Open Access News

Last week, when giving testimony to the House of Commons Science & Technology Committee, you were asked for your opinion of the proposed position statement on open access from Research Councils UK, a document that expresses strong support for a move towards open access. In your response, you [suggested] that open access was in decline, saying: "I think we have seen a peak in the enthusiasm for open access publishing and a fall-off in people putting forward proposals for it because some of the difficulties and costs are now becoming clear." This suggestion of a decline in interest in open access publishing is not at all supported by the available evidence, and simply does not reflect what is happening in scientific publishing. BioMed Central Limited is the world's leading open access publisher. In the third quarter of 2005, BioMed Central's manuscript submissions were up 56% compared to the previous year, a growth rate far exceeding that of the science publishing industry as a whole. Public Library of Science, a leading US-based open access publisher, has experienced similarly rapid growth. Every month, new groups of scientists and societies approach BioMed Central to start open access journals, or to convert their existing journals to an open access model....Blackwell Publishing introduced Online Open, an open access experiment for 30 journals, in February 2005. Oxford University Press, which has already converted some journals to open access, launched Oxford Open in May this year. Springer, the world’s second largest STM publisher, has offered an open access option (Springer Open Choice) for its 1,450 journals since May 2004, and just two months ago hired Jan Velterop as its Director of Open Access....

In relation to your call for a "level playing field", BioMed Central strongly agrees that this is desirable. But the continued strong growth in open access has not occurred on a remotely level playing field. It is a testament to the strength of the open access model that its growth has occurred despite the playing field being anything but level. For example, many scientists have the perception that, when their funding is evaluated, they will be at a disadvantage if they have published in a new open access journal, rather than in a more established traditional journal, even though the quality of the research is identical. An over-reliance on Impact Factors, which are not available for many new journals due to the vagaries of the Institute for Scientific Information's decisions on journal tracking, can lead to a stifling of innovation in publishing. To create a level playing field, active steps are needed to ensure that scientists are confident that their research will be evaluated on its merits, whichever type of journal they choose to publish it in. Similarly, it not a level playing field when the government appears to ignore the impartial advice of the Science & Technology Committee and of major research funders such as Research Councils UK and the Wellcome Trust with respect to open access archiving, and instead appears to give more weight to representations from the traditional publishing industry, arguing against change. Open access archives of published research are strongly desirable from the point of view of funders and research institutions. Objections from traditional publishers should not be allowed to weaken the initiative from Research Councils UK to require deposit in such archives. Publishers ought to be the servants of the scientific community, not its masters....BioMed Central calls on the government to support the RCUK proposed position statement, and not to bow to lobbying from traditional publishers to water down the statement.