Shake-up for academic publishing


MPs today called for a revolution in academic publishing, which would make scientific research freely available on the internet - and could dent publishers' profits.

Faced with the escalating cost of journals for academic libraries, the House of Commons science and technology committee is urging all UK universities to set up their own repositories to store their published research and make it available online free of charge.

But after an inquiry that questioned scientists, research councils and publishers, the committee said a more radical solution might be required in the long term - a shift to a system where the author pays to have his or her work published, instead of the present arrangements where the reader (normally the reader's university library) pays via a subscription to the journal.

Publishers have denounced the "author pays" model as "vanity publishing", but the MPs were evidently unconvinced by their opposition and said further trials were needed to see if it worked, and in particular whether there was any adverse effect on learned societies, which are subsidised by their journals. MPs concluded that funders would provide a bit more money to have the work published after a research project - the money would not come from the scientist's own pocket.

The report was welcomed by the universities' computing organisation ,the Joint Information Systems Committee (Jisc), and by BioMed Central, which has 107 open access journals in the biosciences and medical market. BioMed Central insists all its journal articles are peer reviewed by fellow scientists and are not vanity publishing in any sense.

Academic libraries were struggling to purchase subscriptions to all the journal titles needed by their users, said the Commons report, Scientific publications: free for all?, published today. "This is due both to the high and increasing journal prices imposed by commercial publishers and the inadequacy of library budgets to meet the demands placed upon them by a system supporting an ever increasing volume of research. Whilst there are a number of measures that can be taken by publishers, libraries and academics to improve the provision of scientific publications, a government strategy is urgently needed."

The committee, chaired by Labour MP Ian Gibson, said that all UK higher education institutions should establish institutional repositories on which their published output can be stored and from which it can be read, free of charge, online. They also recommend that research councils and other government funders mandate their funded researchers to deposit a copy of all of their articles in this way.

"The government will need to appoint a central body to oversee the implementation of the repositories; to help with networking; and to ensure compliance with the technical standards needed to provide maximum functionality. Set-up and running costs are relatively low, making institutional repositories a cost-effective way of improving access to scientific publications," it states.

The report added: "Institutional repositories will help to improve access to journals but a more radical solution may be required in the long term. Early indications suggest that the author-pays publishing model could be viable. We remain unconvinced by many of the arguments mounted against it."

To encourage experimentation the report recommended that the research councils each establish a fund to which their funded researchers can apply should they wish to pay to publish. "The UK government has failed to respond to issues surrounding scientific publications in a coherent manner and we are not convinced that it would be ready to deal with any changes to the publishing process. The report recommends that government formulate a strategy for future action as a matter of urgency."

Increased funding to enable the British Library to preserve digital material was needed and regulations for the legal deposit of non-print publications needed to be formulated immediately. "Failure to take these steps would result in a substantial breach in the intellectual record of the UK.

The market for scientific publications is international. The UK cannot act alone. For this reason we recommended that the UK government act as a proponent for change on the international stage and lead by example. This will ultimately benefit researchers across the globe," said the MPs.

Not everyone agrees.

Sir Keith O'Nions, director general of the research councils, earlier told Mr Gibson's committee: "I think it would be a pretty brave decision of the government at the present time to say it has sufficient confidence in the open access business model ... to shift rapidly from something it knows and trusts to an open access model."

The market for scientific publications is worth more than £5bn a year.
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