Over the last couple of years, major funders such as the UK's Wellcome Trust have mandated their researchers to use an open access model when publishing their work. These changes could have significant implications for the RSC's publishing business, which in turn supports our charitable activities. The RSC is therefore experimenting with its own open access model.

Open access (OA) means that after the normal peer review processes, papers accepted for publication are immediately and freely made available to everyone. The ability to do this is one of the many innovations that digital communication has made possible. But the impetus for such a model comes from the idea that research that is funded publicly should be accessible to all of the public who have effectively paid for it.

In addition, arguments are often put forward that researchers from poorer institutions, or indeed from poorer countries, are disenfranchised by their lack of access to published research. 

In reality the RSC has been for some time a 'delayed open access' publisher, in that all journal material from 1997 onwards is freely available to all once it is two years' old. In addition the RSC provides free or very low cost journal information to the world's poorest nations via several programmes including our own Archive for Africa and Archive for Latin America projects.

Who pays?

Arguments for and against the OA approach are numerous, complex and have been fiercely contested within the scientific community. But most authors do want proper peer review and professional production to continue, so the major issue is how the very significant costs of publication (widely considered to be $3000 - 4000 per paper) can be met. 

The whole of the publication process from the submission of a paper to its production after acceptance is much accelerated by electronic means: in more than one case a paper submitted to RSC journals has been refereed, accepted and published electronically within 24 hours! But it would be a mistake to think that this great speed means low costs. 

Publishing expertise - in the RSC's case provided by a team of over 200 staff - is still needed and the substantial and ongoing expenditure by the RSC on faster computers and advanced software demonstrates the very real costs of electronic publishing. On the face of it all these costs either have to be met by the subscribers to the journals - the conventional approach until now - or, under OA, from other sources.  

Open access funding models

Other sources include charitable foundations (the Public Library of Science has been funded this way as well as by author-pays fees), but such financial models have so far generally not proven fully viable in the long term. 

More realistically, a model where the authors of the papers themselves or those funding their research pay for publication is starting to emerge. Some funders have enthusiastically embraced this model, particularly in the biomedical and biochemical sciences, where the case for the instant availability of all research data is perhaps most easily made. Other funding sources, such the Research Councils in the UK, have taken a rather more cautious approach. 

"widespread adoption of OA would have significant financial implications as the true cost of publishing a paper could almost certainly not be recovered"

But OA publication is probably here to stay, and the world's major scientific publishers, both society-based and commercial, are taking notice and moving to meet this trend by offering OA routes.

Implications for the RSC

The RSC has continually reviewed its policy on open access over several years. Widespread adoption of OA by our authors would have significant financial implications as the true cost of publishing a paper could almost certainly not be recovered from even the wealthiest research institute. In turn this would have implications for the RSC's educational, science policy and campaigning activities which are funded by publishing surpluses as well as membership fees. 

Only a tiny proportion of the papers submitted to the RSC currently come from subject areas likely to be committed to OA publishing, but the RSC feels that the time is now right to offer authors an OA option.  

An RSC Open access model

Our new scheme, RSC Open Science, covers all types of papers (communications, primary papers and reviews) with fees ranging from £850 - £2,500. Moreover OA will be available retrospectively: payment will give immediate open access to a paper previously published conventionally. 

A crucial feature of the RSC scheme, underlying our commitment to the highest quality of work and to principled publishing, is that authors will only be offered access to the OA route after the normal processes of peer review have been completed. They will then have the choice between the conventional system, which provides for free access after a fixed period, or the new instant OA system. As a point of principle we will ensure that no financial pressure could be thought to have influenced the decision to publish a paper of only borderline quality on the sole basis that it would generate extra income.

The RSC Open Science system has only just started, and we are waiting to see how it will progress. For some enthusiasts, OA is the publishing route of the future: others feel that in many research areas the take-up will be modest at best. But we think that the RSC approach places us in a position where we can provide a publication service of the highest quality, while safeguarding the Society's broader interests.