Selective free access may be more practical than open access

Many universities in least developed countries, including countries in Africa, cannot afford subscriptions for online journals and other academic publications.

As a result, their students and academics have limited access to some of the academic resources they need for learning, teaching and research.

This has, among other things, contributed to inequality in how academic resources are accessed, thus adversely affecting education and knowledge production in universities with limited financial resources.

One solution that has gained traction as a means of resolving this problem is open access. According to the Right to Research Coalition, open access is about returning scholarly publishing to its original purpose and ensuring price does not prevent people from accessing academic material.

The concept of open access, though noble, continues to face resistance in publishing circles where profit margins are part of the sector’s business model.

Open access and quality

A question that has emerged is whether open access, despite its benefits, leads to the proliferation of poor quality research and the sidelining of African researchers.

Some open access journals finance their publications through money paid by authors known as ‘article processing charges’ (APCs).

This mode of financing has been blamed for the proliferation of poor research as some publishers are accused of publishing almost anything to secure money.

A few years ago, Jeffrey Beall, in an article for the American Association of University Professors, pointed out that open access publications that make authors pay may have a fake or easy peer review process.

“The more papers they accept, the more money they make, and they aim to make as much money as possible,” Beall noted at the time.

Furthermore, APCs are keeping African researchers out of top publications, according to an editorial in BMJ Global Health written by four African health researchers based in Congo, South Africa and Australia. APCs “are systemically excluding African researchers from publishing in high-impact open access journals.

“Researchers in Africa are typically not in a position to win or have access to grants that cover APCs as eligible research expenditure,” reads the editorial.

The prevailing system is creating inequalities

Publishers of academic material are often accused of seeking to make huge profits from academic research at the expense of knowledge proliferation.

However, while not perfect, the current publishing system guarantees quality and is making an important contribution to knowledge production. This view is well argued by Stephen Lotinga in an article titled ‘Think academic researchers are greedy? Do your research’.

Publishers, Lotinga argues, are running businesses and need to cater for costs and ensure continued profitability and viability.

That being as it may, great inequality in the access of academic publications exists and the main cause is the subscription pricing of publishers.

Replacing the current publisher set-up with open access, however, is not the answer. Open access does not always come with the high quality that has come to be associated with established publishers.

The solution to unequal access to academic publications lies with neither open access nor the prevailing status quo, it lies in what I have coined ‘selective free access’.

A case for selective free access

Not to be confused with open access, selective free access entails prominent traditional publishers granting poorly funded universities permission to access their publications while continuing to charge well-financed universities.

This can be done in many ways: poorly funded universities can be permitted a limited number of free downloads by traditional publishers or they can be allowed to freely download certain journals or academic material for a limited period of time (this is known as free access).

The main difference between free access and selective free access is that the former can be granted to any individual or institution, while the latter will be given only to poorly funded universities.

It does not seem realistic to assume, as many open access proponents do, that big publishers can publish free of charge or be overthrown from the publishing industry. They are deeply rooted and geared towards making a profit.

The best approach is to continue finding ways to make them reduce prices (such as boycotts) while ensuring that poorly funded universities are given free access.

Selective free access eligibility

A thorough process has to be developed for screening universities so that only those that genuinely cannot afford to subscribe to traditional publications are given free access.

Such a process may include application for free access to each publisher by individual universities. The applications will provide the necessary information needed for traditional publishers to determine whether or not the university in question ought to be granted selective free access.

A publicity coup for vilified publishers

The internet abounds with news articles portraying big publishers as greedy. One such article, titled ‘It’s time to stand up against greedy publishers’, claims publishers have, in some years, had profit margins that rival those of big oil, pharmaceutical and technology firms.

Publishers are portrayed as being purely profit-driven. This is an image that can be changed through selective free access which ought to be implemented as some sort of corporate social responsibility scheme on the part of big publishers.

The existence of a limited number of players publishing most of the world’s academic research means that, if each of them takes on selective free access as an initiative, universities only have to apply to a few publishers for them to gain access to the most important academic publications.

Why selective free access is more practical

While it would be ideal for everyone to freely have access to academic research, given the importance of knowledge, certain realities such as the need to cater for costs attached to undertaking and publishing research make it unrealistic to demand that publishers simply provide academic work at no charge.

Selective free access strikes a perfect balance between the unrealistic demands of open access and the high prices of publishers.

After all, the main arguments for open access have to do with advocating for the provision of academic research to those who cannot afford to pay. That does not necessarily mean academic research should be freely provided to everyone through open access at the risk of the future collapse of publishers, especially given the efficient role many of them have played in knowledge production.

An alternative way of financing selective free access

There is a huge possibility that big publishers may never implement the selective free access model. However, there is another way through which it can be financed: namely non-profit organisations.

Many non-profits have been financing open access. They can equally finance selective free access through paying subscriptions for financially incapacitated universities.

Selective free access from an ideological perspective

Open access as a concept is leftist in nature while the prevailing system whereby a few publishers control and profit from academic research is capitalism.

Open access, like any leftist-leaning concept worth its salt, eventually seeks to overthrow the capitalist order currently presiding over the academic publication industry.

Selective free access is a compromise between open access and the reigning capitalist system: it seeks to correct the free market failures of the academic research publishing industry, which have resulted in great inequality, without necessarily overthrowing the existing order.

Zachariah Mushawatu has completed a masters thesis on academic freedom at the University of Bergen, Norway, and is also the former national spokesperson of the Zimbabwe National Students Union, or ZINASU.