APPENDIX 68
Memorandum from the Public Library of
Science (PLOS)
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
"I want a poor student to have the same
means of indulging his learned curiosity, of following his rational
pursuits, of consulting the same authorities, of fathoming the
most intricate inquiry as the richest man in the kingdoms."
Sir Antonio Panizzi, Principal Librarian of the British Museum,
1836
1.1 What was an impossible ideal in 1836making
humanity's treasury of scientific and medical knowledge freely
available to allis today within our reach. We now have
the means to create an online public library containing the collected
published work of every scientist and physician, to scientists,
teachers, students, physicians and the public around the world.
1.2 This could be accomplished without sacrificing
the essential services provided by scientific publishers and without
spending any more money than we currently spend to buy a small
academic elite limited access to the research literature. We need
only replace the outdated, inefficient and unsustainable fee-for-access
business model with a new "open access" model supported
by a growing international coalition of scientists, funding agencies
and publishers.
1.3 The traditional fee-for-access model
is a vestige of an era when printing articles in paper journals
was the most efficient way to disseminate new scientific discoveries
and ideas. When each copy of a journal represented a significant
cost for printing and distribution, it made sense for recipients
to pay for each copy delivered.
1.4 With the Internet now the most effective
and widely used medium for communicating the results of scientific
research, charging for use is now economically irrational and
limiting access to subscribers is needlessly restrictive.
1.5 Instead of allowing publishers to recover
the costs of online publication (peer review, expert editing,
production and archiving) by taking ownership of the articles
and charging the readers and their agents for access, published
scientific works could be made freely available to all simply
by paying the costs related to each article at the time of its
publication.
1.6 Open access publishing will not involve
new expenses, nor will it place a financial burden on individual
researchers. Under the fee-for-access system, the governments,
funding agencies, universities and other organizations that sponsor
scientific research pay virtually all of the costs of scientific
publishing through the funds indirectly provided to research libraries.
In an open access system, these same parties would pay, but they
would get far more for their money.
1.7 This simple change in the way we pay
for publication would involve no compromise of the traditional
values of scientific publication. The essential role that scientific
journals play in orchestrating peer-review, editing, and stratification
of research articles is independent of the way costs are recovered.
We can maintain a vibrant scientific publishing industry by paying
publishers a fair price for the service they provide the scientific
community, while providing comprehensive, universal access to
the scientific literature.
1.8 The fee-for-access system is anti-competitive.
Scientific papers are not interchangeable, and every journal has
a monopoly on the papers that scientists have chosen to publish
in it. These monopolies over an essential commodity prevent market
forces from keeping subscription costs rational, leading to the
current unsustainable serials crisis.
1.9 By shifting from a monopolistic market
on scientific knowledge, to a free-market for publishing services,
open access will restore market efficiencies to scientific publishing.
By treating the costs of publication as costs of research and
including funds in research grants, monies available for publication
will scale with publication expenses. Thus, open access is intrinsically
sustainable, whereas the current system clearly is not.
1.10 Scientific knowledge was never meant
to be a commodityit is an invaluable public good. Publications
describing publicly funded research belong in the public domain,
where they can do the greatest good for science and humanity.
RECOMMENDATIONS
The UK governmentacting in the public
interest and as the major sponsor of scientific research in the
UKshould act decisively to remedy the current crisis in
scientific publishing and catalyze the transition to open access
by:
1.11 Establishing a UK national (or Commonwealth)
online public library for research literature. This library would
work in collaboration with the US National Library of Medicine
and other national libraries to ensure that every published research
articleespecially those arising from publicly funded researchare
securely archived in perpetuity and are freely and readily available
to, and useable by, the public.
1.12 Asserting that restrictions on the
distribution and use of research articles describing publicly
funded research are inconsistent with the goals of the government
in funding research.
1.13 Mandating (following a suitable transition
period) that all research articles arising from publicly-funded
research be made immediately and permanently available to the
public by open access publication and deposition in a suitable
public repository at the time of publication.
1.14 Designating a portion of university
funding for the support of open access publication charges to
provide the means for faculty and researchers (particularly those
without specific grant funding) to publish in open access journals.
1.15 Designating a portion of NHS funding
for the support of open access publication charges to provide
the means for clinicians and researchers (particularly those without
specific grant funding) to publish in open access journals.
1.16 Including reasonable (and ring-fenced)
funds to cover the costs of open access publication in all Research
Council grants to encourage grantees to publish their work in
open access journals.
