[Infowarrior] - PR's 'pit bull' takes on open access to scholarly work

[Richard Forno]

PR's 'pit bull' takes on open access
Journal publishers lock horns with free-information movement.
Jim Giles

http://www.nature.com/news/2007/070122/full/445347a.html

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.

 Media messaging is not the same as intellectual debate.
    
>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 $300,000­500,000.

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."

* 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.

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