors: the academic world, the publishingindustry, the public, and the community. An insti-tutional structure that for a long time had seemedto have found a stable balance that satis fiedeveryone has been put out of kilter for goodthrough the breathtaking speed at which theInternet has developed, progressive digitalisation,and the huge changes in academic communica-tion. As a result, issues which in the past wererarely of public concern and which were usuallynegotiated only in specialist circles have becomethe topic of wide-ranging public debate.When it comes to access to knowledge,scientists and scholars aim at maximum dis-semination, and emphasise the new possibilitiesoffered by the Internet with regard to immediacy,affordability and superiority. Nowadays, fromthe academic point of view, the dissemination ofresearch results looks something like this: mostresearch worldwide is carried out at publiclyfunded institutions, primarily universities. Theresults of publicly funded research are mostlypassed on free of charge to publishers, wherethey are prepared for publication. The publishersorganise and finance what is known as the peerreview process as the central quality-assuranceinstrument. This depends on the collaboration(which is as a rule unpaid) of publicly fundedscientists and scholars. At the end of the pub-lication process, publicly funded librarie s haveto buy back publicly funded research results,which have been quality assured by publiclyfunded scientists and scholars acting as review-ers, in the form of constantly increasing ratesof subscription to journals. Looking at the pro-cess like this, it would appear that the taxpayeris shelling out at a number of stages along theway. This in turn leads to talk about the privat-isation of public funds. The cost argument,however, is by no means the only one adducedby academics. According to them, there arenot just financial, but also legal and technicalbarriers that make the publication of academicresearch results in the Internet age far frombeing as efficient and sustainable as they wouldwish or think possible.76Political PerspectivesIf one considers the various academic dis-ciplines, one will see that there is no uniformattitude, indeed not even an unambiguousattitude, towards Open Access. The precondi-tions and cultures, as well as the possibilitiesand requirements in different academic fieldsare too distinct from one another to allow usto speak of a coherent academic standpoint.There are substantial differences between thenatural sc iences and the humanities, but alsobetween the individual natural sciences or evensub-divisions thereof. Even so, there is gener-ally a growing interest in the theme of OpenAccess. What unites academia in all this is thefeeling of living in what may be a revolutionaryperiod in which more and more paths for furtherimprovement of the effectiveness of researchare opening up. This suggests that acade mics’discomfort with the traditional publishing sys-tem and its current allocation of resources willincrease.This situation seems quite different from thepoint of view of commercial information pro-viders. Publishers argue that it is part of theirremit and their culture-historical achievement tocontribute to the dissemination of knowledge.Many publishers see themselves explicitly aspartners of academia, highlighting their mas-sive investment in academic quality assuranceand in electronic distribution platforms, andstressing the fact that never before has somuch content been available to scientists andscholars as today. Publishers counter the com-plaints of academics about qualitative restrictionby pointing to vast quantitative growth in theform of constantly increasing contents anduser numbers. They underscore their compe-tence and experience in ensuring the qualityand integrity of the content of articles, warningagainst underestimating the costs and organi-sational demands of electronic publicationand distribution processes, and insisting thatthere is no alternative to the current subscrip-tion model. They counter the brave new worldpromised by the Internet with warnings aboutthe danger of loss of quality in academic com-munication. In the eyes of publishers, OpenAccess threatens not just the academic journalas a cultural good, but also substantial invest-ments in information infrastructures, jobs, andultimately a whole industry. Optimum accessto knowledge, according to the publishers, willcontinue to lie in the goods and services offeredby commercial information providers.The points of view are no less diametricallyopposed when it comes to copyright and thequestion of what and whose interests this issupposed to protect. For artists who live bytheir creativity, the significance of copyrightis not the same as it is for academics whose77Chapter 4Political Perspectiveslivelihoods are guaranteed by their salariedpositions and whose main interest as a rule liesin their academic results being accessible to asbroad a public as possible. In particular, manyscientists and scholars see that they are surren-dering extensive rights to the publishers in theirpublishing contracts. They are of the opi nionthat copyright, at least where it has an effecton science or scholarship, ultimately serves theinterests not of the author, but above all of thepublishing industry. Not only many academics,but also other institutions and organisationswith a public remit, such as public-servicebroadcasters, schools, cultural institutions andconsumer protection organisations, see therestriction of rights in the digital media moreand more as a problem. With increasing vehe-mence, many are demanding a simple andunambiguous right of use, which for examplewould allow authors, after a defined embargoperiod, to make their own work available ontheir own homepages or on an institutionaldocument server for non-commercial use.The publishers also invoke the authors in thisregard, because they see themselves as theguardians of authors’ interests. Copyright is anecessary legal framework that creates legalsecurity and without it, commercial ac tivitywould be impossible. It takes the interestsof both authors and publishers into account.Without the exploitation rights defined in copy-right law, there would be no safeguard forpublishers’ investment and thus the frameworkwhich supports the whole publishing systemwould simply not exist. For this reason, the pub-lishing side has hitherto vehemently opposedthe demands for generous rights of exploitationfor the authors, and any legislation initiatives tothis effect.Apart from academia and publishers, the OpenAccess debate is increasingly extending toother institutions with a public remit, in par-ticular a cultural public remit. For some, OpenAccess represents the possibility of updatingtheir remit and opening up new fields of ac tivityfor themselves. The declared aim is alwaysto make publicly funded knowledge availableto the public quickly and free of charge (orat least, affordably). For libraries, the themeof Open Access is thus vital, as they are theones suffering particularly from having to paythe increasing costs of academic publica-tions while their budgets stagnate, and theytherefore see no solution but to cancel sub-scriptions. This has a negative effect for libraryusers, and of course is not in the publishers’interests either. Admittedly, some libraries alsofeel that resolutely implemented Open Accesswould inevitably lead to structural and admi-nistrative changes in universities and other78Political Perspectivesacademic institutions, and thus to a change intheir importance and responsibilities.In recent years, university publishing housesof German universities have witnessed a mini-renaissance in that they have been newly foundedor restructured with the remit of online publishingunder Open Access conditions. In this process,they are developing innovative approaches, bothtechnically and in the field of business models. Inthe schools sector, in the public-service media,in the Standing Conference of State Ministersof Education and Cultural Affairs, in consumerprotection, and in many other sectors with acultural sphere of activity, there is a hope of bet-ter access to information and a minimisation ofthresholds and barriers.Another area of discussion, albeit one that isnot a focus of attention, is free access to infor-mation held by public authorities and similarpublicly funded bodies. The demand for OpenAccess seems to many to be incomplete whileinformation not subject to data-protection con-straints, such as geographical, geological orclimatological data held by ministries or planningand environmental authorities, is also not madefreely available to the public and therefore toresearch. In archives, museums and other cul-tural heritage institutions, the debate on OpenAccess will doubtlessly intensify.This article is intended to cast some light onthe controversies that exist in connection withOpen Access. It has shown that the fracturelines that currently exist, in particular betweenacademia and the publishing houses, arenot negligible. But at the same time, it wouldbe wrong to paint a simple black-and-whitepicture. Neither of the camps is monolithic,and both show pioneering spirit and areadiness to innovate on the one hand anddefensive tendencies and obstinacy on theother. ‘When the wind of change blows,’ saysa Chinese proverb, ‘some build walls and theothers windmills.’ At the moment, both wallsand windmills are being built on both sides.But there is certainly room for hope that oneday the consensus will be broad enough tobuild windmills together, or — to be coherentwith the current potentials — entire wind-farms.79

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