Will We Stop Paying Subscription Fees to Access 'Public Papers' Funded by Taxes?

International Renowned Academic Journal Publishers Impose Dual Burden of Subscription and Publication Fees, Gaining Massive Profits
Public Access to Research Funded by Public Finances Also Blocked
National Research Council of Science & Technology Moves to Secure 'Open Access Rights'
Following Elsevier Last Year, Wiley Becomes Second Publisher to Sign Open Access Transition Contract This Year

International academic journal. Data figure. Not related to the article.

[Asia Economy Reporter Kim Bong-su] The public in South Korea is gaining expanded access to papers from national science and technology research institutes, which were previously only available through paid subscriptions or university and public libraries.

The National Science and Technology Research Council (NST), representing 25 government-funded research institutes under its umbrella, announced that it has signed a three-year open access transition agreement with the global academic publisher John Wiley & Sons (hereafter Wiley) from this year through 2024.

Previously, the government-funded research institutes individually contracted to subscribe to over 800 academic journals published by Wiley, obtaining major overseas research outcomes, trends, and various data. The problem was that they also had to pay publication fees to have their own research papers, which are the results of their work, recognized internationally. This created a double burden of paying subscription fees with public funds for papers produced with public financing. Especially from the public’s perspective, there was a significant burden in having to pay subscription fees or rely on university and public libraries to access publicly funded papers written with taxpayers’ money.

Through this contract, NST secured the right for researchers affiliated with the government-funded institutes to freely access the publisher’s academic journals and to publish a certain portion of approximately 200 papers annually as open access without individual publication fee payments.

Accordingly, even government-funded research institutes that previously did not subscribe to Wiley’s journals now have the authority to freely access over 800 scientific and technological academic journals. Papers published as open access by these institutes can be freely used not only by the Korean public but by anyone worldwide.

In December 2020, NST also signed an open access transition agreement with another global academic publisher, Elsevier, marking the first such contract in Asia. Elsevier publishes about 2,700 academic journals.

Meanwhile, the subscription fees that global academic journals collect annually from domestic universities and research institutions reached approximately 180 billion KRW last year alone. Additionally, many publishers charge individual researchers separate publication fees when submitting papers. Globally, as of 2014, 996 publishers produce around 8,000 academic journals, with Elsevier (Netherlands), Wiley (USA), Taylor & Francis (UK), and Springer Nature (Germany) known as the "Big Four." These publishers are notorious for "gapjil" practices, such as raising subscription fees far above inflation rates annually or forcing institutions to subscribe to entire journal packages. These publishers collect enormous subscription fees around 10 trillion KRW annually (7.6 billion euros or about 10.51 trillion KRW in 2015). Since 2010, the global academic community has actively promoted the "open access movement" to allow anyone to publish and access academic papers freely.

NST Director Kim Bok-cheol stated, “Through this open access transition agreement, anyone worldwide can access the research outcomes of government-funded institutes without any barriers or restrictions, which we expect will provide an opportunity to widely share our excellent research achievements.” He added, “As open access activation policies are being promoted at the national level, NST will also actively support these efforts.”

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.