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Abstract

This article explores the Public Library of Science as a site that produces and disseminates open access scientific information and knowledge for the public good. Through this case study, issues of property ownership, the nature and political economy of biological information, scientific expertise and accessibility of information and scientific knowledge as a public good are considered. Drawing on a cultural industries perspective, I examine the various intermediaries and institutional arrangements that continue to impact and shape the production and dissemination of this open access knowledge. I suggest that Public Library of Science embodies a new mode for the social production of scholarly knowledge and its dissemination, with important implications for how scientific knowledge and expertise are created, certified and circulated.

Keywords

Cultural industries open access PLOS political economy scientific research

Introduction

Launched in 2003, Public Library of Science (PLOS) is a publishing project that provides open access content through a library of journals, scientific literature, information on clinical trials, and other such materials and data. Although submissions to PLOS journals are subjected to a peer review process, the pre-publication assessment by PLOS only considers the accuracy and rigour of the experimental design and data analysis. In other words, articles are not rejected due to a perceived lack of significance, and ‘importance’ is determined post-publication by the community (Van Noorden, 2013; Xiao, 2008). Materials published by PLOS are made available under the Creative Commons attribution licence, which allows for the free reproduction and distribution of information, with the sole constraints of acknowledgement and citation of authors. The reported success of PLOS has often been credited with encouraging the widespread adoption of ‘open’ values throughout the scientific community, with not only a recent, steady rise in the number of open source journals but also a number of established journals either becoming open access or moving towards greater accessibility, through ‘delayed open source’ or self-archiving practices.

This article examines the production, publication, distribution and access of information through the various platforms of PLOS; the processes between the production and articulation of data are described. PLOS is explored as a case study for understanding knowledge creation and dissemination through an open access project, considering issues of property ownership, the nature and economy of biological information, and accessibility of information and scientific knowledge as a public good. What intermediaries and institutional arrangements continue to impact and shape the production and dissemination of this open access knowledge? To what extent has PLOS overcome issues of path dependency that have accrued due to the established model of peer review academic publishing over centuries?

The article draws on a cultural industries perspective to gird its framing and analysis of the issues, exploring the production and circulation of information through PLOS using a materialist analysis. The publication, distribution and access of this information are sequences in the chain of production, dissemination and use, representing a form of cultural labour or system of reproduction (Garnham, 2011). I suggest that PLOS embodies a new mode for the social production of scholarly knowledge and its dissemination, with important implications for how scientific knowledge and expertise is created, certified and circulated. I consider how networked technologies have allowed for the emergence of new models of production and distribution, with PLOS representing a form of cooperative cultural labour enabled by the ‘institutional ecology of the digital environment’ (Benkler, 2006, p. 2). This is contrasted with the perspective that such collaborative, open source efforts are phenomena that are largely insignificant in light of the broader colonization of the Internet and networked technologies by capitalist and commercial ideologies and modes of production, drawing on discussions concerning issues of copyright, ownership and control (Babe, 1995; Boyle, 1996; Hindman, 2008; McChesney, 2013; Sell, 2003).

Overview and background on PLOS

Based in San Francisco, California, PLOS was started by an online petition that several prominent scientists, including Nobel Prize winner Harold Varmus, began circulating in October 2000. The petition, which collected over 28,000 signatures from scientists from more than 172 countries, called for publishers of scientific journals to make their content freely available to the public, and for scientists to boycott journals that did not follow this proposed open publication model (Brower, 2001; Giles, 2007). Some commentators stated that the boycott ‘backfired’, considering how most of the scientists who signed the petition did not actually follow through with its terms (Brower, 2001, p. 972). However, the petition was only the beginning. In 2001, it was announced that PLOS would launch a non-profit publishing platform, and many influential and established journals were inspired by the petition to become open access, delayed open access or self-archived.¹ PLOS’ open access platform was officially launched in 2003 with PLOS Biology, a peer-reviewed journal with print and web editions; this was followed with seven additional journals, all of which are published under the Creative Commons attribution licence (‘Journals’, n.d.).

