institutional repositories and open access – a threat to society publishers or an opportunity?
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Institutional Repositories and Open Access – a threat to society publishers or an opportunity?. Nick Evans Chief Operating Officer, ALPSP nick.evans@alpsp,org. What I shall talk about. Are Institutional Repositories a fact of life? What is the likely effect on journals? Does it matter? - PowerPoint PPT PresentationTRANSCRIPT
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Institutional Repositories and Open Access – a threat to society publishers or an opportunity?
Nick EvansChief Operating Officer, ALPSPnick.evans@alpsp,org
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What I shall talk about
• Are Institutional Repositories a fact of life?• What is the likely effect on journals?• Does it matter?• What should societies do about it?
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Are IR’s a fact of life?
• Not much evidence that academics actually want them
• But if self-archiving becomes mandatory, most say they will comply
• Growing number of research funders and institutions leaning towards voluntary or mandatory self-archiving policies
• Increasing inter-operability will heighten appeal
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What is the likely effect on journals?
• Two surveys showing very clearly that when a sufficient percentage of the final version of author articles is freely (and easily) available, cancellations will follow
• Mark Ware: Factors in Journal Cancellation (ALPSP, 2006)
• Chris Beckett & Simon Inger: Self-archiving and Journal Subscriptions – co-existence or competition? (PRC, 2006)http://www.publishingresearch.net/
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Ware• 340 responses• 81% said availability in an
OA repository would be a ‘very important’ or ‘important’ factor in cancellation decisions (but behind pricing (95%), usage (95%), user needs (93%))
• Preprint/postprint versions not seen as adequate substitute (but PDF is)
• 32% think publishers should not be worried
• 11% think they should• 54% think it’s too early to
tell
Beckett & Inger• 424 responses• ‘a significant number
of librarians are likely to substitute OA materials for subscribed resources, given certain levels of reliability, peer review and currency’
• Author’s unrefereed, uncorrected original MS is least adequate substitute
• Post-peer review version (irrespective of publishers’ editing) is adequate
• 38% think publishers should not be worried
• 38% think they should
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What is the likely effect on journals?
• Publishers’ experience to date: subscriptions– British Medical Journal: when all content was free on BMJ site, print
subs (and ads) fell dramatically. Now that only research articles are free, revenue has almost recovered
– Molecular Biology of the Cell: in the 3 years following introduction of 2 month embargo, average annual subscription growth fell from 84% to 8%
– Proceedings of the National Academy of Science: 1 month embargo in 2000 11% fall in subscriptionsin 2001; 6 months embargo reduced this to 9% in 2002
What rational librarian, faced with the need to cancel some journals, would not choose those whose content is freely available elsewhere?
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Does it matter?
• If many subscription journals disappear, will this matter?
• We all need to be aware of the likely of the likely consequences of our actions
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Revenues from subscriptions support other activities
Nonprofit and commercial journals (Crow)
38%
17%
45%
Self-publishednonprofit journals
Commerciallypublished nonprofitjournals
Commerciallypublishedcommercial journals
Ulrich’s Periodicals Directory, 2005 (analysis by Raym Crow)
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• Non profit publishers put any surplus back into their other activities
• In particular, Learned Society publishers use surplus to support:– Conferences (33% of respondents applied median 7% of
their publishing surpluses to this)– Membership fees (32% of respondents, 15% of surpluses)– Public education (26% of respondents, 7.5% of surpluses)– Bursaries (26% of respondents, 7.5% of surpluses)– Research (21% of respondents, 25% of surpluses)
– Christine Baldwin, What do Learned Societies do with their Publishing Surpluses? (ALPSP/Blackwell, 2004)
Knock-on effects for the scholarly community if publishing surpluses are reduced or eliminated
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Which journals are most vulnerable?
• Single- (or few-) journal publishers– ‘Over 97% of society publishers publish three or fewer
journals, with almost 90% publishing just one title’. – Raym Crow, Publishing Cooperatives: an
alternative for society publishers (SPARC, 2006)
– Society publishers limited to specific discipline
• Niche journals– Low circulation higher price
• Low-profit journals– Less room for manoeuvre
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What should publishers do about it?
• Awareness– Publishers need to make sure that the communities
with which they engage understand the likely consequences of widespread mandatory self-archiving
– Funders and others need to understand that ‘one size does not fit all’
• subjects differ• journals differ
– The information must be based on factual evidence – research should continue into theactual effects as self-archiving mandates begin to bite
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Publishers must
• Make content as available as possible (without going bust!)– Decide if they can switch to Open Access publishing or
not (one-fifth are experimenting)• Hybrid/author-choice model a possible first step
(as advocated by David Prosser)– If not, decide whether they need an embargo period
to protect subscriptions, and if so how long• Will authors abide by this?
– At the same time, be creative about adding value to scholarly communicationin new ways
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Adding value . . .
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What should we do about it?
• Understand what journals are for– Journals serve authors and readers
(directly) and funders and institutions (indirectly)
– Both publishers and those whom journals serve need to analyse the functions currently carried out by journals, and
– establish which of these must be preserved
– and work out ways of doing so
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Librarian
Author
Publisher
Peer review tusksRAE Canopy
OA Advocate
Institutional Repository Handmaidens
Research seeking tool
Grant locators
Web 2.0 tools
Bank Manager
The elephant in the room?