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Scientific Publications: Free for all?

: Perhaps the Minister, who is shaking his head, will come up with some superb ideas before the end of the afternoon. I am sure that that will make my hon. Friend very pleased. Not surprisingly, there is some opposition. The moves by Wellcome, RCUK and others continue to be largely opposed by those involved in publishing. The Royal Society supports the principles that underlie the proposals, but not the policy. It is concerned that mandated self-archiving will threaten to undermine established methods; in particular, it notes that many learned societies can conduct their full ranges of activities only through the profits that they currently make from publishing. It also reports concerns in the community that biomedicine might lend itself more readily to open access publishing than other disciplines such as mathematics, chemistry and physics, although that position was attacked last week by 40 fellows of the Royal Society. It would be wrong to characterise the concerns of the learned societies as simply preserving vested interests. I certainly would not want to say that. The learned societies are not-for-profit organisations, whose very reason for being is the promotion of scientific research in their respective communities and the dissemination of the results of that research to the public. Some, though not all, of them are heavily reliant on income from their publications. If there is a move to an author pays model, the affected learned societies will have to either find an alternative income stream or scale down their activities. We need to consider the issue, and the position of the learned societies very carefully before there is a wholesale change. Reed Elsevier also supports in principle the aims of the RCUK proposals, but describes the results of their implementation as"““chaotic, costly and detrimental for British research.””" Institutional repositories are opposed on the grounds that they provide an unnecessary parallel distribution channel for published journal articles and Reed Elsevier also says that it would destroy the publishing system whose output RCUK seeks. I hope that other hon. Members will address all these real issues and concerns head on. The matter of copyright also needs to be resolved. Traditionally, publishers have looked after the copyright on behalf of authors, and few authors have complained—they have not noted any significant problem with that arrangement. The Committee viewed the issue as being crucial to the success of self-archiving, and the Government have expressed support for a flexible approach to copyright. Can the Minister give us a general update on that work? The RCUK initiative is significant because it will be viewed, to some extent, as that body flexing its muscles and testing how much room for manoeuvre it is being allowed by the Government. The DTI has been thought to be lukewarm, at best, on the proposal. That was confirmed when the Minister, Lord Sainsbury, last appeared before the Committee in October when he told us that the policy required some further development. He asked RCUK to go back and negotiate with publishers on timing, rather than leaving that matter to individual researchers. I hope that the Minister will be able to update hon. Members on the progress of those negotiations, and to tell us how closely the DTI has been involved. Is Lord Sainsbury breathing down the neck of RCUK at the negotiating table, or does it have a free hand? It would be wrong for me to paint a picture of conflict in the world of scientific publishing. There are many encouraging moves by both traditionalists and open access enthusiasts to find the most effective way of getting high-quality scientific research published. RCUK and the Royal Society, with the collaboration of publishers, have set up a study to examine the impact that self-publishing and self-archiving will have. That study will take place over the next two years, by which time the impact of the RCUK proposals may start to be felt. I welcome that study and I am sure that the Committee does too. That will go some way towards establishing an evidence base on which Government and funders of research can make further decisions. It is a great pity that the Government did not commit to such a move in their initial response to the Select Committee report. Publishers are also responding to demands for greater access and for allowing authors greater scope to submit their articles to repositories or publish them on a website. I understand that some learned societies are conducting their own limited experiments with different publishing models, and other hon. Members will refer to those later. However, I and former members of the Science and Technology Committee remain to be convinced that the Government have made a serious effort to get all the key players together to discuss the development of this policy. I understand that the DTI has recently established a research communications forum, and I would like to ask the Minister for further details about who is involved in that and what he is seeking to achieve. This is a complex and rapidly evolving market involving many interests that share common aims but are often in sharp conflict over delivery. The Government, with all their different internal interests, must establish their priorities. It seems bizarre that the Government are pumping very large sums into research, but should be content to leave the market to determine how that publicly funded research is disseminated. The Government have wisely identified scientific research as the key driver of economic prosperity. If the pace of research is accelerated significantly by the rapid and universal access to research findings, surely the Government have a responsibility to pursue that and to maximise the return on the investment in science at an international level, even if that has some impact on some other commercial interests in the UK. If one method or other demonstrably serves the interests of the UK and the worldwide research community better, the Government might be faced with a decision. In simple terms, do the Government seek to protect the interests of the highly successful publishing industry and the position of some learned societies over and above any potential gains to the scientific community and to the economy as a whole? The Office of Science and Technology may be a small part of the DTI, but is this a case of the tail wagging the dog? We are not yet at the stage when decisions can be reached. The open access model has many weaknesses, but they should be explored rather than used to dismiss the case at this early stage. The Government should take a lead in gathering the evidence, supporting experimentation, and evaluating the evidence to see what works and what does not. On institutional repositories, I am inclined to disagree with Lord Sainsbury, who sees a role for them only in rather specific circumstances. My instinct is that if it is worth doing, it should be done properly in a co-ordinated and well-regulated manner. To have real value, it must be comprehensive; all articles must be available, with minimal constraints. The publishers are absolutely right that an unreliable and half-hearted network would be pointless. The Government should take a lead, especially as the financial costs are likely to be minimal, and this is one policy area in which a little bit of boldness would not go amiss. We await developments, and also wait to see whether this is the beginning of a breakthrough in evidence-based policy.