APPENDIX 61
Memorandum from the Institute of Biology
1. The Institute of Biology is the independent
and charitable body charged by Royal Charter to further the study
and application of the UK's biology and allied biosciences. It
has 14,000 members and over 60 specialist learned Affiliated Societies
(see www.iob.org). The IOB publishes two peer-reviewed journals
itself, and the Affiliated Societies publish around 70 further
publications between them, making the IOB ideally placed to respond
to the above consultation.
SUMMARY OF
THE IOB'S
RECOMMENDATIONS TO
THE GOVERNMENT
To promote a fair, competitive market in scientific
publishing
2. In any new legislation that affects scientific
publishing, consider the importance of publishing income to learned
societies and their beneficial activities in the scientific community
(paragraphs 15, 19, 24, 29, 30, 42).
3. The Impact Factor is a problematic measure
of journal quality. Alternative systems should be explored by
looking at other existing ratings systems (paragraphs 20-22).
4. Large publishers could be seen as holding
a monopoly position in the market. Consider whether Big Deal schemes
are the best way for libraries to get the maximum number of journals
and balanced scientific coverage for the funds available (paragraphs
19, 25-29).
5. Consider whether scientific publishers
should be competing for subscriptions at all. When the primary
aim for all parties is higher impact research, increasing access
to academic journals is vital. Subscription free journals would
be one answer to this. Other forms of competition, such as for
high quality papers, could still take place. Open access policies
should be explored (paragraph 35).
To explore open access policies
6. A quantitative analysis of the economic
effects of converting journals (both current and archived) to
open access should be undertaken, considering where journals will
derive their income if not from subscriptions, how commercial
publishers will be able to expand and grow, and how learned society
publishing income can be protected (paragraphs 37-42).
7. The international scope of research and
many journals should be taken into consideration in any government
open access initiative in the UK (paragraph 43).
8. An analysis of how institutions will
benefit from open access publishing should be undertaken, with
regards to the costs of subscriptions now vs. the costs of publishing
their research in open access journals. How institutions will
obtain funds to publish papers not derived from grant-funded basic
research (eg reviews) should also be considered (paragraph 44).
9. In order to support open access publishing,
the government could encourage researchers to publish their outputs
in open access journals by stipulating this as a condition of
research grants and providing author publication funds. It should
make clear to researchers that research published in peer-reviewed
open-access journals will be eligible for inclusion in the Research
Assessment Exercise (RAE), and any impact of introducing author
fees on scientists' ability to publish should be considered in
RAE processes (paragraphs 46-50).
To support quality and access in on-line journals
10. The British Library Digital Object Management
Programme should be supported to ensure secure storage of on-line
publications (paragraph 58).
11. On-line articles should be subjected
to the same quality checks as print journals. Peer reviewing activities
should be recognised in the RAE to encourage researchers to undertake
peer review. Electronic publishing is increasing the problem of
plagiarism and computer software for detecting plagarised text
may be more heavily relied upon in future. Publisher copyright
agreements may be a useful system for ensuring that several different
versions of a paper do not end up on the Internet. Public awareness
should be raised of the mechanisms of quality control for scientific
research (paragraphs 59-62).
INTRODUCTION
12. Three main stakeholder groups exist
in the process of publishing scientific journals: researchers
and institutions, scientific publishers and funders of research.
13. Researchers and institutions publish
the outputs of their research in peer-reviewed journals to make
them accessible to other researchers for them to be read, used
and cited. The more they are read, used and cited, the greater
the impact of their research. And high impact research means career
advancement and future funding for the researcher, and prestige
and funding for the researcher's institution. Researchers and
institutions are also the consumers of other researchers' and
institutions' outputs; they need access to publications in order
to carry out their research effectively.
14. Scientific publishers or editors organise
the refereeing process and act as a medium by which the article
is delivered to the reader. Currently, most journals exist as
a commercial business, making money from reader/library subscriptions
in return for this service. Commercial publishers can perhaps
be separated from learned society publishers only by the fact
that profits from society journals are generally invested back
into the scientific community through the missions and activities
of the society. Some societies don't make profits on their publications
at all but produce them as a service to members. All publishers
want to increase the circulation of their journals to increase
subscription income and to help increase the "Impact Factor"
and thus desirability of their journal (which is based on the
number of citations their articles receive).
