The Economist on OA

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Of possible interest..
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Aug 5th 2004 
>From The Economist print edition

Scientific publishing is having to change rapidly to respond to growing
pressure for free access to published research

In a letter penned in 1676, Isaac Newton famously wrote, If I have seen
further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants. Although it is
debatable whether Newton was being modest or making a barbed comment
towards his correspondent (a competitor of short stature) the phrase
epitomises views of how science progresses--with the speedy and open
publishing of discoveries so that others may make use of them to push back
the frontiers of human understanding.

For centuries, printed journals destined for university libraries have
been the focus of this publishing activity. The winds of change, though,
are sweeping through these quiet and dusty corridors. Because of the
internet, cost and distance are no longer barriers to providing the
results of research to more than just a restricted and privileged few.
This is leading people to ask why those results are not, in fact, freely
available to all.

An impressive industry has built itself around the dissemination of
academic research--particularly scientific work. There are over 2,000
publishers in what is called STM (scientific, technological and medical)
publishing alone. Together, they publish 1.2m articles a year in about
16,000 periodical journals. It is a huge success. Not everyone, though, is
entirely satisfied. Academics, universities and governments are worried
that publishers have grown a little too fat and happy.

Serial killers

The problem is one of monopoly. Of course, publishing itself is an
industry with few barriers to entry. That is not the issue. But certain
journals are able to capture a lion's share of the important papers
because researchers want their papers published in the most prestigious
ones. Some titles have acquired exceptional cachet over the years. Such is
their prestige that a researcher can win tenure, promotion or a research
grant on the basis of a single article in the right publication.

That means the publishers of those journals have the pick of the best
papers, reinforcing their reputations in a positive feedback loop. They
also claim copyright over what they publish, reinforcing their monopoly.
So if you want to read an important paper (or an unimportant one for that
matter) you have no legal choice but to pay the publisher for it.

The upshot is that university libraries must purchase the leading titles,
almost whatever their price, and often at the expense of carrying
less-exalted works. Owning a prestigious journal has thus become a
lucrative business, which many people believe is being abused.

Cornell University, for example, recently reviewed its policies on journal
acquisition. In the course of that review it noted that between 1986 and
2001 the library budget at its main campus in Ithaca, New York, increased
by 149%. The number of periodicals purchased, however, grew by only 5%.

Governments, whose funds ultimately pay for a lot of the journals on the
shelves of university libraries, are noticing too. A report published in
July by Britain's House of Commons Science and Technology Committee found
that the average price of an academic journal in Britain rose by 58%
between 1998 and 2003, while the retail price index rose by 11% in that
period, and scientific output rose by 20%. The report added that profits
in the industry were exceptional, singling out Reed Elsevier, a British
publisher whose Dutch subsidiary, Elsevier, is the market leader in STM
publishing, for having profits "as much as 34% at the operating level."

Indeed, Elsevier has attracted criticism from a number of quarters.
Cornell's reviewers, for example, observed that in the previous decade
Elsevier's annual price increases on its titles had often been over
10%--and occasionally over 20%.

Arie Jongejan, CEO of Elsevier's science and technology division, defends
his firm's profits, pointing out that after tax and depreciation, last
year's profit margins were 17%, not as high as some claim. But that is
still a hefty whack. He justifies such margins on the grounds that the
firm's journals are publishing more papers each year and also because high
profitability is necessary in order to ensure the sustainability of those
journals.

Free for all?

But the dominance of Elsevier and its kin is under attack. The House of
Commons Science and Technology Committee did more than just lament the
rising price of journals. It told the British government that the
country's universities should be required to ensure that all their
research papers are available free online, and that government-funded
research grants ought to include free access to the findings a condition
of the awards. The government will respond next month.

American politicians, too, are getting cross. Earlier this month the House
of Representatives' Committee on Appropriations approved a provision in a
bill that backs open access to material published by the National
Institutes of Health (NIH). The committee expressed concern at the lack of
public access to research findings, and at the rising price of journals.
These, it commented, were "contrary to the best interests of the US
taxpayers who paid for this research".

If the Senate approves the recommendation, it will become law and the NIH
will be required to deposit research funded by the agency into an online
government archive called PubMed Central within six months of publication
in any journal. If this happens, it will be significant, since NIH-funded
work amounts to 50,000 papers a year.

Even mainland Europe is getting in on the act. In October 2003, the
leading research associations of Germany, France and Switzerland signed
what has become known as the "Berlin Declaration"--another call for free
access to research findings. One of the groups behind the declaration,
Germany's Max Planck Society, is now changing its employment contracts to
require staff to return the copyright of their work to the society. At the
moment it gets assigned to the publishers. Although the society's
researchers will still be able to publish in journals, their work must
eventually be put into an online repository.

In response to the Berlin Declaration, the European Commission has begun a
study of the scientific-publishing market--looking at price, access to
published papers, and copyright. Because 41% of scientific papers
originate in Europe (compared with 31% in America), the results of this
study could have a big effect on the publishing industry.

One way of addressing the concerns of politicians and university libraries
is the promotion of journals in which the author pays to be published.
Many new online journals are attempting to do this, using electronic
publication to cut their costs. The results are then made available free
to readers.

BioMed Central, based in Britain, is one such publisher. The company,
which was established in 1999, has not yet broken even. But Deborah
Cockerill, the firm's assistant publisher, says it is likely to do so
soon, as it is growing fast. The number of articles it publishes has
doubled every year. In America, a not-for-profit organisation called the
Public Library of Science is employing a similar business model.

Another possibility is to generalise the House of Representatives'
proposal for American medical research and allow the traditional journals
a limited period of monopoly--say six months--after which they have to
make all taxpayer-funded content available free online.

Understandably, the traditional publishers are not too happy about these
ideas, although some of them are moving pre-emptively towards the
free-after-six-months model of the future. Barbara Meredith,
vice-president of professional and scholarly publishing at the Association
of American Publishers, a trade group, has said that a demand for open
access to research findings could undermine the sustainability of the
publishing industry, and has promised to lobby vigorously against this
happening.

At the moment, the entire open access literature is tiny--less than 1% of
what is published according to the Public Library of Science. But if
governments were to insist that the results of research they fund must be
published in an open-access way, that would change completely. The days of
huge profits would then be numbered. Prestige has its uses--and the
open-access journals will, no doubt, establish a pecking-order among
themselves fairly quickly. But for prestige at any price, time is probably
up.

copyright 2004, The Economist
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