The ‘open access’ principle demands that information is made readily available to the public (Schöpfel & Prost, 2013). Based on the premise that ‘science is supposed to progress through rapid communication of results among scientists’ (Schöpfel & Prost, 2013, p. 67), the open access movement in the scientific community is fighting for the free dissemination of information and knowledge as a fundamental condition for science. Various declarations regarding open access to knowledge and information have been made in recent years, such as the Budapest Open Access Initiative (BOAI), which emerged from a conference hosted by the Open Society Foundation (OSF) in 2001. The OSF is a foundation set up and supported primarily by the Soros Foundation that promotes initiatives and public policy reforms concerning human rights issues, democratic governance, reforms in health and education, and supporting independent media (‘Mission & Values’, n.d.). The BOAI is widely considered to be a defining moment for the open access movement. It is credited with coining the term ‘open access’, and for articulating how a movement towards widespread accessibility in the scientific community could be carried out through strategies such as self-archiving and the creation of open access journals (Hagemann, 2012). From the BOAI public statement,

An old tradition and a new technology have converged to make possible an unprecedented public good. The old tradition is the willingness of scientists and scholars to publish the fruits of their research in scholarly journals without payment, for the sake of inquiry and knowledge. The new technology is the internet. The public good they make possible is the world-wide electronic distribution of the peer-reviewed journal literature and completely free and unrestricted access to it by all … (Budapest Open Access Initiative Declaration, 2002)

This discourse concerning how the ‘new technology’ of the Internet enabled this social production of scholarly knowledge and its dissemination is explored later in this article, along with a consideration of the issues concerning rights, ownership and control of scientific knowledge as a commodity. It should be noted here, however, that the BOAI highlights the intersection of these important dimensions: the nature of scientific information and knowledge as a public good, and the barriers to its reproduction and distribution that copyright and ownership create. This conception of public goods is mostly derived from normative considerations (i.e. what should be done). This is undoubtedly a strong component of public goods, as the future of the information commons will depend on politics and normative values; public goods have distinctive qualities that have manifested themselves specifically in the history of how scientists and scientific knowledge have been treated within modern and capitalist societies (i.e. with a combination of a strong role for government funding of basic research, public education, research centres and libraries and copyright laws that aim to strike a balance between market forces and public goods).

Now more than a decade after the BOAI made its declaration, ‘the success of the open access initiative cannot be denied’, with over 2000 repositories and 8000 open access journals ‘improving the efficiency of communication by free and unrestricted dissemination of content’ (Schöpfel & Prost, 2013, pp. 67–68). Computer scientists have arguably been engaging in open access practices since the 1970s, with the use of standard protocols to transfer files across networks (Petersen, 2002). Furthermore, an earlier precedent to PLOS and other open access platforms and journals can be found with arXiv, a repository of scientific papers that was created in 1991 and which now hosts over a million articles from fields such as mathematics, physics and statistics (Butler, 2003). However, PLOS is widely considered a progenitor of the open access movement in the scientific community. Its particular business and publication model – spread across multiple online and print journals and other platforms – has been emulated by many other publishers, across a range of disciplines (Sitek & Bertelmann, 2014).

PLOS’ greatest success is perhaps its online-only journal, PLOS ONE. Launched in 2006, the journal publishes research from any area of science and medicine. Prior to publication, submissions are assessed by a member of the PLOS ONE Editorial Board, which is made up of 5000 academic experts. This ‘Academic Editor’ decides whether to accept, invite revisions or reject the submission. However, this evaluation does not include a consideration of the potential impact or significance of results, and is designed to merely ensure that the research was performed to a technical standard, adheres to basic ethical guidelines, has not been published elsewhere and other such minimal criteria. In other words, PLOS ONE follows a ‘publish first, judge later’ model, in which the ‘significance’ of a paper is decided post-publication by readers, who can rate the article, highlight segments of text and attach comments. Data generated from these interactions, along with statistics concerning the number of downloads and citations, impacts the visibility of papers (Giles, 2007; Patterson, 2009; Sitek and Bertelmann, 2014). In this way, the broader scientific community – rather than a small number of reviewers – collectively determine the value or currency of the information.

PLOS ONE has become the largest journal in the world, with the greatest number of papers published per year (Pattinson, 2014; Van Noorden, 2013), and its post-publication discussion and ranking features have been adopted by other journals (Sitek & Roland, 2014). PLOS has continued to promote open access values through various initiatives and new platforms. In 2013, PLOS partnered with Figshare, a digital repository that allows researchers to freely upload and share figures, videos, datasets and other content in any file format, under a Creative Commons licence (Hane, 2013). Another recent initiative is PLOS Currents, a group of journals based on a ‘direct-authoring’ platform that allows users to freely submit, edit and format their papers. Currents was created to facilitate the rapid communication of research; papers are typically published within several days of submission, after an assessment by a small group of experts to ensure there are no obvious methodological, ethical or legal violations (‘PLOS Currents’, n.d.). Finally, PLOS also hosts a network of blogs, which includes both staff-written and independent blogs written by science journalists and researchers. These blogs were launched to ‘help share and explain important scientific ideas’ and encourage a better understanding of science for a wide audience, ‘including policy makers, the academic science community, researchers, medical and mental health practitioners, journalists and the general public’ (‘About PLOS Blogs’, n.d.).

