Restricting ability to view open-access journal articles in nations that have not reciprocated with policies to remove paywalls could provide an incentive to aid the global spread of open access, according to a European Commission expert.
Jean-Claude Burgelman, the European Commission’s open access envoy, said – speaking in a personal capacity – that one of the arguments against open access was that although publishers were willing to commit to it in Europe, large parts of the world had not yet done the same. This would leave these nations free to access articles through initiatives such as Plan S – a global open access plan unveiled last year by European funders under the auspices of the commission – when their own country had not reciprocated with similar plans.
However, Dr Burgelman said “in a digital world that argument doesn’t make sense”.
“You know who is downloading what: for example, Amazon knows if someone is in the US or the UK and shows them different prices,” he said. Therefore, the same could be done for those accessing journal articles, Dr Burgelman told a Westminster Higher Education Forum conference.
Some audience members questioned whether it was truly open access if certain people were restricted from viewing certain articles. However, Dr Burgelman said “we can’t wait for the whole world to be open access at once” so it was important to find an interim solution, which he called a “geo-specific access model”.
“We already know that there are different prices being paid for access to publications in the world, there are different models, so the geo-specificity is only another model that’s not so radically different," he said.
Dr Burgelman added that he personally believed others would quickly follow suit with their own initiatives and that global open access was an achievable goal.
The problem, he argued, is that there are no formal platforms that are fit for purpose to have a global discussion about initiatives such as Plan S. Implementing open access must be a bottom-up approach, perhaps carried out by a federation of regional coordinators or by the International Science Council, he added.
“If we really want to go global, we'll need to be more creative,” Dr Burgelman said. “We can’t change the direction of the wind, but you can change the policy”.
He said he already believed that open access targets, such as for Plan S, would be hit before their deadlines.
“By 2030, I hope that access to articles will be the most marginal part of what we talk about globally, and that by then Plan S will have disappeared in our rhetoric; instead we will talk about a science system that is much more immediate and collaborative than is the case now,” he said.
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Print headline: ‘We can’t wait for all the world to be open access’
