Parlamentarischer Untersuchungsausschuss zu wiss. Publikationen (Grossbritannien))

[Marcel Brannemann <mbrannemann@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

FYI:

aus der IAMSLIC liste:

Zusammenfassung der Befragung von Verlagsvertretern (Blackwell, NPG, 
Wiley, Elsevier), Vertretern wiss. Gesellschaften (ALPSP, Inst. of 
Physics, Oxford Uni. Pr.), sowie Vertretern 'offener' Systeme (PLoS, 
BioMed Central, Axiope Ltd.) durch das UK Parliament's Science & 
Technology Committee


die unredigierten Transkripte finden Sie unter:

For March 1: 
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200304/cmselect/cmsctech/uc399-i/uc39902.htm 


For March 8: 
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200304/cmselect/cmsctech/uc399-ii/uc39902.htm



-------- Ursprüngliche Nachricht --------
Betreff: [IAMSLIC:4038] News: Summary of UK Parliament's Science & 
Technology Committee Inquiry
Datum: Fri, 02 Apr 2004 08:51:22 +0200
Von: Webster, Janet (FIDI) <Janet.Webster@xxxxxxx>
An: iamslic@xxxxxxxxxxx

Below is a succinct description of the inquiry.  It gives a flavor for the
discussion.
-Janet Webster


Library Journal Academic Newswire (TM)
The Publishing Report
April 1, 2004

II. LJ ACADEMIC NEWSWIRE SPECIAL REPORT: A look at the UK
Parliament's Science and Technology Committee's inquiry
into STM publishing.
--UK STM Inquiry, day one, session one: Blackwell, Nature,
and Wiley
--Day one, session two: Elsevier
--Day two, session one: ALPSP, Institute of Physics, Oxford
University Press
--Day two, session two: PLoS, BioMed Central, Axiope Ltd.

****************SPECIAL REPORT***************
UK STM INQUIRY, DAY ONE, PANEL ONE: BLACKWELL, NATURE, AND
WILEY
The panel's first session on March 1 featured witnesses
Robert Campbell from Blackwell, Richard Charkin from the
Nature Publishing Group, and John Jarvis from Wiley. The
trio faced a total of 93 questions from nine legislators.
Chair Ian Gibson immediately sought to assess the potential
impact of new initiatives on the three publishers, asking
what open access models would cost versus the subscription
model. For NATURE, replied Charkin, a shift to open access
would incur author charges between an astonishing £10,000
and £30,000. (£1=$1.84.) Charkin later explained that
NATURE was a different model than other scholarly journals,
and offered a simple arithmetic for his answer: sales of
£30 million divided by 1000 articles published annually.
Charkin also told committee members that he did not feel
open access enjoyed wide support. "We ran an open access
debate about a year ago within NATURE," he testified, "and
there really was not overwhelming support." For most
journals, the trio agreed, author costs would more likely
fall around £1,250 per article.

When it came to inflation and its effect on library
budgets, the questioning became somewhat more heated. MP
Brian Iddon asked why journal prices have risen an average
of 58 percent over the past five years when the retail
price index (RPI) had risen 11 percent. "That is the
masthead price." countered Blackwell's Campbell. "But in
fact, many libraries get their journals through negotiated
deals, so there is another statistic which is more
important... access." In 1993, Campbell noted, the average
British university had access to roughly 4,000 journals,
while today that number has swelled to 6,500. That line of
questioning eventually led to the discussion of
consolidation in the industry. All three said that, while
consolidation offered better profit margins, they were now
investing more in their products. "I think there are
clearly some scale advantages to being big," Charkin told
the committee, "But I believe those advantages are trivial
when compared to doing a better job." Campbell told the
committee that 30 percent of his company's profit was re- invested in new
technologies.