15. Government, industry and charity funders
of research want to see the research they fund gaining the largest
impact possible to prove the money was well spent and promote
the scientific development of the country (or the success of their
business in the case of industry). They, therefore, have an interest
in the outputs of their research reaching as large an audience
as possible.
16. For all three stakeholder groups, high
impact research is the goal. The government has an interest and
influence in all parts of the process, in that it funds a substantial
amount of UK research and, as a consumer, funds a large number
of the subscriptions of scientific publishers through university
library budgets. A significant amount of business wealth and employment
in the UK is also dependent on the well being of the scientific
publishing industry.
17. Within the scientific publishing process,
Institute of Biology (IOB) members generally represent the researcher/institution
category. In addition, many of our 60+ Affiliated Societies are
learned society publishers of academic journals. After canvassing
views from these groups, the following issues are discussed in
this paper:
— Open access policies; and
— Online publishing—quality and
access.
PUBLISHER COMPETITION
18. Competition between publishers promotes
high quality journals, a better service to authors and keeps subscriptions
in check. However, commercial publishers and learned societies
are often not competing on an equal footing, as they vary widely
in the set-up and objectives of their operations. For example,
learned society publishers usually publish between one and four
peer-reviewed journals within the same discipline (with the largest,
the Institute of Physics, publishing around 40 journals), while
some commercial publishers, such as Elsevier, produce over 2,000
titles across a range of disciplines. With this market dominance,
commercial publishers can offer libraries deals and schemes for
journals across a range of specialisms to further increase their
market share. And a larger circulation can mean a higher Impact
Factor, increasing their competitiveness for research articles.
Competition for research articles
19. Several factors can influence a researcher's
choice of journal, for example, area of specialisation, speed
of publication and whether there are page or colour charges. But
the main factors are the prestige, reputation and quality of the
journal, and this is largely measured by the "Impact Factor".
A higher Impact Factor indicates that papers previously published
in that journal have been read and cited more, making it an attractive
place to publish work.
20. Impact Factors are produced by a company
and do not cover all journals. The company charges a substantial
fee to libraries to have access to Impact Factor records and operate
something of a monopoly. Unfortunately, the Impact Factor does
not necessarily reflect the standard of the work. It is strongly
influenced by the number of workers investigating a topic, and
an article may even be heavily cited because lots of other authors
are refuting the research findings it contains. It is also possible
to increase the Impact Factor of a journal by publishing review
articles, which are generally more frequently cited. A cheaper
subscription, the status of the publisher and inclusion in a Big
Deal scheme can all affect the Impact Factor of a journal. In
addition, the "educational" role of scientific papers
are not reflected by Impact Factors. Use by undergraduates,
postgraduates and lecturers does not involve citation by researchers
and so plays no part in the calculation of Impact Factors. Therefore,
the Impact Factor rating system has many problems.
21. Other rating systems do currently exist
and could be used to help to develop a better universal system
for rating journal quality than the Impact Factor. For example,
the "Euro-Factor" is a new rating system for European
biomedical journals developed by VICER (www.vicer.org). Journals
are selected under a strong peer-review quality selection process
on the basis of inclusion into an abstract indexed European database,
quality of peer review process, and other quality requirements.
Over 500 journals are currently listed under a range of categories.
In addition, the "Faculty of 1000" website (www.facultyof1000.com)
highlights and reviews the most interesting papers published in
the biological sciences based on the recommendations of 1,000
leading researchers.
COMPETITION FOR
SUBSCRIPTIONS
22. The number of scientific journals in
the world is ever increasing, yet library budgets are decreasing.
They must do their best to buy in and provide for their researchers
as wide a range of journals as possible. There are hundreds of
journals, and therefore research outputs, that are not available
to researchers simply because their libraries cannot afford them.
The outputs of hundreds of researchers are therefore not having
the impact that they could. Libraries may make the decision to
buy a particular journal based on several factors, for example,
the Impact Factor (see paragraphs 20-22), whether it is available
on-line (see paragraph 56-57), the subscription cost and whether
it is part of a publisher Big Deal scheme.
