Examination of Witnesses (Questions 360
- 379)
WEDNESDAY 5 MAY 2004
PROFESSOR SIR
KEITH O'NIONS,
MR RAMA
THIRUNAMACHANDRAN AND
PROFESSOR JOHN
WOOD
Q360 Dr Harris: Why are you in a
position where you think it is between £300 and £3,000?
That is a huge range, clearly. Is there a lack of research?
Professor Sir Keith O'Nions: Yes.
Q361 Dr Harris: Are false figures
being put in there? I am astonished that there has not been a
clearer view about what the costs would be on average, particularly
in a particular field.
Professor Sir Keith O'Nions: That
is the range that is as good as I have access to at the moment,
and I would agree with you immediately that this is a subject
that needs a lot more investigation. I can understand why the
range may be largeand let me just quote two things that
would intuitively suggest that it is going to be a big range.
The vast majority of things submitted to Nature, go out
for referring with all the costs associated with that. But many
get rejected and do not get published. Its prestige comes of publishing
a very small proportion of what it receives, so the costs are
obviously going to be quite high per article. There are other
journals which scientists have somewhat less respect for, as it
were, which may publish 80 or 90% of what they are receiving.
The cost per article there is going to be different. You could
conceive of some sort of open access without peer review that
published everything, and then the costs would be exceedingly
low but the respect for them as publications will be proportionately
lower as well.
Q362 Dr Harris: John says that his
council is providing money for this sort of research, and RCUK
in their evidence say, "Research councils will have to provide
funds to meet publications costs within reasonable limits."
That begs the question, firstly, what are the limits? At what
level, at the £300 end or the £3,000 end, are you pitching
it? If you pitch it at less than the Nature costs, then
you are basically saying, "Feel free within limits to publish
in open access" but obviously you will continue to publish
prestigious high-impact stuff through the normal business model,
which is a little unfair on those people who want a level playing
field and not loaded dice, if I may use those terms.
Professor Wood: I think this is
a very valid point actually to bring up. At one extreme we hear
that the journal Science is even thinking of $10,000I
am sorry, £7,000 or soand some learned societies are
a few hundred pounds. At the moment there is only one research
council that actually allows grant-holders to bid specifically
for publication and open access, but they do have the ability
to use the overhead that is there at the momentbut, again,
with the discussion with dual funding that may actually change.
It is a very difficult subject this, because the area of confidence
in the journal and its status is the key issue here. It might
actually reduce the number but may it actually improve the quality?
These are the sort of issues. I fully concur with Keith here:
I do not think we know enough about it to realise what the impact
would mean.
Q363 Dr Harris: At some point you
are going to recognise a significant double payment, because money
is going into libraries, and some money, within reasonable limitsand
I would be interested to know what those limits areis going
to authors to fund. I am not sure that the public would want to
be paying twice and sooner or later there has to be some virement
to keep pace with the organic (the term you usedan interesting
term) growth in open access if that is what there is going to
be. Could anyone explain how that is going to be tackled?
Professor Sir Keith O'Nions: Could
I just make a comment on that. To my knowledge that has been happening
in a small way for about 30 years in the United States. I will
give you a very specific example. There is a thing called the
American Geophysical Union, which is obviously a not-for-profit
organisation, which for the last 30 years, for those who can afford
to pay from their grants in the US, they charge $75 to $100 per
printed page. That is quite normal, so the author is paying through
the grants system, but at the same time the printed and electronic
versions of that journal are sold back to the author and more
broadly, just as other journals are, and the profits they are
making from that enterprise are used to support student activities,
conference grants and so on. So there are examples already where
you have this mixture of author paying twice. That really just
supports what John says. It is a deeply complex subject, and that
is a practice that has been going on for 30 years.
Q364 Dr Harris: Overall, let's say,
£10 million or a reasonable limit of money is being spent,
presumably libraries are not having a cut in their budgetand
they would say they were under-funded anywaybut is there
a conscious effort, in order to avoid double payment through the
public purse at least, to shift money when this grows?
Mr Thirunamachandran: I think
the issue of potential double payment is a slightly hypothetical
one. For the foreseeable future there is going to be a hybrid
model, when both systems are going to be running in parallel:
libraries will be continuing to subscribe for a range of journals,
whilst open-access publishing will also grow, as it is indeed
growing at present. Whilst a hybrid model is in place, I think
the notion of double funding is probably a hypothetical rather
than real issue.
Paul Farrelly: Clearly not a great deal
of work has gone on down in the bowels of the DTI. This is not
so far up the list of priorities.
Chairman: Is it in the DTI or the OST
that the work is not going on?
Q365 Paul Farrelly: Reid Elsevier,
clearly the biggest company, a British-based company, said to
us that a move to an author-pays model would be costly to the
UK because we publish more than we read. Has sufficient work gone
on to try to estimate the potential economic impact of the different
models on the UK?
