Scholarly Communication: Issues and Action

ALABAMA ACRL Chapter Workshop February 13, 2006

Ray EnglishDirector of Libraries

Oberlin College

Contact information:

Ray English

Director of Libraries, Oberlin College

ray.english@oberlin.edu

440-775-8287

Purpose of the workshop To give you some basic tools to engage other librarians, faculty

and administrators on scholarly communications issues

The system scholarly communication is complex Need to consider:

Economic, legal, political, sociological and cultural aspects

By learning key concepts you can become • conversant with the issues • effective in working for change

Overview of the workshop

Issues and dysfunctions in the system

Strategies for change

Actions for librarians and faculty

Developing a campus plan

Discussion and activities throughout the day

System of Scholarly Communication

What do we mean by scholarly communication?

Scholarly Communication

Definition:

The system through which research and other scholarly writings are: • created• evaluated for quality• edited• disseminated to the scholarly community• preserved for future use

Formal vs. informal system

System of Scholarly Communication

• What are the issues?• What’s the most fundamental issue?

Scholarly Communication: What’s the Real Issue?

Serials crisis? Cost of journals?Industry consolidation? Publisher monopoly power?Decline in library monograph purchases?Decline in specialized monograph publishing?Permissions crisis?Licensing restrictions? Big Deals?Loss of public domain?Legislative threats to fair use?Preservation of electronic information?Published knowledge growing faster than library budgets?

Fundamental issue is access

Problems are resulting in

loss of access

barriers to access

Access to scholarship by users

Access to publishing opportunities

Problems are systemic

True or False?

1. Science journals that are higher in price have higher value, as measured by citation impact.

2. Science journals published by large commercial publishers are generally less costly than journals from smaller non-profit organizations.

3. Journal articles that are openly accessible on the web have greater research impact than journal articles that are accessible only through subscriptions or licenses.

Aspects of Serials Crisis

Extraordinary price increasesWorst is scientific fieldsInelastic marketCommercial journals have substantially higher prices

and high profit margins

Serial & Monograph Costs, 1986-2002

North American research libraries

ARL Statistics

Crisis in a nutshell

Average journal prices by broad discipline

Arts and Humanities US $162Non-US $235

Social Sciences US $349Non-US

$721

Sciences US $1,068Non-US $1,732

Library Journal Periodical Price Survey, April 2005

Average prices by specific discipline

• Chemistry $2,868• Physics 2,719• Engineering 1,683• Biology 1,494• Technology 1,460• Math & Computer Science 1,267• Astronomy 1,235• Geology 1,197• Botany 1,109• Health Sciences 1,081• General Science 1,059• Zoology 1,053

Library Journal Periodical Price Survey, April 2005

Higher priced journals tend to have lesser impact

Higher priced journals tend to be published by commercial firms

Higher quality journals tend to be non-profit, published by societies

Commercial vs. non-commercial journal prices

Wisconsin and Cornell studies

Henry Barschall study

Ted Bergstrom’s journal pricing page

http://www.econ.ucsb.edu/~tedb/Journals/jpricing.html

Data used with permission of Carl T. Bergstrom

9%

91%Of cost

62%

38%Of

citations

Data used with permission of Carl T. Bergstrom

Journal Pricing across Disciplines:Price per Citation Comparison

Journal cost-effectiveness

Ted Bergstrom’s journal cost-effectiveness calculator

http://www.journalprices.com/

Antitrust issues in journal publishing industry

Increasing corporate control of journal publishingIndustry consolidation

Mergers since 1980: • Kluwer: 11 major publishers • Wiley: 8 major publishers• Taylor & Francis: 16 major publishers• Elsevier: 18 major publishers plus Endeavor ILS• Thomson: 15 publishers

Migration of journals to commercial sector

Antitrust issues in journal publishing

Price increases result from mergers

Pergamon titles increased 27% after they were purchased by Elsevier

Lippincott titles increased 30% after they were purchased by Kluwer

McCabe <http://www.prism.gatech.edu/~mm284/>

Antitrust issues in journal publishing industry

Mergers produce price increasesBundling creates barriers to entry

Information Access Alliancehttp://www.informationaccess.org/

What if you owned this business?

People produce your product for youThey check it for qualityThey’re even kind enough to give you their intellectual

propertyYou polish it up and distribute it And you charge those same people handsomely to

make their product available back to them They think they must have your product, even though

they created it, so you’re free to raise prices

What a magnificent ship! What makes it go?

Cartoon by Rowland B. Wilson

Serials crisis

How have libraries responded?

