The Open Access Button
is designed to help researchers easily report when they hit a publisher paywall
and are unable to access scholarly publications (because they lack a paid
subscription to a particular journal or database or have not otherwise paid an
access fee for the document). The button, an easy-to-use browser bookmarklet,
searches for alternative access to the article, identifying open access
versions of articles/research on the internet while mapping where obstacles are
inhibiting research advances around the world. Researchers can complete an
optional short form to add their experience to a map along with thousands of
others located around the world. This visualization depicts the worldwide
impact of paywalls on research, building a picture of where obstacles are
placed in the way of research, inhibiting collaboration and possibly delaying
innovations.
Launched on Nov. 18, 2013, at the Berlin 11
Student and Early Stage Researcher Satellite Conference of
the Berlin 11 Open Access Conference, the Open
Access Button “tracks how often readers are denied access to academic research,
where in the world they were or their profession and why they were looking for
that research,” aggregating the information in “one place, creating a real
time, worldwide, interactive picture of the problem,” according to a blog post at the Public
Library of Science. The button was developed in response to the frustrations of
two medical students, David Carroll (Queens University Belfast) and Joseph
McArthur (University College London), who repeatedly encountered difficulties
in gaining access to academic research results they needed for their work.
Denial of access, which is largely invisible
(hence, the map), has repercussions beyond each incident, slowing innovation,
killing curiosity, and discouraging students from reading and reusing the
research conducted by others. By tracking the impact of paywalls and helping
users get access to the research they need by pointing them to OA repositories,
Carroll and McArthur hope to improve the online experience of individuals and
influence the field of academic research (and beyond) by shining a light on practices that inhibit
progress: “Each time an individual hits a paywall is an isolated incident, this
is unlikely to shake the ivory tower of academic publishing. But putting these
moments together using the Open Access Button, we hope it will capture those
individual moments of injustice and frustration and show them, on full view to
the world. Only then, by making this problem impossible to ignore, will the
button begin to make a difference.”
Carroll and McArthur hope that “[t]he use of
the button will help more people to find research papers. But just as
importantly, it will generate worldwide data on the extent of the paywall
problem. By exposing the problem, the button should add to the push for
change,” according to Stephen Curry. The music and
film industry, as well as general publishers, have already experienced
disruption by musicians, filmmakers, and authors taking control of their
intellectual property through online businesses with direct contact with
customers; open access repositories are taking root for academic researchers.
For students—who resent having to click more
than once for access to a full-text article or inputting usernames or passwords
in databases—linking to open access repositories is crucial. The upshot of
hitting a paywall is ignored research, even when the article or document is
precisely the item that could form the centerpiece of their term papers,
supporting their theses on every level. However, as Bonnie Swoger noted in her Nov. 25 Scientific American blog, one of
the goals of the Open Access Button is to “quickly and easily point users to
freely available copies of the article online (via open access repositories
such as PubMedCentral or the arxiv).” By not pointing users to institutional
resources they may have access to, such as an academic library with access to
JSTOR for older issues of Science
or one that offers interlibrary loan services (recognizing that these cost
money too), the Open Access Button stops short of the help it could offer
researchers.
These paywalls go beyond students and
academics. When doctors not affiliated with universities don’t get access to
the latest treatments, patients suffer. Similarly, the work of lawyers,
engineers, accountants, farmers, and others can be less than optimal when
professionals have hoops to jump through to obtain access to quality research,
including paywalls. With no university to turn to, fees for access to these
articles by individuals can reach $40, in part because the expensive
subscription-based journals are now bundled in databases whose vendors are also
shifting strategies from purchase to licensing, adding costs for access when
the print journal is not subscribed to along with the database. Individual
publications may be embargoed for a time so that subscribers have access, but
others do not. (See Marydee Ojala’s Nov. 21, 2013, NewsBreak concerning the Harvard Business Review.)
The Open Access Button tagline says it all:
“Tearing down barriers to accessing research. one click at a time.” Follow the project on Twitter:
@OA_Button and #oabuttonlaunch. The code behind the bookmarklet can be found at
GitHub.
Source
| https://www.openaccessbutton.
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