For those who care about such things, this piece in the Economist does a decent job of laying out the issues (pro and con). A few highlights:
- At the beginning of April, Research Councils UK, a conduit through which the government transmits taxpayers’ money to academic researchers [in the UK], changed the rules on how the results of studies it pays for are made public. From now on they will have to be published in journals that make them available free—preferably immediately, but certainly within a year.
- In February the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy told federal agencies to make similar plans.
- For scientific publishers, it seems, the party may soon be over.
- It has, they would have to admit, been a good bash. The current enterprise—selling the results of other people’s work, submitted free of charge and vetted for nothing by third parties in a process called peer review, has been immensely profitable
- Elsevier, a Dutch firm that is the world’s biggest journal publisher, had a margin last year of 38% on revenues of ...$3.2 billion. Springer, a German firm that is the second-biggest journal publisher, made 36% on sales of ...$1.1 billion in 2011 (the most recent year for which figures are available).
- The rejected papers all have to be scrutinized though—and even though peer review is free, this involves staff time and other costs. According to Nature, the cost per published paper is $40,000. If Nature is to stay in business in anything like its current form, someone will have to pay that.
I would sure LOVE to see a peer-reviewed report on the data crunched by Nature to come up with that figure!
