ALPSP sets out OA 'facts'. Blackwell and Macmillan bosses jump on anti-open access bandwagon.

Byline: Bobby Pickering.

Leading lights in the scientific publishing community in the UK have endorsed the findings of a new ALPSP-backed study on open access publishing.

The Facts About Open Access report has been compiled on behalf of the Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers (ALPSP) to establish, in the words of chief executive Sally Morris, "a baseline of comparison with traditional subscription publishing".

The findings, the core of which come from emails sent to OA publishers listed on the Directory of Open Access Journals website, are not good news for the open access movement. They raise doubts about the quality of peer review editing, impact factors and editorial independence (see right).

Key financial findings from the study show that 41% of OA journals are losing money, 24% are breaking even, and a mere 35% are profitable.

Bob Campbell, president of Blackwell Publishing, told IWR that the survey showed that the long-term viability of OA publishing was questionable. "Most OA publishing houses are financially stretched," he said. "The OA model is not secure financially, it isn't delivering a stable platform and it's not sustainable."

Campbell said that a core problem was the unpredictability of revenues in an author-pays environment. "The subscription model gives the stability that means you can do peer review properly. In OA you're under pressure to accept a paper for the revenue."