US Forbids Open Access Publishing?

There's a proposed law in the US to prohibit researchers paid with public money to, well, make the results available to the public. They would not be allowed to publish in Open Access journals or to submit to public-access repositories. And not surprisingly it is slimeball companies like Elsevier (you know, the charming guys who created fake medical journals so pharmaceutical companies could push made-up data in support for their products) and Wiley Publishing that are behind it.

I've said it before, but I will no longer publish anywhere that is not Open Access. OK, if you look at my publication record that's not exactly a threat of earth-shaking significance. But I will also no longer review papers for closed journals. I do review quite a lot of papers; it's fun and it's a good way to stay abreast of a wider range of subjects. And publishers depend critically on a good supply of reviewers to do their (unpaid, unacknowledged) work.

I will — I already do, to some extent — make a point of using Open Access sources for citations and other resources when I can. I've said before that there's two kinds of citations in your papers. A few are central to your own work, and pretty much unavoidable. But most papers are really about establishing background for your work and give references to general knowledge, and there you often have any number of papers to choose from. The same group may have half a dozen papers that all cover the point you want to make, there may be several groups all working on the same thing, and any of them would be fine as a general reference.

 
I will make a special point of not dealing with Elsevier in any way, shape or form. Which leaves me with one issue: I'm a member of the Japanese Neural Network Society. I need to be a member to be able to attend and publish in their conferences and meetings. They have a Japanese journal of their own, but also co-publish an English language journal together with the European and International societies. Published by, you guessed it, Elsevier.

Resigning from the society is unproductive, and feels like overkill. I'm not dealing with Elseview when I'm going to a conference or something after all. As I'm not Japanese¹ and just a simple post-doc I have zero clout in the society, protesting a long-standing publishing arrangement is futile. What I will do is simply ignore the English-language journal. Not publish, not review, and, where feasible and honest, not reference. Should not be too difficult as I have yet to do either.

Remember, while this suggested law is recent and US-centric, the instigators — the for-profit journal publishers — have been fighting to stay gatekeepers of research across the globe for years. It is a very profitable business, and they have shown there is little they would not do to stay in it no matter how much it hurts science, the scientists who they depend on, or the public that pays for it all.

#1 It's a question of language. Your ability to convince others about a controversial position is tightly coupled to your ability to make a strong rhetorical case. As my Japanese is barely usable I am unable to make good, coherent arguments, fully understand voiced objections, or formulate convincing answers.