Science and technology

科学技术

Academic publishing

学术出版

Free-for-all

自由竞争

Open-access scientific publishing is gaining ground

科学出版的开放存取已逐渐被人们所接受
 

AT THE beginning of April, Research Councils UK, a conduit through which the government transmits taxpayers' money to academic researchers, changed the rules on how the results of studies it pays for are made public.

四月初，英国研究理事会—一个由政府向学术研究者提供资金机构-改变了它的一项规则：即该机构提供资助的一些研究成果是否可以自由出版。

From now on they will have to be published in journals that make them available free—preferably immediately, but certainly within a year.

从今后，这些成果将必须在期刊上自由，免费发表—最好是结果出来后立即出版，但是出版时间最迟不能超过一年。

In February the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy told federal agencies to make similar plans.

今年二月，白宫科学和技术政策办公室也要求联邦机构做出与之相类似的计划。

A week before that, a bill which would require free access to government-financed research after six months had begun to wend its way through Congress.

在此前一周，国会也通过了一项法案—即政府资助研究产生成果六个月后，可以自由出版，虽然投票通过的过程有些曲折。

The European Union is moving in the same direction.

同时，欧盟也正在同样方向的指导下做着类似的工作。

So are charities.

慈善机构同样如此。

And SCOAP3, a consortium of particle-physics laboratories, libraries and funding agencies, is pressing all 12 of the field's leading journals to make the 7,000 articles they publish each year free to read.

而且，一个由众多粒子物理实验室，图书馆和资助机构组成的联合体-SCOAP3已经向该领域的12个先锋期刊提出如下要求：即他们每年出版的7,000篇文章都能免费阅读。

For scientific publishers, it seems, the party may soon be over.

对科学出版社们来说，这似乎预示着独享的快乐聚会可能就快结束了。

It has, they would have to admit, been a good bash.

不过，他们将不得不承认，这是一个很好的尝试。

The current enterprise—selling the results of other people's work, submitted free of charge and vetted for nothing by third parties in a process called peer review, has been immensely profitable.

现在的企业—销售他人的工作成果，不要承认任何费用，而且不要接受被称为同行检查的第三方审查，已经是极有利润可图了。

Elsevier, a Dutch firm that is the world's biggest journal publisher, had a margin last year of 38% on revenues of 2.1 billion.

荷兰的爱思唯尔是全球最大的杂志出版商，去年在这个方面的利润达到了总收入的38%。

Springer, a German firm that is the second-biggest journal publisher, made 36% on sales of 875m in 2011.

而第二大出版商—德国的施普林格，就其最近一年—2011年可查的数据来看，出版研究成果的收入达到了当年销售收入—8.75亿欧元的36%。

Such firms are now, though, faced with competitors set up explicitly to cover only their costs.

但是，现在这些公司也面临着仅为赚取投资成本而起家的竞争对手的挑战。

Some rely on charity, but many have a proper business model: academics pay a fee to be published.

有些企业倚重的却是慈善出版物，但是，它们大多都有一个合适的商业模式：学者都要支付一定的费用才能出版他们的研究成果。

So, on the principle of if you can't beat 'em, join 'em, commercial publishers, too, are setting up open-access subsidiaries.

因此，本着如果你不能打败他们，那就加入他们的原则，商业出版社也开始设立可以开放存取的子公司。

Open for business

开业了

The biggest is BioMed Central, part of Springer.

影响最大的是生物医学中心，它隶属于斯林普格，创建于2000年。

It was founded in 2000 and in February it published its 150,000th paper and also launched its 250th periodical, catchily entitled theJournal of Venomous Animals and Toxins Including Tropical Diseases.

今年二月，它出版了它的十五万篇文章，也出版了它的第250期期刊，它的题目很吸引人—有毒动物，及包含热带疾病的毒素。

Days later Nature Publishing Group, which owns Nature and 81 other journals, and which itself belongs to the Georg von Holtzbrinck Publishing Group, another German firm, bought a majority stake in Frontiers, a Swiss open-access platform with 30 titles in 14 scientific fields.

几天以后，拥有自然杂志和其它81种杂志的自然出版集团-它本身隶属于另一家德国公司：格奥尔格-冯-霍尔茨布林克出版集团，购买了前锋—一家拥有14个科研领域30种期刊的瑞士开放存取平台—的多数股权。

In combination, NPG and Frontiers publish 46 open-access journals, and 7,300 free papers a year.

联姻后，自然集团和前锋每年能够出版46个开放存取期刊，及7,300篇文章。

In the past year Elsevier has more than doubled the number of open-access journals it publishes, to 39.

去年，艾思维尔把它出版的开放存取期刊的数量增加了一倍以上，达到了39个。

And even in those that usually charge readers, paying a publication fee makes a paper available free immediately.

甚至那些通常收费的出版商，在支付出版费用后，也能够立刻免费读到这些文章。

Outsell, a Californian consultancy, estimates that open-access journals generated 172m in 2012.

据一家加州咨询公司—奥特舒尔估计，去年开放存取杂志产生了1.72亿美元的收入。

That was just 2.8% of the total revenue journals brought their publishers, but it was up by 34% from 2011 and is expected to reach 336m in 2015. The number of open-access papers is forecast to grow from 194,000 to 352,000 in the same period.

而这仅仅占了出版商全部杂志收入的2.8%，但是相比于2011年，已经增加了34%，估计到2015年，全部开放存取杂志的收入会达到3.36亿美元。届时，开放存取文章的数量将会从19.4万篇增加到35.2万篇。

Open-access publishers are also looking at new ways of doing business.

