Fwd: Wellcome Trust report, FT article, on costs of scientific publishing

[Tom Moritz]

Food for thought -- (Forwarded from another LIST) --
and very important reading for  our community...

Tom Moritz

>From: "Alison Macdonald" <alison.macdonald at britishlibrary.net>
>To: <liblicense-l at lists.yale.edu>
>Subject: Wellcome Trust report, FT article, on costs of scientific publishing
>Date: Fri, 30 Apr 2004 13:44:51 EDT
>
>More on scientific publishing cost ....  The Wellcome Trust has just
>published a report commissioned by it, "Costs and business models of
>scientific publishing" (URL below).  ... perfectly timed for a rainy
>holiday week-end in the UK!
>
>Today's Financial Times (30th April 2004) carries an article* by Dr. Mark
>Walport, a director of the Wellcome Trust, heralding the report:  "A
>report launched today by the Wellcome Trust, available to everyone [!] at
>www.wellcome.ac.uk/publications shows that publishing a paper in the
>traditional way costs between £800 and £1,500. Under open access, the cost
>is £550 to £1,100. The report shows this is an efficient, affordable and
>high quality model sustainable for the long term."
>
>The FT article is an outline of the scientific publishing/open access
>debate.  A few extracts below - if readers want to see the full article,
>please let me know.
>
>The Wellcome Trust is anxious that "the new knowledge the research [funded
>by public or charitable funds] brings must be made widely available for
>maximum impact".  While acknowledging benefits of the current journal
>system (peer review, selection, promotion of important articles in
>editorials), Dr. Walport also sees problems and anomaly:
>
>"The [scientific publishing] market is largely invisible to the providers
>and users of research. Researchers and peer reviewers neither make nor
>receive payment. Readers are unaware of comparative subscription costs of
>different journals. "Meanwhile, the subscription costs have risen by much
>more than inflation. Some publishers acquire groups of journals and sell
>them electronically to libraries in a single package. This poses a new
>problem for libraries. Paper copies of journals reside on shelves for
>ever, but the content of journals bought online may be available only for
>the lifetime of the subscription. "Another issue is that once copyright is
>surrendered, anyone wanting to look at that research in the future,
>including the researchers and the body that funded them, must pay whether
>they read the paper journals or access them online. Thus, the Wellcome
>Trust, which funds £400m of research a year, is denied opportunities to
>disseminate the results of studies it funds."
>
>Alison Macdonald
>Digital Archiving Consultancy
>Twickenham
>UK

Tom Moritz                                              212-769-5417
Boeschenstein Director, Library Services         212-769-5009 - FAX
American Museum of Natural History              tmoritz at amnh.org
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