David Hencke, Science journal publishers defend profits, The Guardian, March 2, 2004. On the first session of oral testimony before the UK House of Commons Science and Technology Committee. This session heard from the large commercial publishers. Next week, the supporters of OA will have their chance. Excerpt: "The biggest publishers of scientific journals last night defended their huge profits, in front of MPs, against the rising challenge of new 'open access' internet publishing....They were facing critical questions from the Commons science and technology committee under Dr Ian Gibson, Labour MP for Norwich North, about overcharging for journals and having a monopoly over publications. MPs were also pressing them about the challenge from free articles available on the internet - which are paid for by the authors....All the publishers warned that if the system changed it would mean lower standards, the end of peer review and scientists having to rely on patronage from their universities - since it could cost up to £30,000 to publish each paper. Mr Campbell [of Blackwell] and Mr Davies [of Elsevier] said that institutions such as Oxford, Yale, Stanford and Imperial College, London, would be faced with huge bills to subsidise their staff so they could publish their work." (PS: Did they really say £30,000 per paper? Do they think this obvious exaggeration will be more credible to the committee than the testimony next week from PLoS and BMC on the actual costs? On the peer review smear, see my detailed response.)
Posted by
Peter Suber at 3/02/2004 10:40:00 AM.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
I recommend the OA tracking project (OATP) as the best way to stay on top of new OA developments. You can read the OATP feed on a blog-like web page or subscribe to it by RSS, email, or Twitter. You can also help build the feed by tagging new developments you encounter.
