Study on scientific publishing in Europe :Development, diversity, and transparency of costs

To support the Commission’s policies on open access, and subsequent to Council Conclusions to take concrete measures against the proliferation of insufficiently transparent contractual arrangements with publishers, this study was commissioned to provide a deeper understanding of the issues around practices and costs of scholarly publications, offer an analysis of the situation, and propose advice for policy actions. The report documents the pervasive lack of information on such contracts and deals with publishers and recommends specific actions, mostly required on the side of the member states, institutions and libraries to enhance transparency regarding the costs of publishing. These include, among others, publishing the contracts and working on making available structured information about them.