Lots of interesting comment about open access or 'author-pays' publishing in the UK press this week. Vivienne Parry (she of BBC Tomorrow's World fame) in her article A toenail in the door in Thursday's Guardian 'Life' section (6 May) suggests that open access, far from threatening the big publishers will make it increasingly difficult for small learned societies to compete.
“If I were one of the big publishers, I would be developing amazing access services, for a reasonable fee … The mighty Wellcome Truse has already committed itself to open access and the research charities are bound to follow … The concept of a copy for the taxpayer is a compelling one. Science should embrace it wholeheartedly.”
In Friday's (7 May) Times Higher Education Supplement article Publishers resist revolution we hear that, far from seeing a business opportunity:
“Journal publishers are battling to discredit the idea of free research results for all on the web”
However, as with the Guardian the THES agrees that small learned societies are under threat in part due to the 'bundling' strategy (multiple journal deals) adopted by big publishers:
“Jisc, which told the committee that it has had particular difficulty negotiating with Elsevier, has warned that commercial publishers are pushing out smaller journals owned by the learned societies by offering these rigid “big deals”.
In the THES article we hear one learned society suggesting it would have to charge $10,000 (£5,600) per article under open access to maintain its high quality and high selectivity.
Read the Parry article first. As she suggests in her opening paragraph:
“There's a touch of Through the Looking Glass about scientific publishing”.
