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Scientific Publications: Free for all?

: I thank the hon. Gentleman for his kind comments. I echo everything that he said. I hope that my remarks will indicate that, although I came to the topic fairly new, I understand its seriousness and why it interests so many people in the scientific and publishing communities. I hear strongly the words he says about third world science. All Committee members who are present are grateful for the briefings that they received from various learned societies, such as Research Councils UK, to prepare for the debate. The Committee launched the inquiry in December 2003 for several reasons. First, there was a recognition that digitisation had led to a transformation in the way in which scientific knowledge is stored and disseminated. The potential for infinitely faster internet access to scientific knowledge was forcing changes to the traditional ways in which scientific publishing operated. In exactly the same way, digital communication is transforming the acquisition and dissemination of knowledge in all areas of society. Web technologies, from blogs to electronic laboratory notebooks, are transforming the way in which the internet is being used. The internet is not just a giant library, as many people think; it is increasingly used in many scientific establishments as a collaborative laboratory. The second reason was that the open access movement was just beginning to gather momentum in 2003. When I use the term ““open access””, I refer to two basic strands; self-archiving by authors in institutional repositories and the ““author pays”” model, with which authors or their funders pay for the cost of publishing their work in peer-reviewed journals which are then disseminated for free. When I talk about open access in this debate, I am referring in broad terms to the principle that the published output of research should be available to everyone without charge. The third reason why the Committee went into this subject was because libraries had begun to complain that they were struggling to meet the cost of providing the journals that they needed for their students, including research fellows and post-doctorate students. The average price of academic journals rose by 58 per cent. between 1998 and 2003, compared with the UK retail prices index increase of 11 per cent. Libraries were concerned by some of the policies of the major publishers, such as big deals and bundling—whereby they are required to accept the whole output of the publisher rather than being able to pick titles—and wanted to take co-ordinated action. The fourth reason was that increased attention was being drawn to the profits of the scientific, technical and medical publishers, which appeared to the Committee to be excessively high. Reed Elsevier told the Committee that it made an operating profit of 34 per cent. on its scientific publications, with profits amounting to 17 per cent. after tax. The Committee was rightly concerned that too high a proportion of the financial benefits from the Government's substantial investment in research were ending up with publishers' shareholders. The Committee's inquiry attracted over 120 written evidence submissions, and there were four well-attended oral sessions. Indeed, on two occasions a larger room had to be hired to get everyone in.