1.17 Requiring universities and granting
agencies (including the Research Assessment Exercise) to consider
the intrinsic merits of a published article, rather than the impact
factor of the journal in which the article is published, in promotion
and funding decisions, recognizing that the canonization of journal
impact factors inhibits the development and growth of new publishing
endeavors.
1.18 Establishing a temporary "open
access transition fund" to which publishers can apply for
funding to facilitate the transition from subscription-based journals
to open access publishing.
2. SCIENTIFIC
PUBLISHING AND
ITS STAKEHOLDERS
The purpose of scholarly publishing
2.1 Publishing research is an essential
part of the scientific process. Research papers are the formal
means of communication between scientists and their communities.
Papers published in scholarly journals are a source of research
findings validated by peer review, establish the precedence of
one piece of work over another and provide the means by which
new ideas, methods and techniques can be disseminated and built
upon. Scientists also depend on publishing to build their reputation
and careers. Hiring, grants and promotion are based, in part,
on publication records.
2.2 Publishing is carried out by commercial
and not-for-profit publishing organizations, many of whom have
a long and successful history in scientific publishing.
The publishing process
2.3 Research papers are taken through the
following steps before they are published, although the details
involved vary from journal to journal:
Submission of a manuscript to the
journalusually done online;
Peer reviewthe process whereby
experts (usually scientists volunteering their time as part of
their commitment to the community) assess the validity and significance
of the research in a manuscript;
Revisionby the author in response
to peer review;
Acceptance for publicationdependent
on meeting the requirements of the peer reviewers; and
Productioninvolving copy-editing,
layout, graphics processing, proofing, and finally distribution
in print and online
2.4 Peer review is a key step in this process.
Although it is not a perfect system, peer review helps to eliminate
mistakes and enhances the value of the publication to readers.
Peer review is normally done for free by academics who are selected
by the Editor of the journal.
Stakeholders
Researchers as authors
2.5 For authors, papers provide two crucial
functions: (1) dissemination of their research and (2) career
advancement. Authors therefore choose the journal in which to
publish their work on the basis of criteria that will help fulfill
these functions: the prestige of the journal; the impact factor
(the average number of times a paper in that journal is cited
in other articles); the target audience; and the speed of publication.
2.6 In general authors want to publish in
the "best" journal they can, so that their work is noticed,
read and cited. If their work cannot reach all of the intended
audience, authors lose impact. Ideally, they would like everyone
with an interest in their work to be able to access it and use
it.
Researchers as readers and teachers
2.7 For readers, papers are a crucial source
of information for their own research and teaching. Keeping up-to-date
with the literature enables them to gain new ideas, learn new
techniques and avoid duplicationin short, to build on the
work of others. Papers themselves can even form the basis of research,
for example via meta-analyses of published data.
2.8 Science has become both more specialised
and more interdisciplinary, which means researchers need to be
able to assimilate information from many different sources. It's
no longer sufficient to browse through a small selection of journals
as it was 20 years ago. Researchers as readers value the quality
control provided by peer-review, the journal name as an indicator
of the perceived importance of a paper, currency of information
and unfettered access. Ideally, readers want access to all of
the literature, and the online searching tools that will allow
them to find and to mine the information that is relevant to their
work.
2.9 Keeping up-to-date with the current
literature is also essential for any teacher involved in tertiary
education. Academics at Universities and teaching colleges often
require students to read research papers during their courses
and exam questions are commonly based on data from published research
findings. This teaches students to critically evaluate complex
data and ideas and provides them with appropriate skills not only
for a career in research but for many other professions.
Scholarly societies
2.10 Many scholarly societies make important
contributions to their field, by helping to maintain the communication
between scientists in that discipline (via publishing journals
and organizing scholarly meetings), and by promoting the science
of their members not only to the broader scientific community
but also to policy makers, governments and the general public.
Many societies currently rely on the profits of their journals
to carry out useful works to further the aims of the society and
their members. At the heart of the mission of many scholarly societies
is the aim to promote and disseminate the science of its members
to as broad an audience as possible.
Research funding agencies
2.11 For funding agencies, research publications
are the means by which they can measure the return on their research
investment. They are a measure of the research output of individual
academics and help to determine who should receive future grant
awards. Given that others can then build on published research
findings, it is in the interests of funding agencies that the
published research results reach as large an audience as possible.
Research publications are also a measure of the research output
of institutes and universities, which has an important influence
on the direct funding to institutions in the Research Assessment
Exercise.
The public
2.12 Much of the funding that supports scientific
and medical research derives from public money, and yet the general
public does not have ready access to the published products of
this research. An individual seeking peer-reviewed and published
scientific information on the Internet might pay as much as £10-30
to view a single article, without knowing whether or not the information
would be useful before committing to pay to view.
