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      Letter to the Editor: An Indian Perspective on Universal Open Access Publishing: Think of the Fire before Venturing Out of the Frying Pan!

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          Abstract

          Dear Editor, We read with great interest the opinion article discussing the publicly funded platinum open access (OA) model of publishing, and its contemporary relevance.1 We are clinician scientists from India, an emerging economy, however, still a lower middle income country.2 In this letter, we share our viewpoints regarding this, from a regional standpoint. The recent drive towards OA publishing, contributed in no small part by the emergence of plan S, is motivated by noble intentions. These include the desire to make all scientific knowledge freely accessible to everyone, with the ultimate aim that such knowledge can be best utilized for the betterment of mankind. The perceived reason for the emergence of the OA model was the need to improve access to subscription-based journals, for which libraries paid significant quantities of money. These costs, which had to be borne by the institutions hosting such libraries, were perceived to be a hindrance towards access to science, a significant proportion of which is publicly funded, conducted by scientists, a significant proportion of whose salaries are funded by public money. Thereby, it was considered reasonable to demand that all publicly funded research be published in OA journals.3 4 5 6 A critical analysis of the proposed plan, however, reveals significant concerns.3 First, there remain costs associated with scientific publishing, including, but not limited to, operating manuscript submission systems, editorial offices, copyediting, and printing copies for journals.7 Second, not all research that is published is funded research. Many a time, authors might conduct research, particularly observational research, investing their own time, while neither seeking, nor requiring, funding for the same. Third, studies are often published years after their completion, when it is likely that their funding might have ceased. This may particularly be true with respect to long-term outcomes of clinical trials.8 Fourth, the mandated shift to total OA, for journals publishing publicly-funded research, would inevitably result in development of mechanisms from the publishers of such journals to recover the costs of running the journals from some other source. A common source of such funds would be to ask authors to bear article processing charges (APCs), i.e., gold OA.9 Let us revisit the same arguments that we had earlier put forth for justifying the move to universal OA. Here again, the scientists, a majority of whom are publicly funded, conducting research, again a majority of which is publicly funded, have to pay APCs for getting their research published. Most authors who are able to pay APCs, would do so from money available from their research grants, or their institutions, which is, again, public money. Therefore, the public money being utilized for paying for subscriptions would now pay for universal OA. On the surface, this may not appear to be a significant trade-off. However, the underlying assumption that public money, to either pay for subscriptions to journals, or to bear APCs (gold OA), is plentiful, may not be true in most parts of the world, including India.10 The reality is that of limited funding for research in countries like India, understandably so, in view of numerous areas of equal, if not greater, priority than research, such as defence, social upliftment, and healthcare.10 Therefore, enforcing a utopia of universal OA upon the whole world, could conceivably limit the ability of authors from the developing regions of the world to publish their research in reputable, international journals. Mandating a shift to pure OA would not take away the reality that publishing journals remains a costly affair for the publisher, therefore, such fees would, inevitably, be derived from APCs charged to authors. A significant fear amongst scientists from developing regions would be that they simply cannot afford such publication charges. Therefore, the spectrum of scientific inequalities in the publishing world, as alluded to by Gajovic,1 shall inevitably widen, as scientists from developing nations may only be able to publish their work in national or regional journals. While most good-quality gold OA journals offer waivers on APCs for authors from lesser economically-developed regions not able to afford these charges,9 the reality remains that such waivers may not always be feasible, and APCs, even if subsidized, may be beyond the reach of authors from developing countries. As the index article has succinctly discussed,1 even in a high income country like Croatia, there may be authors and author groups who have to think twice before considering payment of APCs.1 As this particular article also mentions, many author groups might prefer to spend research funds to buy consumable items for research, rather than reserve such money to support gold OA.1 Our own analysis of journals from Southern and South-East Asia, listed on the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) as of 9th January, 2020, reveals that a majority of OA journals from this region do not charge APCs (Fig. 1). This possibly reflects the reality that most authors from these parts may not be able to afford APCs. Indeed, many society journals from India operate on the model of platinum OA, funded by the respective society while not charging the authors.11 There is no easy answer to this conundrum. The reality remains that publishing is costly, and these costs have to be borne from somewhere.7 In this respect, platinum OA probably remains the most feasible middle path, wherein public funds (as cited in the example of Croatia1), or national societies are able to bear the publication costs for OA. Further, we suggest that future iterations of plans for universal OA, while reasonably mandating publication of publicly-funded research as OA, should not mandate such journals publishing publicly-funded research to be purely OA journals. Otherwise, authors from vast stretches of the world may find their options to publish their work severely limited, and there remains a possibility that significant research from these regions may not get published. In view of the costs associated with publishing research as OA, as well as with further editorial processes such as post-acceptance typesetting and editing, it may ultimately be more beneficial to authors from low- and middle-income countries if greater flexibility and diversity of the available publication models is maintained.

