Funding agencies can end profit-first science publishing
Funding organisations can fix the science publishing system – which currently puts profit first and science second – according to new research.
The new paper says the current relationship between researchers, funders and commercial publishers has created a “drain” – depriving the research system of money, time, trust and control.
The research team used public revenue and income statements to assess the money being spent on publishing articles with the biggest commercial publishers, and placed this in the broader historical context, including recent trends.
Published on arXiv, the paper examines the scale of publisher profits – with the four leading publishers (Elsevier, Springer Nature, Wiley and Taylor & Francis) generating over $7.1 billion in revenue in 2024 alone, with profit margins exceeding 30%.
Much of this money comes from public funds intended for research – and the new paper says bold action by funders is now essential.
“The real solution is not for scientists to band together. We’ve tried that for 30 years and it hasn’t worked – publisher profit margins have remained steady despite every attempted reimagining of science publishing,” said Dr Mark Hanson, from the Centre for Ecology and Conservation at the University of Exeter.
“The funding agencies hold all the cards. They’re the ones paying authors to do research, and journals to publish that research. They can mandate change.
“Some already are. For example, the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) has proposed limits on how much it will reimburse researchers for payments to publishers to make their articles open access (free to read).
“We researchers can support the battle, but we cannot lead the charge.”
Research funding often includes money to pay journal fees to make articles open access. With these fees rising, increasing amounts of research funding – which often comes from taxpayers – becomes publisher profits.
One option discussed in the paper is for “re-communalising” scientific publishing – with funding agencies, universities or governments promoting or even requiring researchers they fund to use community- and non-profit systems that are led by researchers.
This model of non-profit publishing already exists, with any extra revenue reinvested into the research community.
Professor Dan Brockington, from the Institute of Environmental Science and Technology at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, said: “When facing large and powerful organisations, you need allies that are equally large and powerful. We have them: funders, government agencies, foundations and universities, which together could decide where funds for publishing go and what incentives drive researchers.
“The current system harms science: it fuels a proliferation of papers focused on prestige, which strains the publication machinery.
“It also discourages slow, careful interdisciplinary thinking, which is key to achieving higher-quality science. Ultimately, it contributes to a weakening of quality and, consequently, to an erosion of public trust.”
Last year, researchers including Dr Hanson and Professor Brockington wrote a landmark paper highlighting the “strain” on scientific publishing caused by the rapidly rising number of papers being published. A 2023 study described an “oligopoly” in which the big five academic publishers profit from article processing charges. These studies paved the way for the new paper, entitled: “The Drain of Scientific Publishing.”
