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Editorial

They would fund open access and reduce ten fold the overall cost to the scientific community

Author charges have the potential to radically change scientific publishing by bringing about a more equitable distribution of knowledge and a massive (up to ten fold) cost reduction to the scientific and educational world. But this requires a change of culture. The first significant steps towards this change are already being taken.

A scientific research article is published for two main reasons: to record and to communicate research results. An ideal publishing process therefore satisfies both. It ensures an unambiguous, permanent, secure, findable record, and it enables optimal circulation among those to whom the results may be of interest, now or in the future.

The traditional journal publishing model satisfies the first requirement, that of unambiguously recording research results. This is necessary, as the whole body of scientific knowledge is bonded together by citations and references. For this bonding to work, citations and references must be able to point to immutable and unique records. All of this is achieved by the current journal publishing system.

Optimal circulation is another matter. Public access to science is limited by the widespread practice of making the user (vicariously the research institution's library) pay high prices for scientific literature. Circulation via subscriptions and licences is supplemented to a degree by interlibrary loan and document delivery services, but remains restrictive. We are still far from achieving easy, affordable access to scientific results. Indeed, subscription prices are highest in regions of the world with the least resources: prices are on average lowest in the USA, followed by Europe, and highest in developing countries. This situation may have been justifiable when print and postal distribution were major elements of the cost of journals, but is no longer justified in an era of electronic distribution with its negligible marginal costs.

The remaining barriers to progress are simply economic. The turnover generated by print publication is in the order of ten times, per article published, what is needed to cover the all-in price of providing world wide electronic access. This means that for about a tenth of the current cost to the scientific community, electronic access to research results could be procured for the entire world. However, this would also reduce the combined turnover of the journal publishers to one tenth of what it is now. Their stakeholders (shareholders, staff, membership in the case of society publishers) won't like that.

While open access removes the revenue stream, it also removes a great deal of the cost. A revenue protecting system based on subscriptions or access licences requires a lot of effort (for which, read money) to be put into the security of copyright as well as into selling and administering these subscriptions and licences. All these costs are incurred because of the need for restricted access.

So here is the alternative: a system in which the author (vicariously the research institution) pays the cost of electronic publication and procures free access worldwide. Average author charges of under $500 per published article could reliably ensure world wide barrier-free electronic access for all, and secure permanent archiving. Print versions could be made as and when desired, at the cost of printing and binding.

A charge of $500 per article may still seem a large amount to some, but it is likely to be trivial compared with the cost of the research itself. And, since this would be the total amount paid by the scientific community, it compares favourably with the current cost of around $5000 per article, which is incurred without the benefit of optimal circulation. It should also be weighed against the common practice of charging authors for publication of colour plates and the like. Such charges often amount to more than $500 per article. Of course, not all countries have well funded research institutions. Where authors might have difficulty paying, author charges should be waived to avoid replacing access barriers with barriers to publication.

Because of the benefits to themselves and to the scientific community, and because of their and their funding agencies’ responsibility to disseminate research, authors should support the idea of open access and lobby their institutions or funding agencies to foot the (small) bill for author charges. We hope users will contribute to the debate on author charges by letting us know their views. Responses to this article can be sent to info@biomedcentral.com and will be considered for publication.