United Press International - August 27, 2004
Dee Ann Divis, Senior Science and Technology Editor

The outcome of the argument could have enormous implications for patients urgently searching for the latest findings on their illnesses. Likewise affected would be scientists who need information from the journals to support their own research and publishing opportunities in the journals to advance their careers.

At the core of the debate are skyrocketing journal prices. Some journals now cost as much as $10,000 to $20,000 annually, with prices across the board up 100 percent to 150 percent over the past decade.

With the faltering economy, many libraries have not received budget increases to offset the prices. Many schools have had to cut back on subscriptions, reducing access for their own researchers and the general public, whose only affordable access often is through college libraries. Some librarians are so angry at perceived price gouging -- in particular by huge commercial publishers such as Elsevier -- they are specifically targeting cuts at firms they consider unfair.

Largely as a result of the price increases, librarians have become significant supporters of "open access" -- a term describing several different ways to make research results and journal papers available for free, or nearly free, to the reader. Examples include authors paying journals to cover costs, using grants to subsidize publishing, and authors posting results on personal Web sites or publishing research papers after a certain delay.

An approach that passed in the House of Representatives would require research funded by the National Institutes of Health to be made available for free on the NIH PubMed Web site six months after initial publication in a journal.

The measure -- found in a report by the Appropriations Committee detailing budget directives for the Department of Health and Human Services next year -- would not cover research funded by other sources. This, and the fact that research papers often are too technical for average readers, opponents say, means the move probably will not be of much benefit to the public.

Publishers say they will be hurt, and assert the blow to their businesses will hurt the research community, too. Implicit in the argument is the assumption that publication on PubMed will undermine the financial health of many journals and the scientific societies and publishers they support. Not all in the industry agree, however, but some publishers are suggesting open access will undermine revenue from fee-based databases, for example, and commercial publishers will begin to leave the business.

"There are certain incentives involved in being able to provide access to (information) through other means," Allan Adler, vice president for legal and governmental affairs for the Association of American Publishers, told United Press International. "Once the government has ordered this material ... be made available for free ... there is no value in a further, private sector treatment of that information."

Both for-profit and not-for-profit publishers told UPI the House language would push the science community toward relying on open-access business models that are unreliable and may not last.

"There have been so many changes in the scientific publishing business that nobody's sure at the end of the day who's going to still be left or which models are going to work," said Paul Kincade, president of the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology. FASEB organizations publish 59 different journals, many of which could be affected by the House proposal.

Kincade noted the current, subscription-base approach has been demonstrated to be reliable.

"Some of these journals have been in business for 100 years -- that's tested," he said.

Reliability also involves providing information without imposing an agenda on it, Adler asserted.

"It is remarkable to me that the advocates of open access ... have such utter faith and trust in the government as ... an objective gatekeeper, that the government is going to freely allow this information to be as widely accessible as possible, even when the government may have its own reasons for not wanting it to be," he said.

Adler pointed to reports by the Union of Concerned Scientists about politically motivated efforts to control the interpretation of research results.

"The government second-guesses its funding of research all the time," Adler said. "Can the government be counted on not to put its thumb on the scale when particular research involves highly politically controversial issues like stem cell research or abortion?"

The publishers want to make these points to the House and are unhappy legislators crafted the change with so little input from them.

"There had been no input, no due process, no hearings," said another publishing official, who asked not to be named.

The official noted the publishers have persuaded House members to hold a colloquy on the issue this fall. This scripted "discussion" involving two legislators would serve to clarify what Congress wants from NIH. The phraseology, which publishers no doubt will try to influence, may limit change or provide more flexibility on the timing of the move to PubMed. As proposed, papers could begin to appear within the next two years.

Scientific societies are particularly likely to ask that rules for mandatory publishing not be "one size fits all." For example, societies that publish quarterly journals could be hurt by a six-month publishing schedule, said Ellen Paul, executive director of the Ornithological Council.

The societies are the backbone of the entire research system and all who spoke to UPI insisted any changes must be crafted to protect the organizations.

Most publishers who spoke to UPI acknowledged the industry was going through changes, but several denied pricing problems were the fault of the publishers or that they created access problems.

"Library budgets are either going down, being reduced or they are just being matched for inflation," said Eric Merkel-Sobotta, director of corporate relations for Elsevier. "We don't agree with some people saying that it is the fault of the publishers."

Another publishing executive, who asked not to be named, agreed.

"(Library budget problems) are partly an issue in universities of how indirect costs are allocated," said this member of the Association of American Publishers' Professional and Scholarly Publishing Group. "But it is also an issue that librarians have not, unfortunately, lobbied effectively for funding increases."

The price increases also reflect growth in the number of pages published, Merkel said.

"Overall, the volume of research published goes up by ... about 3 percent per year," he said. "Our price increases are a combination of inflation and increase in the volume of research published."

Merkel also told UPI that 97 percent of the people in the United States can have access to what Elsevier publishes for free through universities, state schools and inter-library loans.

The AAP member said the technical innovations and success of the commercial publishers are, in part, responsible for the current controversy.

"Frankly we wouldn't even be having this debate if publishers hadn't been so successful at transitioning what was a traditional print business to an online delivery mechanism," the member said. "Commercial publishers led the way on implementing novel standards and technology, like the digital object identifier, that enable navigation across the Web and enables the cross linking of millions of articles."

Commercial houses add value in other ways, the AAP member noted. "We provide often significant funding to organize (the peer review) process -- either for startup journals or for well established journals. We are providing the infrastructure to organize peer review in conjunction with the scientific community."

Marketing and broad licensing agreements also have expanded the number of readers who are aware of, and have access to, the journals.

"There is no need for the government to step in and take control of intellectual property, i.e., the rights inherent in copyright, when the market is functioning properly now," the AAP member added.

Whether the Senate approves the House version of the bill or not, Merkel acknowledged change is in the wind.

"I would say the system is in transition," he said. "There are new things happening. There are experiments taking place ... To some extent, we are sort of doing our own experiments.

At the moment, "we aren't jumping on any bandwagons, however," Merkel added.

E-mail ddivis@upi.com

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