It is worth noting that the scientists who have supported PLOS pushed for the open access model – a non-capitalist model – and that this stemmed from the nature of their profession and of the information/knowledge that is their currency (scientific knowledge). This points to a unique kind of worker (scientists) with a distinctive ethos (sharing public knowledge) and an immaterial good (scientific knowledge) that has always had public good qualities. Those qualities are true of information generally but are especially pronounced in domains of scientific knowledge, and made easier to realize in light of technological innovations enabled by the Internet (e.g. the ease of reproduction and dissemination, and efficient communication between authors, reviews and readers). Here, I trace the publication of a hypothetical project through PLOS; following this, I draw on a cultural industries approach, examining the production, circulation, and use of information and knowledge as a commodity. I also use a media materialist lens to consider the physical properties and affordances of the communication technologies – namely, the Internet, computers and other digital tools – that make these particular practices possible.

This hypothetical project begins with the researchers downloading a dataset from a large-scale repository. This could include, for example, information concerning the DNA of a particular organism, previously sequenced and shared by another team of researchers. This dataset can then be analysed by a series of programmes, software and algorithms to generate new meta-data, perhaps identifying certain features or patterns of significance. The results are submitted to PLOS ONE, and an Academic Editor from the Editorial Board assesses the methods used by the researchers and the presentation of the results. No major errors are uncovered in the analysis and no ethical or moral concerns are raised, so the paper is published online. Over the next several weeks and months, the paper is downloaded by the larger scientific community and interested members of the public. Some of these readers leave comments, highlight text, rate the article or cite its results in their own papers; this information is automatically gathered by the PLOS ONE website and determines the visibility of the paper. The article is assigned ‘significance’ through these community interactions and relations.

The metrics used for determining this significance are openly available; users can see the number of views, citations, saves and shares for any article, along with information about where the article has been discussed on social media and shared on forums and websites (such as the number of Tweets, Facebook shares, Google blogs hits and links from Wikipedia). This hypothetical project is rated highly by readers, garners many comments and is widely viewed, cited and shared across social media; this assigns the article a high significance score, which makes it more prominently displayed on the PLOS ONE website. The results are also shared in a staff-written blog post on the PLOS website, making the information more accessible and understandable to a broader audience. Finally, other researchers download the datasets, which are hosted by repositories such as Figshare (Kishor, 2013; Patterson, 2009; Thacker, 2006), as PLOS journals require authors to make all data underlying the findings in their manuscript available.

Creative Commons licences

A Creative Commons licence allows for the free distribution of a copyrighted work, granting people the ability to share and use this work. There are four conditions that may be applied by the author. ‘Attribution’ stipulates that users may distribute the work and build on it to make derivative works, but must give the author credit. ‘Share-alike’ means that derivative works must be released under an identical licence to the original work (e.g. if the original author does not allow for non-commercial uses of their work, the derivative work cannot either). A ‘Non-commercial’ condition means that users can only share, use and make derivative works for non-commercial purposes. Finally, ‘No Derivative Works’ restricts users from building on the work to make a derivative. There are six commonly used licences that include a combination of these four conditions (e.g. ‘attribution alone’, ‘attribution + Non-commercial’ and ‘attribution + Non-commercial + No Derivatives’). These licences were created and released in 2002 by Creative Commons, a US non-profit organization with an agenda to increase the amount of creative works available for sharing and making derivative works (Boyle, 2008). All content published by PLOS is licensed under ‘attribution only’, that is, the ‘maximum openness’ model under the Creative Commons approach (‘Open Access’, n.d.).

‘Openness’ and open access

Peter Suber (2012) describes the myriad of economic models and publishing standards that fall under the ‘open access’ label, pointing out that both for-profit and non-profit variants exist, and the distinction between open access journals and repositories. The former, sometimes referred to as ‘gold open access’, conduct their own peer review, similar to traditional journals; the latter, sometimes referred to as ‘green open access’, typically host or distribute content that has been peer-reviewed elsewhere. Thus, this green/gold label is a way of describing different standards of open access, with gold being the highest standard, as it involves immediately publishing material in an open access journal, whereas green open access content may be initially published on a ‘closed’ platform and then later deposited in an openly accessible database. Articles that are published in any PLOS journal comply with the gold standard, which means they are immediately accessible online at no cost.

