House Science Committee holds hearing on the state of scientific publishing

On April 15, the House Science Committee’s Subcommittee on Investigations and Oversight held a hearing on “The State of Scientific Publishing: Assessing Trends, Emerging Issues, and Policy Considerations.” The hearing was announced to discuss a broad set of issues related to “challenges facing the scholarly publishing ecosystem, including the integrity of peer review, conflicts of interest, data access and reproducibility, and concerns around predatory journals, paper mills, and ‘publish or perish’ incentive structures.”

STM met with nearly all of the Members of the Committee in advance of the hearing and submitted a statement that will be included in the hearing record. During the hearing, Committee members were generally supportive of the role of publishers in U.S. innovation, competitiveness, and public trust, while raising concerns about fraudulent research, inconsistent peer‑review standards, and barriers to reproducibility. Discussion included research integrity and the importance of publishers in supporting the integrity of the scholarly record. In general, the discussion did not get into granular detail, but concerns were raised about the Nelson memo’s impact on publishers and about the budget request restriction on subscriptions and publishing charges. Ranking Member Lofgren and Dr. Owen-Smith (one of the witnesses) raised concerns about the “high cost of publishing” and profits, but this line of discussion did not go very far.

The full hearing, written testimony, and opening statements are available on the hearing website. STM will have an opportunity to suggest Questions for the Record, and will share the hearing record when it is available.