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Scientific Publications: Free for all?

: As my hon. Friend the Member for Wantage (Mr. Vaizey) pointed out, this is a UK success story. We lead the world in academic publishing. The major players in the field are British, as are the most respected journals, such as The Lancet and International Affairs. Some 5 per cent.—60,000—of the 1.2 million articles published each year are from the UK. That shows the extent to which having a vibrant publishing sector has enabled us to hit above our weight in carrying out and publishing academic research. We also have a global reputation for academic rigour. The first question we must ask ourselves is whether the current system is failing. There are three strands to the system: the for-profit sector, the not-for-profit sector and the learned societies. Many people have spoken eloquently about the need to ensure that nothing that we do undermines the work of those learned societies. We have ended up with a system of academic rigour that is probably second to none. The hon. Member for Bolton, South-East (Dr. Iddon)) spoke of Nature rejecting nine in 10 articles that are submitted to it, and 97 per cent. of the articles that are submitted to The Lancet being rejected. It should be seen as a tremendous strength that we have enormous diversity and a great range of publications, so that those at the very top are seen as being of world importance, whereas everybody at a different level still gets a chance to have their views and research published. It has led to a tremendous dissemination of knowledge. We have to accept that excellence cannot be achieved on the cheap. It is not just the research, it is the assessment, the peer group work, the editing, the publishing and the marketing. All in all, it ends up as an extremely expensive exercise. For different publications costs of $2,000 to $3,000 per article published are not uncommon. If we want to see that excellence maintained, we must be prepared to invest in it. Our current system has significant benefits. It means that copyright is protected. There is the legal system and the might of those publishing companies and learned societies that can protect copyright legally if that is required. The quality of the articles is maintained. The hon. Member for Bolton, South-East spoke of his friend the prolific writer Professor Katritzky, who has been given the opportunity to contribute so many articles and so much research in this way. Whether he would have been prepared to do that at $3,000 dollars a pop if he had been paying for it himself or his institution had been paying for it is another matter. We have seen great strides towards interoperability and a willingness to make sure that research is shared through the use of the internet, so that people can get access not only to the information that has been published by that journal or by journals from the same publishing house, but can link through to other research that has been published through different publishing houses. That is a tremendous benefit for students and people carrying out research. In recent years, all back copies of publications have been scanned and so every edition of The Lancet is now available digitally for people to access. There has probably never been more research work more generally available than there is today. It is against that background that we need to decide whether fundamental reform is required. The concept of open access is a misnomer. The concept of author pays is more accurate. My concern of going down this route—some of the issues were so well set out by my hon. Friend the Member for Wantage—is that there could be a loss of academic rigour. Some articles will simply not be submitted if authors have to pay to do it. That is an issue to which the Royal Society drew attention in its position statement on open access. It said:"““Among the potential dangers are that researchers will stop submitting papers or subscribing to existing journals, particularly if they choose only to deposit papers in repositories and archives. If many journals cease to exist, without any guarantee that open access alternatives will offer the same range of options, for instance in terms of serving all sub-disciplines, the opportunities for publishing research results might diminish.””" We have discussed the needs of developing countries. The hon. Member for Norwich, North spoke about Malawi. If one went down the route of the author paying, would it open up the opportunities for people in Malawi to contribute research or would it, as I believe, start to close them down because they and their institutions would find that they simply could not pay the charges? There is another dimension to this. As the hon. Member for Bolton, South-East said, it is not the author who pays but the institutions behind him or her. What we will then see is the potential for abuse because of the people who are prepared to fund it. Before I came to the House I worked, I am almost ashamed to say, in the public relations industry. It used to amaze me how many people could be found to write an academic research paper on virtually everything saying, for example ““Fat is good for you””, ““Smoke is good for you””, ““More butter is important””, ““More alcohol is vital”” and so on. Someone could be found, funded quite often by an organisation or a company with a vested interest in that area, to produce a piece of doubtless well researched academic work that came to the conclusions that they wanted. If we go down the author-pays route, we will open up the possibility that the people who are prepared to fund it because of commercial advantage will come that much more to the fore. We have to question whether under that principle the same rigour would be given to choosing articles based on their academic merit. If a publication is trying to fill the final article or two before it goes to print, and it has an article with a cheque for $3,000 attached, it may be prepared to relax its standards. The Royal Society drew attention to that. It said:"““One consequence might be that the primary criterion for publication of results may become whether they are produced by researchers who can pay, rather than whether they are of wide interest to the rest of the research community. A move towards a system that relies mainly on ability to pay rather than quality would profoundly undermine the exchange of knowledge.””" We have also discussed peer review. If there is a conflict between funding and the quality of the publication, the concept of peer review is inevitably undermined to some extent. It is also possible that we could end up subsidising large corporations. I believe that 40 per cent. of the subscriptions to publications are from large corporations—companies such as GlaxoSmithKline and Ford. Do we really want the research to be available free to major corporations, which can afford to pay for it, yet charge the academic institutions and academics who provided the work in the first place? I am not even persuaded that that is a sustainable direction. The German company Springer has decided to offer choice, saying that people can go down the author pays route or the traditional way. Of some 200,000 articles published by Springer last year, only 24 were submitted on the author pays basis. Although I applaud and encourage diversity, we can see that there is no tremendous enthusiasm in the research community for going down that route. The hon. Member for Oxford, West and Abingdon (Dr. Evan Harris) spoke about charging for submissions in order to stop people putting forward too many articles. That fills me with horror. It strikes me as an attack on inspiration at a time when we should be encouraging people to submit the best research that they can to the best publications available. We should not start taxing people and putting charges on their work because they have dared to aim higher than might seem appropriate. The hon. Member for Norwich, North introduced the concept that because the state has paid for it, the research should be accessible to all. That sounds like a wonderful ““motherhood and apple pie”” concept, but it would cause some fundamental problems. It would be a massive extension of state involvement. Do we really want a sector that has worked so well to be run as efficiently as the Child Support Agency or the working family tax credit system? When the Government start to become involved in such matters, particularly if complicated computer systems and research engines are required, they do not necessarily do it well as those in the private and the not-for-profit sectors. There would be no measure of quality. The temptation would be to publish everything; the concept of peer review would again be undermined.