Are academic journals becoming obsolete? Ted Bergstrom University of California, Santa Barbara

Traditional Role of library The obvious way for scholars to share printed journals was to have their university library subscribe to them and store them. But are libraries needed for electronic journals?

Electronic Site licenses Libraries buy site licenses for electronic access. Supply workstations at library. Also buy permission for faculty and students to access from office or home.

What is library’s role? Most users of electronic journals do not go to the library. It is feasible and easy for users to subscribe directly with publisher. Libraries have become revenue collectors for publishers. Is this beneficial for academic community?

Are site licenses beneficial? For nonprofit society journals, site licenses give publisher revenue to recover the cost of production, yet allow access to individuals for free. This is an efficient arrangement--better than charging individuals for access, since marginal cost of serving a reader is zero.

But not always. Site licenses allow profit-maximizing publishers to closely estimate willingness to pay and extract extremely high profits from academic sector. See Bergstrom and Bergstrom, PNAS, Jan 2004 http://www.econ.ucsb.edu/~tedb/Journals/mypapers.html

Publishers’ traditional role Publishers have provided: Referee’s comments, quality control, classification by interest. Copy editing and typesetting. Bundling articles into groups. Subscription management. Printing and distribution.

Publishers’ old business model Combine the functions of certification, classification and distribution. Collect revenue from users supported by a monopoly on distribution of articles that have been submitted for certification. This model was sustainable with paper-only journals. Distribution was difficult and costly. This shaped industry.

New institutions for new technology? With electronic access and computerized type setting, distribution is much less costly. Author can typeset own article in TeX or Word, and post it on own website or a public archive. Separation of classification and certification from distribution is now possible.

Functions of traditional referees Checking the work for mistakes. Read carefully and suggest improvements. Determine whether paper is important and useful. (A much more ambiguous process.) Certify quality of work to non-specialists who determine author’s promotion and salary.

What motivates referees? Referees are paid little or nothing. Obligation to their field. Desire to influence direction of work. Cultivate good will of editors so that they are more likely to be published.

Certification Models Traditional refereeing without publishing. Authors submit papers to editorial board. Editorial board sends papers to referees. Editorial board lists recommended papers and provides links to paper on archive site. Who pays the costs? Note that costs can be small. Author fees For submission For publication Voluntary university subscriptions

Non-traditional Certification Non-exclusive publication Article could be recommended and linked by a publication with no requirement that it not be published or recommended elsewhere. New models of refereeing. Interested readers could comment after publication. Author could respond. This needn’t be refereed, since storage costs are very low. Indexes of citation and downloading.

Professional societies Professional societies are likely to remain important. Coordinating device for recognizing high quality scholarship. Currently publish the top journals in most fields. Annual meetings and social functions complement publishing. Can expect some support from universities to cover costs.

University Presses University Presses publish some journals to advertise their university. Usually run as non-profit or with small loss. A helpful coordinating device and source of funds. Also allows for healthy decentralization.

Journals of the future? Low cost society and university press journals with traditional refereeing process. Non-traditional “certification” journals without publishing. A few high-end journals with high costs, staffs of editors and promotional people. Science, Nature, PLOS journals, some flagship society journals. Traditional commercial journals?

Things to strive for Promote open internet access to scientific papers. Encourage evaluation and quality standards without discouraging innovation. Avoid intellectual monopolies and cliques.

Suggestions for Chinese scientific publishing Support open access archives for scientific work. Insist that government supported research be posted in these archives.

Further suggestions Encourage independent scientific societies and university presses. More than one per discipline, to prevent monopoly and cliques Encourage innovative “journal substitutes” with alternative forms of evaluation and certification.

Look for new solutions to match new technology.