Public research, private profits | COSMOS magazine

“... The Finch report, Accessibility, Sustainability, Excellence: How to Expand Access to Research Publications has concluded, among other things, that the country ‘should embrace the transition to open access’. While this is an excellent result, the report recommended a mechanism that is both unlikely to achieve a significant increase in open access in the shorter term, and is very expensive. The report, at 140 pages, is a comprehensive look at the scholarly publishing industry in Britain. It has recommended that there to be a move to publication in open access journals, as the best way of increasing access to research. It estimates that this will cost an extra £38 million (A$57 million) a year. While British government has responded in support of the report, it has indicated that they will not stump up any extra money, which means it will have to be taken from research funds. Conclusion? Less money for research, more profits for publishers, and arguably no real increase in the level of open access in Britain. It is a lose-lose situation. Unless you are a publisher... published research is written by academics employed by the public purse (in Australia almost exclusively so). They then give their work to a publisher, signing away the copyright. Researchers also peer review other people's articles, act as editors and sit on editorial boards, all for free. The work is then published and the public purse is forced to pay again, this time for subscriptions to the journals. Australian institutional libraries each spend literally millions of dollars annually on subscriptions. Make no mistake, commercial academic publishers make a lot of money. Elsevier (the biggest of them all), made over £6 billion (A$9 billion) last year with a 27% operating margin – and this in the wake of the 2008 global financial crisis. Not surprisingly, there has been disquiet about this situation for some years, spawning a movement asking for 'open access' to research. This movement argues that research funded by the public should be available to the public. There are two ways to achieve open access - through publishing in a journal that makes the works openly available, or by making a copy available online. So, why is the Finch report a step in the wrong direction? Among many issues I have with the recommendations, the area I have the greatest objection to is that the report gives hybrid open access publishing the same standing as genuine open access journals.”