Open Knowledge International (OKI) is an international non-profit that advocates for openness and promotes the sharing of data and content through projects such as the Comprehensive Knowledge Archive Network (CKAN), a management system used by many governments around the world to host catalogues of freely available data, and the Open Knowledge Definition (OKD), which aims to provide a framework for describing ‘openness’ of data and content (Molloy, 2011). Briefly, the OKD states that data and content are ‘open’ when they can be freely retrieved, used, adapted and distributed. The OKD also specifies that the work must be available in its entirety, ideally downloadable over the Internet, in a convenient and adaptable format (Molloy, 2011).

However, these kinds of definitions and parameters – which present ‘openness’ as a rigid, absolute standard that stands in complete opposition to ‘proprietary’ or ‘closed’ forms of content and data – fail to acknowledge that openness ‘can only be considered within the context of a particular system’ (Schrock, 2014, p. 5). In other words, openness can exist in a variety of forms and configurations that trouble easy distinctions between ‘open’ or ‘closed’. In terms of scientific data and research, there may be supplementary materials, such as raw data or programmes and software used, which may not be readily accessible or modifiable. Narrow definitions of openness also run the risk of presenting these kinds of practices as an economic aberration, which ignores well-established scientific and scholarly traditions, such as earlier precedents to the Open University movement, or publishing and archiving cooperatives among libraries and other organizations (Willinsky, 2005, 2006). Discourses around the ‘open internet’ often point to the supposedly ‘unlimited’ storage and dissemination capacities of the net, and its non-hierarchical, networked nature, positing that online data are inherently transparent and accessible. Yet, as Birchall (2012) contends, this overlooks the paradox that openness and ‘e-transparency’ present: the volume of information available, the diffuse nature of networks and databases, and certain characteristics of search engines renders much of the data effectively invisible. Furthermore, ‘openness’ is not simply a way of describing a particular platform or content but, arguably, can also be drawn on as a marketing move; companies and organizations may gesture towards open practices as a kind of branding exercise, building a reputation (whether it is deserved or merely a rhetorical move) for working in the public interest (Schrock, 2014; Willinsky, 2005). Commercial parties often invest resources in various open initiatives, promoting and subsidizing the ‘open source movement’ to not only generate goodwill but also often in an attempt to capture a larger market share for the company’s products and services, or to effectively crowdsource troubleshooting and development of their software to users (Lerner & Tirole, 2005).

Tkacz (2015) argues that openness is inherently political and connected to neoliberalism. The language of openness, as it used by open access publishers and even governments, reflects the organizational philosophy of competition that underpins neoliberal ideology. Tkacz (2012) describes the origins of the so-called Free Software Movement (FSM) in the 1980s, an attempt to make software free use, distribute, change and modify; this included the creation of copyright licences in an attempt to ensure the outputs of the FSM remained open. The ‘open source’ movement, according to Tkacz (2012), represented a more business-friendly approach that avoided the ‘rhetoric of “free,” which seemed less than appealing to profit-seeking enterprises, especially when attached to a product’ (p. 392). The point here is that, as noted above, although it may be taken for granted that open source ideology reflects an altruistic, anti-commodification worldview concerned with sharing resources for the public good, ‘openness’ has also been leveraged by corporations to harness the contributions and labour of others to increase efficiency and productivity, in some cases leading to the further commodification of software outputs (Tkacz, 2012). The rhetoric and supposed values of openness have been invoked by a range of organizations and bodies, including leftist activist groups, the Tea Party, governments, scholars and corporations (Tkacz, 2012). Considering how the goals and ideals of many of these groups exist in opposition to one another, openness should not be uncritically mobilized as a desirable, apolitical force that necessarily fosters transparency, accountability and collaboration. As Tkacz (2012) posits, ‘once something is labeled open, it seems that no more description is needed’, yet there is clearly a need to more closely inspect ‘the specific projects that operate under its name … [the] details, emergent relations, consistencies, modes of organising and stabilising, points of difference, and forms of exclusion and inclusion’ (pp. 403–404).

Networks of social production, or loci of control?

Benkler (2006) explores the implications of the networked information economy for society. He describes the rise of social production and so-called commons-based peer production, concepts that directly relate to the ideals and practices of open access projects such as PLOS. Of particular note here are the features of the ‘networked public sphere’ that reinforce commons-based peer production and the capacity of information to serve as an economic good. Benkler identifies three ‘inputs’ for the production of information, including existing information and culture, the communication of new information goods, and human communicative capacity. PLOS, through the networked structure of the Internet, creates a platform that brings together all three of these inputs to allow for the social production of scientific information and knowledge. First, as an open access project, PLOS expands the range of existing information and culture that is freely available in the public domain. Second, the communication of new goods is facilitated through an infrastructure of information storing and sharing platforms, including online repositories and databases, the blogs and Currents journals maintained by PLOS, and of course the main PLOS journals themselves. Finally, human communicative capacity is enhanced by the free access to this ever-increasing range of information and knowledge; through open access projects such as PLOS, a single researcher is capable of consuming and making use of an enormous scope and wide breadth of information.

