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The $10 billion science publishing industry hasn't heard the last of a bill that would make publicly funded studies available for free.
Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) has pledged this year to resurrect the Federal Research Public Access Act (S.2695), which would require federally funded research to become publicly available online within six months of being published.
"When it's the taxpayers that are underwriting projects in the federal government, they deserve to access the very things they're paying for," said Cornyn spokesman Brian Walsh. "This research is funded by American taxpayers and conducted by researchers funded by public institutions. But it's not widely available."
The largest journals can rake in tens of millions of dollars a year in subscriptions and advertising. Mandatory open access could kill off traditional journals if readers decide they don't want to pay hundreds or even thousands of dollars annually for material that's eventually available for free.
The bill, co-sponsored by Sen. Joseph Lieberman (I-Connecticut) was first introduced last year, but it never went to a vote. Cornyn plans to reintroduce it later this year, Walsh said.
Groups including the Alliance for Taxpayer Access are rallying behind the bill. And the student organization FreeCulture.org has declared February 15 National Day for Open Access in support of the bill.
In response, publishers have hired Dezenhall Resources, a public relations firm famous for its aggressive tactics in high-profile cases, to disparage aspects of open source publishing.
According to e-mails obtained by Nature in January, the public relations firm advised the publishers to emphasize simple messages like "public access equals government censorship" and "paint a picture of what the world would look like without peer-reviewed articles."
Critics say money is the publishers' main concern: "They want to preserve their profits," said Gunther Eysenbach, an associate professor at the University of Toronto and publisher of the open-access Journal of Medical Internet Research. "That's their prerogative, being commercial publishers."
But the publishers say there's more to it. They warn that government interference will harm science.
"Our core message is that we believe in the integrity of the peer-review system and the investments in it," said Brian Crawford, chairman of the executive council of the Professional and Scholarly Publishing Division of the Association of American Publishers. "It's inappropriate for the government (to interfere)."
Publishers argue that mandatory open access could cripple the respected peer-review system which is maintained, they say, by hefty subscription and advertising fees. While reviewers often aren't paid, finding and tracking them is expensive.
The bill would apply to only federally funded research, but that's more than half the research in science journals, and up to 30 percent of in clinical journals (the rest is mostly paid for by pharmaceutical companies), according to Peter Banks, a publishing consultant and former publisher of medical journals in Fairfax, Virginia.
Some journals are embracing the open model — which might make the looming bill all the more worrisome. Since 2000, some publications have made their (also peer-reviewed) contents available to the public for free. They now make up as much as 10 percent of all research journals.
Some, such as those published by BioMed Central and Public Library of Science, have become well-respected. "A few years ago, publishing in open access would be a radical thing to do," said Matthew Cockerill, publisher of BioMed Central. Now, "there are many fields where open-access journals lead the way."
Open-access journals typically require authors to pay fees, which can be in the range of $1,500 per paper. Some critics say this allows only researchers who can afford it to publish. They also say it makes journals beholden to researchers. In 2005, the editor of The New England Journal of Medicine, which is supported by advertising, pointed out that "in our capitalist society, one of our basic tenets is who pays the fiddler calls the tune."
A few traditional subscription publishers are also experimenting with open access, making more research freely available after a certain amount of time or if authors pay extra fees. Nature, for example, is experimenting with a free journal and allowing some authors to pay to make their findings publicly available. And earlier this month, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute announced it would pay the large Elsevier publishing house to make institute-funded research available to the public for free after six months. The change will take effect on Sept. 1, affecting research published after that date.
"But it is already clear that a journal like Nature would struggle under an open-access business model," said David Hoole, head of brand marketing for the Nature Publishing Group. "We reject 90 percent of the articles we receive, and spreading the cost of peer review over the few authors who do get published would be very unfair (and would probably deter submissions). We have approximately 1,000 authors, and 60,000 subscribers. It seems fairer to spread the costs over the subscribers."
The shift in publishing doesn't guarantee a rosy future for open-access journals, which are still trying to figure out how to make money.
After about seven years in the business, the for-profit BioMed Central expects to break even this year; Public Library of Science — which gets help from grants — is "on a path toward financial self-sufficiency," according to a spokesman.
According to tax records, the Public Library of Science had a deficit of $975,000 in 2005 and spent $5.47 million. Its total revenue was $4.49 million.
By contrast, The New England Journal of Medicine made $44 million in 2005, $30 million from advertising and $14 million from subscriptions, according to Advertising Age. And its rival, JAMA: The Journal of the American Medical Association, clocked in with $39 million in revenue, $33.2 million from advertising and $5.8 million from subscriptions.
How much damage could open access cause? Even if federal legislation passes, the journals could still sell subscriptions — many scientists don't want to wait six months before seeing the latest finding.
Indeed, "for big journals, it's probably not a terrible risk," Banks said. "For someone like The New England Journal of Medicine or JAMA, I don't think many people are going to cancel their subscriptions because they're freely available after six months."
But more obscure journals published less than once a week, Banks said, could find themselves losing subscriptions. "That's the basis of the publishers' worries."
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