APPENDIX 129
Supplementary evidence from BioMed Central
Limited
1. (Re Q179) The suggestion, by John Jarvis
(Wiley, response to Q26) and Crispin Davis (Elsevier, response
to Q65) that the commercial sector would gain from Open Access
at the expense of the academic sector is fundamentally incorrect.
In the Open Access model the funding of publishing of research
results is regarded as a necessary and integral part of the funding
of the research itself. The commercial sector does carry out research
and publishes it, but in addition, funds (contract) research that,
if published under the Open Access regime, is paid for from the
money provided by the commercial sector. As generally a high proportion
of research is funded by industry, so a high proportion of the
publishing costs will be covered by the commercial sector. However,
the `input-paid' Open Access model may redistribute the proportions
of some of the costs the various players bear. If this produces
unfair imbalances, they can and should be corrected. In the case
of the commercial sector participation, however, we do not see
a problem.
2. (Re Q189) It is a requirement that all
research articles submitted for publication in the Open Access
journals we publish are peer-reviewed by members of the scientific
community that are independent of BioMed Central. This is no different
from the process used by traditional publishers and adheres to
accepted standards of the scientific community. Reviewers are
asked and expected to make a judgement whether the manuscript
is scientifically sound and coherent; does not substantially duplicate
work that the authors have published elsewhere; or is such a trivial
study that it does not deserve publication at all at this stage.
Reviewers are also asked to declare any competing interests. Note:
the current system of publishing provides a strong incentive to
publish as many articles as possible, since by increasing the
number of pages published the journal subscription or licence
price can be increased. Indeed, this argument is often used to
justify price increases (Crispin Davis, Elsevier, responding to
Q64).
3. (Re Q202, 205) In the answer to Q65 Crispin
Davis (Elsevier) states that: "We [the UK] produce 5% of
the world's research and we consume 3% of the world's research."
It seems very difficult to ascertain whether UK's proportion of
spending on publishing will increase or decrease under the open
access model, but there are many indications to suggest that the
total spent will substantially decrease. However, during the transition,
when savings through cancelling subscriptions does not necessarily
match the spending on open access publishing, there is a chance
that, temporarily, institutions will be faced with increased expenditure,
and this issue needs to be addressed.
4. The precise cost of peer-review is difficult
to ascertain in a young and still growing business. The cost is
divided in two parts: the cost of the process and the cost of
maintaining the system (the latter is fairly fixed and translates
to a cost per article that is very dependent on scale). Our current
estimate for the irreducible cost of peer-review per article is
between £50 and £200. Scientists working in academia
carry out the actual peer-review; we, as publishers, provide logistical
and technological help to increase speed and reduce costs.
5. The cost per article to the publisher
comprises the costs mentioned in the previous question plus the
costs associated with hosting the articles on a configuration
of web sites, and those of overheads. As we currently charge per
published article only, yet incur costs for every article processed,
the Article Charge is higher for more selective journals with
a high rejection rate and lower for "archival" journals
with a lower rejection rate.
6. The Open Access publishing model is of
crucial importance to the publication of facts uncovered by research,
such as in the biomedical disciplines. When it concerns opinion,
such as in commentaries, analyses and reviews, the model may not
apply.
CLOSING STATEMENT
We believe the Committee has the opportunity
to benefit UK biomedical research by doing two things:
Recommend that it be required that
research results obtained from publicly funded medical research
(most urgently those from clinical trials) are published under
Open Access rules.
Recommend that, in the strategic
long-term interest of the UK, a Repository with full Open Access
functionality is created which includes mirrors of such already
existing repositories elsewhere, such as PubMed Central, and which
allows direct deposits of individual journals or articles.
March 2004
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