Why the American Numismatic Society is Open Access . . . and why your institution, learned society, publisher, etc., should be, too

Academic and scholarly publication is at a crossroads as publishers, authors, and institutions of research and higher learning considerboth the financial and 'moral' implications of publishing new scholarship as Open Access. The American Numismatic Society (ANS) has adopted what somewould consider a progressive approach, while others would find these points to simply be common sense and good manners.

As you read the points below, I challenge you to formulate arguments against each one that does not include money. Profit and loss in academic publishing is a very real concern, but it can be demonstrated (and has been in my nine years of experience as an academic publisher) that publishing niche scholarship is (and likely always will be) a money-losing venture. Publication is often built into the mission statements of learned societies, and funding needs to be sought from sources beyond book sales and journal subscriptions to keep the publishing enterprise sustainable.

The ANS has addressed each of the following problems in its efforts to make published research open without taking a hit financially.

Problem: Profit-Based Publishing
One of the greatest mistakes a learned society or institution can make is to become focused on making its publications turn a profit.Scholarly publications typically cater to a niche market and sell dozens or occasionally hundreds of copies over a period of three years. Salesbeyond three years of the original publication date are rare. If an organization recognizes the fact that it will realize little (or no) profit fromthe sale of what it publishes, it can strategize how to pay the not inconsiderable production costs. These costs can be built into annual budgets,can be inserted into grant applications for projects, and can be sought in the form of subventions. Basing choices of what to publish by what thepublisher (or Board) thinks will sell can be a mistake, especially when what is to be published fulfills the mission of the parent institution.

The ANS favors a mission-based approach to publishing. It understands that some publications will never recover their production costs, but nevertheless that the content is exceedingly important in fulfilling the Society's stated goals for research and dissemination of that research.

Problem: Print-Only Publishing
Arguably the biggest roadblock to Open Access research is publishing solely in print. Publishing in print restricts access to the contentlocked on the pages and favors those readers with library access or the ability to purchase the publication. Print editions of scholarship, whileuseful to many, are themselves silos of information, unable to interact with anything other than the active reader. This is the opposite of OpenAccess. Making print editions available online as digital editions unlocks that content, making it searchable, and perhaps more importantly, givesthe content the ability to link to any other data available openly online, as well as making itself available to be linked to from other onlinesources.

The ANS will continue to produce print editions of scholarship, but it will make digital editions of all of its publications past, present, and future available online as Open Access. Doing so allows the ANS to play well with others, to be a good academic citizen, and to contribute to the work of others. By sharing publications openly, this guarantees that multiple copies will be made and circulated thereby preventing loss of that content should something happen to the original publisher.

Conclusions
If Open Access publication of content is not part of your institution's/society's/publisher's strategy, it should be. As authors and asconsumers of content, it is within your rights to ask (and in some cases demand) that your research (or the scholarship you need) be made openlyavailable online. Open Access does not require the cessation of the sale of that same content. Many readers still prefer to read printed books andjournals, and will pay for them (or will ask their libraries to pay for them). Most readers prefer a suite of media with which to work, using printin concert with digital as they produce new scholarship.

The end goal of the production of that scholarship should not be to make money, but instead to advance the humanities, arts, and sciences. The best way to do that is to make that scholarship available immediately to the world upon publication. Openly. The ANS hopes that other institutions, learned societies, and publishers will share in this approach to placing published work online without cumbersome restrictions. The Internet is genetically predisposed to facilitate such sharing, which makes it the greatest enabler of advancing our collective intellectual enterprise.

To read the complete article, see:
ON OPEN ACCESS (www.anspocketchange.org/on-open-access/)