Transcript Document

Will the Parasite
Kill the Host?
Sally Morris
Morris Associates
What I’m going to talk about
An alternative (ex-publisher’s) view:
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Are Institutional Repositories a fact of life?
What is the likely effect on journals?
Does it matter?
What should we do about it?
Where I’m coming from
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Publisher for >25 years
Publisher of ~50 medical/nursing journals for
>10 years
Representative of scholarly and professional
publishers for >8 years
Now editor of a journal about publishing
Are IRs becoming
a fact of life?
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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
What is the likely effect
on journals?
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IRs are parasitic on journals – but will they kill
the host?
What is the likely effect
on journals? (1)
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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)
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
What is the likely effect
on journals? (2)
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Publishers’ experience to date: usage
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London Mathematical Society: articles self-archived
in ArXiv received 23% fewer downloads on the
publisher’s site
Institute of Physics: journals whose content is largely
mirrored in ArXiv see marked drop in usage on
publisher’s site.
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Note also that High Energy Physics community making
active move to OA publication
Ware found that usage was a ‘very important’ or
‘important’ factor in cancellation decisions for 95% of
librarian respondents
What is the likely effect
on journals? (3)
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Publishers’ experience to date: subscriptions
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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 subscriptions in 2001; 6
months embargo reduced this to 9% in 2002
It makes sense to me!
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What rational librarian, faced with the need to cancel some
journals, would not choose those whose content is freely
available elsewhere?
Humpty Dumpty
Through the Looking Glass, Lewis
Carroll (ill. John Tenniel), 1871
Does it matter? (1)
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If many subscription journals disappear, will
this matter?
We all need to be aware of the likely
consequences of our actions
Peer Review
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Journals are currently the framework for
conducting peer review on research findings
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Academics value this very highly, e.g.
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Authors and Electronic Publishing (ALPSP, 2002) –
96% of respondents ‘strongly agree’ or ‘agree’ that
they prefer to submit articles to journals that maintain
formal peer review
Other frameworks have been proposed
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Open Peer Review (e.g. Nature experiment)
Peer Review applied directly to repository contents
(e.g. J Smith, ‘Deconstructed Journal’)
Editing (1)
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Journals are also the vehicle for carrying
out copy-editing to improve clarity and
readability
… and to check accuracy of references, in
order that citation linking (highly valued) can
actually work
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42.7% of editor queries were to do with inaccurate
or incomplete references
13.6% were requests for missing data
5.5% led to alterations that materially altered the
sense
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Wates & Campbell, ‘Author’s version vs publisher’s version’
(Learned Publishing, April 2007)
Editing (2)
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Good editing is, by its nature, invisible,
but when asked, authors value it (more
highly than readers)
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60% of respondents thought that content
editing and improvement of articles should be
maintained in any new model
50% thought that language or copy-editing
should be maintained
46% thought checking citations/adding citation
links should be maintained
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Authors and Electronic Publishing (ALPSP, 2002)
… but not all journals any longer do much, if
any, copy-editing
The journal ‘package’
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Journals also provide a convenient ‘package’
for selecting and collecting together content
of especial relevance and interest to a
particular (sub-) community
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Information overload makes this increasingly
important
But maybe journals as we know them are not the
only way?
Supporting other activities (1)
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Not all publishers are commercial
Nonprofit and commercial journals (Crow)
Self-published
nonprofit journals
38%
45%
17%
Commercially
published nonprofit
journals
Commercially
published
commercial journals
Ulrich’s Periodicals Directory, 2005 (analysis by Raym Crow)
Supporting other activities (2)
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Nonprofit publishers put any surplus back into
their other activities
In particular, Learned Society publishers use surplus
to support:
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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)
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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
Which journals are
most vulnerable?
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Single- (or few-) journal publishers
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‘Over 97% of society publishers publish three or
fewer journals, with almost 90% publishing just
one title’.
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Society publishers limited to specific discipline
Niche journals
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Raym Crow, Publishing Cooperatives: an alternative for
society publishers (SPARC, 2006)
Low circulation  higher price
Low-profit journals
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Less room for manoeuvre
What should publishers
NOT do about it?
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Publishers raising arguments (valid or
otherwise) against IRs are unlikely to do any
good
In fact, ‘shroud-waving’ could do more harm
than good to the industry
Remember the English Civil War…
‘… the utterly memorable struggle between
the Cavaliers (Wrong but Wromantic) and
the Roundheads (Right and Repulsive)’
1066 and All That
W C Sellar & R J Yeatman (ill. J Reynolds),1930
What should we
do about it? (1)
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Awareness
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Publishers need to make sure that the
communities with which we engage understand
the likely consequences of widespread mandatory
self-archiving
Funders and others need to understand that ‘one
size does not fit all’
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subjects differ
journals differ
The information must be based on factual
evidence – research should continue into
the actual effects as self-archiving mandates
begin to bite
One size
does not
fit all
What should we
do about it? (2)
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Make your content as available as possible
(without going bust!)
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Decide if you can switch to Open Access
publishing or not
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If not, decide whether you need an embargo
period to protect subscriptions, and if so how long
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Hybrid/author-choice model a possible first step
(as advocated by David Prosser)
Will authors abide by this?
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At the same time, be creative about adding value
to scholarly communication in new ways
Riding the wave
What should we
do about it? (3)
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Understanding what journals are for
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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
… establish which of these must be preserved
… and work out ways of doing so
There may or not be a role for
publishers as we know them!
Conclusions
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Institutional Repositories are not going to go away
They have the potential to do great damage to many
journals
We need to make funders and others aware of the
facts
… but we must avoid ‘shroud-waving’
Publishers need to work with the communities they
serve, to work out how best to add the value that is
really wanted
We cannot assume there is a role in future for
journals, or publishers, as we know them!
Thank you!
[email protected]