3. What is wrong with the existing system
of scholarly publication?
3.1 Scientists have historically relied
on paper publication as the most efficient means for distributing
and promoting their work. When the information was encoded as
ink on paper, a large fraction of the costs were in the printing
and distribution, and each copy produced and distributed involved
an expense for the publisher. The standard business model for
scientific research publication, which organized works by scientific
field into journals sold by subscription, was sensible and efficient
and served science and society well. But today, the most effective,
efficient and widely used way to distribute scientific knowledge
is over the internet, and it no longer makes sense to use an economic
model optimized for print. The existing system is now unsustainable
and hampers the communication and progress of science.
3.2 Most scientific publications are only
available to institutional or individual subscribers, and libraries
are struggling to provide access to all the journals desired by
their affiliated faculty. Moreover, the logistics of subscribing
have become complicated. Before, a library just subscribed to
a print journal, but with electronic access there are now complex
licence agreementsand complex authentication systems to
ensure that unauthorized readers do not have access to the electronic
journal. Different publishers have different agreements, with
subscription fees being calculated in different ways.
3.3 Commercial publishers are now bundling
journals togetherthe "big deals". Although it
has been argued that these big deals increase access to the literature
(most notably by Elsevier), in reality bundling restricts choice
for librarians (they receive journals they don't want), while
taking a greater proportion of their budget. The recent debates
between Elsevier and the Universities of California and Cornell
demonstrate that even large relatively wealthy institutions are
unable to pay the high premiums demanded by commercial publishers
for these licences[251].
At the other end of the spectrum, individuals may pay a fee to
view a single article, even though there is no additional cost
to the publisher for the reader to view that article.
3.4 All recent analyses have shown that
the scientific, technical and medical (STM) publishing sector
has achieved remarkable growth over the past 20 years. For example,
financial analysts have estimated that it is at least a seven
billion dollar industry, in which publishers are used to very
healthy profit margins of 30-40% [252].
A recent analysis by the Wellcome Trust reported that the scientific
publishing market is dominated by the concerns of the commercial
publishers at the expense of the needs of the community as a whole[253];
and the Office of Fair Trading concluded that "there is evidence
to suggest that the market for STM journals may not be working
well"[254].
Commercial publishers have done well despite falling library budgets
primarily because the scientific publishing market is not competitive.
This is for three key reasons.
3.5 First, every paper is unique and each
journal is essentially a monopoly. Journals therefore cannot behave
like most other commodities because academics need access to all
relevant research findings. Librarians have consequently sought
ways to fund subscriptions regardless of the fees charged by publishers,
which helps explain why journal prices have increased by more
that 225% since 1986 while inflation increased by around 60% [255].
3.6 Second, researchers are cushioned from
the real cost of publication. Authors are unaware of what publishing
entails and of the real dissemination costs involved per article.
The result is that authors submit their work to journals regardless
of whether there are relatively high or low costs per article,
given the editorial or production standards. Readers are also
cushioned from the costs of subscription because it is librarians
that have traditionally negotiated access with publishers. Academics
at institutions have therefore put pressure on their libraries
to maintain subscriptions in the face of above inflation price
increases. Making the cost per article transparent would help
stabilize prices and provide real choice for authors, institutions
and funders.
3.7 Finally, funding for research and research
infrastructure (including libraries) is often split between different
organizations and funding agencies. For example, in the UK, government
funding for research is awarded via the Research Councils but
budgets for library subscriptions comes from HEFCE (among others).
Therefore, the cost of disseminating research is concealed from
the agencies that fund it.
4. THE OPEN
ACCESS BUSINESS
MODEL
4.1 Even if all publishers eschewed profits
and charged libraries only their fair share of each journal's
production costs, the simple act of restricting access to subscribers
creates unnecessary and counterproductive obstacles to the access
and use of the scientific literature. These obstacles needlessly
deny access to countless researchers, teachers, students and interested
members of the public who could benefit from comprehensive access
to the scientific literature, and prevents the scientific community
from fully exploiting technology to make the scientific literature
more accessible and useful. By adopting an "open access"
model for scientific publishing, in which publishers are paid
a fair price for the service they provide the scientific community,
we can maintain a vibrant scientific publishing industry while
providing comprehensive, universal access to the scientific literature.
4.2 Open access to scientific and medical
literature allows anyone, anywhere, with a connection to the Internet
to find and read published research articles online, and to use,
copy and redistribute their contents in the course of scholarship,
teaching, and personal inquiry. There are two crucial components,
based on the Bethesda Principles (2003) [256].
