Issues in Scholarly Communication

Mary M. CaseUniversity Librarian

University of Illinois at Chicago

Dominican University

November 30, 2006

REVIEWER REVIEWER

AUTHORAUTHOREDITOREDITOR

READERREADER

Scholarly Communication

SOCIETY

Author/Reader

Copyright

Publisher

Research Findings

The Market Economy

Includes Primary & Secondary STM publishing.

Aggregators represent an additional $1.6 billion (Total: $9.5 billion.)

Source: Outsell Inc., "Industry Trends, Size and Players in the Scientific, Technical & Medical (STM) Market” (Aug. 2000).

The Economic Realities

STM Market 2004

$2.5

$0.8

$0.8

$0.7

$0.6

$7.0

ElsevierThomsonWolters KluwerHoltzbrinckSpringerRest of STM

$12.4 billion industry

Source: Outsell “I-Market,” Sept. 2005.

Elsevier Science

-10.00%

0.00%

10.00%

20.00%

30.00%

40.00%

50.00%

60.00%

1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004

Operating Margin Revenue Growth

1997 MDL

1998 Beilstein

1998 Engineering Information

1998 BioMedNet & ChemWeb

1999 Cell Press

2000 Endeavor

2001 Academic Press

2001 Churchill Livingston

2001 W. B. Saunders

2001 Mosby

2001 MD Consult

2002 STM Holtzbrinck

Elsevier Science & Medical

1988 Michie (Mead purchase)

1989 Martindale Hubbell (Reed)

1996/1998 Shepards

1997 40 legal pubs from Thomson

1998 Matthew Bender

2002 Quicklaw, MBO Verland, FactLANE

2003 Applied Discovery

2003 Dolan Media Company

1994 LexisNexis (Mead Data) [$1.5b]

Legal

Reed Elsevier PLC Jan.1, 1993

Commercial Effects on Pricing

• High prices for commercial publications

• Significant price disparity between not-for-profit and commercial publishers

• High annual inflation rates

• Significantly higher prices the result of mergers, even those of a relatively modest size (Mark McCabe, Georgia Tech)

Average Journal Prices

$0.00

$100.00

$200.00

$300.00

$400.00

$500.00

$600.00

$700.00

ScienceSocial SciencesHumanities

Sticker Shock: $12,495

http://www.englib.cornell.edu/displays/stickershock/default.html

OR

Price per Page

$0.00

$0.20

$0.40

$0.60

$0.80

$1.00

$1.20

For-profit Not for-profitSource: Carl Bergstrom, [octavia.zoology.washington.edu/publishing/pageprice_table.html]

Price per Citation

$0.00

$0.50

$1.00

$1.50

$2.00

$2.50

For-profit Not for-profitSource: Carl Bergstrom, [octavia.zoology.washington.edu/ publishing/pageprice_table.html]

Variable N 1988 1998 MEANS

MEANSNONPROFIT

Price 118 146.31 335.43Cites 118 6348.2512540.22Papers 118 207.85 250.50

COMMERCIAL

Price 818 258.71 837.82Cites 818 1800.37 3167.54Papers 818 115.77 157.60SOURCE: Mark McCabe, ARL 207

ISI-Ranked Biomedical Titles

Biomedical Titles Rate of Growth 1988-1998

0.00%

50.00%

100.00%

150.00%

200.00%

250.00%

Price Citations Papers

Nonprofit CommercialSource: Mark McCabe, ARL 207

Median Journal Prices All Subjects

0

100

200

300

400

500

600

700

800

900

2000 2001 2002 2003 2004

Pou

nd

s

Elsevier

Nature

Kluwer

Lippincott

Springer

Blackwell

Sage

T&F

OUP

Chicago

Cambridge

JHUP

Source: White & Creaser, Oct. 2004

Electronic Publishing Exacerbates Problems

• E-products are often priced as add-on to print– Without re-engineering legacy systems, electronic publishing

adds costs– Unless library cancels print, does not reduce spend with the

publisher• Libraries do not own digital content

– Must license rights for perpetual access– Limits libraries’ ability to archive & preserve

• Licenses can be restrictive– Dictate who can use resources for what purposes– Often more restrictive than copyright law

• Publishers are bundling content– May include titles libraries would not have subscribed to– Limits ability to cancel

• Researchers cannot easily manipulate text & data across proprietary systems

The Big Squeeze

Casualty of Journals Prices

• Significant decline in the purchase of books

• Books accounted for 40% of materials purchased in 1986

• In 2004, account for only 22%

• Results in decreased print runs for scholarly monographs (from about 1500 to 200-300)

• Press rejection of manuscripts based on potential sales, not quality

• Creating issues for young faculty trying to publish their first book

How Could This Happen?