Subscription cost
23. Although the costs of running a journal
are fairly constant, subscription prices vary widely. The differing
objectives of charity/society publishers vs. commercial publishers
may be one reason for this. High impact journals also tend to
charge more. A money-tight library may opt for cheaper journals
rather than the ones the teaching and research community needs,
and researchers have to defend the continuing appearance of their
specialty journals.
Big Deal schemes
24. Big Deal schemes allow institutions
to buy electronic bundles of journals from one publisher across
a wide range of subjects. This is often good value for money for
the institution and allows publishers to increase the potential
readership and sales of journals.
25. Due to these schemes it is thought that
a larger range of journals are now available to most academics
compared to five years ago. It certainly means that journals that
could otherwise not be afforded are now available. For example,
one researcher surveyed found that Geoderma, a soil science
journal from Reed-Elsevier that had previously been abandoned
by his library (at a saving of around £1,000 per annum),
is now available under a Big Deal scheme.
26. Big Deal schemes are also a way of expanding
sales for small circulation journals, such as The British Society
of Soil Science's journal Soil Use and Management, which
is now available through such a scheme.
Disadvantages of Big Deal schemes
27. It was found that librarians are often
wary of Big Deal schemes, as they may not include some of the
key or more expensive journals essential to their readers. Journals
not included in these schemes might not be bought as individual
titles due to the extra cost, yet less essential journals are
bought in as part of the deal. There seems to be little flexibility
for opting out of parts of schemes to use the reduction in cost
to buy non-Big Deal journals.
28. Big Deal schemes also give large publishers
with large portfolios a massive competitive advantage over smaller
ones, and could be seen as promoting a monopoly. Elsevier strengthens
its position further by providing a convenient and freely accessible
on-line information service allowing worldwide access to what
is available in its journals (BioMedNet). The outcome is a swing
towards groups of journals that do not necessarily represent balanced
scientific coverage. Libraries are finding it ever harder to purchase
valuable journals from smaller, not-for-profit sources (eg learned
societies and educational charities).
29. Is it really desirable that government
funds to universities, channelled through library budgets, end
up supporting the profit margins of commercial publishers? It
can be argued that journal sales are more important for learned
societies in that they often fund many of their other scientific
activities, such as conferences, training and educational activities.
On the other hand, commercial publishers have probably done more
to make their journals available to a wider audience and on-line.
In both cases, many scientific publishers use the profit from
their periodical publishing to partly subsidise much less profitable
book publishing. If their income was reduced, the first casualty
may well be the learned volumes that are unlikely to produce a
profit.
"How can the government promote a fair, competitive
market?"
30. The government has significant influence
over science publishing, as the funder of much UK research and,
in particular, the source of university library budgets. The government
might want to consider several options for promoting a fair, competitive
market:
31. In any new legislation that affects
scientific publishing, consider the importance of publishing income
to learned societies and their activities in the scientific community.
32. Alternative measures of journal quality
to the Impact Factor should be explored by looking at existing
ratings systems
33. Large publishers could be seen as holding
a monopoly position in the market. Consider whether Big Deal schemes
are the best way for libraries to get the maximum number of journals
and balanced scientific coverage for the funds available.
34. Finally, should scientific publishers
be competing for subscriptions at all? When the primary aim for
all parties is higher impact research, increasing access to academic
journals is vital. Subscription free journals would be one answer
to this. Other forms of competition, such as for high quality
papers, could still take place. Open access policies should be
explored (see paragraphs 36-55).
OPEN ACCESS
POLICIES
35. Open access (subscription-free) journals
are, it seems, one answer to increasing the availability and,
potentially, the impact of research carried out in the UK. By
definition, such journals are Internet based. BioMed Central (www.biomedcentral.com/home/)
already provides over 100 journals free of charge on the Internet.
However, with a well-established scientific publishing industry
and many learned societies relying on publishing income, there
are several issues to consider when developing wider open access
to research outputs in the UK.
Publisher costs and income
36. In order for journals to survive in
an open access world, the costs of administration, editing, printing
and maintaining journal websites will need to come from somewhere
other than subscriptions. An open access model whereby authors
pay for publication costs rather than subscribers has been put
forward by several organisations such as the Wellcome Trust. The
Wellcome Trust suggests that publishing costs should be included
in research grants, which would entail all funders of research
(government, charity and industry) agreeing to increase their
research grants/expenses to account for this—a major undertaking
that would take many years to phase in.