A. The author(s) and copyright holder(s)
grant(s) to all users a free, irrevocable, worldwide, perpetual
right of access to, and a license to copy, use, distribute, transmit
and display the work publicly and to make and distribute derivative
works, in any digital medium for any responsible purpose, subject
to proper attribution of authorship[257].
B. A complete version of the work and all
supplemental materials, in a suitable standard electronic format
is deposited immediately upon initial publication in at least
one online repository that is supported by an academic institution,
scholarly society, government agency, or other well-established
organization that seeks to enable open access, unrestricted distribution,
interoperability, and long-term archiving (such as PubMed Central
or INIST).
4.3 Open access publishers such as PLoS
and BMC are using a simple alternative business model for scientific
publication, designed to take full advantage of the economics
and opportunities of electronic publication. In this model, the
institutions that sponsor the research pay the costs of publishing
the results, recognizing that communication of research results
is fundamental to the research process, and is an integral part
of their mission to promote the discovery and dissemination of
new knowledge. This cost has been estimated to represent only
1-2% of the investment in the research itself (cited by Mark Walport,
Director of the Wellcome Trust, at the JISC discussion meeting
"Global Access to UK Research: Removing the Barriers",
London, 20 November 2003). The analysis was based on data obtained
from the Research Outputs Database (ROD) project[258].
4.4 By covering all costs upfront, it will
no longer be necessary or appropriate to restrict access or use
of published material. Instead, the information is made freely
available with no charges for access or restrictions on use or
redistribution. When an article is published in an open access
journal, the authors grant to the public domain an irrevocable
license to print, copy, distribute or otherwise use the work.

Figure 1. Subscription versus open access journals.
In subscription-based journal publishing, financial barriers are
imposed that restrict access to those who can afford to pay: for
institutional licenses, personal subscriptions, or document delivery.
Note that many journals also impose page or colour charges on
authors. Open access requires that revenue is provided to the
publisher to cover the costs of publication and dissemination,
from the author, institution or funding agency. Literature can
then be made freely available to any reader.
5. Why is Open Access Important?
5.1 Shifting the business model from "pay-to-read"
to "pay-upfront", brings profound benefits for research,
education and health and creates a competitive market that will
help both reduce and stabilize costs. The promise of open access
publishing for the key stakeholders in publishing will help to
catalyze the changes that are necessary.
5.2 For authors, open-access literature
maximizes the potential impact of their work. Anyone can find
and access their manuscripts, increasing the likelihood that the
works will be read, cited and used as the basis for future discoveries.
5.3 For the academic research community,
open access holds great promise. Open access will provide the
essential foundation for the development of diverse new ways to
search, interlink and integrate the information in published research
papers. Scientists are eager to incorporate the information contained
in research publications into their own databases to explore new
ways to integrate the contents of published works with information
from disparate sources, to reorganize it, to annotate it, to map
connections between pieces of information in disparate works published
in different journals, and to transform it into something that
goes far beyond an electronic version of journal volumes on a
library shelf. Unrestricted access to scientific data, such as
genetic and molecular information, has already revolutionized
life science research over recent years and has sparked new fields,
such as genomics; open access to the treasury of scientific and
medical literature will have similarly profound benefits for research[259],[260].
Open access will also help level the playing field between rich
and poor institutions and between those countries traditionally
not able to afford access to the scientific literature (eg many
Commonwealth countries).
5.4 For research libraries, open access
will help contain the spiraling costs of subscriptions to scientific
serials. Mergers and market concentration within the publishing
industry are placing increasing pressures on the budgets of university
science libraries and other archives of research, and open access
to peer-reviewed journals is a long-term solution to the problem
that has become known as the "serials crisis".
5.5 For funding agencies, open access will
ensure that the research they have invested in will be made available
to the widest possible audience and that progress in that field
will be maximized by the application of the latest navigation,
and text-and data-mining tools.
5.6 For scholarly societies, open access
will provide the means by which the research they promote can
reach new audiences, whether policy makers, the general public
or scientists from less wealthy countries or institutions (such
as NGOs). Moreover, open access provides a financially realistic
means to launch new journals or publications in burgeoning fields.
The current subscription model relies on large start-up costs
and having a threshold number of subscribers to make any new launch
viable. Inevitably, this can take several years and can fail unless
supported by additional funds. Large publishers will often provide
those funds as long as there is evidence that the final product
will eventually make a healthy profit. This prevents the launch
of journals in less profitable areas. With open access the revenue
scales with the growth of the journal.