• Significantly increased federal funding for research, esp. after WWII & Sputnik

• Growth of the research university• Increase in faculty and students• Increased competition for tenure, promotion,

and grants• Increased productivity publications• Twigging of the disciplines new journals• Inability of professional and scholarly societies

to expand rapidly enough

Attractive Business Model

• Highly motivated authors• Free content• Professionally committed reviewers• Modestly supported editors• Captive market - libraries• Exclusive ownership of copyright• Federal funding driving the engine

Copyright Transfer Agreements

• Often require exclusive transfer of all rights in every format and every language for all time in every nation

• May require seeking permission and paying a fee to use your own work in your classroom or in another publication

• Copyright is divisible; transfer of all rights not required for a publisher to do its work

• Copyright agreements can be modified

Summary of the Problem

• Culture & expectations of the academy drive the generation of content & provide the captive market for publishing

• Commercial, and to a lesser extent, not-for-profit publishers have learned to exploit this culture

• Academy has it within its control to change the system

Strategies for Change

• SPARC• Public Library of Science - PLoS• Open/Public Access• Library Publishing Systems• Institutional/Digital Repositories• Mass Digitization

Scholarly Publishing & Academic Resources Coalition <http://www.arl.org/sparc/>

• Membership organization that leverages libraries’ strengths & resources

• Encourages the development of low-cost, high-quality alternatives to high-priced commercial journals in STM

• Supports new partnerships to expand not-for-profit publishing capacity

• Promotes open access:– Open access journals– Distributed digital repositories

SPARC

Public Library of Science

• Founded in Oct. 2000 by a coalition of research scientists dedicated to making the scientific literature a public resource

• Circulated an Open Letter ultimately signed by nearly 34,000 scientists from 180 countries

• When publishers still did not respond, decided to start their own publishing operation

QuickTime™ and aTIFF (LZW) decompressor

are needed to see this picture.

Launched: PLoS Biology in Oct. 2003PLoS Medicine in Oct. 2004Computational Biology in 2005PLoS Genetics in 2005PLoS Pathogens in 2005PLoS Clinical Trials due in ‘06

PLoS Open Access Model

• Authors retain copyright• Articles deposited in PubMed

Central (PMC) at point of publication

• Electronic access free; small fee for print subscription

• Publication fees charged to authors - paid from institution, grants

• www.plos.org

Open Access Journals

• DOAJ = 1800+ titles (www.doaj.org)• Quality assessments

– PLOS Biology - impact factor of 13.9, #1 in general biology journals

– BMC titles increasing in rankings, with 5 in the top 5 of their specialties

• Journal of Postgraduate Medicine - 60% of the citations to the journal from 1990-2004 have been to issues since 2001 when the journal went open access (Chronicle, Sept. 19, 2005)

Advantages of Open Access

•Expanded access to research•Expanded impact of research•Reduced systemic cost•Accelerated innovationLawrence, Steve (2001). “Free online availability substantially increases a paper's impact.” Nature, Vol. 411, No. 6837, p. 521 <www.nature.com/nature/debates/e-access/Articles/lawrence.html>

Public Access

• NIH Public Access Policy– Grant recipients & NIH researchers– Deposit in PMC within 12 months of publication– Voluntary– Final accepted manuscript– Effective May 2005

