SCIENTIFIC PUBLICATIONS: FREE FOR ALL?A Seminar on the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee Inquiry

The Commercial Publisher’s ViewpointRobert CampbellBlackwell Publishing23 November 2004

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Why an Inquiry?

• Journals crisis – high prices limiting access

• Conviction that Open Access offers a solution

• Without the OA model would there have been an inquiry?

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Is there a Journals Crisis?

“Librarians are suffering because of the

increasing volume of publications and rapidly

rising prices. Of special concern is the much

larger number of periodicals that are available

and that members of the faculty consider essential

to the successful conduct of their work”

From a report of the Association of American Universities (1927)

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Is there a Journals Crisis?

“Libraries, for their part, are experiencing severe strains on their general budgets from inflation and are beginning to rebel at soaring journal costs……”

From John Walsh (1974) Journals: photocopying is not the only problem. Science, pp. 1274-5

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Access

• SCONUL DataMean number of titles per library1993/94 3,9762001/02 6,489

• Downloads of articles from Blackwell2002 19 M2003 36.7 M2004 (est) 65 M

• Tenopir & King dataAverage number of articles read1977 1502002 216

• INASP, HINARI, AGORA

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CIBER Survey

CIBER survey (Centre for Information Behaviour and Evaluation of Research, City University)

4,000 researchers from 97 countries– Aiming to reach their research colleagues, few aiming at

general public (narrow casting)– Brand of quality and integrity from good peer review– 82% know little or nothing about alternative models and open

access– Lack of understanding of what publishers do– 76% felt they have better access to journals than 5 years ago– Generally positive towards Open Access although

reservations over quality and preservation– But great resistance to author payment (can’t pay, won’t pay

is the message)– Felt fewer papers would be rejected and papers might

become less concise as market power shifts form reader to author

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Is the Market Competitive?

Is the Market Competitive?

• OFT seem to think so

• There are 1000’s of journal publishers

• The Big Deal is delivering better value

• Two thirds of library expenditure is on overheads

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No acknowledgement of what publishers have achieved

• Invested heavily in new technology

• Greatly improved access

Despite:

• Annual increase in funding of research c. 10% (RCUK £1.3 Bn 1997 → £2.4 Bn 2004)

• No commensurate increase in library funding

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Is Author-pays Open Access sustainable?

• New Journal of Physics

• New launches of author-pays:

2004 11 out of 89 (12.4%)

2003 30 out of 198 (15.2%)

2004 47 out of 255 (18.4%)

• Cornell Library Study

• Funding varies greatly by subject, eg in surgery about 25% of research reported is funded

• Around 11,000 funding bodies

• What happens if grantee publishes a second paper?

• Most papers are multi-author

• Barrier to authorship

• Standards could drop

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Is self-archiving in Institutional Repositories sustainable?

• What is the cost of setting up IRs in every HEI?

• What should IRs do?

• How will authors be encouraged to submit?

• How will IRs handle legal liability?

• Will IRs confuse article authenticity?

• How long should the embargo be?

• Complete Open Access will lose revenues from industry

• Parasitism or symbiosis

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The STM position on the NIH Proposal

• Does not adequately define the problem to be solved• This leads to proposals which could have unintended

consequences• The six months embargo ignores the long life of

research articles• Certain medical journals could require more

government funding• STM publishers continue to develop innovative

business models• STM publishers have improved access in developing

countries• Members are already experimenting with Open

Access models• There is nothing new in the NIH proposal other than

unfunded mandates that arbitrarily favour some models over others