5.7 Beyond the community of academic researchers,
open access will: foster science education by making the results
of scientific research available to all teachers and students;
lead to more informed healthcare decisions by doctors and patients;
and make publicly funded research available to the public.
5.8 In the commercial sector, open access
will empower industry with unfettered access to the latest scientific
discoveries. Biotechnology and the pharmaceutical industries in
particular stand to gain significant economic benefits. And even
in the context of publishing, open access to primary research
literature will create an environment in which new publishing
ventures will develop to provide and sell new tools and services
so that users of the literature can get the most out of this information.
5.9 Importantly, open access will also allow
market forces to operate effectively for STM literature and consequently
will provide a choice for authors (in terms of paying for an appropriate
dissemination service) that will help to contain costs and reward
the most efficient publishing operations.
6. Who Pays for Open Access?
6.1 Because open access eliminates subscription
fees for online journals, different sources of revenue must be
generated to sustain publication. There currently exist a variety
of business models for subscription-based commercial and not-for-profit
journals that might include revenue from advertising, page and
colour charges, and reprint, reuse, and course-pack charges, in
addition to major revenue from subscriptions and site licences.
6.2 Open access journals also rely on a
variety of revenue streams for support, but most charge publication
fees for each accepted research article as the major source of
revenue to replace traditional subscriptions. Such publication
charges require that funders, authors and institutions treat publication
as the final stage of a research project and provide additional
funds for dissemination through publication as a legitimate cost
of doing research, like presenting a poster or talk at a scientific
meeting.
6.3 Pragmatically speaking, there are many
different ways to sustain open-access publication costs. It is
not necessary for the thousands of existing peer-reviewed scientific
journals to adopt precisely the same business model[261].
It is likely, however, that successful open-access publishing
models will use some combination of the following options, many
of which are in use by subscription-based journals: publication
charges for an accepted article; institutional membership arrangements
(such as those arranged by PLOS or BMC), whereby publication charges
are waived or discounted for scientists affiliated with the member
institution; grant support from research sponsors and other funding
bodies; continuing revenues from existing sources, such as print
subscriptions, advertising, and corporate sponsorship; and new
revenue streams made possible by open access to new audiences,
such as the sale of value-added content or services.
6.4 Open access journals also rely on taking
full advantage of the decreased publication costs that are made
possible by the increased efficiency of digital technologies in
journal management, publication, and distribution. Because of
these efficiencies, publication costs should decrease while at
the same time the quality of the published product will be improved
by electronic enhancements such as interlinking, animations, and
other interactive functionalities. For example, electronic publication
and dissemination via the Internet eliminate printing and distribution
costs and negligible additional costs are incurred for each additional
reader.
6.5 However, we also recognize that some
authors today do not have ready access to funds to cover the costs
of publishing in open access journals. Such authors might be clinicians
who are writing up findings that arise from their clinical duties,
junior scientists with limited access to funds, or scientists
from underfunded institutes in poorer nations. The situation could
therefore arise that such authors become disenfranchised from
the system of scientific publishing if publishing always requires
an author payment. The first and most important response to this
concern is that the ability to pay must never enter into the decision
about whether a piece of work is published in an open access journal.
If an author cannot pay, then the fee must be waived, if the peer
review process judges that the article is worthy of publication.
In addition, strenuous efforts need to be made by many stakeholders
in publishing to ensure that this population of authors is provided
with access to funds wherever possible. Massive savings from the
cancellation of subscription journals will be made in institutions,
hospitals, NGOs and universities that could help to establish
funds for employees who are less well funded. As far as developing
nations are concerned, many organizations, including the WHO[262],
INASP[263]
and SciELO[264]
are working to support journals in those areas, and to provide
access to the expensive subscription-based journals produced in
wealthy nations. With open access to literature, these efforts
can be shifted to providing support for publication for these
authors.
7. The Transition to Open Access
7.1 There are many barriers that need to
be overcome to change the subscription-based model to one of open
access. The transition will not be straightforward and the stakeholders
in scientific publishing are all faced with different challenges.
7.2 Authors have little incentive to submit
their work to new open access journals that have neither an impact
factor nor an established reputation. Moreover, many authors do
not have the funds required to cover the costs of open access
publishing.
7.3 Research funding agenciesboth
private and publicand other international organizations
do not yet directly apportion funds to support publication costs
but have the potential to act as catalysts in the open access
transition. The past two years have seen significant and influential
open access policy statements from major funding agencies including
the Wellcome Trust[265],
the US-based Howard Hughes Medical Institute, and many European
funding agencies[266].
The UN World Summit on the Information Society also approved a
Declaration of Principles and Plan of Action that contained explicit
endorsements of open access to scientific information[267].