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          Independent, Publicly Funded Journals Adhering to Platinum Open Access Are the Future of Responsible Scholarly Publishing

          Technical advances in digital publishing brought substantial changes to how we now deal with the essential element in producing new knowledge, namely, scholarly journals. Previously, paper-based journal issues were stored in libraries to be accessed by researchers. The printed issues could be borrowed, copies made, or reprints sent by colleagues. Every researcher used an impressive space for their own collection of selected publications to be on hand when needed, in particular during the process of new manuscript preparation. All of these practices became obsolete as the off-line paper version was transformed into a virtual online-ready data file. This transformation also created the impression that having a non-touchable manuscript equivalent would incur no costs related to this type of publication. The dream that knowledge would now be available to all was conceptualized as open access and it was a logical consequence of free flow and replicability of digital files. The end of scholarly publishing as a sustainable business was predicted, which was far from the truth.1 2 The business model of scholarly publishing in the open access circumstance of digital publishing was established soon after, and it now represents a viable, profitable and rather lucrative way of economic activity. Digital publishing is indeed connected with the investment in proper presentation and handling of digital files. Moreover, scholarly publishing involves a substantial amount of highly valuable professional work to be provided by experts. All of this is to be translated to a realistic cost of scholarly publication. To sustain the notion of open access, where end users would access a digital publication for free, there is a clear need to find resources in order to cover incurrent costs, such as the so-called article processing costs (APCs). The covering of APCs is necessary for both the profit and non-profit model of open access, although only those for-profit would add a profit margin to the costs. For simplicity of billing procedures, the invoice for APCs would be issued to authors (referred as gold open access), or the total publishers' cost could be covered either by the scholarly association or by public funding (resulting in platinum open access without fees to be paid during the publication process).3 4 The above explanation is a well-known story repeated here with the purpose of showing that there was a logical sequence of events that has led us to the current situation in publishing. Open access is growing, both preserving the position of the publishing business, as well as providing the important added value of open access to all, which characterizes the current status of advanced scholarly digital publishing. However, the model described above relates to an advanced level of knowledge production typical for highly developed research communities. In contrast, the perspective of emerging research communities is rather different, which needs to be considered and addressed. The major fear, when open access is observed from the viewpoint of emerging research communities, is that open access could paradoxically add to the global inequalities in knowledge distribution rather than diminish it, which is quite opposite to what was intended by the notion of having knowledge accessible to all.5 Inequality in knowledge production is a rising global phenomenon. The number of high impact publications and in general, academic excellence, favors selected locations across the globe.6 The causes for this inequality are complex and circular. The standard of research publications is related to the number and level of grants attracted, selection of PhD students, technology transfer and innovativeness. The level of research excellence is further related to a country's economic status and outcomes, providing to the industry new knowledge to be translated to market products. Subsequently, although the inequality of knowledge production is evident by analysis of published papers, reflecting the ability of the community to produce knowledge, it can also be extended to the ability of the community to absorb knowledge to enhance own economy. Having no own knowledge to absorb, the community would have difficulty in absorbing and profiting from the global knowledge access provided by open access. The fact that open access provides knowledge to everybody, does not warrant that this knowledge would then contribute to the capacity of the community to absorb the knowledge. To counteract knowledge inequalities and to diminish the gap between the best and the rest, APCs, which are to be charged to the authors as a part of the gold open access, represent a serious barrier. When we take Croatia as an example, Croatia is classified as a high-income economy by World Bank criteria, and subsequently has no reason to ask for any discount when invoiced for open access.7 However, Croatian researchers are not in an easy position. The APCs of open access are rarely eligible for funding or declared when requesting national financing. Due to the recent increase of APCs, publication costs in the total financing of a research group can be substantial. To give one example, our research group had the money to cover the APCs for a publication, however our collaborating group were rather upset about paying for open access, arguing that it would be wiser to invest in the consumables necessary to continue our research collaboration. In this situation, when it is unclear whether future experiments would be hampered by financial constraints, the argument for open access publishing is easily fading. In our research group, we have always given high priority to open access publications and have been successful in obtaining money for this purpose. However, we fully understand why our colleagues were not willing to jeopardize their experiments to support open access ideals. In addition to this perspective, paying for APCs as a part of gold open access has elements of the “reverse Robin Hood” phenomenon. Robin Hood was famous for taking from the rich and giving to the poor, whilst the reverse