Ensuring free and open access to research
Open access provides free and open access to scientific literature by facilitating peer-to-peer communication. It also helps accelerate of research while increasing the visibility of publications.
Subscription costs and publisher profits
Currently, the dissemination of research is hampered by exorbitant subscription costs imposed by greedy publishers in a monopoly situation. In a tight financial context, the University of Rennes1 pays more than 1 million euros each year to maintain access to scientific documentation, which is about 1,000 euros per researcher.
Most authors contribute on a voluntary basis (writing, reviewing, editing), while very often they are forced to transfer their rights to publishers.
In contrast, the large publishers make very comfortable margins from this situation: the largest, Elsevier (ScienceDirect), has a turnover (STM) of almost €3 billion, with an annual net profit after tax of 37% (2019 financial data). So the taxpayer ends up paying twice for research and access to the results of that research, just for the benefit of a handful of multinationals.