开放存取出版商也在探索这方面的新方式。

Frontiers, for example, does not try to judge a paper's significance during peer review, only its accuracy—an approach also adopted by the Public Library of Science, a non-commercial organisation based in San Francisco that was one of the pioneers of open-access publishing. It thus accepts 80-90% of submissions.

比如，前锋并不注重一篇文章在同行眼光中的重要性，而只专注于它的准确性—这也是公共科学图书馆所采取的方法，因此，前锋获得了所提交研究论文中80-90%的出版权。

Instead, a Frontiers paper's merit is gauged after publication, using measures like the number of downloads.

相反，前锋文章的一个优点是，在出版后，通过类似下载数量的衡量方式来对文章进行评判。

Frontiers also doubles as a social network for researchers to share news, job offers and information about conferences and events.

作为一个为研究者提供新闻，工作计划和有关会议和事件信息分享的社交网站，前锋杂志的下载量也增加了一倍。

This network currently has around 70,000 members.

这个网站现在已经有约七万左右的会员。

PeerJ, founded last year, makes an even more dramatic departure from tradition.

而去年创建的皮尔杰则开发了一个更加异于传统的运作模式。

Rather than being charged publication fees, authors pay a one-off membership fee, which ranges from 99 to 298, depending on how many papers they want to publish each year.

文章的作者并不需要支付出版费用，而只要支付一次性会员费用，从99美元到298美元不等，这取决于每年他们打算出版的文章数量。

All co-authors must be members. The firm also deals neatly with the question of peer review. Members must review at least one paper a year.

所有的合作者必须都是会员。这家公司也很好地处理了同行评审的问题。它规定，会员每年必须评审一篇文章。

Non-commercial open-access publishers, though, are fighting back.

但是，非商业性的开放存取出版商们也开始了反击。

The Wellcome Trust, the Max Planck Society and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute have set up eLife, a peer-reviewed journal that does not charge publication fees.

一家名叫威康信托基金会英国的医疗慈善机构，运作多家德国研究机构的马普学会及一家称为霍华德休斯医学研究所的美国慈善机构共同设立了开放存取期刊—网络生活，这个期刊不收取出版费用，但是还能进行同行评审。

And in January Jean-Pierre Demailly, of the University of Grenoble, in France, and a handful of fellow mathematicians launched the Episciences Project.

今年一月，法国格勒诺布尔大学的皮埃尔-德马里和少数几个屈指可数的数学家们创建了科学至上期刊。

This aims to show that researchers themselves can turn out refereed papers cheaply, bypassing traditional purveyors.

这旨在表明，不需要传统意义上的传播者，研究者自己能够出版经过评审的文章，而且成本低廉。

Episciences will piggyback on ArXiv, an online repository beloved of physicists and mathematicians—who often post work there as preprints before submitting it to journals.

科学至上将与数学预印本网库在线网络资料库合作，这是一个物理学家和数学家们衷爱的网络平台，他们在向期刊投稿前往往会把预印本提前上传到这里。

ArXiv is hosted by Cornell University at a cost of $830,000 a year.

ArXiv的运营商是美国康奈尔大学，每年的运营成本为83万美元。

Tacking on an epijournal, so that refereed papers would sit alongside the preprints, should not add much to that.

连接到一个预印杂志上，这样就会同时看到经过评审的论文和它的预印本，这样也无法在论文上增加太多了。

Matthew Cockerill, BioMed Central's boss, though, points out that Episciences's publishing model may have its drawbacks.

但是，斯林普格生物医学中心的老板马修-科克尔指出，科学至上期刊的出版模式可能也有不足之处。

Academics who bypass publishers become publishers themselves.

绕过出版商的学者们自己成为了出版者，

And that will be harder to do as the operation grows.

当业务越来越多时，他们也会越来越难做。

Who pays for lunch?

谁来买单？

Other aspects of open-access publishing also draw polite scepticism from incumbents.

开放存取其它方面的影响也遭到了在职人员理性的怀疑。

The promiscuous approach of Frontiers and PLoS, for example, is at odds with the rejection by publications like Nature and its American counterpart, Science, of over 90% of submitted manuscripts.

比如，前锋和科学公共图书馆方式的混杂操作受到了类似《自然》和它的美国同仁《科学》的质疑，而且拒绝了它们90%以上的文稿，

It is this selectivity that gives these journals their prestige.

也正是这种专一性树立起了《自然》们的权威性。

At the moment, publication in Nature, Science and a handful of similar journals is like a sprinkling of fairy dust.

现在，在自然，科学和少数几个类似的杂志上可以发表文章，就好比点点星尘那么稀少而珍贵。

Everyone knows how tough it is to get in, so papers that do so are assumed to be special.

每个人都知道它们的门槛有多高，所以能够被刊印的文章被认为是非常特别的。

This will be hard for open-access publications to emulate.

而这一点是开放存取出版很难效仿的。

The rejected papers all have to be scrutinised, though—and even though peer review is free, this involves staff time and other costs.

被退稿的文章都必须经过审查，尽管，即使同行审查是免费的，而工作人员的时间和其它成本也是非常高昂的。

According to Nature, the cost per published paper is 40,000.

根据自然杂志的数据，每篇发表文章的成本为四万美元。

If Nature is to stay in business in anything like its current form, someone will have to pay that.

如果自然杂志处在类似它现在形式的任何产业里，总是会有人不得不买单的。

Whether anyone will want to, remains to be seen.

无论是否有人愿意，这还有待观察。

Budgets are tight, and pressure for access to be open is growing.

预算紧张，加上要求开放的压力越来越大。

Intangible blessings of the sort bestowed by prestigious journals can vanish rapidly.

这种著名杂志赋予的无形的资产会很快消失。

Where the game will end is anybody's guess.

游戏什么时候结束，谁也说不准。