1. Free access to truth? Scientific Publication in the Internet Era A view from a professional society publisher John Haynes Head of Business Development, IoP Publishing Ethical Forum on Electronic Publishing, Brussels 21 October 2002 john.haynes@iop.org, www.iop.org

2. The best or worst of times? l Time of intense change? l Innovation / investment l Opportunity or threat l The ‘Google culture’ l A turning point? l Internet as a disruptive technology l OAI-PMH, institutional repositories l Or same as it ever was? ‘The present mode of scientific publication is predominantly through the 33,000-odd scientific journals. It is incredibly cumbersome and wasteful, and is in danger of breaking down on account of expense.’ J D Bernal, 1939

3. Journals and Authors l What do research scientists want? l Credit l Rapid dissemination l Widest possible distribution l Retrievability l Citeability l Permanence - archiving l The journal ‘brand’ is paramount l Authors ‘talk with their papers’ - they want journals and peer review

4. Journal and Readers l What do research scientists want? l Content l retrieve all relevant information online l Features / Functions l browse (ToC’s, citation links) l search (via A&I services and on j-platform) l multimedia, more colour, additional data, ‘live’ math l Seamless access l ubiquitous access to past and present l free at point of use

5. How do journals help? l The journal ‘brand’ signifies: l Subject coverage l Quality standard l Character and style l Remember: l Librarians and Publishers are INTERMEDIARIES between authors and readers

6. Scholarly communication as a complex system l Alternative approaches l Self archiving l Budapest Open Access Initiative l PubMedCentral l Public Library of Science l Web e-print servers l Institutional repositories l How can technology help? l Multiple options for distributing science will strengthen communication l Experience shows it is much more difficult to adopt new technologies throughout a complex system than one might think

7. Journal economics l Journal prices have increased faster than inflation l Journals have grown in size l Fall in personal subscriptions l Growth in supply of individual articles l from 40m to 100m+ article since 1970’s (US figures)

8. Journal economics l Journal publishing has large fixed and infrastructure costs and low marginal / distribution costs l Electronic publishing has increased costs l additional fixed costs of putting full text on the web: l staffing, software, etc l elimination of print and physical distribution will reduce costs l Small publishers do not have the advantage of scale l implications for the future / investment requirements

9. Institute of Physics l Founded in 1874 as The Physical Society of London l Mission-based professional society l to serve members l to promote physics education l to disseminate information l publish high-quality physics, pure and applied l Membership grown through the 1990’s l 37,000 members (ca 25% outside UK) l 100% of publishing surplus goes back to serve physics - special relationship with community

10. l Journals l First journal published in 1874 l Proceedings of the Physical Society of London l Current output l 36 journals (print and electronic) l 12 on behalf of other organisations / learned societies l Online journals (year-to-date 2002) l 10 million hits l >2 million full-text downloads l Books, Magazines, Online databases l Encyclopedia of Chemical Physics & Physical Chemistry l Physics World, PhysicsWeb l Axiom Institute of Physics Publishing

11. What is IOPP doing? l Supporting innovative start ups and playing a partnership role l New Journal of Physics (SPARC Leading Edge, IOP, German Physical Society) l Journal of High Energy Physics (SISSA) l JET Preprints and Reports (an example of an institutional repository) l TiPS - portal technology - author / reader tools (EU project) l Involved in cross-industry groups l PALS (Publisher and Library Solutions Group) l RoMEO - Rights metadata (JISC project) l New investments l E-Archival preservation - full-text back to 1874

12. What more is IOPP doing? l Experimentation / adopting new technology l Standards and interoperability l XML work flow l Reference linking (forward and back) l STACKS, DOI, CrossRef l OAI-PMH l Open URL compliant l Z39.50 - ‘distributed searching’ l Clustering and auto-classification technologies l e.g. Vivisimo, LexiQuest l Observation: l the investment cycle is becoming shorter and more intensive / expensive

13. What more is IOPP doing? l Increase dissemination l e.g. Open Access to extend visibility l Free abstracts l New Journal of Physics l open access, author charges l ‘This Month’s Papers’ l ‘IOP Select’ l IOP E-journal traffic doubles every 9 months l Liberal (‘author-friendly’) copyright policy l To be driven ever more strongly by our authors and readers

14. What can / must be done? l Partnerships / alliances become more important l Get involved in cross-industry initiatives l e.g. institutional repositories l standards and technologies l understanding of the complementary roles l Involve authors and readers: Professional societies are a natural partner l e.g. the author / reader community is their natural constituency l Address the financial challenge l i.e. How to make the successful transition from seed funding to a sustainable financial model l Continue to ask difficult questions l the role of traditional journals and librarians

15. What must / can be done? l Develop better understanding l e.g. the realities of scholarly journals, how they work, and their economic basis l A ‘must read’: Towards Electronic Journals: Tenopir and King, SLA, 2000 l Publishers, scientists, administrators need to base their actions on facts, not emotions or speculation l of how alternative scholarly communication initiatives can complement / conflict current channels l Constructive engagement l academic administrators, librarians, publishers and academics, e.g. re funding l This is only the beginning!

16. Thank you Questions, comments?