The production, verification, publication, distribution, access and use of information and knowledge through PLOS is an example of what Benkler (2006) calls ‘commons-based peer production’ (p. 62). This mode of production in the networked environment is ‘decentralized, collaborative, and non-proprietary; based on sharing resources and outputs among widely distributed, loosely connected individuals who cooperate with each other’ (Benkler, 2006, p. 62). As an open access project, PLOS produces cultural or public goods (knowledge and information) under the Creative Commons attribution licence; this is in line with Benkler’s (2006) description of the ‘Commons’ as an institutional structuring of rights to freely access, distribute and use works or resources. Furthermore, the process of verifying information and knowledge published through PLOS and assigning value to it is a kind of communal, ‘non-rival’ practice, a clear example of ‘[c]ooperation in peer-production processes’ (Benkler, 2006, p. 104). Additionally, since researchers can access datasets and build in this information to produce their own derivative works, PLOS provides ‘a meritocratic hierarchy’ in which disparate contributions from a wide range of actors can be integrated (Benkler, 2006, p. 104). Benkler suggests that information has always been a public good, but now its potential to be realized as such has been dramatically increased by the declining costs of information production and sharing. In other words, the commons model was imminent but is now being realized to a greater extent by changes in technology (whether those changes will be realized to their full extent will largely depend on the ‘battle of institutional ecology’, or how politics will be reflected in law).

The production of scientific information and knowledge through PLOS: a cultural industries analysis

I draw on a cultural industries approach here to analyse the production, verification, circulation and consumption of scientific knowledge and information through PLOS. This perspective is a useful lens as it highlights the conditions of creation, consumption, circulation and reception, as well as the institutional structures in which these activities and practices function (Garnham, 2005).

Bernard Miège’s model of cultural industries presents three ‘logics’ of cultural production: the publishing logic, the flow logic and the press logic. The publishing logic is centred on the production of ‘discrete’ goods such as books or movies; the flow logic is based on a product that involves ‘continuous flow’ such as radio and television; the press logic involves more ephemeral or rapidly obsolete products, such as newspapers and magazines (Miège, 1989; see also Hesmondhalgh, 2013; Hesmondhalgh & Baker, 2011). This model is of note here because it focuses on the relationship between the nature and distribution of the cultural products. The varying logics of production are characterized by different ‘ways of realising exchange value, different ways of managing demand and creative labour, and different levels of capital investment and corporate control’ (O’Connor, 2010, p. 25). This is a salient point, as much of the debate around the regulation and ownership of scientific work and research in general (e.g. though copyright and the intellectual property regime) hinges around differing conceptualizations of the nature of information and how it is disseminated – such as whether information commodities are inherently immaterial – which echoes the connections that Miège makes between the nature of cultural products (their ‘logic of production’) and their distribution and regulation. The ‘commodity’ of scientific knowledge and information from PLOS is an immaterial good or product (the datasets produced) that is shared across a distribution network (a variety of online platforms) and assigned value and significance according to its relations with the audience (the scientific community and public at large). Indeed, the ‘commodity’ that is produced, disseminated and used through PLOS – information and knowledge – is an immaterial good which depends on the Internet and other digital technologies for each step in the chain of production and consumption.

PLOS does not merely circulate pre-existing information and knowledge but allows for the certification, production and use of new kinds of information and knowledge, and for new forms of audience–product relations. As Garnham (2005) contends, there is an ‘increasing importance of symbolic or cultural production, now dubbed “information” or “knowledge” … and of the nature and role of information work and workers’ (p. 21). For example, bioinformatics is a field of biology that incorporates computational and statistical methodology, generating and analysing large sets of data through the use of computer programmes and servers (Thacker, 2006). Using online databases and software, bioinformatics involves producing work in the immaterial domain of informatics, using online databases and software to create work that may have economic value, and that can benefit the scientific community and public at large (Thacker, 2006).

Garnham’s (2011) description of the evolution of the cultural industries highlights the ‘rise of immaterial labor and products and services’ (p. 60). There is considerable discourse concerning the transformations in production, circulation and consumption of cultural goods brought about by the Internet, with digital distribution supposedly providing a greater opportunity for innovation through lower distribution costs (Hesmondhalgh & Baker, 2011). Adorno considered the relation between technology and the culture industry, distinguishing ‘between those cultural industries employing technology to distribute cultural products made by traditional means … and those where technology was inherent to the production of the form itself’ (Garnham, 2005, p. 20; see also Adorno, 1980).

