Electronic publishing: issues and future trends Anne Bell

Electronic publishing: issues and future trends Alternatives to existing e-journals –“Free online scholarship” –“Open access to research information” The present scholarly publishing system is failing

What is wrong with the present system? Office of Fair Trading Report September 2002 –price increases above inflation –large price disparity between commercial and non-commercial journals –high profits for commercial STM publishing –bundling of journals by commercial publishers, possibly hindering others from entering the market.

What is wrong with the present system? Electronic publishing not producing benefits for scholarly communication –Driving costs up further but not making information available more widely or more quickly Copyright transfer

What are the new electronic publishing initiatives? Open access journals –creating new journals whose content is freely available –encouraging publishers to make their content freely available Author self archiving –e-print archives

What are the new electronic publishing initiatives? Open access journals –SPARC –Public Library of Science –PubMed Central –HighWire Press –BioMed Central –Budapest Initiative

Open Access Journals: SPARC Scholarly Publishing & Academic Resources Coalition Activities: –promotional initiatives –high quality low cost alternative journals Achievements: –price reductions –academic quality –editorial board defections

Open Access Journals: Public Library of Science Organisation of scientists worldwide Open letter signed by 30,000+ scientists from 180+ countries “…committed to making the world's scientific and medical literature freely accessible to scientists and to the public around the world.”

Open Access Journals: PubMed Central Free public archive for the life sciences Launched January 2000 by (US) NIH Both non-peer reviewed pre-prints and peer-reviewed journal papers Intended that journals would submit content after print publication Not the same as BioMed Central!

Open Access Journals: HighWire Press Large free online archive of published articles in the life sciences Stanford University Library Hosts 340+ journals that provide free online access to their full-text, including back issues

Open Access Journals: BioMed Central Commercial publishing house Core journals are e-only - rapid publication, peer reviewed, archived Committed to the free availability of original research (not added value content) Author charges Institutional Membership programme

Open Access Journals: Budapest Initiative Open Society Institute (OSI) meeting December international effort to make research articles freely available on the internet Backed by $3M from George Soros. Advocates alternative system in parallel with established journals Signed by institutions and individuals

What are the new electronic publishing initiatives? Author self archiving via e-print archives –Free access to pre-publication versions of papers to expedite communication –Started in 1991 with the Los Alamos physics server (arXiv) –Relationship with traditional journals –Terminology: e-print and pre-print, and are they “archives”? –Copyright

What are the new electronic publishing initiatives? Author self archiving via e-print archives –Free access to pre-publication versions of papers to expedite communication –Started in 1991 with the Los Alamos physics server –Relationship with traditional journals –Terminology: e-print and pre-print, and are they “archives”? –Copyright

Author self-archiving via e-print archives Discipline-based: Physics (Los Alamos), CogPrints (Southampton) −PrePRINT Network Institutional: Nottingham, Edinburgh, Glasgow Open Archives Initiative (OAI) Open Citation Project (Citebase) eprints.org

Author self-archiving: CogPrints: Stevan Harnad, Southampton University Funded by JISC Psychology, Neuroscience, Linguistics, areas of Computer Science, Anthropology, Biology and Medicine Both pre-refereed pre-prints and refereed, published reprints

Author self-archiving: Copyright Publishers’ policies: many allow post publication e-prints to be deposited in e- archives by authors If they do not, there is an alternative known as the Harnad/Oppenheim strategy

Author self-archiving: Institutional archives MIT – DSpace UK pilot developments at Glasgow, Edinburgh and Nottingham JISC FAIR Programme: –SHERPA, e-prints UK, TARDIS, ROMEO

Author self-archiving: Institutional archives JISC FAIR Programme: –SHERPA Securing a Hybrid Environment for Research Preservation and Access –TARDIS Targeting Academic Research for Deposit and dISclosure –ROMEO Rights MEtadata for Open archiving –e-prints UK

Future trends… “So far, paper is the only commonly used medium that we know can preserve texts for hundreds of years” –(Peter Suber) “Publishers are collaborating as never before, among themselves and with digital libraries, to support new electronic services such as reference linking and mediated access…” –(Steve Hitchcock et al)

Future trends “The online medium has opened up a powerful new capability that will dramatically increase the visibility, accessibility, navigability, interactivity, usability and citability, hence the speed, impact and productivity, of peer- reviewed research.” –(Stevan Harnad)

Some conclusions… Journals can continue to thrive because they provide major benefits Publishers should not object to web archives, and authors should not abandon journals Authors may become publishers and traditional publishers become facilitators Institutional archives are being created but need to be filled by authors