Even before the open access movement had coalesced, a time bomb was being duct-taped to its foundations in the form of what became known as “hybrid” open access publishing. The first journal to offer hybrid open access, way back in 1998, was a learned society journal called the Florida Entomologist. As with all roads to Hell, the hybrid solution was introduced with the best of intentions.
Let’s back up a bit. “Hybrid” open access refers to the practice of charging a fee for a specific article to be made open access in an otherwise closed subscription journal. By paying an extra fee to the journal publisher, authors can make their article openly accessible despite its being published in a subscription journal. Costs could even be passed on to their institution, or their funding body, so that the author didn’t have to foot the bill when complying with open access mandates. Hybrid open access was originally promoted by open access advocates as a method of gradually switching from pay-to-read models toward pay-to-publish. David Prosser, the future director of the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC), proposed such a model and labelled such journals “hybrid” in a 2003 article in which he suggested that a hybrid model would “help provide a way for those journal owners who see these benefits to begin the transition from closed to open access.” Sadly, those journal owners did see the benefits. Publishers quickly realised that it was another profitable way to further milk the Great Cash Cow of Science.
Now, in addition to profiting from charging institutions subscriptions to read articles written, peer-reviewed, and edited voluntarily by researchers working at publicly-financed institutions, publishers
could now charge per-article fees in order to make those articles openly accessible. Combine this with the fact that those researchers were often reporting the results of research projects also carried out with public money, and you have what quickly began to be described as “double-dipping” of the public purse.
Imagine this situation: Researchers are generally employed by universities, which are largely publicly funded. A significant part of the researcher’s salary is therefore paid by the taxpayer. The researcher has a brilliant idea and writes a research proposal in order to apply for funding from the national funding agency – also a publicly funded institution – who agree that the idea is indeed brilliant and award the researcher a grant. So far, so taxpayer-funded. The researcher implements the programme of research outlined in their proposal, and the project eventually starts to bear fruit in the form of data, software,
improved methodologies, theoretical advances, and so on.
Investment of public funds in science is a sensible move by governments because they tend to reap dividends in the form of new innovations, improved healthcare, and other sorts of public goods, but use of public money brings with it some stipulations: namely accountability to the taxpayer, and here is the rub with hybrid open access. Having paid to support the research up to this point and not seen anything for their money, the taxpayer is faced with a fairly raw deal: either continue to not see anything for their money – because the results of the research will be published in a high-impact journal to which the vast majority of us do not have access, or pay twice for it to be made “hybrid” open access.
Open access is not some communist plot to overturn the tables of the moneylenders. Quite the opposite. It has the potential to spur innovation, create jobs, stimulate the economy, and drive economic growth. One of the major backers of open access publishing is the European Union: an entity that began life as a trading bloc, and which is composed of countries that have largely embraced a neo-liberal capitalism. They are concerned with ensuring transparency of public spending, providing value-for-money for their citizens, and stimulating innovation. The small companies, talented entrepreneurs, and crackpot inventors whose tinkering in garages often ends up transforming the latest scientific curio into an innovation that changes all our lives cannot afford the luxury of subscribing to expensive scientific journals. Paywalls therefore hinder the transformation of (publicly funded) research into innovations for use in both the public and private sector. For an economy the size of the European Union, even a small lubrication of the gears of industry can reap huge dividends. Opening up access to the results of research removes this barrier to innovation and acts as a force multiplier.
But hybrid open access is not open access. It is simply another sleight-of-hand by publishers to co-opt open access to their own ends. The development and spread of hybrid open access, driven ironically enough by funding agencies’ own open access policies, effectively sabotaged the open access project. Journal publishers had hit upon a method by which they could provide open access to those who required it, maintain their obsolete and expensive closed-access subscription model, while introducing yet another revenue stream to further fill their swollen coffers.
Open Warfare 