Scholarly Communication: Threats, Problems and Opportunities Presentation to the Council on Libraries Dartmouth College 4/12/04 Barbara De. Felice, Head, Kresge Physical Sciences Library Jim Fries, Head, Feldberg Business and Engineering Library Co-chairs of the Digital Library Content Working Group 4. 12. 04 Dartmouth College Library COL 1
Scholarly Communication: Threats, Problems and Opportunities Part 1: What are threats and problems facing the current scholarly communication system, and how did we get here? A. Introduction and overview of threats and problems B. Social system and history of scholarly communication C. Economics of scholarly publishing D. Policy and legal issues E. Emerging Information Technologies and Systems 4. 12. 04 Dartmouth College Library COL 2
Introduction and overview The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation study addressed 2 issues: • “The explosion in the quantity of desirable published material and a rapid escalation of unit prices…jeopardizes the traditional research library mission of creating and maintaining large self-sufficient collections for their users. Issues of pricing, acquisition, and collection are the focus of the study, which brings together kinds of information not often, sometimes not ever, gathered in one place before. • The rapid emergence and development of electronic information technologies make it possible to envision radically different ways of organizing collections and services the library has traditionally provided. Insofar as the finances of collection development approach a crisis, the new technologies offer possible mitigation and perhaps a revolution in ways of knowing. ” University Libraries and Scholarly Communication 1992 4. 12. 04 Dartmouth College Library COL 3
Introduction and overview, cont. • “Electronic access and consortia for sharing materials can reduce library costs while increasing access for scholars and students. This shared approach alone, however, will not yield affordability if the copyrights for academic publications continue to be controlled by the commercial sector. For example, any savings from a change to electronic access can be defeated by the costs of licensing agreements to use those online materials. • In fact, the situation is even worse than that…faculty members, in part, push forward the frontiers of knowledge. This new knowledge is disseminated through publication. When faculty members publish articles, they give away the copyright to the journal. So, universities are paying for these materials more than once. ” Indiana University Committee on Scholarly Communication convened by Myles Brand, President of Indiana University 1998 4. 12. 04 Dartmouth College Library COL 4
Introduction and overview, cont. “The need to attain greater control of the intellectual property produced by their own faculty is now well-understood by the leadership of most research universities. Equally clear is the enormity of the task, as it is much harder to reclaim something given away. . . commercial publishing…has become increasingly concentrated as well as more profitable [and] brings considerable advantages to the contest: substantial financial resources, a willingness to press its case in court, and extensive control of the most prestigious academic publishing outlets. The most obvious strategy available to universities, a boycott in the purchase of excessively priced journals published by commercial entities, simply won't work; universities and their faculty would have substantially more to lose than the publishers in any prolonged stand-off. ” Policy Perspectives: To Publish and Perish, March 1998 4. 12. 04 Dartmouth College Library COL 5
Introduction and overview, cont. “The most obvious symptom of instability (in the system of scholarly communication) is that the cost of scholarly journals has risen so rapidly that every research library has canceled hundreds of subscriptions and can no longer collect what their…users regard as necessary information resources. But there are deeper causes… disciplines have continued to specialize and subdivide, creating new journals at a rate faster than any library can collect them--while the commercialization of scholarly publishing has continued to exert upward pressure on the prices of individual serials…local institutions cannot respond effectively because “the library crisis” is a symptom of the breakdown of the whole traditional system of scholarly publishing. ” The Future of Scholarly Communication”, in: Mirage of Continuity: Reconfiguring Academic Information Resources for the 21 st Century. Washington, DC: CLIR and AAU, 1998 4. 12. 04 Dartmouth College Library COL 6
Social system of scholarly communication • What is this system intended to accomplish? – Wide dissemination in a timely manner – Participation in the scholarly conversation – Assurance of scholarly integrity and quality Recognition and/or reward; priority for ideas, discoveries • Participants, their roles, responsibilities and relationships • Historical developments in social, business, legal and technological aspects that inform the current system 4. 12. 04 Dartmouth College Library COL 7
Participants and Their Roles in Scholarly Communication • Scholars-Create, evaluate, and share knowledge and information; prime consumers of information • Publishers/Vendors-Prepare information for distribution, market and sell the final products • Libraries-Select, organize, disseminate, and maintain information • Universities-Encourage and support the creation and dissemination of knowledge and information for the public good • Governments-Support and regulate the creation and dissemination of information for the public good 4. 12. 04 Dartmouth College Library COL 8
Scholarly Publishing: A Brief History 1440 - - Print on paper technology made wide distribution of books possible so that by the 1660’s scholars complained there were too many books being published! 1665 - Founding of the first two scholarly journals: Journal des Scavans in France (literature, theology, science news, book reviews), the model of the general purpose journal Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London (natural history or scientific papers), the model of the science society publication geared to serving its members Why? To manage the growing numbers of letters which scholars used to communicate with each other, to communicate with a larger and more diverse group of people, and to determine priority for an idea 1780 -1798 - 45 of the 69 new publications since 1665 started Late 1800’s - 5000 journal titles in all fields Post World War II - Explosion of numbers of journal titles; for example, Pergamon started 250 new journal titles in 25 years Individual and institutional subscriptions and society membership are payment models for journals 1950 -1970 - Microform technology to manage published information 4. 12. 04 Dartmouth College Library COL 9