Garnham (2005) argues that political economic approaches to studying cultural products or commodities, despite typically analysing technologies of distribution and considering the role of economic and regulatory frameworks, tend to overlook the nature of the commodity and its particular associations with the audience. However, according to Garnham, there has been a shift from ‘cultural’ industries to so-called ‘creative’ industries, an evolution that occurred ‘in the context of a wider debate about the impact of information and communication technologies (ICTs) and digitalisation and the relationship between the deployment of new communication networks and the products and services carried over them’ (p. 20). This incorporates an information society perspective that connects the capitalist economy and wider social trends with ICT policy, and the goods and services provided through these distribution systems.

It can be argued that this is all made possible by certain characteristics and properties of the Internet, computers and other digital technologies, or what Lievrouw (2014) refers to as the ‘material affordances of communication technologies’ (p. 23). This is not to suggest, in a deterministic manner, that these technological artefacts possess inherent properties, but rather that the affordances of these given artefacts – their uses and effects – are relational characteristics that ‘frame, while not determining, the possibilities for agentic action’ (Hutchby, 2001, p. 444). Indeed, computers and databases allow researchers ‘to organize large amounts of data efficiently in a standardized database structure’ and provide capabilities such as large-scale statistical analyses (Thacker, 2006, p. 54). This computing power, and the networking of researchers and institutions through the ‘tendril-like expansion of the Internet provided technical means of consolidating research results into centralized information nodes’ (Thacker, 2006, p. 56).

However, this is somewhat of a short cut explanation: the first consideration to be developed further is the immaterial nature of information and its status as a public good, examining what makes information a ‘public good’. Furthermore, how does the nature of scholarly scientific research reinforce that conception? Only then will the potential of the Internet to easily and cheaply copy and disseminate information be maximized (or resisted) each step of the way. Indeed, although scientific information and knowledge has been created and shared for millennia, its production, circulation and use through PLOS has implications for the nature and value of this information and knowledge as a cultural product, with the networked structure of the Internet allowing the scientific community (and general public) to interact on a larger scope and scale. It is the fact that the Internet supports the conditions and possibilities of scientific knowledge creation and dissemination that helps explain why PLOS has succeeded. Through online repositories and databases, raw data, colour pictures, figures and large datasets can be shared; this work can then be accessed by researchers to create their own derivative works (i.e. they use raw datasets as a starting point for their own analyses). Although information is of course not necessarily tied to computers, software and networks, transformations in these technologies have fuelled the growth of information into an organizing principle for the economy (Babe, 1995).

PLOS’ open access model not only changes the forms and scope of information and knowledge that can be shared but also subverts traditional practices of control and ownership. Restrictive property rights have ‘wide-ranging negative effects’ (Boyle, 1996, p. xi), stifling and constraining the production of new creative or cultural works (in this case, scientific knowledge and information). As James Boyle (1996) contends, information can be viewed as having ‘public good’ qualities. According to Boyle (1996), it is difficult to reconcile traditional conceptions of authorship and originality with information, particularly biological information such as genetic codes, due to its immaterial nature. Unlike cultural or creative works such as print books and film, information – whether it is software or the genome of an organism – is not exhausted through use and can be widely copied and circulated. The story in a book or a recorded song or the words written here are not ‘used up’ (exhausted) when consumed but persist and remain available for others to reuse at will, to the extent they are not locked into place by copyright or digital locks. Indeed, with information there is ‘an absence of any final consumption … there is only accumulation, dissipation, or transformation’ (Babe, 1995, p. 16). Benkler (2006) highlights these same features of information, noting that, ‘certain characteristics of information and culture lead us to understand them as “public goods,” rather than as “pure private goods” or standard “economic goods”’ (pp. 35–36).

Boyle (1996) argues that information, as a public good, should be more freely available in the public domain, as it functions ‘as a resource for future creators and as the raw material for the marketplace of ideas’ (p. 168). This does not mean information ‘should’ be treated a particular way in a normative sense, but rather that it ‘is’ in the descriptive sense: copying a word, a sound, a song or an idea is much easier to do and the marginal cost of spreading it is effectively zero. Even by economics’ sights, information is public good, in contrast to reproducing a car, a toaster or a piece of clothing – all of which will consume resources that cannot be reused once committed to such products, have a clear price attached to them and can be cordoned off from others’ use. Indeed, PLOS (and more broadly the open access movement) is expanding the range of cultural works that are available in the public domain.

