Paying the price for publishing
We invest in research to spur innovation, not to line CEOs’ pockets, says Simon Duke.
Aharsh truth is facing university students: access to outstanding research is rarely free. Imagine you’re a medical student studying early onset dementia. The Lancet has a paper on this topic on its website with interesting findings on links between diet and dementia. There’s a problem, though. The article is behind a paywall. Unless your university librarian has subscribed to the journal, it will cost you $31.50 to read it.
On one level, the high price is justified. Producing an original academic paper can require thousands of hours of research. Before the work can be accepted for publication in a scientific journal, it must be assessed for accuracy and originality by leading authorities – a laborious and costly undertaking.
On another level, though, the cost should be negligible – much of the labour is funded by the taxpayer. Governments pay academics’ wages and it is the state that funds universities, the main buyers of scientific journals. In the middle stand a quartet of large publishers, which reap large quantities of taxpayer cash for their role as gatekeeper between researchers and university libraries. Relx, the media conglomerate formerly known as Reed Elsevier, is the largest.
Some of these private companies enjoy profit margins in excess of Facebook and Google. When young people are spending considerable sums annually to attend university, it’s hard to see why rent-seeking on this scale should persist in the world of education.
Unlike many other corners of the media industry, academic publishing has been spared the disruption wrought by new entrants from the technology sector. Yes, the business has largely moved online, but the dominant firms of old still reign supreme.
The reason is prestige. Academics are often judged by the perceived quality of the title that chooses to publish their work. Eminent journals, such as The Lancet and Nature, have a higher threshold for publication and more rigorous peer-reviewing procedures. As a consequence, open-access journals, which make research available for free, account for a small portion of the market.
The power of incumbency has brought great rewards. Last year, revenues for Relx’s academic publishing division were £2.5 billion and operating earnings £913 million. At almost 37 per cent, its profit margin is 13 percentage points higher than Alphabet, the owner of Google. Scientific publishing is Relx’s largest single business, accounting for 40 per cent of the AngloDutch giant’s profits. Since 2012, chief executive Erik Engstromhas raked in £66.8m in pay, bonuses and other perks.
Academics periodically have agitated for change. In 2012, Sir Timothy Gowers, a renowned mathematician, fronted a boycott of Relx’s Elsevier journals. Yet it still charges universities exorbitant fees for its publications.
However, the industry has had a shot fired across its bow from a more formidable foe. Last month, UK Innovation and Research and 10 fellow science funding agencies in Europe warned that they would no longer endure the status quo. From 2020, they have threatened to pull public funding from researchers who publish their findings in journals with a paywall. Many private research funds, such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, publish their scientific work on open-access sites.
With billions in grants at stake, the panEuropean crusade stands a far better chance of shaking up the industry than previous wildcat strikes. Change cannot come quickly enough. Governments invest in research to spur innovation and advances in science and healthcare – not to line the pockets of rentseeking executives.
Simon Duke is technology business editor of The Times