Science journals

Publishing progress

Ensuring that knowledge spreads through society is one of the key challenges of the modern age. Stimulating understanding is important for economic progress and technical advancement. To make this possible should be easy: a characteristic of knowledge is that one person's use does not lessen another's. Even better if it is inexpensive to make new ideas available to someone else. For example, reading about a new scientific development and lending someone an article about it involves not much more than the cost of the text. Until now the editing, printing and distribution costs have meant that the price of academic journals were controlled by publishing houses. But the internet offers a chance to change all that, and today sees the most high-profile attempt to do so. Being launched is the first journal of a publishing house, the Public Library of Science, which aims to give away research for free.

Backed by Nobel prize winners and a respected US charity, "open access" aims to overturn three centuries of publishing tradition. This alternative has arrived just in time - as even well-financed university libraries are finding it difficult to stock the full range of scientific journals, thanks to annual subscriptions which now carry a price tag of as much as £15,000. But for the new publishing model to work, two things have to change: one is to do with mindset; the other with money. First, scientists must start using the online journals rather than established outlets for important new bits of research. Second, the way of funding the process of peer review, which ensures scientists can trust what they read, must be redesigned. One course of action, advocated by the Public Library of Science, is for the peer review to be financed by scientists' institutions. This makes sense as they would be only using money that would otherwise have paid for subscriptions. The promise of such new models cannot be underestimated.

Transferring new scientific advances to poor countries is key to boosting their economic prospects and enhancing their ability to cut poverty. Commercial publishing houses should not control access to information just to maximise revenues - especially when much of the research has been publicly funded. But international regulations are moving in the wrong direction. A government commission last year raised concerns that new laws in the EU and the US would limit access to electronic databases. The rules which govern copyright ought not be written to deliver for private interests, but for the widest possible public good.

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