This can be contextualized as part of a larger trend, in which cultural production has been transformed by the ‘age of access’ and is ‘governed by a whole new set of business assumptions’, as ‘markets give way to networks, sellers and buyers are replaced by suppliers and users, and virtually everything is accessed’ (Rifkin, 2000, p. 6). Boyle (1996) describes how these transformations in communication technologies – facilitating the reproduction and flow of information across networks – have accentuated the problems and tensions created by restrictive property rights. He posits that property rights in informational and cultural goods in general can limit debate and impeded innovation ‘by limiting the availability of the public domain’ (p. 155). These concerns are particularly salient when considering the ‘information economy’, as the immaterial nature of information defies the modes of control and regulation that have been used for other (more traditional) commodities. Open access projects such as PLOS arguably provide a way to resolve the tensions that Boyle describes between traditional conceptions of authorship and originality, and the ‘public good’ of circulating information and making it freely accessible. These kinds of projects strengthen the public domain by embracing scientific information and knowledge as public goods that attain value and currency not in terms measured by money and stocks of property but by disseminating knowledge to the broadest audience possible. The alternative option – conventionally pursued via copyright and the commercial publishing model – is to ignore or actively subvert the public good aspects of information in favour of limiting access to knowledge, locking it down through state sanctioned monopoly (i.e. copyright).

On the other hand, it can be argued that without property rights ‘protecting’ knowledge, people ‘appropriate the knowledge without any obligation to contribute towards the cost of its production. Patents are one form of social invention to deal with this problem’ (Drahos & Braithwaite, 2002, p. 42). However, the regulations of knowledge as an intellectual property ultimately serve the interests of corporations; Drahos and Braithwaite (2002) present biotechnology research, such as attempts to find a cure to breast cancer, as a case study that demonstrates these dynamics. They argue that researchers are hindered by the ownership of information and intellectual property rights. Knowledge and information that is shared through open access projects such as PLOS allows researchers to collaborate, as they may freely access, share and build upon each other’s work in a large-scale cooperative process. This knowledge and information is treated as a public good, circulated and used for the betterment of society. This is clearly not possible for research controlled by biomedical and pharmaceutical companies, as ‘the corporatized system of scientific research’ allows ‘corporations to retain control over commercially valuable knowledge for much longer periods of time’ (Drahos and Braithwaite, 2002, p. 42).

The issue here is that the primary purpose of the patent system is not to encourage innovation, but to create guarantees for investment (Drahos & Braithwaite, 2002). Indeed, institutional arrangements that lead to strengthened regulation of information undercut its capacity to serve as a public good (Benkler, 2006). This does not mean that all forms of intellectual property should be abandoned, as there are limitations to the so-called ‘sharing economy’ (Boyle, 2008, p. 201). Indeed, although the Web has brought about an ‘explosion of non-proprietary creativity and sharing across digital networks’, it would be difficult – and perhaps unfeasible – to finance and run a ‘Phase III drug trial or bring a drug to market’ (Boyle, 2008, p. 201).The constraints on innovation that are created by the current patent system and intellectual property law does not mean that there should be no regulation or control, but rather a different kind of regulation and control. This includes fair use protections and other rights and laws designed to counteract monopolistic and anticompetitive practices (such as decreasing the time span of patents) and expanding the range of works available in the public domain (e.g. by supporting open source projects such as PLOS). Finally, systems of intellectual property rights should be periodically audited to ensure that an appropriate and effective balance between incentive and innovation is achieved, and to prevent corporate power from influencing regulations (Boyle, 1996, 2008; Drahos & Braithwaite, 2002). In other words, the entire nature of the ‘information commodity’ becomes one of political contestation and balancing between ‘creator’ and ‘user’ rights (determining, for example, how long the period of protection should be, or the breadth of coverage). Politics and law construct the information commodity.

Networks of peer production, or avenues of control and commodification?

Through the Internet and other digital technologies, PLOS provides an infrastructure for the social production of scientific information and knowledge, yet what is the motivation for this collaborative labour? The argument for strong patents and intellectual property rights is that they provide an incentive for innovation by protecting investments in the production of goods (Boyle, 2008; Drahos & Braithwaite, 2002; Sell, 2003). Yet, the thriving sharing economy – as exemplified by successful open source projects such as PLOS – suggests that this kind of economic control and regulation may not be necessary in all cases. Indeed, Boyle (2008) believes that the products created under Creative Commons licences and collaborative projects such as Wikipedia are evidence that ‘useful, creative, or expressive activity is generated without any financial incentive at all’, with ‘millions of creators out there who want to share their works with others. Many of those creators even want to allow the world to build on their material’ (Boyle, 2008, p. 195). Benkler (2011) describes this as the ‘rise of peer production on the Net’, something that is perhaps indicative of a broader ‘culture of cooperation’ (p. 30). The social production of knowledge and information through PLOS challenges capitalistic control over access and use of this resource.

