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A BRAND-NEW PhD from the University of X proudly tells his mother he’s just
published his first refereed journal article. She asks him how much he was paid
for it. He makes a face: “Nothing,” and then begins a long, complicated
explanation.

A fellow researcher at the same university sees a reference to the article.
He goes to the library to get it, but meets the response: “Not subscribed to.
Can’t afford that journal.

Meanwhile, an undergraduate sees the article cited on the Web and clicks on
it. The publisher’s website responds: “Access denied: only subscribing
institutions have access to this journal.” (The undergraduate loses patience,
gets bored, and clicks on Napster to download a bootleg CD.)

Years later, the same PhD is now being considered for tenure. His
publications are good, but they’re not cited enough, haven’t made enough of a
“research impact”. Tenure denied. So it’s back to applying for research grants.
But his research findings just haven’t had enough impact: not enough researchers
have read, built upon and cited them. Funding denied.

In desperation, he decides to write a book. Publishers say it’s interesting
work, but decline to publish it. “Wouldn’t sell enough copies. Not enough
universities have enough money to pay for it. Their purchasing budgets are tied
up in their inflating annual journal costs . . . “

He tries to put his articles on the Web, free for all, to increase their
impact. The journal that originally published them threatens to sue him and his
server-provider for violation of copyright. He asks his publisher: “Who is this
copyright intended to protect?” The publisher replies: “You!”

Something is clearly very wrong here. Researchers give away their work; all
they ever want in exchange is that all potential users should be able to access
it. The Web has now created this possibility of free universal access. Unlike
recording artists, however, who want to earn royalties from the sale of their
work, and so do not want users to be able to download it from the Web for free
(yet they can, and do), researchers do want users to download their work for
free (yet they can’t).

So what are researchers to do? Their growing frustration has lately inspired
a wide range of literature-liberation scenarios, from the far-fetched Utopian
(“Give up submitting your work to non-giveaway journals”) to the frankly
crackpot (“Give up peer review [refereeing] and journals altogether”) to the
outright cop-out (“Settle for the public freeing of access to your findings 6 to
12 months after you have published them”).

When print was the only medium of dissemination, there was no alternative to
toll-gated access. The Web era has provided a method of liberating the refereed
research literature online without giving up journals or peer review, and
without violating copyright. This “Self-Archiving Initiative” is well within
reach and long overdue.

To free this literature virtually overnight, all its authors need do is to
self-archive their own portion of it online in their institution’s “e-print”
archive. Free archive-creating software (www.eprints.org) is now available to
make all such institutional e-print archives “interoperable”
(www.openarchives.org), hence “harvestable” into one global virtual archive
(http://cite-base.ecs.soton.ac.uk/cgi-bin/search).

Free for everyone, everywhere, forever.