Library responses

Request increased budgetsCut subscriptionsReduce monograph purchasesCut subscriptions and reduce monographsLicense electronic journalsRely on document delivery or ILL

Effective Effective YearYear

Journal Titles Journal Titles

Not RenewedNot Renewed

Dollar cost of Dollar cost of

Titles Not RenewedTitles Not Renewed1987 843 $160,425

1991 1,417 $263,614

1992 68 $17,944

1993 1,933 $371,734

1996 605 $196,826

2000 1,063 $213,506

2001 274 $41,000

2002 555 $93,542

TotalTotal 6,7586,758 $ 1,358,591$ 1,358,591

Cancellations Record at a Research I Institution

Issues for faculty

Loss of access to journal literatureLack of access to desired literature

Monographs crisis

University presses under pressure

Library markets in decline

Limited sales of specialized monographs

Monographs crisis

How are university presses responding to economic pressures?

Monographs crisis

Reduce specialized monographsPublish Bullshit

Issue for faculty

Monograph publishing opportunities in decline

MLA Letter from Stephen Greenblatt, 2002“The Future of Scholarly Publishing” report

MLA report

• Library budgets for monographs declining• Far fewer scholarly monographs being purchased• Fewer outlets for traditional scholarly monograph• Junior faculty between a rock and a hard place• Need for alternative forms of scholarly expression• Publishing subventions for junior faculty

MLA, 2002, The Future of Scholarly Publishing

More on monographs crisis

Specialized Scholarly Monograph in Crisis, Or How Can I Get Tenure if You Won’t Publish My Book

1997 conference proceedings on ARL website:

• http://www.arl.org/scomm/epub/program.html

Permissions crisis

Legal and technological barriers to access

Legal barrierscopyright (public domain, orphaned works)licenses (ILL? access? copies?)

Technological barriersDigital rights management

Peter Suber’s term

Licensing issues

What are the issues?

Licensing issues

Provisions of licensing agreements that impede access

Issues related to bundled licenses: Loss of library choice over content Rates of price increase Length of contracts Threats to subscriptions outside the bundle Continued pressure on monographs budgets

Public domain Bono Copyright Term Extension Act

Orphaned works

Digital Millenium Copyright Act

Public access to federally-funded researchIf the federal government funds research, shouldn’t the public have access to that research?

National policy issues

Preservation of electronic information

Libraries responsible for preservation of print journals

Electronic journals are licensed from publishers Libraries lack control over electronic version

Scholarship as a public good

Substantial portion isfunded by taxpayerssupported publicly

created in non-profit sectorJournal literature is freely given away by authors

But journal publishing is largely under corporate controlA public good in private hands

Not just the serials issue or a library concern

Scholarly communication operates as a systemIssues are interrelated Seeing systemic aspects better positions you to talk

with faculty from the base of their concerns

Example:

How would / could a young humanist become concerned about a merger of two major science journal publishers?

A Case Study

Liberal arts college

Isolated

Science faculty are very unhappy with the library

Is their anger justified?

How should the library handle this?

Need for transformative change

Traditional system is unsustainable

Scholars are losing access

System of out of the control of researchers and the academy

Break time!

Creating Change

Change agents

Strategies

Progress

Who can create (or impede) change? Who holds power in the system?

Librarians, library organizationsPublishersHigher education administratorsFaculty and other researchers

As producers of research As editors, editorial board members,

peer reviewers As users of research

Congress, Federal government

Change agents

SPARC

www.arl.org/sparc/

ARL, ACRL, other major library organizations

Public interest organizations:

Creative Commons, Public Knowledge

Some publishers, PLOS

Faculty, researchers

Importance of faculty / researchers?

They have:

Power as editors and editorial boards

Power as originators of research and holders of copyright

Why should faculty care?

Access to research is threatened

Access is fundamental to teaching, learning and the process of research itself

Issues affect them directly, though in different ways, depending on their discipline

Current system difficult (impossible?) to sustain financially

Change strategies

Open Access

Collective buying

Competitive journals

Editorial board control

Declaring Independence

Antitrust actions

Campus advocacy

National policy advocacy

Open access

Most promising strategy to date

Free, unrestricted online access to research literature

Few restrictions on subsequent use

Two forms:

Open access journals

Author self-archiving - in open archives

Definitions, Proclamations

Budapest Open Access Initiative

Bethesda, Howard Hughes Medical Institute Meeting

Berlin Conference on Open Access to Knowledge in Science and the Humanities

Open access journals - gold road

Fully peer reviewed

Full research content openly available on the web

Publication costs covered prior to publication

Lower cost structure

Open access - an access model

Business models vary:

Author fees, from research grants

Subscriptions to non-research content

Advertising

Institutional memberships

Institutional support, subsidies

Related products and services

Endowment

Examples

Public Library of Science

http://www.plos.org/

BioMed Central

http://www.biomedcentral.com/

Directory of Open Access Journals

http://www.doaj.org/

Open access journals - issues

Funding / business models still evolving

Prestige may be lacking for new titles

May be less workable in some disciplines

Delayed open access may be more feasible in some instances

Author self-archiving - green road

Steven Harnad

Subversive proposal, June 1994

Make scholars' preprints universally available to all scholars via ftp, gopher, and the world wide web

