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Scientific Publications: Free for all?

I am grateful for the opportunity to participate in the debate. The hon. Member for Harrogate and Knaresborough (Mr. Willis) started by saying that a debate on the future of scientific publishing was unlikely to feature on many people's radars. I wholeheartedly agree; it is an esoteric issue for most, but not for those of us who represent constituencies in Oxfordshire. Scientific publishing is a huge industry in the United Kingdom, and is particularly focused in Oxfordshire. We have Reed Elsevier in the constituency of the hon. Member for Oxford, West and Abingdon (Dr. Harris) and publishers such as Blackwell, Macmillan and the Oxford University Press in and around Oxford. For the sake of clarity, I should point out that Nigel Blackwell lives in my constituency and is a patron of my association. In my constituency, I have Informa, formerly Taylor and Francis, at Milton park in Didcot, and CABI, the former Commonwealth agricultural board, based technically in the land of Boris, Henley-upon-Thames, but literally 100 yards beyond my border. Hence I have many constituents employed in the industry. It is estimated that the companies that I have mentioned employ directly some 2,500 people, and if we take into account the freelance designers, editors and printers who are associated with the industry, we could probably say that twice that number depend on scientific publishing in and around Oxfordshire. It is also estimated that the industry generates some £100 million in revenues from overseas. We have in the United Kingdom a world-beating industry. On that basis, the debate should be on everybody's radars and it should feature heavily on the ““Today”” programme; I hope that it will tomorrow. The recommendations of the Science and Technology Committee are based on two arguments, both of which were addressed by the hon. Member for Norwich, North (Dr. Gibson). The first is a practical one. It is asserted that a small number of powerful publishers are pushing up prices and limiting access, and that cash-starved libraries are no longer able to provide the sort of access to academic research that they used to give. The second is a moral argument and, again, was articulated with a creditable degree of force by the hon. Member for Norwich, North. It is said—I wrote this before I heard the hon. Gentleman speaking, but it is almost exactly what he did say—that if the Government, or in other words the taxpayer, is funding the research on which these articles are based, morally it is wrong for companies to make a profit by selling that research and for access to be denied to people simply on the grounds of cost. I take issue with both of those arguments and with the conclusions of the report. I hasten to add that that is no criticism of Mrs Commander, the excellent clerk to the Select Committee, who was also the excellent clerk on the Consumer Credit Bill on which I was lucky enough to be a small foot soldier. First, I do not accept that the problem lies with the publishers. They have made significant changes to take account of the new technology and to increase access, and I do not accept that there is an access crisis. Secondly, I do not accept that the alternative being proposed—the author pays model and the creation of university repositories—is well thought through. Rather, I think that those alternatives have been pushed forward far too fast, without proper analysis and discussion of the additional problems that they may bring with them.