Business, Innovation and Skills CommitteeWritten evidence submitted by John Bynner, Emeritus Professor of Social Sciences in Education, Institute of Education and Harvey Goldstein, Professor of Social Statistics, University of Bristol
ACCESS FOR ALL; THE FUTURE OF ON-LINE ACADEMIC JOURNALS
There is general agreement that free and open access to scientific knowledge is desirable. The way in which this might be achieved has surfaced in current debates about the future of scientific and scholarly journals and has been concerned with who pays for the costs of journals and how. David Willetts’ announcement of free access to all publicly funded research findings (Guardian 2 May 2012), Jimmy Wales’ appointment as advisor and Dame Janet Finch’s working group set up to advise on Open Access, all reflect the importance of this issue. Nevertheless, we have a real concern that the process of opening up academic publication may exclude some key interests as a result of the methods used to achieve it.
As the Guardian editorial of 11 April pointed out, the present academic publishing system obstructs the free communication of research findings. Through the erection of “endless pay walls” against open access by commercial publishers, researchers can be prevented from downloading research papers unless they pay substantial publisher fees. Libraries similarly pay substantial amounts (up to £1 million or more per annum) to give their readers access to on-line journals.
Our concern lies with the major proposed alternative to the current system. Under this alternative arrangement, authors are expected to pay for submitting papers for publication in on-line journals, the so called “article processing cost” (APC). Such a fee can amount to anything between £1,000 and £2,000 per article depending on the reputation of the journal. Although such fees may sometimes be waived, eligibility for exemption is decided by the publisher and such concessions have no permanent status and can always be withdrawn or modified.
The APC approach is increasingly favoured by funding bodies, such as the Wellcome Foundation (Guardian, 10–04). These funding bodies make provision in academic research grants to pay for publication charges for the research they fund.
A major problem with this APC model is that it effectively shifts the costs of academic publishing from the reader to the author and therefore discriminates against those without access to the sources of funds needed to meet these costs. Among those excluded are academics in, for example, the humanities and the social sciences whose research funding typically does not include publication charges, and also independent researchers whose only means of paying the APC is from their own pockets. Academics in developing countries particularly face discrimination because of their often very limited access to research funds.
Not only is APC discriminatory, but within a finite research funding budget its costs are likely to be met from funds otherwise available for the research itself, thereby potentially penalising the whole research community.
But there is another approach that could be implemented for a fraction of the cost of commercial publishers’ current journal subscriptions. “Access For All” (AFA) journals that charge neither author nor reader, are committed to meeting publishing costs in other ways. We ourselves have been involved with the funding of a journal, Longitudinal and Life Course Studies (LLCS), which is free for authors and readers, and was initially established with the support of a three year development grant from the Nuffield Foundation.
The continuation costs for an AFA journal include copy-editing, lay-out, editorial meetings and journal management, including the peer review process, together with website hosting charges and publishing software support. For LLCS these amount annually to about £15,000 for three issues and are met with the help of the Society for Longitudinal and Lifecourse Studies, independent research centres and a nominal readership registration fee.
How can AFA be encouraged? We propose that university libraries set aside some of their journal acquisition funds, currently paid to commercial publishers through bulk arrangements, in the form of grant aid to support new or existing AFA journals. Allocations would take account of the many years it can take to build the readership and submissions base on which the journals reputation and future viability will depend. Governance details would need to be decided and ideally would involve library consortia, universities, learned societies and research funders.
What we need is some clear thinking about how on-line publishing should develop. In particular we strongly urge the Finch committee to give serious attention to the alternative AFA strategy for journal funding and for David Willetts to adopt it within his vision for Open Access
We are not advocating a sudden major shift to this form of publication, rather a funding regime that would encourage its growth and explore how it might best be managed. In line with the Guardian editorial, such a publication model would not only be cost efficient, but we believe that within the academic community it would find greater acceptance as a legitimate return on the editorial and refereeing resources that are currently provided for free.
John Bynner
Emeritus Professor of Social Sciences in Education
Institute of Education
Harvey Goldstein
Professor of Social Statistics
University of Bristol
22 January 2013