Robin Hood takes from the poor and gives to the rich. The fact that major pro-profit publishers are registered in restricted locations of the developed world is just a part of the narrative that APCs are part of the “reverse Robin Hood” phenomenon. The perception of APCs as a fair compensation for the service provided by for-profit entities is difficult to argue in the context when it competes with the basic financial resources for experiments. Paying for APCs has an unintentional humiliating effect on researchers in academia, who are financed by public money, and after prolonged experiments, paper preparation, thorough review and paper acceptance, are not eligible for publishing without payment, which seems to be aimed at supporting the pro-profit industry. Taking this perspective into account adds a surprising twist to predatory publishing being the unwanted distortion of gold open access. In predatory publishing, published papers are indeed open in the digital environment, however, they are not selected for publication in an ethical way.8 As the predatory publishers try to tap in to the profit source of established publishers, and are predominantly located in developing countries, one can assign the Robin Hood characteristics to them. This is even more exaggerated as some of the production centers of established publishers are indeed in the same countries hosting predatory publishers, making the difference in production quality negligible, and apparently, the analogous service provided in the same neighborhood in a predatory and non-predatory way. The barrier of an ethical approach of established publishers vs. a non-ethical approach of predatory newcomers could be blurred by the clear pro-profit strategies of both sides providing quite a controversy between Robin Hood- and “reverse Robin Hood”-driven approaches.9 The fact that Croatia does not provide clear financial resources of public money to cover APCs to the publishers located outside of Croatia is counteracted by a rather positive notion, unrecognized even within Croatia's own confines. Namely, Croatia provides public money for the journals published in Croatia, almost all of them being published independently from the major publishers and being part of platinum open access, i.e., not asking any APCs from authors. The full text versions of published articles in all of these journals are available from a central Croatian repository Hrcak (https://hrcak.srce.hr/). Many of these journals are highly respected among research peers, including Biochemia Medica, Croatian Medical Journal and Food Technology and Biotechnology. The ethical and publishing standards are highly important for the functioning of these journals, and they are actively engaged in spill-over of these standards in the region. The important achievement of the Sarajevo Declaration endorsed by several journals from the region highlights the importance of integrity and visibility of independent journals.10 The support provided by public financing originating from Croatian tax-payers is not exclusive to Croatian authors, as indeed the authors publishing in supported journals belong to countries from across the world. The journals' editorial boards understand the difficulties of authors coming from emerging research communities and in particular, the Croatian Medical Journal was the proponent of author-helpful policies, which provide a mentoring-like support for manuscripts having important results but lacking the corresponding features of style.11 The major disadvantage of these journals is that they lack the level of marketing and community appeal that the major publishers have, and their impact factor cannot compete with the best (being 2.202; 1.624; and 1.517 respectively in 2018 for the 3 journals mentioned above). Nevertheless, these types of non-profit journals, financed by public money, governed independently and reflecting the needs of local and global communities, reveal the major characteristics of the openness connected to Responsible Research and Innovations. Similar to Responsible Research and Innovations, being connected to societal needs and offering free services to academic colleagues can be referred to as responsible scholarly publishing. The activities of the responsible journals accumulate publishing and ethical practice within the community and allow newly generated knowledge to be connected to the technology transfer necessary for the absorption of knowledge related to the economic and social progress of the community. Addressing the gap between advanced and emerging research communities cannot be achieved only by implementation in emerging communities of the practices generated in an advanced environment. Due to the time delay of acceptance and adaptation of these practices, even if they would be systematically applied, the gap would still grow. Subsequently, the only way to close the gap would be to apply a disruptive approach using advantages already present in emerging communities which would propel them by fast tracking even beyond the level of the current world leaders. These disruptive advantages grow in the cradle of emerging communities asking to be recognized and utilized. One of the advantages aimed at knowledge production is indeed the publishing model of independent journals supported by public money based on platinum open access. Being free of dependence on financial contribution from the authors, they can indeed concentrate on increasing ethical standards and scrutinizing submitted manuscripts at a higher standard. The latter would depend on the quality of reviewers. However seeing a higher purpose, reviewers would eventually move away from providing their free services to pro-profit businesses, and rather, move towards non-profit, community based, and ethically justified efforts, which we refer to here as responsible scholarly publishing. Without the intention to replace the current massive operations of major commercial publishers, the small, independent and publicly funded journals outside of mainstream business, could represent a “craft-beer revolution” in academic publishing, becoming carefully curated arts and crafts for presenting new knowledge.12
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                Author and article information