Professor Sir Keith O'Nions: Not
to my knowledge, but there are some DTI people sitting behind
me that may pass me some information. In those sorts of broader
economic terms, I do not believe there has been, but I think our
analysis is absolutely correct.
Q366 Paul Farrelly: The OFT has clearly
looked at the market and has concluded that the market for STM
publications is not working well at the moment. I wondered in
what respects the panel share that view, if at all.
Professor Sir Keith O'Nions: Could
you be more specific?
Q367 Paul Farrelly: Let us take the
example of Reed Elsevier which has 18% of the market. Following
a look at the market by the OFT, has the DTI taken the issue seriously
enough to consider whether, for example, a company like Reed Elsevier
has what might be called a complex monopoly?
Professor Sir Keith O'Nions: I
cannot give you an answer to that. I will pass you the formal
DTI position on that, if I may.
Q368 Paul Farrelly: We would be very
interested in that.
Professor Sir Keith O'Nions: I
am very happy to do that but I have had no involvement in any
discussions that have taken place in that, if at all.
Q369 Dr Turner: The World Summit
on the Information Society, a summit of the UN, has published
a declaration of principles and a plan of action that are committed
to the principle of "universal access with equal opportunities
for all to scientific knowledge." How much influence has
this summit had on government policy in the UK? How committed
is the UK to its stated principles? Indeed, are we in a position
to implement it even if we wanted to or is it a complete waste
of time?
Mr Thirunamachandran: I cannot
respond for the Government other than to say what HEFCE has already
started to do by way of the funding we provide through JISC in
terms of exploring new models of publication.
Dr Iddon: The transition period, where
we are operating more than one publishing model, Sir Keith, is
going to be extremely costly. I think everybody would agree on
that. We have raised a few questions with you this morning about
whether academia and the UK generally will cope with this hybrid
transition period, but are you able to tell the Committee whether
any branch of the Government has thought about offering publishers
some money to allow them to travel through this transition period,
whether the publishers be commercial, who are probably less likely
to need help, or the learned societies, which I am particularly
thinking of, who obviously are going to find it extremely difficult
to survive against the commercial publishers during the transition
period?
Q370 Chairman: I believe you did
say there was money available for open access that they could
put that into. Did you say that?
Professor Sir Keith O'Nions: This
is a research council responsibility but I believe one of the
research councils at least is making money available.
Q371 Chairman: How much?
Professor Sir Keith O'Nions: I
do not know the number.
Professor Wood: That I cannot
answer. It is EPSRC.
Q372 Chairman: They know, do they?
Professor Sir Keith O'Nions: They
will know what has been bid for. I am not sure they have a number
they agree to but individual proposals can say that is how much
they believe they want.
Q373 Chairman: Perhaps you could
try to answer Brian Iddon's question.
Professor Wood: I will try to
get that information to you.
Q374 Dr Turner: Professor Wood, you
have made reference to the particle physics archive. How much
does that cost to run and where does the funding come from?
Professor Sir Keith O'Nions: I
can answer that. This is broadened from particle physics archive
and it is broader science now in the US. It is currently, I believe,
run through the Cornell and its source of funds certainly includes
the National Science Foundation; so federal US funds are used
in a university environment to support that. Again, whether that
is a sustainable model into the future . . .. ArXiv.org
I believe is the name of the site.
Q375 Dr Turner: Paul Farrelly has
already referred to the possibility of double payment, but a clear
possibility that has been raised by Research Council UK is that
research councils can end up paying at both ends; both paying
for open-ended access publication and paying for the cost of journal
subscriptions. How does this affect your grant allocation policy
in terms of giving people money?
Professor Sir Keith O'Nions: The
research councils and OST are not generally paying for subscriptions
within universities. That is a responsibility of my colleague.
Q376 Dr Turner: It is partly infrastructure
costs.
Professor Sir Keith O'Nions: Yes,
but they are infrastructure costs that are coming from higher
education. But you are right, in as much as, if this business
model succeeds and develops as one expects it will develop, then
there will be upfront costs to OST for supporting that. I do not
think at the moment we know how big those are going to be. We
know how big they could be, but how much money will need to be
made available we do not know. Obviously it will start off being
really very small because the percentage usage is small.
Q377 Dr Turner: Do you want to comment
on your support for the subscriber?
Mr Thirunamachandran: At the moment
in the UK we provide a significant amount of funding to universities
for the basic infrastructure, but ultimately HEFCE funds are less
than half of what the totality of the university sector's general
income is; so it is difficult to specify exactly how much of HEFCE's
money might be going to libraries, but UK university libraries
spend about £400 million, of which probably 10% is on general
subscriptions.
Q378 Chairman: Did universities not
have an exercise in the last few years where they were told to
chase the money? It seems to me I remember the Chancellor was
quite adamant about making sure you knew where the money went
in universities.
Professor Sir Keith O'Nions: The
TRAC methodology.
Q379 Chairman: Yes.
Mr Thirunamachandran: Around £400
million is spent by universities on libraries, of which around
10% is on general subscriptions at present.
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