Seminar on Scholarly Communication and the UC Community

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Seminar on Scholarly Communication and the UC
Community

• University of California
• Office of Systemwide Library Planning
• Fall 2003

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Crisis in Scholarly Communications Journals
Source Bear Stearns European Equity Research
report on Reed Elsevier. September 29, 2003
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Crisis in Scholarly Communications Journals
Source Graphic accompanied Weiss, Rick. A Fight
for Free Access To Medical Research Online Plan
Challenges Publishers' Dominance. Washington
Post. Tuesday, August 5, 2003 Page A01
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Crisis in Scholarly Communications Journals
Source Van Orsdel Born, Library Journal, April
15, 2003
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Stress and Unsustainability commercial
publishers contributions

•  
•  
• PRICE per PAGE PRICE per CITATION
• Field For-profit non-profit For-profit
  Non-profit
• Ecology 1.19 0.19 0.73 0.05
• Economics 0.81 0.16 2.33 0.15
• Atmos. Sci. 0.95 0.15 0.88
  0.07
• Mathematics 0.70 0.27 1.32
  0.28
• Neuroscience 0.89 0.10 0.23
  0.04
• Physics 0.63 0.19 0.38 0.05
• Note 66 of the STM journal market is occupied
  by commercial companies

STM Journal Prices Commercial vs. Non-commercial
Source Carl T. Bergstrom and Ted C. Bergstrom.
The economics of scholarly journal publishing.
September 2002 at http//octavia.zoology.washingt
on.edu/publishing/intro.html
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Crisis in Scholarly Communications Reed Elsevier
Case Study
Elsevier journals cost vs. use at UC 2002-03
Source UC Systemwide Library Planning, September
2003
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Crisis in Scholarly Communications Reed Elsevier
Case Study
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Crisis in Scholarly Communications Monographs
Source Bear Stearns European Equity Research
report on Reed Elsevier. September 29, 2003
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Crisis in Scholarly Communications Monographs
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Crisis in Scholarly Communications Societies

• Sample of Society Titles Now Published by
  Blackwell
• Disciplines Avg. price increase N (titles)
• 03-04
• Humanities Soc. Sci. 15.7 30
• STM 19.4 30
• All 17.6 60

Source UC Systemwide Library Planning, September
2003
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Crisis in Scholarly Communications Society Case
Study - AAASs Science
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Alternative Forms of Scholarly Communication
1. Personal and Departmental web pages
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Alternative Forms of Scholarly Communication

• 2. Discipline based repositories
• (e.g. arXiv - a Physics/Comp.Sci./Math working
  paper repository)

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Alternative Forms of Scholarly Communication

• 3. Institutional repositories

UCs eScholarship Repository (as at October
2003) of departments, ORUs, MRUs
participating 119 of papers deposited to date
2291 of papers downloaded last week 8139 of
downloads since 04/02 launch 230,000 of
downloads from outside UC 97 of countries from
which people link 76 of sites that link to the
repository 1608
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Alternative Forms of Scholarly Communication
4. Competitively priced journals
Machine Learning Journal Publisher
Kluwer Price 1050/year Number of defecting
editorial board members in 2001 40 Journal of
Machine Learning Research Est. 2001, with help
from SPARC Publisher MIT Press Price
195/year   One of 16 alternative journals
supported in part by SPARC motivated by
service to the research community rather than by
profit. Source SPARC web site and Ted
Bergstroms Journal Pricing Page
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Alternative Forms and Economic Sustainability
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Alternative Forms of Scholarly Communication

• 4. Open-access journals

• 100 journals
• author publication charges
• institutional memberships can replace author
  charges

• author publication charges
• 11 UC faculty on editorial board
• 16 UC faculty represented in opening issues

• 551 journals listed
• 19 journals added this month
• funded by the Open Society Institute Budapest
  SPARC

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Potential for UC faculty action

• As authors
• Retain some rights in your publications
• Place articles with high-quality alternatives to
  high-cost publications
• As editors, reviewers, and authors
• Favor reasonably priced journals
• As editors
• Consider moving journals from publishers with
  unreasonable pricing practices
• As library users
• Support and encourage the librarys aggressive
  negotiating stance with uncompetitively priced
  publishers even where that stance potentially
  results in title cuts

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Potential for UC faculty action

• As participants in faculty promotions and rewards
  processes
• Implement promotion criteria that emphasize
  quality without discouraging publication in
  fairly priced and open-access publications
• As society members
• Encourage societies adoption or maintenance of
  reasonable pricing mechanism
• Encourage societies to lead in the search for
  sustainable publishing models

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Potential for collective institutional action at
UC

• Leverage existing agencies able to support new
  modes of scholarly publishing (e.g. the Press,
  the libraries eScholarship program),
  supplementing them where appropriate
• Take a lead in national bodies such as AAU in
  identifying mobilizing effective coordinated
  national actions

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UC Scholarly Communication Faculty Seminars

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