Open access puts publishing jobs at risk (From Oxford Mail)

“CONCERNS have been raised about the jobs of 10,000 people working in Oxford’s academic publishing industry under Government plans to make all publicly-funded research available free on the internet. A meeting is being called in Oxford tomorrow by two unions – the National Union of Journalists and Unite – and the Society for Editors and Proofreaders, to discuss the plan to charge researchers submitting articles to journals a fee for publication, instead of charging individual readers and libraries. Oxford NUJ branch secretary Anna Wagstaff said the new system, known as open access, was potentially an enormous threat to jobs, because no-one had thought about how to pay for editing. An estimated 10,000 people are employed by UK academic publishers, most of them in Oxford. Ms Wagstaff said: ‘What happens next has implications for our jobs. We who carry out the core editorial and production processes have a big stake in this and we need to make our voices heard.’ The meeting for staff and freelances is at 7pm at the Mitre in High Street, Oxford.”