[Note from moderator: The article Peter forwards mentions the Public Library of Science whose web site is at http://www.publiclibraryofscience.org/ where support is being sought.] Science world in revolt at power of the journal owners James Meek, science correspondent Guardian Saturday May 26, 2001 Scientists around the world are in revolt against moves by a powerful group of private corporations to lock decades of publicly funded western scientific research into expensive, subscription-only electronic databases. At stake in the dispute is nothing less than control over the fruits of scientific discovery - millions of pages of scientific information which may hold the secrets of a cure for Aids, cheap space travel or the workings of the human mind. More than 800 British researchers have joined 22,000 others from 161 countries in a campaign to boycott publishers of scientific journals who refuse to make research papers freely available on the internet after six months. "Science depends on knowledge and technology being in the public domain," said Michael Ashburner, professor of biology at Cambridge University and one of the leading British signatories of the campaign, the Public Library of Science (PLS). "In that sense, science belongs to the people, and the fruits of science shouldn't be owned or even transferred by publishers for huge profits. The fruits of our research - which is, overwhelmingly, publicly paid for - should be made available as widely and as economically as possible." Anger has been simmering for more than a decade in the research libraries of Europe and the US at the massive increase in the cost of subscriptions to scientific journals, which collectively make up the sum of the world's scientific research. As the power of the internet to mine electronically archived journals for data grows, scientists have become increasingly frustrated at the journal publishers' plans to keep tight, lucrative control over decades of their work. Last year the most powerful journal publisher, the Anglo-Dutch firm Reed Elsevier, made a profit of #252m on a turnover of #693m in its science and medical business. Elsevier Science and other journal publishers effectively benefit from the public purse twice: once when taxpayer-funded scientists submit their work to the journals for free, and again when taxpayer-funded libraries buy the information back from them in the form of subscriptions. In Britain, the government is so concerned about the power of Reed Elsevier that it has blocked its #3.2bn takeover of another big journal publisher, Harcourt, while complaints about its market dominance are investigated. Derk Haank, the head of Elsevier Science, protested at the singling out of his company, and portrayed the boycott group as naive idealists. "Everybody would like to have everything available, all the time, and preferably for free," he said. "That's a general human trait, but I'm not sure the business model is realistic. I'm not ashamed to make a profit. I would only be ashamed if people were saying I was delivering a lousy service." He added: "Research is publicly funded, but the cost of publishing it isn't. If the funding authorities were to decide to pay for publication I would provide it for free." You won't find copies of most of Reed Elsevier's 1,100 journals on newsagents' shelves. With titles like Thin Walled Structures, Urban Water, Journal of Supercritical Fluids and Trends in Parasitology, their publications don't have the allure of Elle or FHM but the price of a year's subscription would make mass market publishers drool with envy. A year's subscription to Alcohol - nine issues - comes in at about #100 an issue. One Elsevier journal, Brain Research, costs more than #9,000 a year. Another, Preventative Veterinary Medicine, is now #713 a year, an increase of more than 300% over its 1991 price of #171. Elsevier justifies the increases on the grounds that the number of articles being submitted increases each year, adding to the firm's costs. Each article must be peer-reviewed by fellow scientists to see if it is worthy of publication. Mr Haank added that his firm's price increases forced libraries to cut subscriptions, which in turn cut Elsevier's income, forcing them to increase prices still more. Elsevier wanted to get out of this vicious circle, he said, and was trying to get universities to sign up for electronically archived versions of its journals. The firm has taken on 1,500 people to put its entire journal archive - going back to 19th century editions of The Lancet - on computer databases. But he said the price of subscription to the electronic database would still be tightly linked to the ever rising cost of the paper journals. "Our plan is to make everything available in the academic or professional environment, not just in six months, but on day one," he said. "Somebody has to pay for the cost of the system." Scientific research is not considered real unless it has been published in a recognised journal, and scientists' status and promotion is tied to publication. As a rule, neither the scientists who write the papers, nor their colleagues who peer review them, nor the editorial boards who vet them, are paid. The publishers' costs are printing, the tiny full-time staff on each journal - typically two people - marketing, and distribution. While the feud over the price of journals was between libraries and publishers, the scientists stood aside, but the advent of the internet has changed everything. Powerful search engines trawling computer databases make it possible for scientists to discover groundbreaking links between different research results which would previously have taken years of trawling through a jungle of indexes. The prospect of this incredible new tool being controlled by large private corporations has jerked scientists into action. "The major commercial publishers have every reason to feel threatened," Prof Ashburner said. "They charge very high prices, and they are very insistent on copyright transfer. We are not paid for publication, and we see no reason whatsoever why we should hand over copyright to a commercial publisher, having done the work, both the science and the writing. "The costs these publishers are charg ing are such that even in the wealthy countries we can't always afford to buy the information back, and it's off-limits totally for the developing world." In a letter to the competition commission in March, Clive Field, librarian at Birmingham University and head of the Consortium of University Research Libraries said that the Elsevier-Harcourt merger would give one company control over journals representing 42% of a typical university's spend in that area. He said Elsevier and Harcourt were already trying to drive too tough a deal with their electronic archive. "Neither publisher has yet offered a deal which is recognised to be fair and equitable," he wrote. "It is not unnaturally feared that a merged publisher, operating in a market where the buyer is weak, would be even less subject to the price checks and balances that a more open market would offer." A nice little earner Title Brain Research Publisher Elsevier Annual subscription 1991 #3,713 Annual subscription 2001 #9,148 Increase 146% Title Journal of Virological Methods Publisher Elsevier Subscription 1991 #527 Subscription 2001 #1,555 Increase 195% Title Neuroscience Letters Publisher Elsevier Subscription 1991 #1,125 Subscription 2001 #2,805 Increase 149% Title Preventative Veterinary Medicine Publisher Elsevier Subscription 1991 #171 Subscription 2001 #713 Increase 317% Title Biochemical Journal Publisher Biochemical Society (not-for-profit body) Subscription 1991 #793 Subscription 2001 #1,334 Increase 68% Source: Consortium of University Research Libraries