A group of computer scientists yesterday reignited the debate over access to results of publicly funded research, issuing a detailed riposte to journal publishers who oppose plans to make research freely available on the internet.

The seven computer experts - including Sir Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the worldwide web, who is a professor at Southampton University - sent their analysis to Research Councils UK, the umbrella body responsible for all publicly funded research in Britain.

It called on the body to stick to its proposal to make it compulsory for research papers to be deposited in open-access databases as soon as possible. Journal publishers are campaigning against the draft RCUK policy, for which a period of public consultation ends today.

Sally Morris, chief executive of the Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers, said: "We are convinced that RCUK's proposed policy will inevitably lead to the destruction of journals."

Reed Elsevier, the largest commercial publisher of scientific journals, said its analysis "shows that if the RCUK proposal was implemented, access would not increase beyond current levels; current quality assurance levels could be reduced; UK higher education institutes would end up paying more for articles they can already access; the continuity and completeness of the scientific record would be threatened; and the productivity of multiple stakeholders in the UK science research community would be reduced".

But the computer scientists maintain the publisher's claims are unsubstantiated, "not least because evidence has shown that not only can journals co-exist and thrive alongside author self-archiving, they can actually benefit from it. Authors, institutions, fund-ers and publishers benefit from the increased visibility, use and impact of research articles that are self-archived and freely available to all".

According to Stevan Harnad, another Southampton University professor and organiser of the rebuttal letter, there is widespread confusion about what self-archiving actually involves. "Many people confuse it with open-access publishing - and this confusion has set back self-archiving more than anything," he said. "Self-archiving is not publishing."

Open-access publishing involves the author paying the journal for his or her paper to be peer-reviewed, edited and published in a form that is accessible to anyone without charge.

Self-archiving can apply to any form of publishing, whether traditional or open access; it requires the author to deposit an electronic copy of his or her paper, in a form that has been peer-reviewed and prepared for publication - but not the final version that appears in a journal.