Together, they demonstrate a remarkable commitment to the wholesale
transformation of scientific publishing to open access. To ensure
the long-term sustainability of Open Access publishing, a similar
commitment by the UK Research Councils is a priority.
7.4 Libraries face an uncertain future in
a journal publishing world dominated by open access. However,
some of the savings that are made from the cancellation of subscription
journals can be used to provide some financial support for the
publication costs of researchers at their institution, especially
those with limited funding. Librarians will also have a vital
role in equipping staff and students with the skills needed to
mine and navigate new literature-based resources that will develop
as a result of open access.
7.5 It is not obviously in the interest
of most commercial and many not-for-profit publishers to change
from a system where they have achieved substantial profits and
surpluses. However, there is no reason to suppose that open access
publishing is not commercially viable. Indeed, the largest open
access publisher is BioMed Central (BMC), a for-profit company.
There will also be opportunities for publishers to provide value-added
services to a freely accessible primary content layer, as pointed
out in section 5.8. Society publishers have the additional concern
that open access could adversely affect their membership and long-term
sustainability. This is discussed in section 8.7.
8. Common Concerns about Open Access
8.1 All of the stakeholders involved in
scientific publishing will be affected by the transition from
subscription-based to open-access publishing. The following concerns
are frequently expressed. All are important, but all can be answered,
so that the full benefits of unfettered access to the literature
can be realized.
Concern 1: Open Access Publishing is Currently
Heavily Subsidized and is not Financially Sustainable
8.2 The publishing efforts of both BMC and
PLoS are currently subsidizedin the case of PLoS by a nine
million dollar grant from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation.
These subsidies are helping to fund the establishment of a completely
new business, which includes developing systems, launching new
products, advocacy and outreach. We do not expect to be in profit
for another four to five years but it is unlikely that other publishers
would have to bear similar costs once open access is accepted
as a credible publishing model. PLoS and BMC have already demonstrated
that the scientific community is ready to support open access
publishing, by submitting outstanding scientific research for
publication in these new journals.
8.3 By launching further journals, and charging
a reasonable price to authors for the costs of publishing (currently
set at $1,500) PLoS will be able to run journals that support
themselves on a fee-for-publication basis. We are making our publication
costs known so that there can be a more informed debate about
the real costs of scientific publishing. Although many publishers
have claimed that they would need to charge authors in excess
of $4,000 to support journals by author payment, this discussion
has been hampered by a lack of information sharing about the real
nature of these costs.
8.4 The open access system is intrinsically
sustainable. The costs of online publishing scale with the number
of papers published, and thus are tightly linked to research expenditures.
By providing funds for publication in every research grant, the
funds available for publication track with the funds needed for
publication. This economic balance is in stark contrast with the
fee-for-access system where neither the funds available for subscriptions,
nor publisher revenues, bear any direct relationship to the actual
costs of publishing. This imbalance leads on the one hand to often
excessive profits for publishers, and on the other to a perpetual
shortage in budgets dedicated to journal subscriptions.
8.5 There is clearly enough money entering
the scientific publishing system to support the industrythe
robust economic health of commercial and not-for-profit scientific
publishers attests to this fact. The key to sustainability is
that funding and policies are changed such that funds to support
open access publishing are available to all authors, via research
funding agencies, universities, hospitals, institutions, companies,
contractors and so on. Already, many funding agencies have indicated
their support for the provision of open access publication expenses
in research grants. The UK Government can take decisive action
that builds on these developments.
Concern 2: How will the archival record of science
be sustained in an open-access world?
8.6 The long-term sustainability of electronic
journal literature is an issue that affects all journalsnot
just open access journals. One of the main benefits of open-access
publishing is that papers are routinely archived in stable, centralized
resources such as PubMed Central and INIST[268].
In fact, open-access journals are in many ways more robust than
subscription-based journals when it comes to archiving because
articles can be deposited in multiple archives without the arduous
process of securing copyright permission from many different publishers
separately (remember that the vast majority of subscription-based
publishers own exclusive reproduction rights on the articles that
they publish). Open-access journals and archives also protect
against corporate contingencies (mergers and bankruptcy, for example)
that may remove archives previously considered secure.
Concern 3: Open access publishing threatens
the existence of scholarly societies who rely on journal subscriptions
revenue to fund key activities within their respective communities.