37. A possible consequence of this model
is funders of research may start to stipulate that research outputs
must be published in a journal with an Impact Factor (or other
quality measure) above a certain cut off point. Journals with
low Impact Factors may not be able to compete and a culture of
discounts may begin. In addition, a problem may arise when papers
are written after the end of a grant when researchers may have
moved on—some funders insist that all the money must be
spent at the time the grant finishes.
38. Who pays for the publishing costs of
journals that publish reviews or articles that have not been derived
from basic research? Many less-well funded academics would find
it hard to publish unless journals had sufficient income to operate
bursary schemes. BioMedNet uses a different approach to get round
this—as well as charging authors for publication costs in
some journals, it also has over 400 institutional and corporate
"members" from 32 different countries. Each pays a membership
fee to support open access publishing, and in return gets benefits
such as author-fee waivers and a web page devoted to the institution
and its publications. There needs to be a quantitative study on
whether potential income from authors or BioMedNet-type "members"
would be equal to the current income from subscriptions.
39. Journals currently strive to increase
income by increasing subscriptions. If income were derived from
authors paying per page, journals would have to publish more pages
or charge more per page in order to increase income. Both these
options are limited, in that publishing more pages is limited
by the potential workload of editors and reviewers, and page charges
will need to be competitive and cannot increase indefinitely.
The open access model, therefore, leaves little room for business
expansion and perhaps little incentive to stay or enter into science
publishing as a commercial activity.
40. In an open access model, it would be
ideal to have access not only to new articles but also to archived
articles going back, in some instances, for many decades. Although
many journals have made their pre-1980s editions electronic, many
charge to access them. There would be income lost in making archived
material open access.
41. Learned society publishers are a special
case. Many society journals are offered to society members either
free or at a reduced rate to members. Making the journals open
access would take away this benefit of membership and could reduce
membership subscriptions—another important source of income.
International publications
42. The open access model comes into difficulties
when you consider that research and journals are often truly international.
Many UK journals receive papers from overseas where research funders
may not be able/want to include a publication cost in grants.
How will those authors pay the costs of publication? In addition,
many UK researchers will require access to articles in journals
published abroad, where open access policies have not been implemented.
Libraries will still have to pay subscription fees to gain access
to this research. If the UK were to instigate a significant change
to the method by which UK researchers publish their results, both
UK science (and therefore scientists) and those journals that
are less international may suffer. For example, rather than instigating
wholesale changes, many publishers may simply prefer to receive
papers from US researchers. The UK government also has a responsibility
to consider scientists in developing countries. They need to publish
their research and the international scientific community needs
to be able to access it. Any changes should be agreed on an international
playing field.
Institution costs and benefits
43. The changes that an open access model
would signify for university budgets would also need to be analysed.
Currently all pay a certain amount to gain access to a number
of journals, and usually nothing for publishing their research.
In the new model, all would pay nothing to access all journals,
but the amount paid by each institution on publishing will vary
depending on the activity of its researchers. Publishing costs
for research funded by project grants will be covered in the open
access model, but what about other types of publications? Would
institutions be able to cover the cost of publishing review articles,
and what if one research project leads to multiple articles and
a particularly high number of pages?
Affect on quality
44. There is concern that open access journals
will somehow lose the quality of subscription journals, but if
a rigorous peer-review process is maintained there is no reason
for this to happen (see paragraph 59 for more on peer review).
As open access journals would remove competition between publishers
for subscriptions, the emphasis would move to obtaining the best
articles, especially if a better mechanism for rating journals
were developed. So rather than cause a degeneration of quality,
open access models may actually promote quality and more rigorous
peer-review processes.
Affect on research assessment
45. The 2001 Research Assessment Exercise
stipulated: "When assessing the research quality of a research
output, panels may take into consideration evidence that the item
has already been reviewed or refereed by peers as one measure
of quality. However, the absence of such review may not, in itself,
be taken to imply lower quality. Hierarchical lists or weightings
of output types are not used in the assessment process. Panel
members form judgements on all the evidence presented in the round,
with full awareness of the wider context in which the outputs
presented have been developed." In addition, a recent report
by researchers on research assessment said: "The most important
characteristics of high quality research were seen as rigour;
international recognition; originality; and the idea that the
best research sets the agenda for new fields of investigation."
