Funders “should mandate change in science publishing”
Funders should step in to fix the current system of scholarly publication, according to a new report.
The paper, The Drain of Scientific Publishing, published on arXiv, argues that the global scientific publishing system is systematically “draining” research through misaligned incentives that prioritise commercial profit over scholarly value – and that funders, governments and universities should intervene more forcefully.
The authors argue that a small group of multinational commercial publishers now dominate scholarly communication in ways that extract value from the research system while undermining its long-term health.
They call for the “re-communalisation” of scholarly publishing: sustained investment in non-commercial, community-governed platforms; stronger limits on the use of public funds for APCs; reform of “research assessment and prestige” systems; and more assertive action by funders and competition authorities.
Dr Mark Hanson, from the Centre for Ecology and Conservation at the University of Exeter and one of the report’s 12 authors, said: “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.
“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.”
The authors estimate that the largest publishers generated more than US$7.1 billion (£5.35 billion) in journal revenues in 2024 alone, and more than US$14.7 billion (£11.08 billion) in profits between 2019 and 2024, with profit margins consistently greater than 30 percent. Open access, they argue, has not corrected this imbalance.
Furthermore, they argue that the pressure to publish more papers, fuelled by prestige metrics and commercial incentives, has increased the volume of research outputs faster than the growth of the scientific workforce.
The paper highlights growing concerns about editorial independence, the proliferation of “cascade” journals and special issues, and high-profile failures linked to paper mills, peer-review manipulation and mass retractions. The authors argue that digital publishing has removed historic constraints on volume without strengthening safeguards for quality.
They also claim infrastructures for publishing, metrics and research evaluation are increasingly owned and governed by commercial firms, reinforcing Global North dominance.