The IES is launching a survey to understand how our members consume scientific information and gather their thoughts on the subject of open access journals.

The debate over open access journals – those that allow their material to be shared online for free as soon as they are published – has intensified since the UK government backed proposals from the Wellcome Trust to make all of the research it funds to be made available as widely as possible in the public domain.

Currently three publishing companies - Elsevier, Springer and Wiley - own most of the world's 20,000 academic journals and account for about 42% of all journal articles published. And, even as library budgets over the past few years in the UK and North America have been flat or declining, journal prices have been rising by 5-7% a year or more.

This survey will allow the IES to get a feel for how the members perceive open access journals and the future of academic publishing. The results of the survey will be published in a report next month.

IES Members can take the survey here. The survey closes on 8th May.