• Wellcome Trust (UK)– Grant recipients– Deposit in PMC or UK PMC within 6 months of

publication– Requirement– Effective Oct. 1, 2005

NIH Policy

• NIH report to congress, February 2006– Less than 4% of NIH-funded manuscripts have

been deposited into PMC

• NLM Board of Regents recommendation to NIH Director Zerhouni, February 2006– Policy cannot achieve goals unless deposit is

mandatory– Recommends only 6 month embargo– Final published version most desirable

Potential Legislative Mandates

• American Center for CURES Act of 2005– Introduced in Dec. 2005 by Lieberman (D-CT)

and Cochran (R-MS)– Would require deposit of funded research

results in PMC within 6 months of publication– Applies to all HHS agencies– Non-compliance may be grounds for refusing

future funding

• Federal Research Public Access Act of 2006 (S2695)(FRPAA)– Would require all agencies who grant over

$100m per year to develop public access policies

Library Publishing Systems

Creating cost-effective infrastructure to help make scholarly literature more openly available to scholars worldwide at little or no cost

Digital Repositories

• Infrastructure & services for capturing, disseminating, and preserving the digital resources created by an institution and its members

• May contain pre-prints, articles, technical reports, e-dissertations, courseware, audio/video, software, datasets, etc.

• Can be both disciplinary and institutional

• E-publishing software integrated with IR’s

Mass Digitization

• Google Print– Google Publisher– Google Library

• Internet Archive, Yahoo, Microsoft - Open Content Alliance

• Will create a demand for and an expectation of free, quality content on the Web

Creating Change

• As a librarian . . .– Learn about the issues– Join SPARC, PLoS, BMC– Provide a pool of funds for author fees– Develop an educational program for

campus– Talk about these issues with faculty– Provide copyright support for faculty– Develop an institutional repository or

e-publishing system– Negotiate aggressively with publishers

Creating Change

• As an individual faculty member. . .– Learn as much as you can about the issues

confronting scholarly communication

– Find out about projects and proposals intended to transform the system

– Encourage discussion of scholarly communication issues in your department and school

– Include electronic publications in promotion & tenure discussions

Creating Change

• As an individual faculty member. . .– Support junior faculty who choose to publish

in non-traditional venues– Participate in discussions of campus

intellectual property policies– Encourage development of an institutional

repository ... and deposit your work there– Stay open to new ideas

– Take responsibility - Help shape the future

Creating Change

• As an author, reviewer, or editor. . .– Submit papers to quality journals with open access

or reasonable pricing practices– Post your own work to an institutional or

disciplinary open access repository– Review, understand, and modify, if necessary, any

publishing or editing contracts– Be aware of the pricing, copyright, and licensing

policies of publishers– Consider declining to review for or serve as an

editor of unreasonably expensive journals

Knowing Your Rights

• You own the copyright to your work• Copyright rights are divisible• You should retain the rights to use your own work in

the classroom and in coursepacks, and to post it on your website and on publicly accessible online archives

• Creative Commons - copyright for creative work <www.creativecommons.org>

• SPARC - Copyright Resources for Authors http://www.arl.org/sparc/resources/copy.html

Creating Change

• As a member of a scholarly society . . .– Encourage the society to explore alternatives

to contracting out or selling publishing rights

– Explore ancillary revenue sources to reduce dependence on subscription revenue

– Encourage the society to consider making their journals open access

– Encourage the society to create competitors to expensive titles

Creating Change

• As a library user . . .– Support cancellation of expensive low-use

titles– Invite librarian participation in faculty

departmental meetings & graduate seminars– Find out about journal cost-effectiveness

studies – Support the library’s participation in projects

such as SPARC, PLoS, BioMed Central

Resources

• Create Change – www.createchange.org

• ACRL Scholarly Communication Toolkit– www.ala.org/ala/acrl/acrlissues/

scholarlycomm/ scholarlycommunicationtoolkit/toolkit.hrtm

• ARL Scholarly Communication– www.arl.org/osc

• SPARC– www.arl.org/sparc/

• Information Access Alliance– www.informationaccess.org/

The Dream

“… The ability to speed the results of better research into useful and productive

applications, whether in a hospital, a courtroom, or anywhere, will have enormous

consequences for the lives of people.”

AAAS IP Report, 2002

Today’s researchers are fighting for it….

Tomorrow’s will demand it