[210]
Therefore, unless open access journals have some affect on the
ability of researchers to publish their work, and as long as rigorous
peer-review processes are maintained, it is difficult to see how
open access policies will have any consequences for the Research
Assessment Exercise. Although it should make clear to researchers
that research published in such journals will be eligible for
inclusion in the Research Assessment Exercise.
46. Conversely, the RAE process is thought
to have distorted the journal market. The RAE fails to recognise
that "scholarship" is multifaceted and not to be judged
solely by publishing five papers in high impact journals. Open
access, author payment models that affect scientists' ability
to do this will force the RAE to revise its quality assessment
processes. It is time for the RAE to change and accept that there
are a variety of inputs that should be used to judge the worth
of a particular researcher.
Self-archiving
47. Self-archiving is when researchers themselves
place their already peer-reviewed/published research outputs on
publicly accessible websites to further increase accessibility
to research. Some institutions, such as the University of Southampton,
already host an archive for their own research (http://cogprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk).
48. When a researcher has a paper accepted
for publication in a journal, they can request permission to self-archive.
Whether permission is granted depends on the copyright agreement
that the author has with the publisher. If permission is not given,
there are ways round it, ie pre-peer reviewed manuscripts can
be self-archived along with the reviewer's comments. If this practice
became more common and researchers made their outputs accessible
to all by self-archiving, then journals will have little demand
for subscriptions. So although self-archiving is not a replacement
for open access, peer-reviewed journals, it may encourage journals
to become open access.
49. However, the concept of self-archiving
does seem to be based on trust and prone to misuse. For example,
it will be difficult to check whether research posted on self-archive
deposits have permission from publishers to be there and whether
they have been through the peer review process.
"How should the government explore open access?"
50. Open access journals are one way of
increasing access to research outputs in the UK. However, in order
to address the issues detailed above and support open access journals,
the government should consider the following:
51. A quantitative analysis of the economic
effects of converting journals (both current and archived) to
open access should be undertaken, considering where journals will
derive their income if not from subscriptions, how commercial
publishers will be able to expand and grow, and how learned society
publishing income can be protected.
52. The international scope of research and
many journals should be taken into consideration in any government
open access initiative in the UK.
53. An analysis of how institutions will
benefit from open access publishing should be undertaken, with
regards to the costs of subscriptions now vs the costs
of publishing their research in open access journals. How institutions
will obtain funds to publish papers not derived from grant-funded
basic research (eg reviews) should also be considered.
54. In order to support open access publishing,
the government could encourage researchers to publish their outputs
in open access journals by stipulating this as a condition of
research grants and providing author publication funds. It should
make clear to researchers that research published in peer-reviewed
open-access journals will be eligible for inclusion in the RAE,
and any impact of introducing author fees on scientists' ability
to publish should be considered in RAE processes.
Online Publishing—Quality and Access
55. On-line publishing is not another word
for open access publishing. The Internet has provided a medium
through which journals can become open access, but on-line journals
are mostly subscription based and also available in print. Therefore,
on-line publishing itself has not necessarily increased access,
but it has revolutionised the ways in which researchers can search
for and source articles in journals to which their libraries subscribe.
Provision to libraries
56. Initiatives already exist to get libraries
the best deals in on-line publishing. NESLi2 is the UK's national
initiative for the licensing of electronic journals on behalf
of the higher and further education and research communities for
2003-06. The agent for NESLi2 negotiates with large publishers,
such as Blackwell Publishing, the Nature Publishing Group and
Elsevier, for agreements on the provision of electronic journals.
Storage of articles
57. Publishers and distributors in the United
Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland have a legal obligation to
send one copy of each of their publications to the Legal Deposit
Office of the British Library within one month of publication,
under the Legal Deposit Libraries Act 2003. There is some concern
that purely electronic publications may somehow be lost and require
formal storage processes. The Legal Deposit Libraries Act is currently
being reviewed to include online publications, which are managed
through a new digital storage solution, part of the British Library
Digital Object Management Programme. They have already securely
stored approximately 100,000 items and mechanisms by which the
public can gain access to this information are being developed.