Consolidation eventually led to discussion of "big deal"
bundling practices, including those of industry leader
Elsevier, whose representatives would address the committee
in the afternoon session. MP Desmond Turner asked if
criticisms of bundling were fair, and was told that the
practice was still evolving. "In our view," said
Campbell, "[bundling] is a transitional model and we are
moving to different sorts of pricing models and working
through the big deal as part of the evolutionary process."
With Elsevier representatives up next, the hearing finally
displayed some of the tartness notable in the British
Parliament. "We are seeing Reed Elsevier next," Chairman
Gibson, remarked. "Are they giants in the land?" Campbell
conceded they were industry leaders, but said Blackwell was
competitive and growing. "Why are they [Reed Elsevier] so
good and you are so useless at getting at the market,"
Gibson retorted. "Chairman, that is an unfair remark," a
chagrined Campbell fired back. "Nothing is unfair in this
place," said Gibson, "as you well know."

-----------------------------------
DAY ONE, SESSION TWO: ELSEVIER
In the second session before the committee on March 1, Reed
Elsevier CEO Crispin Davis, and CEO of Elsevier's Science
and Technology division Arie Jongejan came before the
panel. The tartness that marked the end of the first
session did not reappear. In fact, the panel was noticeably
deferential to the executives, though Elsevier Science is
the largest and perhaps the most controversial of all
publishers in the STM realm. Unlike the other panelists,
Davis was asked to open his session with a monologue in
which he very effectively contrasted Elsevier's price
increases of 6.2-7.5 percent annually with a flurry of
international statistics. According to Davis, new research
articles published are up three to five percent annually,
access to backfile articles available is up 20-30 percent,
and usage of their journals is up between 50-90 percent in
recent years. Libraries are getting "massive improvements
in functionality." Cost per download is falling 50-80
percent annually. As for bundling, Davis said there were
misunderstandings about the practice, and said "all
librarians and institutions are free to choose whatever
they wish." Against this backdrop, he suggested that
Elsevier's price increases were reasonable. He was not
asked to expand on these statistics, or challenged
on the practice of bundling.

As for open access, Davis said the company was neutral on
the issue, then added that open access would in "factual
fact" reduce accessibility, because it is "Internet-only."
(The Public Library of Science's PLoS BIOLOGY, a pioneering
open access journal, however, is also available in print.)
Though Davis was generally not challenged in the session,
the chairman did ask, as per remarks relayed from an
anonymous "whistleblower," whether Davis thought the
committee was a useless exercise. Davis called that
charge "total rubbish," and tactfully disarmed Gibson's
follow-up questions. The only thing close to a probing
question to follow came from MP Desmond Turner, who asked
Davis whether Elsevier had gotten too big. Davis responded
that the STM market was in fact "extraordinarily
fragmented," and that the company's size was beneficial,
allowing the company to contribute in excess of £200
million toward developing its popular ScienceDirect
platform. Turner, in his follow-up, did not ask about
whether libraries were put in a bind by spending too much
of their budgets on Elsevier journals, as has been a common
complaint from libraries, instead asking whether the
company's 2001 acquisition of Harcourt would yield higher
prices. To the contrary, Davis reported, Harcourt's
inflation rate had dropped since the merger.

The next questioner, MP Bob Spink, chose not to follow up
on the theme of consolidation, saying Davis had
given "quite a good account" of Elsevier. Davis was also
acknowledged for forthrightly revealing Elsevier's 34
percent gross profit margin. The remaining questions,
surprisingly, had little to do with business practices or
libraries. MP Robert Key instead asked Elsevier to
illuminate conflicts of interest, citing the case of Andrew
Wakefield. In 1998, Wakefield was accused of failing to
disclose that he had received a payment from a group
supporting a lawsuit against the makers of a vaccine he
questioned in the Elsevier Journal the LANCET. Elsevier
detailed how it responded to the conflict of interest,
which satisfied the committee.