                Journal
                J Korean Med Sci
                J. Korean Med. Sci
                JKMS
                Journal of Korean Medical Science
                The Korean Academy of Medical Sciences
                1011-8934
                1598-6357
                19 February 2020
                02 March 2020
                : 35
                : 8
                : e85
                Affiliations
                [1 ]Department of Clinical Immunology and Rheumatology, Sanjay Gandhi Postgraduate Institute of Medical Sciences, Lucknow, India.
                [2 ]Centre for Rheumatology, Calicut, Kerala, India.
                [3 ]Clinical Immunology and Rheumatology Services, Department of Internal Medicine, Postgraduate Institute of Medical Education and Research, Chandigarh, India.
                [4 ]Department of Rheumatology, King George's Medical University, Lucknow, India.
                [5 ]Department of Clinical Immunology and Rheumatology, Kalinga Institute of Medical Sciences, Bhubaneswar, India.
                [6 ]Department of Clinical Immunology, Jawaharlal Institute of Postgraduate Medical Education and Research, Puducherry, India.
                [7 ]Department of Clinical Immunology and Rheumatology, Sanjay Gandhi Postgraduate Institute of Medical Sciences, Lucknow, India.
                Author notes
                Address for Correspondence: Durga Prasanna Misra, FRCP. Department of Clinical Immunology and Rheumatology, Sanjay Gandhi Postgraduate Institute of Medical Sciences, Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh 226014, India. durgapmisra@ 123456gmail.com
                Author information
                https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5035-7396
                https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5842-1877
                https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0813-1243
                https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4342-9547
                https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4631-311X
                https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1518-6031
                https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4508-1233
                Article
                10.3346/jkms.2020.35.e85
                7049622
                32103647
                ba4030fa-e640-4860-9617-3ff19d13771b
                © 2020 The Korean Academy of Medical Sciences.

                This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License ( https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

                History
                : 17 January 2020
                : 05 February 2020
                Categories
                Correspondence

                Medicine
                Medicine

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