Alternatively, it is possible that this instance of collective action and social production is a marginal phenomenon compared to the larger colonization of the Internet by commercial values and capitalist control. Despite discourses about the Internet promoting egalitarian ideals of accessibility and democratic engagement, powerful elites arguably still dominate the Web, or at least have a disproportionate ability to influence agendas and have their voices heard in the public sphere (Hindman, 2008). Contrary to claims that the Web has created dispersed communities that distribute power, control and visibility in the public sphere more evenly (Benkler, 2006), there is evidence of ‘concentration at the top and diffusion at the bottom’ (Hindman, 2008, p. 278). A more direct argument in this case is that digital technologies such as the Internet make information more measurable and ‘lockable’ than ever before, thereby undercutting their status or potential as public goods and making them more commodifiable; this is the commodification thesis of Vincent Mosco (1996), Schiller (1994), McChesney (2013) and others.

On the surface, PLOS may appear to be representative of a wider democratic revolution brought about by the Internet and digital technologies, providing an infrastructure for freely producing, disseminating and accessing information and knowledge. Yet, Robert McChesney (2014) draws on a political economy of communication (PEC) approach to explore ‘what type of cultural system digital technology makes possible’, and he finds that ‘[m]edia content industries tend to be oligopolistic, with only a few firms dominating production in each sector … the largest media corporations have become conglomerates’ (p. 73). According to this analysis, media industries – rather than publics – have been empowered; of particular note here is the fact that copyright protection has been dramatically extended and increased in scope, becoming a form of ‘government monopoly protection licenses’ (p. 79). Although PLOS and other open source projects seek to expand the public domain, the larger picture is not one of expansion but of decline. PLOS may encourage and promote the social production of information and knowledge as a public good, yet considering the larger dynamics at play, corporations and media conglomerates are leveraging copyright to exert monopoly control over culture (McChesney, 2014).

Conclusion

Open access projects such as PLOS are instances of social production in networked environments. As an institution that relies on digital networks and technologies to facilitate the free dissemination of knowledge and access to information, PLOS illustrates the dynamics and intersections between communication networks and the regulation and ownership of works through patents and property rights. Drawing on a cultural industries perspective and information society concepts such as the ‘sharing economy’, it can be argued that this social production of knowledge and information through PLOS is an example of commons-based peer production (Benkler, 2006). As McChesney (2014) states, ‘Digital technologies can make the system much more accessible and economically cost-efficient’ (p. 202). Certain affordances of the Internet seem to inherently promote democratic ideals of participation, visibility and meritocracy, as evidenced by the communal practices surrounding the production and use of information through PLOS. However, commercial interests and capitalist control still arguably dominate the production, circulation and accessibility of information and knowledge. The role of the information economy as the basis for an information commons has always been present; what has changed, it seems, is that the potential to increase the role of the information commons has improved with new technologies. However, this has also facilitated changes in the opposite direction, with an ongoing battle over institutional ecology ultimately determining which will prevail. Economic and political control is leveraged by corporations and industries to influence the regulation of copyright and patents, restricting innovation and subverting the ‘public good’ nature of information (Boyle, 2008; McChesney, 2014).

Yet, this does not mean that PLOS is a futile effort. Along with the need for reforms in copyright and patent policies (Boyle, 2008), promoting open source projects and Creative Commons licences is essential for the protection and expansion of the public domain, which provides resources for the future innovation. Governments have long underwritten much basic science research, yet PLOS does appear to embody a new mode for the social production of scholarly knowledge and its dissemination. Further attention to the nature of ‘knowledge’ and ‘scientific’ production as distinctive forms of labour would be useful, focusing on some of the unique contexts of production and financial support, and the ‘structure of motivation’ for scientists. This kind of knowledge production not only has important implications for how scientific knowledge and expertise are created, certified and circulated but also illustrates broader concerns about the ownership and control of information and knowledge in the network era.

Footnotes

1.

Delayed open access and self-archived journals do not immediately release their contents freely to the public but make them available after a set amount of time.

Author biography

Scott Mitchell is a PhD student in Carleton University’s School of Journalism and Communication, and a former newspaper columnist and writer, blogger and cartoonist with Maclean’s magazine. After completing a BSc in Biomedical Sciences, and a Master of Science with research in bioinformatics, he focused his research interests on the public communication of science, critical data studies, open data and crowdsourcing, and risk communication.

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