The UK government is reportedly set to unveil controversial plans to make publicly funded scientific research immediately available for anyone to read for free by 2014. Under the scheme, research papers that describe work paid for by the British taxpayer will be free online for universities, companies and individuals to use for any purpose, wherever they are in the world. The move is viewed as the most radical shakeup of academic publishing since the invention of the Internet.
In an interview with the Guardian, before the announcement, David Willetts, the universities and science minister, has said he expected a full transformation to the open approach over the next two years. According to him, the move reflects a groundswell of support for "open access" publishing among academics who have long protested that journal publishers make large profits by locking research behind online paywalls. Though many academics are expected to welcome the announcement, some scientists contacted by the Guardian were reportedly dismayed that the cost of the transition, which could reach £50 million a year, must be covered by the existing science budget and that no new money would be found to fund the process. That could lead to less research and fewer valuable papers being published.
British universities now pay around £200 million a year in subscription fees to journal publishers, but under the new scheme, authors will pay "article processing charges" (APCs) to have their papers peer reviewed, edited and made freely available online. The typical APC is around £2,000 per article. Tensions between academics and the larger publishing companies have risen steeply in recent months as researchers have baulked at journal subscription charges their libraries were asked to pay. More than 12,000 academics have boycotted Dutch publisher Elsevier, in part of a broader campaign against the industry that has been called the "academic spring".
The government's decision is outlined in a formal response to recommendations made in a major report into open access publishing led by Professor Dame Janet Finch, a sociologist at Manchester University. The Finch report strongly recommended so-called "gold" open access, which ensures the financial security of the journal publishers by essentially swapping their revenue from library budgets to science budgets.
