Transcript Things you might do…

Issues in Scholarly
Communication:
Do they affect you?
Andrea Imre, Julie Arendt,
Howard Carter, Joseph Ripp
Morris Library
Why are we doing this?

To raise awareness


Or to learn about awareness that’s already
there
To stimulate discussion of the issues and
explore alternate solutions
Why are we doing this?

Libraries
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
“Not because it might solve their budget woes
but simply because access is core to
librarianship.” – Andrew Richard Albanese1
National Organizations
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SPARC - Scholarly Publishing and Academic
Resources Coalition – “to correct market
dysfunctions in the scholarly publishing
system”
Association of Research Libraries and
Association of College and Research Libraries –
Create Change cosponsors
(www.createchange.org)
Circle of life – for scholarly findings
Scholars conduct research, write articles
 Scholars submit articles to publishers and sign
away their copyright
 Publishers sell journals to libraries
 Libraries provide access to
Scholar
scholarly findings
 Scholars use the information
to produce more research

Library
Publisher
Scholar’s interests
My work published in the best journals
 My work used and cited often
 Easy for others to find and cite my work
 Easy for me to find and cite
Scholar
others’ work
 Copyright protects the credit
for my ideas and work

Library
Publisher
Commercial Publisher’s interests
High demand for my journals, or at least
enough demand to produce profitably
 Easy for others to find and purchase my
products.
 Copyright protects revenue
Scholar
 Products are sold at the price
that maximizes profits

Library
Publisher
Landscape of publishing industry
Constant mergers in past decade
 Large commercial publishers increase their
profits

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
Elsevier’s 2002 science and medical revenue
was up 26%2
Publishing has become a multi-billion
dollar business.
Non-profit publishers
Struggling – they generally publish one
scholarly title
 Can’t compete with the big companies
(Elsevier over 2300 active academic and
scholarly titles, Springer & Kluwer over
2200)3
 Many commercial publishers publish
journals on behalf of non-profit publishers

Commercial publishing and price4
Publisher
Type
Journal
Publisher
Sports
medicine
Adis
Profit
International
Medicine and
science in
sports and
exercise
American
College of
Sports
Medicine
Journal of
applied
physiology
ISI impact
Price per
Price
Factor
article
2.781
$999
$15.37
Profit for
Society
2.552
$512
$1.80
Non-profit
American
Physiological
Society
2.824
$930
$1.57
Periodical price survey 2005

http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA5
24958.html5
Library’s interests
Provide easy access to articles
 Subscribe to journals that best meet user’s
needs while leaving enough money
for other services
 Buy journals at lowest price
Scholar
possible

Library
Publisher
Libraries struggle - Price pressure
6
What are the results?
Academic libraries reduce their
subscriptions – collecting an ever smaller
fraction of scholarly output
 Fewer scholarly monographs are published
because libraries are not buying as many.7
 Articles published “behind the price gate”
are less cited than freely accessible
articles.8

What could be
9
done?
Some ideas that
have been suggested
Know your rights

Read and understand the publishing
agreement

Negotiate to retain some rights in
copyright terms
Self-archiving

Distribute peer-reviewed works free


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
Disciplinary repository
Departmental web site
Personal web site
Institutional repositories
Currently 93% of journals allow selfarchiving

http://romeo.eprints.org/stats.php
Open access journals

Try out new models of publishing as a
writer, reviewer, editor, or reader


Creates competition to profit-driven
publications
Directory of Open Access Journals is a
collection of peer-reviewed journals
(www.doaj.org)
Strengthening not-for-profit publications

Does selling to a commercial publisher
make long-term sense for the society?
Consider where you publish
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What is the reputation of the journal

Who is publishing your journals?
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How much does it cost a library to
subscribe?
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Is there another journal with similar
content and reputation?
What can scholars do?
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Learn more
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Visit the Create Change web site
Talk with your librarian
Become an informed consumer
Start discussions in your department,
committees, and societies
 Take action
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Write to your publisher
Refuse to write for, review for predatory
publishers
Insist on favorable contract terms
References
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
Albanese, A. R. (2005). Life after the NIH. Library Journal, 130 (7), 5658
Sales and Earnings. Publishers Weekly, 250 (9), 28.
Data from Ulrich’s Periodicals Directory http://ulrichsweb.com
Journal price information from University of Wisconsin Journal Valuation
project http://www.wendt.wisc.edu/projects/jvp/welcome.do
Graph of public ARL library costs from ARL statistics
http://www.arl.org/stats/arlstat/graphs/2004/monser04_pub.pdf
Decrease in monographs at ACRL scholarly communication toolkit
http://www.ala.org/ala/acrl/acrlissues/scholarlycomm/scholarlycommuni
cationtoolkit/toolkit.htm
Research on citations of open access articles in Antelman, K. (2004). Do
open-access articles have a greater research impact? College and
Research Libraries, 65, 372-382 and in Lawrence, S. (2001). Free online
availability substantially increases a paper’s impact. Nature, 411, 521.
Van Orsdel, Lee C. (2005). Choosing sides. Library Journal, 130 (7), 4348
Ideas for what you can do based on ideas listed in UIUC Library
Gateway, Scholarly Communication site
http://www.library.uiuc.edu/scholcomm/whatyoucando.htm and from
ALA/ACRL/SPARC Crete Change site www.createchange.org
Resources
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Information about the problem
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Journal Price Information
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Directory of Open Access Journals http://www.doaj.org/
Summaries of publisher’s usual self-archiving policies
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Ulrich’s Periodicals Directory (http://www.ulrichsweb.com/ulrichsweb/)
Morris Library: liaison librarians (http://www.lib.siu.edu/cgibin/encore2/staff?liaison=1)
Open Access Journals
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ACRL Scholarly Communication Toolkit
http://www.ala.org/ala/acrl/acrlissues/scholarlycomm/scholarlycommu
nicationtoolkit/toolkit.htm
Open access news http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/fosblog.html
Of publishers at Sherpa (http://www.sherpa.ac.uk/romeo.php)
Of journals at Eprints.org (http://www.eprints.org/)
Places to self-archive
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Departmental web space
SIU Personal web pages http://mypage.siu.edu/
ArXiv.org (for physics, math, computer science) http://www.arxiv.org/
Institutional Repository?