Scholarly Communication

ACRL/MetroNY New York, NY December 3, 2004 Frances Maloy [email protected]

• Frances Maloy, Division Leader Access Services Emory University. Am here today in role as ACRL president • Am so pleased to be here to talk with you about ACRL and about the issue of scholarly communication

Overview of talk

• What is Scholarly Communication • What is the problem?

• Share ACRL initiatives • Scholarly Communication in larger context of higher education and changes enabled by technology

Scholarly Communication

• System through which research and other scholarly writings are created, evaluated, disseminated, and preserved. • Publications in peer-reviewed journals (formal) • Electronic listservs, etc. (informal) • Public Good to faciliate inquiry and knowledge

What’s the problem?

• Non-substitution of journals • Consolidation of publishing industry – open season on pricing; – 4000 titles published by 6 publishers – Reed Elsiever publishes 1,850 titles alone • Prices increase steeply – 215% for jrls between 1986 2001 (2x as fast as cost for health care) • Large profits cited – Reed Elsiever 37% on average (1995-2001) as opposed to 5 % on average same period for non-profit publishers • Quantity of scholarly journals increasing • Library budgets cut, flat, not keeping up with materials inflation • Limits to fair use (through licenses) • Libraries don’t like to cancel jrnls; want coverage of an area

Impact on Libraries

• Decreased buying power = decreased access to information • Negative impact on books • Long term preservation of, access to, information • Staff with legal, business skills and knowleged to negotiate contracts • New work load to manage information on contracts

What are the solutions?

• Authors retain copyright ownership • Less conglomerates more competition • Institutional Repositories/Open Archives Initiative (immediately or after specified time period) e.g. Pub Med Central • Open Access Journals (many flavors, forms- no subscription cost- funded by grants and institutions; authors pay up front, delay in making article freely available • Faculty – just say no – authoring, referring, editors • Negotiating with publishers for control and affordable prices – no more “big deal”

Is there an impact yet?

• Yes • I’d be nervous if I were Elsvier – not that I feel sorry for them however.

• Citicorp analysis of STM jrnl industry and the market position of Reed Elsevier SPARC Newsletter 11/2/04 – Open Access journals and archiving a trend – Libraries out of big deal – Library budgets maxed out – Universities recognizing rising jrnl costs and copyright are reducing access to research – OA business model on funding agency makes sense not author pays model • NIH proposal

Scholarly Communication Committee

• Monitor legislation and activities in arena • Letter writing • Education of members • Document ACRL principles and strategies • Document ACRL stance on Open Access • Broad based support for legislation and change in how publishers operate – we are the market

ACRL Principles

• Broadest possible access to published research • Fair and reasonable prices for scholarly information • Competitive markets for scholarly info • Open access to scholarship • Innovations in publishing to reduce costs, speed delivery, extend access • Quality assurance of publishing • Fair use • Preservation • Right to privacy in use of scholarly info

ACRL Initatives

• Endorse BOAI (budapest open access initiatve principles) • Scholarly Communication Committee • Advocacy – letter writing, Library Legislative Day • Member SPARC • Member IAA • Education of members- SPARC/ACRL sponsored workshops at ALA • Staff member to monitor legislation including that which impacts scholarly communication • Revise author agreement for CRL and CRLNews • White paper on Open Access and ACRL publications

ACRL White paper on Open access

• ACRL is a publisher- 4 jrnls CRL, CRLNews, RBM and Choice • Membership revenue: Member surveys- publications primary reason for joining – would people continue to join if publications free? • Subscription revenue: will individuals continue to pay for jrnls if open access?

• Publishing program makes money for its members to do programs members want

Put this in context of future

• In thinking about scholarly communication – don’t’ think in terms of how research is done now Think in terms of 10-20 years- what will research be like then? How will users be interacting with information then?

-May not be jrnls in future – IR’s and google type search engines that crawl for you on a given topic • Core purpose – support teaching learning and research. What is now possible in HOW we do this?

Experiment play be open to ideas – listen to vendors what they are seeing

Bibliography

• Rick Anderson, “Open Access in the Real World: Confronting economic and legal reality”, CRLNews, 4/2004.

• Mary Case, “Information Access Alliance: Challenging anticompetitive behavior in academic publishing”, CRLNews, June 2004. • Richard Edwards and David Shulenberger, “The High Cost of Scholarly Journals (and what to do about it)”, Change, Nov/Dec 2003.

• John Ewing,“Open access to journal won’t lower prices”, Chronicle, 10/1/05.

• David E. Shulenberger, “On scholarly evaluation and scholarly communication: increasing the volume of quality work”, CRLNews, September, 2001.

• SPARC Open Access Newsletter, “Citicorp report on Elsevier and open access”, 11/2/04 www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/newsletter/11 02-04.htm

Web sites

• • • www.arl.org/sparc www.informationaccess.org

www.ala.org/acrl