Currently, this is not a commonly used route for obtaining on-line
journals as it is often cheaper to buy a single article direct
from the publisher.
Peer review
58. On-line articles should be subjected
to the same quality checks as print journals and whether the article
is peer-reviewed should be indicated on any article published
on the Internet. Readers rely on the editorial processes of print
journals to ensure that published research is original, rigorous
and of high quality within the context of the particular discipline.
Peer review is the accepted method by which research is checked
for quality before publication, and should be used for all academic
journals, both print and on-line. There is debate about the fairness,
consistency and value of peer review in general, but it is difficult
to come up with better quality checks. Rather than think of alternatives,
it may be more important to ensure that the peer review process
is robust and transparent, as this can vary across journals and
is often quite opaque. Journals could insist on double-blind reviewing,
where the identity of both the author and the reviewers are concealed
during the review, but this is thought by some to be an unachievable
task. Some kind of audit on the quality of refereeing, ie a review
of the reviewers, would also serve to improve the quality of the
process, and the responsibility of the reviewer to make only defensible
points should be emphasised. On-line publishing may provide a
means by which authors can reply to referee comments where they
feel their papers have been unfairly rejected. Whether for print
or on-line journals, peer review should be recognised in the RAE
as an important scientific task. Without such recognition, it
may be difficult to persuade key scientists to devote the time
necessary to undertake peer review efficiently and effectively.
Fraud and malpractice
59. It is easier to plagiarise large chunks
of text from electronic articles and the consequences of this
are often reported in the scientific press. It is a problem for
both publishers and lecturers, whose students can take chunks
of text straight from the Internet. Text that is translated into
other languages is particularly hard to detect. Expert referees
are relied upon to pick up on plagiarism as individual fields
of research tend to be fairly small, but computer software for
detecting plagarised text may be more heavily relied upon in future.
The IOB has an ethical code to which all members sign up and relies
on others to report any member engaging in untoward activity.
60. Electronic communication, including
email and the Internet, has made delivering information to a large
number of individuals extremely quick and inexpensive. This means
that releasing information before quality checks have taken place
is increasingly easy, and even reviewed information can be misrepresented,
by part-publishing papers out of context. Scientists, journalists
and the wider public should therefore be aware of the differences
between peer-reviewed research and non-peer-reviewed research.
This is discussed further in the Biosciences Federation response
to the Royal Society's consultation on "Best practice in
communicating the results of new scientific research to the public".[211]
Copyright agreements
61. Some authors believe that handing over
copyright to publishers goes against the drive for better access
to articles and restricts dissemination of a piece of work. However,
publishers argue that this facilitates maximum protection against
infringement, libel or plagiarism and enables requests from third
parties to reproduce, reprint or translate an article to be dealt
with efficiently. Elsevier also states that "by obtaining
the exclusive distribution right it will always be clear to researchers
that, when they access an Elsevier site to review a paper, they
are reading a final version of the paper which has been edited,
peer-reviewed, and accepted for publication in an appropriate
journal." Therefore, this may actually be a useful system
for ensuring that several different versions of a paper do not
end up on the Internet.
"How can the government support quality and
access in on-line journals?"
62. The British Library Digital Object Management
Programme should be supported to ensure secure storage of on-line
publications.
63. On-line articles should be subjected
to the same quality checks as print journals. Peer reviewing activities
should be recognised in the RAE to encourage researchers to undertake
peer review. Electronic publishing is increasing the problem of
plagiarism and computer software for detecting plagarised text
may be more heavily relied upon in future. Publisher copyright
agreements may be a useful system for ensuring that several different
versions of a paper do not end up on the Internet. Public awareness
should be raised of the mechanisms of quality control for scientific
research.
February 2004
210 Steven Wooding and Jonathan Grant. Assessing
Research: The Researchers' View. May 2003. Available at: http://www.rareview.ac.uk/reports/assess/AssessResearchReport.pdf Back
211
Best practice in communicating the results of new scientific
research to the public. A response from the Biosciences Federation
to the Royal Society. September 2003. Available at: http://www.bsf.ac.uk/recent.htm Back
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