Scientific research funded by the European taxpayer should be freely available to everyone over the internet, according to a European commission report - a blow to the lucrative scientific publishing operations of media groups such as Reed Elsevier and Germany's Springer. The report, produced by economists from Toulouse University and the Free University of Brussels for the EC, shows that in the 20 years to 1995 the price of scientific journals rose 300% more than the rate of inflation over the period. In the 10 years since then, price increases slowed but still significantly outpaced inflation. "While it is important to stress the societal value of the existing publication system, it is also important to acknowledge the societal cost linked to high journal prices, in financial terms for public budgets, but also in terms of limits on the dissemination of knowledge and therefore of further scientific progress," the report concludes.
The report, published this month and open to consultation until the summer, recommends open access to publicly funded research. It proposes that researchers who receive EU funding should be "mandated" to place copies of articles published in subscription journals on web-based archives that can be accessed by everyone for free. The worry for traditional publishers such as Reed, Springer, Blackwell and the hundreds of learned societies that make their money through journals, is that if research is available for free on the internet no one will pay subscriptions....
Peter Willis, Liberal Democrat MP for Harrogate and Knaresborough and current chair of the science and technology select committee, described the EC report as "a good trigger for the UK government and science minister Lord Sainsbury to say this is something we support as well....I am delighted at the EC's recommendations and indeed hope it will act as a catalyst for the UK government to apply similar principles to the publishing market in the UK," he said. "Now is the time to bite the bullet and say this is the future of publishing."...[BioMed Central] publisher, Matthew Cockerill, said of the EC report: "It confirms what BioMed Central has been saying for some time - that scientists and funders are getting a poor deal from the traditional publishing system, which delivers limited access at high cost."
Posted by
Peter Suber at 4/18/2006 10:45:00 PM.
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.