8.7 At the heart of the mission of many
scholarly societies is the aim to promote and disseminate the
science of their membership. Open access publishing provides a
very effective way to fulfill that mission and is being actively
explored by several society and non-profit publishers, including
The American Society for Cell Biology, The Company of Biologists
and the British Ecological Society. In addition, PLoS has been
approached by many societies who are interested in moving their
journals to open access. It is also the case, however, that many
society publishers have expressed great concern about the impact
of open access publishing on their own activities. One of the
major benefits of society membership is often a subscription to
the society journal. Open access therefore removes a significant
incentive to join a society, and might therefore adversely affect
membership as well as revenue.
8.8 The transition to open access will lead
to a profound change in the publishing landscape, and to preserve
the valued activities of the scholarly societies, there is a strong
case for the provision of funds to aid publishers who wish to
migrate from subscription-based to open access publishing. The
case is all the more strong for society publishers whose journals
tend to be more fairly priced than those of commercial publishers
and, as a result of their funding of community initiatives, do
not usually have access to substantial cash reserves. The Joint
Information Systems Committee announced, last November, a modest
scheme to fund such transitions for a small number of publishers.
Additional funds need to be provided for similar efforts. These
could be made available for competitive bidding. The membership
of the society could also be consulted to determine whether they
would actively support a transition to open access. If the membership
substantially supports the transition, and also recognizes that
the society brings significant benefits in addition to a subscription
to the society journal, fears about lost membership can be allayed.
The societies at the vanguard of the transition to open access
stand to gain in reputation and standing as a result of their
leadership, and their journals will benefit from the increased
impact and exposure that is a natural consequence of open access.
Concern 4: Since open-access publishers will
rely largely on publication fees, there will be an incentive to
publish as many papers as possible. The quality of the published
literature will therefore diminish.
8.9 Publishing high-quality, rigorously
peer-reviewed science costs moneyregardless of the publisher's
business modeland certainly open-access and restricted-access
publishers both feel pressure to keep costs down. However, the
quality of a journal depends on a network of cooperation among
authors who send their best papers, reviewers who acknowledge
and apply appropriate standards of publication for the journal,
and editors who select the papers and reviewers. That requisite
stream of productive interactions is independent of a particular
publishing business model because if standards drop the value
of the journal diminishes both for authors and readers. Open access
journals therefore experience the same pressure to maintain and
raise standards to retain their place in the community.
Concern 5: The 83% of scientific, technical
and medical (STM) journals that currently require authors to transfer
copyright to their works to the publisher do so because publishers
are better equipped to protect authors' rights than authors are269.
Authors would forfeit a considerable assetnamely legal
protectionby publishing with open-access licenses rather
than restricted-access licenses.
[269]
8.10 Publishers claim to offer two kinds
of legal protections to authorsprotection against unauthorized
duplication and protection against misattribution. On the first
count: the "protection" against unauthorized duplication
does not benefit the author; it benefits the publisher. Authors
want their works to see the widest possible distribution and citation;
they are publishing for impact, not for profit. Publishers, on
the other hand, take substantial revenues from reprints and photocopying,
particularly when the article is used as part of a coursepack,
and have a standing incentive to prohibit the free duplication
of works. Indeed, open access would largely eliminate the protection
against unauthorized duplication, because open access would permit
duplication and distribution for any responsible purpose. Broadly
permitted duplication and distribution are assets of open-access
publishing, not liabilities.
8.11 On the second count: STM publishers
virtually never go to court to defend an author's work against
copyright violations involving misattribution or lack of attribution.
The vacancy of this historical record is due in part to the fact
that legal questions of attribution are governed more by legislation
pertaining to fraud than by legislation pertaining to copyright.
Furthermore, the real protection of scientific works against misattribution
comes from standards of the scientific community. Since an author's
reputation is his or her most valuable asset, the expectations
of peers will always enforce proper compliance with codes of attribution
more effectively than legal statutes can. And, of course, open
access makes plagiarism far easier to spotsince open archives
are more inclusive and more easily searched.
9. Recommendations and Actions
9.1 The Government has a crucial role to
play in changing the current scholarly publishing regime to one
that better serves the research community and the general public
and makes optimal use of the public funds the government invests
in research. Through legislation, policy and funding, the Government
can also influence and encourage change among the stakeholders
in the scholarly publishing enterprise by:
(a) Establishing a UK national (or Commonwealth)
online public library for research literature. This library would
work in collaboration with the US National Library of Medicine
and other national libraries to ensure that every published research
articleespecially those arising from publicly funded researchare
securely archived in perpetuity and are freely and readily available
to, and useable by, the public.
(b) Asserting that restrictions on the distribution
and use of research articles describing publicly funded research
are inconsistent with the goals of the government in funding research.