-----------------------------------
DAY TWO, SESSION ONE: ALPSP, INSTITUTE OF PHYSICS, OXFORD
UNIVERSITY PRESS
On March 8, the committee heard remarks from Sally Morris,
CEO of the Association of Learned and Professional Society
Publishers (ALPSP), Julia King, CEO of the Institute of
Physics, and Martin Richardson, Managing Director of Oxford
University Press's journals program. In stark contrast to
the experience with Elsevier, the questions were wide-
ranging, and comments offered by this trio were often
challenged. When asked if the panelists differentiated
themselves from the market leaders, King responded yes, and
said her group was not "as pushy as" as Elsevier.
"What does pushy mean?" chairman Gibson asked.
"As acutely commercial, we do not push the big deals on
librarians." King responded.
"You say you think they do?" Gibson retorted.
"That is what we hear from the community," King replied.
"You cannot possibly confirm that," Gibson volleyed back.
MP Geraldine Smith, at one point, asked if smaller
publishers were able to keep prices lower because they
under-invested in technology. The publishers said they in
fact did invest heavily in technology.

The three also were asked to address thorny preservation
issues, more so than the other publishers who testified. In
perhaps the most puzzling exchange of the entire hearing,
MP Robert Key pressed Richardson regarding the
Wakefield/LANCET flap with more vigor than he did Elsevier,
the article's publisher.
"Would you have published Wakefield's article?" he asked. Richardson
responded that things occasionally "slip through
the net" but that rigorous peer review generally works.
Key shot back, "Either you have rigorous peer review or you
are content for things to slip through the net." Richardson
repeated his point, but was pressed even further by Key.
"Sir," Richardson finally said, "we did not publish that
article."

-----------------------------------
DAY TWO, SESSION TWO: PLOS, BIOMED CENTRAL, AXIOPE LTD.
The committee's final session featured open access pioneer
and CEO of the Public Library of Science (PLoS) Harold
Varmus, Biomed Central Publisher Vitek Tracz, and CEO of
Axiope, Nigel Goddard. Axiope is a fledgling effort to
produce software for scientists that facilitates data
sharing. This session offered some of the most genuine give- and-take of the
proceedings, largely due to the committee's
curiosity about the burgeoning open access
movement. "What's wrong with the current publishing model?"
asked Chair Gibson. Varmus answered that it does not take
full advantage of the opportunities offered by the Internet
nor make scientific information widely publicly available.
In contrast with the Elsevier session, open access
advocates had no real wellspring of figures to fall back
on. Instead, they attempted to detail an evolving
technology-based model, drawing on both experiences as
researchers and publishers and on their beliefs. MP Brian
Iddon asked specifically what the costs of open access were
and whether authors could pay fee to publish.

"We do not know entirely what our costs are," Varmus
answered. "We are too new and are doing to many things."
Tracz, whose BioMed Central has been publishing since 2001,
was able to offer more hard data. "More than 90 percent of
our journals charge $525." Tracz told the committee. "We
believe that at this rate we can be profitable." That was
challenged by Iddon, who noted that BioMed Central was not
yet self-sustaining and asked when it might be. "We are now
getting 500-600 papers a month. We need about 2000 papers a
month," Tracz responded. "We grew by more than 50 percent
last year. I expect we will be self-sustaining in about a
year and a half." The session ended with a provocative
question from Iddon--whether open access would kill
scientific societies. "I certainly hope not," Varmus
responded, but suggested that open access was not to be
denied. "These societies are guilds. They are there to
serve their constituents. The societies need to survive,
but they will need to do so by changing their business
plan...so that they can continue to do their good work but
not deny their members the advantage of open access."

The Science and Technology Committee will conduct a second
phase of hearings in April, and is scheduled to issue a
report sometime this summer. To access the complete,
uncorrected transcripts, see:

For March 1: 
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200304/cmselect/cmsctech/uc399-i/uc39902.htm 


For March 8: 
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200304/cmselect/cmsctech/uc399-ii/uc39902.htm




--
___________________________AWI_________________________
Marcel Brannemann - mbrannemann@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Bibliotheksleitung -
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fuer Polar- und Meeresforschung
P.B. 120161, D-27515 Bremerhaven, Germany

Tel.: ++49 471/4831-1587 - Fax.: ++49 471/4831-1149