Author self-archiving

Author deposits article in an openly accessible repository

Disciplinary repository

Institutional repository

Pre-print, post-print, final published version

Disciplinary repositories

Make intellectual output of a discipline openly accessible

Example:

arXive - for high energy physics

Math, cognitive science, economics, library science, and many other fields

Institutional repositories

Capture the intellectual output of an institution

Examples:

DSpace - at MIT

University of California eScholarship Repository

Ohio Digital Commons

Issues - obtaining content

National and universal repositories

French national repository

Universal repository

For those who do not have access to an institutional or disciplinary repository

Internet Archive, Brewster Kahle

Repository directories

OpenDOAR: Directory of Open Access Repositories

http://www.opendoar.org/

Peter Suber’s list of open access repository directories

SPARC Open Access Newsletter site

http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/lists.htm#archives

Self-archiving

Author control of copyright is critical

Author modifies publisher’s copyright agreement

SPARC author’s addendum

http://www.arl.org/sparc/author/addendum.html

Acceptance of self-archiving

High percentage of publishers allow self-archiving

SHERPA ROMEO listing

http://www.sherpa.ac.uk/

Value of open access

Increased:

access (instantaneous, worldwide)

readership

research impact

Value of open access

Studies on research impact:

Antelman

Brody and Harnad

Lawrence

Bibliography of studies available at:

http://opcit.eprints.org/oacitation-biblio.html

Value of open access

Fosters scientific progress and growth of knowledge

Progress of open access

Foundation and funding agency support

Welcome Trust mandate

National Institutes of Health policyUnited Kingdom developments

Faculty / university actions

University of Kansas, Columbia

Growth of institutional and disciplinary repositoriesGrowth of open access journals

Impact of open access movement

Changed the debate -- focus is now on access

Widespread acceptance of self-archiving by publishers

Delayed open access -- substantially increased

Experimentation with individual article OA

Commercial publisher adjustments

Blackwell Author’s Choice, Springer Open Choice

Follow open access developments

SPARC Open Access Newsletter

Peter Suber

http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/

Open access news blog

http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/fosblog.html

Other change strategies

Collective buying

Licensing journals collectively through library consortia

OhioLINK

Increased journal access through statewide licenses

Cost controls

Not a transformative strategy

Competitive journals

Creating journals to compete with specific high-priced commercial titles

Example: Organic Letters

See other “SPARC Alternatives” listed on SPARC webpage under “Publishing Partners”

http://www.arl.org/sparc/

Issue -- journal proliferation, but not if OA

Editorial board control

Editorial boards have power -- if they will exercise it

Example: American Journal of Physical Anthropology

Wiley title

33% price reduction

Actions for editorial boards

Examine business practices of the journal: Look at:

Subscription pricing trends, access policiesCirculation and renewal history Production process and publisher performance

Push for reasonable prices and access policies Push for transition to open access model or delayed accessConsider moving the journal

Declaring Independence

Move journal to a nonprofit or independent context

University press, society publisher, academic context, independent

Consider alternative models, particularly open access

Examples:

Evolutionary Ecology Research

Other titles listed as “SPARC Alternatives” and “SPARC Leading Edge” on SPARC webpage

Antitrust actions

Information Access Alliance

White paper on publisher mergersChallenged Kluwer - Springer mergerSymposium on “Antitrust Issues in Scholarly and Legal

Publishing”Working with some state attorneys general and DOJ on

anticompetitive practices

http://www.informationaccess.org/

Campus advocacy

Essential strategy for engaging faculty

Various approaches

Campus advocacy

ACRL Scholarly Communications Toolkit

http://www.ala.org/ala/acrl/acrlissues/scholarlycomm/scholarlycommunicationtoolkit/toolkit.htm

Create Change

http://www.createchange.org/home.html

ACRL / ARL Scholarly Communications Institute

July 12-14, UCLA

National policy advocacy

NIH policy -- working to strengthen it

NIH Public Access Working Group

Other agencies

CURES bill, other legislation

Signs of hope

Many factors are leading toward fundamental change:

The Force (technology) is on the side of change

New strategies for change (especially open access) are working

Librarians are becoming more active on the issues

There's increased faculty engagement

Scientific publishing is reaching the level of national policy debate

It will still be a long struggle

What will you do?

Sit on the sidelines?

Question effectiveness of change strategies?

Work for change?

Get involved

Individual actions make a difference

Faculty activists can have a big effect

Examples:PLOS founders, Peter Suber, Mark McCabe,

Ted Bergstrom, Steven Harnad

Contact information:

Ray English

Director of Libraries, Oberlin College

ray.english@oberlin.edu

440-775-8287