Scholarly Publishing, cont. 1960 -1980 - Increasing domination of European commercial publishers producing highly regarded and expensive journals, especially in science and social sciences 1970 -1980 - Networked access to scholarly databases; pay per search 1980’s - Price per page for science journals becomes the issue in the growing tensions between scientists and commercial journal publishers 1980’s - Technological solutions are video disks, laser disks, CD-ROM 1990’s - Ownership of copyright becomes a major theme in the continuing tensions between scholars and journal publishers 1990’s - Technological solutions- the Internet and WWW network protocols 1990’s - Shift from ownership to access; negotiated licenses become a means of purchasing access to information 2003 - MLA proposes to cease relying on the book as the standard for promotion in humanities and social sciences 2000 -present - Licenses become the dominate pricing and ownership model for academic libraries; long-term, archival access becomes a major concern for scholars and librarians 2004 - University presses close due to economic pressures 4. 12. 04 Dartmouth College Library COL 10
Economic Issues ARL charts the rising cost and declining purchasing power for ~120 member research libraries …and shows two forces reshaping the distribution of scientific and scholarly information: the serial pricing crisis (the dramatic rise in the cost of serial publications) and, indirectly, the commercialization of scholarly publishing. Material Costs in ARL libraries 1986 -2000 4. 12. 04 Dartmouth College Library COL 11
Economic Issues, cont. Published book output vs. Dartmouth book acquisitions 4. 12. 04 Dartmouth College Library COL 12
Economic Issues, cont. An economist looks at journals pricing (and journals refereeing) Ted Bergstrom’s Journal Pricing Page (Economics Department UCSB) “ Free Labor for Costly Journals? ”, Journal of Economic Perspectives, Fall 2001. I argue that commercial publishers are charging excessive prices for academic journals and suggest ways that economists can deal with this problem. Professor Robert Kohn of Southern Illinois University [responding] urges that libraries should cancel subscriptions to overpriced journals and use interlibrary loan. He suggests that commercial journals deserve some credit for founding new journals when the professional societies failed to do so. My response: I show that the pattern of pricing that we saw with paper journals has reemerged with electronic site licenses. Commercial publishers continue to charge prices far above average cost and far above the prices charged by the non-profits. Electronic site licenses for universities are priced at about 6 times as much per page for the 10 most-cited commercial journals (all of which are now owned by Elsevier) as for the 10 most-cited non-profit journals. 4. 12. 04 Dartmouth College Library COL 13
Economic Issues, cont. San Francisco Chronicle article “The Staggering Price of the World’s Best Research” • “Critics are complaining…that the most important advances in human knowledge -- the new research and discoveries of top universities -- have been in effect seized and are being held for ransom by commercial publishers. ” • “The companion journals Nuclear Physics A & B cost the same as a 2004 Toyota Camry sedan -- $23, 820, according to a "sticker shock" calculator from UC Berkeley. The calculator is "our way of raising hell, " university librarian Thomas Leonard said. “ • Theoretical Computer Science goes for $5, 619 a year, enough to buy an 18 - diamond gold ring from Tiffany's, according to a similar calculator from Cornell University. 4. 12. 04 Dartmouth College Library COL 14
Information Policy • IEEE SCORES FIRST AMENDMENT VICTORY FOR SCHOLARLY PUBLISHING – Piscataway, N. J. , 5 April 2004 – IEEE scored a victory for freedom of the press and the scholarly publishing community with the ruling it received Friday from the U. S. Department of Treasury Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC). The ruling exempts peer review, editing and publication of scholarly manuscripts submitted to IEEE by authors living in countries that are under U. S. trade embargoes, such as Iran and Cuba. OFAC determined that IEEE’s publications process is "not constrained by OFAC's regulatory programs. ” • ARL SPARC Create Change program – “One of the key areas in which scholars have ceded control of their communication system to publishers is intellectual property. Publishers often require authors to transfer exclusively all of their copyrights as part of the contract. Authors may then have to ask permission, and perhaps even pay a royalty, to send reprints to their colleagues, distribute copies to their classes or include their own work in a course pack, post their work on their own Web site, or even update an earlier edition of their work. ” 4. 12. 04 Dartmouth College Library COL 15
Emerging Information Technologies and Systems for Scholarly Communication Is technology the answer? The 1992 Mellon study continued a tradition of optimism about the role technology can play in solving the problems- “Insofar as the finances of collection development approach a crisis, the new technologies offer possible mitigation and perhaps a revolution in ways of knowing. ” Technology enables scholarly communication to achieve the goals of dissemination, quality assurance and recognition: • Connectivity for distributed scholarly communities • Deep access to distributed information sources • Online review, editing, distribution for timely sharing of information • Digitization of print for broader access New social system problems include: • Control over dissemination of scholarship due to security issues • Influence of the entertainment industry in intellectual property legislation • Commercial publisher domination in the digital journal world; fewer competitors • Responsibility and funding for long term access to digital information • Changing roles for all participants From this dynamic and complex environment, innovative projects and experiments are emerging that may help reform the scholarly communication system, and we will talk about those next time. 4. 12. 04 Dartmouth College Library COL 16
Scholarly Communication: Threats, Problems and Opportunities Acknowledgements: The members of the Digital Library Content Working Group helped us frame these topics, contributed to discussions of the issues, and developed some of the slides used in this presentation. John Cocklin Laura K. Graveline Lucinda M. Hall John R. James Margaret K. Sleeth Reinhart Sonnenburg 4. 12. 04 Dartmouth College Library COL 17
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