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 “Not because it might solve their budget woes but simply because access is core to librarianship.” – Andrew Richard Albanese 1  National Organizations 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 (

Scholar LibraryPublisher 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 scholarly findings  Scholars use the information to produce more research

Scholar LibraryPublisher 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 others’ work  Copyright protects the credit for my ideas and work

Scholar LibraryPublisher 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  Products are sold at the price that maximizes profits

Landscape of publishing industry  Constant mergers in past decade  Large commercial publishers increase their profits 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 price 4 JournalPublisher Publisher Type ISI impact Factor Price Price per article Sports medicine Adis International Profit2.781$999$15.37 Medicine and science in sports and exercise American College of Sports Medicine Profit for Society 2.552$512$1.80 Journal of applied physiology American Physiological Society Non-profit2.824$930$1.57

Periodical price survey 2005  html html

Scholar LibraryPublisher 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 possible

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 done? 9 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 Disciplinary repository Departmental web site Personal web site Institutional repositories  Currently 93% of journals allow self- archiving

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 (

Strengthening not-for-profit publications  Does selling to a commercial publisher make long-term sense for the society?

Consider where you publish  What is the reputation of the journal  Who is publishing your journals?  How much does it cost a library to subscribe?  Is there another journal with similar content and reputation?

What can scholars do?  Learn more Visit the Create Change web site Talk with your librarian Become an informed consumer  Start discussions in your department, committees, and societies  Take action Write to your publisher Refuse to write for, review for predatory publishers Insist on favorable contract terms

References 1. Albanese, A. R. (2005). Life after the NIH. Library Journal, 130 (7), Sales and Earnings. Publishers Weekly, 250 (9), Data from Ulrich’s Periodicals Directory 4. Journal price information from University of Wisconsin Journal Valuation project 5. Graph of public ARL library costs from ARL statistics 6. Decrease in monographs at ACRL scholarly communication toolkit cationtoolkit/toolkit.htm 7. 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, and in Lawrence, S. (2001). Free online availability substantially increases a paper’s impact. Nature, 411, Van Orsdel, Lee C. (2005). Choosing sides. Library Journal, 130 (7), Ideas for what you can do based on ideas listed in UIUC Library Gateway, Scholarly Communication site and from ALA/ACRL/SPARC Crete Change site

Resources  Information about the problem ACRL Scholarly Communication Toolkit nicationtoolkit/toolkit.htm nicationtoolkit/toolkit.htm Open access news  Journal Price Information Ulrich’s Periodicals Directory ( Morris Library: liaison librarians ( bin/encore2/staff?liaison=1)  Open Access Journals Directory of Open Access Journals  Summaries of publisher’s usual self-archiving policies Of publishers at Sherpa ( Of journals at Eprints.org (  Places to self-archive Departmental web space SIU Personal web pages ArXiv.org (for physics, math, computer science) Institutional Repository?