(c) Mandating (following a suitable transition
period) that all research articles arising from publicly-funded
research be made immediately and permanently available to the
public by open access publication and deposition in a suitable
public repository at the time of publication.
(d) Designating a portion of university funding
for the support of open access publication charges to provide
the means for faculty and researchers (particularly those without
specific grant funding) to publish in open access journals.
(e) Designating a portion of NHS funding
for the support of open access publication charges to provide
the means for clinicians and researchers (particularly those without
specific grant funding) to publish in open access journals.
(f) Including reasonable (and ring-fenced)
funds to cover the costs of open access publication in all Research
Council grants to encourage grantees to publish their work in
open access journals.
(g) Requiring universities and granting agencies
(including the Research Assessment Exercise) to consider the intrinsic
merits of a published article, rather than the impact factor of
the journal in which the article is published, in promotion and
funding decisions, recognizing that the canonization of journal
impact factors inhibits the development and growth of new publishing
endeavors.
(h) Establishing a temporary "open access
transition fund" to which publishers can apply for funding
to facilitate the transition from subscription-based journals
to open access publishing.
9.2 In taking these actions, the Government
will encourage the stakeholders to take action in support of open
access on behalf of their constituents, members, faculty and researchers,
for example:
(a) scientific research funders (here and
abroad) will follow the example set by the Research Councils and
will treat publication costs as essential research expenses;
(b) the scientific and medical community
will be encouraged to make their work publicly available and to
publish their work in open access journals;
(c) colleges, universities, hospitals, NGOs,
research institutions and libraries will support and promote open-access
journals and public availability of scientific information;
(d) industry will be encouraged to sponsor
open-access journals and help to fund the transition to open access
publishing;
(e) publishers will convert their journals
to open access and respond to new publishing opportunities to
meet the growing demand for navigational , educational and literature
mining tools; and
(f) the general public will increase its
use of the scientific and medical literature and will demand that
access be made comprehensive.
This collective action, led by the Government,
will drive the transition to a robust and sustainable open access
science and technology publishing system. Such a system will better
serve the scientific research community, faculty, teachers, and
students, the public and private research funding agencies, and
the general public.
February 2004
251 See the journal pricing web page at http://www.econ.ucsb.edu/-tedb/Journals/jpricing.html. Back
252
Morgan Stanley Media Report, Scientific Publishing: Knowledge
is Power, Sept 2002; J.P. Morgan Report, Scientific and Medical
Publishing: Big is Beautiful, June 2003. Back
253
http://www.wellcome.ac.uk/en/1/awtpubrepeas.html. Back
254
UK OFT Report, The Market for Scientific, Technical and Medical
Journals, 2002 (www.oft.gov.uk). Back
255
Association of Research Libraries (http://www.arl.org/stats/arlstat/graphs/2002/2002t2.html). Back
256
http://www.earlham.edu/-peters/fos/bethesda.htm. Back
257
The licence used by the Public Library of Science is the Creative
Commons License - http://www.plos.org/journals/license.htm. Back
258
Dawson G, Lucocq B, Cottrell R and Lewison G (1998) Mapping
the Landscape: National Biomedical Research Outputs 1988-95. London,
The Wellcome Trust, Policy Report no 9 (ISBN 1869835 95 6). Back
259
Yandell MD, Majoros WH, Genomics and natural language processing,
Nature Reviews Genetics 3 (8): 601-610. Back
260
Tim Hubbard, Appendix C (not printed) Back
261
For a more detailed presentation of open-access publishing business
models, see Crow, R. and Goldstein, H. (2003) Guide to Business
Planning for Converting a Subscription-based Journal to Open Access,
Open Society Institute, Edition 2, July 2003. Back
262
WHO: World Health Organization (http://www.who.int/en/) Back
263
INASP: International Network for the Availability of Scientific
Publications (http://www.inasp.info/) Back
264
SciELO: Scientific Electronic Library Online (http://www.scielo.br/)
Back
265
http://www.wellcome.ac.uk/en/1/awtvispolpub.html Back
266
http://www.zim.mpg.de/openaccess-berlin/berlindeclaration.html
Back
267
http://www.itu.int/wsis/documents/doc-single-en-1161.asp Back
268
Institut de l'Information Scientifique et Technique (INIST)
is the centre for scientific and technical information of the
CNRS in France. http://www.inist.fr/ Back
269
Cox, John and Laura (2003) "Scholarly Publishing Practice:
the ALPSP report on academic journal publishers' policies and
practices in online publishing," for the Association of Learned
and Professional Society Publishers. http://www.alpsp.org/news/sppsummary0603.pdf
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