[LINK] For-profit publishers getting ready to trash-talk open access

[Glen Turner]

Nature
2007-01-24, corrected 2007-01-25
<http://www.nature.com/news/2007/070122/full/445347a.html>

PR'S 'PIT BULL' TAKES ON OPEN ACCESS
JOURNAL PUBLISHERS LOCK HORNS WITH FREE-INFORMATION MOVEMENT.
Jim Giles

The author of "Nail 'Em! Confronting High-Profile Attacks on
Celebrities and Businesses" is not the kind of figure normally
associated with the relatively sedate world of scientific
publishing. Besides writing the odd novel, Eric Dezenhall has made a
name for himself helping companies and celebrities protect their
reputations, working for example with Jeffrey Skilling, the former
Enron chief now serving a 24-year jail term for fraud.

Although Dezenhall declines to comment on Skilling and his other
clients, his firm, Dezenhall Resources, was also reported by Business
Week to have used money from oil giant ExxonMobil to criticize the
environmental group Greenpeace. "He's the pit bull of public
relations," says Kevin McCauley, an editor at the magazine O'Dwyer's
PR Report.

Now, Nature has learned, a group of big scientific publishers has
hired the pit bull to take on the free-information movement, which
campaigns for scientific results to be made freely available. Some
traditional journals, which depend on subscription charges, say that
open-access journals and public databases of scientific papers such as
the National Institutes of Health's (NIH's) PubMed Central, threaten
their livelihoods.
	
>From e-mails passed to Nature, it seems Dezenhall spoke to employees
from Elsevier, Wiley and the American Chemical Society at a meeting
arranged last July by the Association of American Publishers (AAP). A
follow-up message in which Dezenhall suggests a strategy for the
publishers provides some insight into the approach they are
considering taking.

The consultant advised them to focus on simple messages, such as
"Public access equals government censorship". He hinted that the
publishers should attempt to equate traditional publishing models with
peer review, and "paint a picture of what the world would look like
without peer-reviewed articles".

Dezenhall also recommended joining forces with groups that may be
ideologically opposed to government-mandated projects such as PubMed
Central, including organizations that have angered scientists. One
suggestion was the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a conservative
think-tank based in Washington DC, which has used oil-industry money
to promote sceptical views on climate change. Dezenhall estimated his
fee for the campaign at $300,000–500,000.

In an enthusiastic e-mail sent to colleagues after the meeting, Susan
Spilka, Wiley's director of corporate communications, said Dezenhall
explained that publishers had acted too defensively on the
free-information issue and worried too much about making precise
statements. Dezenhall noted that if the other side is on the
defensive, it doesn't matter if they can discredit your statements,
she added: "Media messaging is not the same as intellectual debate".

Officials at the AAP would not comment to Nature on the details of
their work with Dezenhall, or the money involved, but acknowledged
that they had met him and subsequently contracted his firm to work on
the issue.

"We're like any firm under siege," says Barbara Meredith, a
vice-president at the organization. "It's common to hire a PR firm
when you're under siege." She says the AAP needs to counter messages
from groups such as the Public Library of Science (PLoS), an
open-access publisher and prominent advocate of free access to
information. PLoS's publicity budget stretches to television
advertisements produced by North Woods Advertising of Minneapolis, a
firm best known for its role in the unexpected election of former
professional wrestler Jesse Ventura to the governorship of Minnesota.

The publishers' link with Dezenhall reflects how seriously they are
taking recent developments on access to information. Minutes of a 2006
AAP meeting sent to Nature show that particular attention is being
paid to PubMed Central. Since 2005, the NIH has asked all researchers
that it funds to send copies of accepted papers to the archive, but
only a small percentage actually do. Congress is expected to consider
a bill later this year that would make submission compulsory.

Brian Crawford, a senior vice-president at the American Chemical
Society and a member of the AAP executive chair, says that Dezenhall's
suggestions have been refined and that the publishers have not to his
knowledge sought to work with the Competitive Enterprise Institute. On
the censorship message, he adds: "When any government or funding
agency houses and disseminates for public consumption only the work it
itself funds, that constitutes a form of selection and self-promotion
of that entity's interests."


Correction:
  In the original version of this story, Susan Spilka was reported as
  emailing a note that said "Media massaging is not the same as
  intellectual debate." It should have read "Media messaging", and has
  been changed accordingly.