Last Spring, while we were in the middle of the debate over the Research Works Act, former ACRLog blogger Barbara Fister issued “a call to action.” As she wrote:
“Many of our scholarly journals are published by the very corporations that supported the Research Works Act and which will continue to do what they can to maximize profits, which means making research in librarianship unavailable to many. Either we believe in open access, or we’re okay with the enclosure of knowledge. To preach open access without practicing it is baffling to me.”
For years even our own Association contributed to the “enclosure of knowledge,” but now I am the editor of an open access journal to which many of you subscribe. I was proud when ACRL lived up to its ideals by making the content of College & Research Libraries openly available – first to the pre-prints, then to the current content, and (within the next few weeks) to the complete back-file back to 1939 – and I am proud of our commitment to author rights. When you read our “instructions for authors,” it’s clear where we stand: “[the] agreement between ACRL and the author is license to publish. The author retains copyright and thus is free to post the article on an institutional or personal web page subsequent to publication in C&RL.”
Unfortunately, not everyone stands with us, and we are not the only publisher of scholarship in library and information science. We received another reminder of the fact that Fister’s call to action still echoes over this past weekend when the entire editorial board of Taylor & Francis’s Journal of Library Administration resigned their positions. In an explanation of this decision already described in blog posts by Brian Mathews, Jason Griffey, and Chris Bourg, former JLA editor Damon E. Jaggars wrote:
“The Board believes that the licensing terms in the Taylor & Francis author agreement are too restrictive and out-of-step with the expectations of authors in the LIS community . . . . A large and growing number of current and potential authors to JLA have pushed back on the licensing terms included in the Taylor & Francis author agreement. Several authors have refused to publish with the journal under the current licensing terms. Several others have demanded to add addenda to the author agreement to clarify what they find to be confusing language about the exclusivity of the publishing rights Taylor & Francis requires . . . . Thus, the Board came to the conclusion that it is not possible to produce a quality journal under the current licensing terms offered by Taylor & Francis and chose to collectively resign.”
The former editorial board of the Journal of Library Administration is being justly recognized for taking a stand on behalf of their authors and on behalf of a field that has made a commitment to promoting author rights, but Fister’s original question still pertains: given our commitment as a field to open access and author rights, and given what we know about the limitations of the still-predominant model of scholarly communications in our field, and given the easy access that many of us possess to the tools that allow for the launch of high-quality, open access titles that may fill the niche currently held by commercial journals, why are the actions of the former JLA board still so unusual? Why do so many of us still serve as the editorial leadership for journals whose policies do not reflect our ideals? Why do I? In the interest of full disclosure, I will note that, while editor of College & Research Libraries, I continue to serve on a number of other editorial boards, including those of journals published by commercial publishers whose policies regarding open access and author rights may not be precisely what I wish them to be. Fister suggested that I re-think that service a year ago, but I’m slow. Now Jaggars and company have suggested it again. It’s time for me to look at this seriously, if only because it will give me more time to promote the development of C&RL as an open access journal and to collaborate more effectively with other OA journals in library and information science.
How about you?