The Crisis in Scholarly Communication Ray English University of Houston Transforming Scholarly Communication Symposium October 4, 2006

Scholarly Communication: What’s the Real Issue? Serials crisis? Cost of journals? Industry consolidation? Publisher monopoly power? Licensing restrictions? Big Deals? Monographs crisis? Permissions crisis? Loss of public domain? Legislative threats to fair use? Preservation of electronic information? Published knowledge growing faster than library budgets?

Fundamental issue is access Problems are resulting in loss of access barriers to access Access to scholarship by users Access to publishing opportunities Problems are systemic

References Sites and Cites for the Struggle: A Selective Scholarly Communication Bibliography Available on symposium website

Serials Crisis Extraordinary price increases Worst is scientific fields Worse for foreign publishers Commercial journals have substantially higher prices and high profit margins Highest priced journals tend to have lesser impact Inelastic market Industry consolidation, publisher monopoly power Problems with electronic licenses, Big Deals

Journal price increases Currently averaging 8% annually* Library acquisitions budgets are relatively flat Ohio libraries increasing app. 2% annually *Library Journal Periodical Price Survey, April 2006

Serial & Monograph Costs, North American research libraries ARL Statistics Crisis in a nutshell

Average journal prices by broad discipline Arts and HumanitiesUS $116 Non-US $230 Social SciencesUS $385 Non-US $716 SciencesUS$1,093 Non-US$1,866 Library Journal Periodical Price Survey, April 2006

Average prices by specific discipline Chemistry $3,254 Physics 2,850 Engineering 1,756 Astronomy 1,724 Biology 1,548 Geology 1,323 Math & Computer Sci 1,278 Zoology 1,259 Botany 1,238 Health Sciences 1,132 Library Journal Periodical Price Survey, April 2006

Commercial vs. non-commercial journal prices Henry Barschall study (1988) Wisconsin and Cornell studies (1998) Ted Bergstrom’s journal pricing page

No correlation between price and impact Higher priced journals tend to be published by commercial firms Higher quality journals tend to be non-profit, published by societies

Costs of Economics Journals Bergstrom data Publisher Type Number of Journals Price / Page Price / Cite Non-Profit91$0.18$0.15 For-Profit206$0.82$2.40

Costs of a Complete Economics Collection Bergstrom data PublisherType Percent of Cost Percent of Cites Non-Profit9%62% For-Profit91%38%

Journal Prices by Discipline Bergstrom data Ecology Economics Atmosph. Sci Mathematics Neuroscience Physics Costper page Cost per page Non-profit Forprofit For-profitNon-profitFor-profit Cost per cite Bergstrom, Costs and Benefits of Library Site Licenses to Academic Journals, PNAS, 2004

Journal cost-effectiveness Ted Bergstrom’s journal cost-effectiveness calculator

What’s going on? Inelastic market coke vs Coke Publishers have pricing power High profit margins

Industry consolidation Increasing corporate control of journal publishing Some mergers since 1980: Kluwer: 11 major publishers Wiley: 8 major publishers Taylor & Francis: 16 major publishers Elsevier: 18 major publishers plus Endeavor ILS Thomson: 15 publishers Migration of non-profit journals to commercial sector

Mergers produce price increases Mark McCabe data Pergamon titles increased 22% after purchase by Elsevier Lippincott titles increased 35% after purchase by Kluwer Antitrust issue McCabe, ARL Bimonthly Report, Dec. 1999

Electronic journal licensing issues, Big Deals Provisions of licensing agreements can impede access Issues related to bundled licenses: Increased cost Loss of library choice over content Loss of budget control Rates of price increase Length of contracts Threats to subscriptions outside the bundle Pressure on monographs budgets Antitrust issue -- anticompetitive practices

Independent industry analyses UK House of Commons Science and Technology Committee report (2004) Scientific Publications: Free for All? European Commission Report (2006) Study on the Economic and Technical Evolution of Scientific Publication Markets in Europe Journal industry analysts Credit Suisse First Boston BNP Paribas

What if you owned this business? People produce your product for you They check it for quality They’re even kind enough to give you their intellectual property You polish it up and distribute it And you charge those same people handsomely to make their product available back to them They think they must have your product, even though they created it, so you’re free to raise prices

What a magnificent ship! What makes it go? Cartoon by Rowland B. Wilson

Library responses Request increased budgets Cut subscriptions Reduce monograph purchases Cut subscriptions and reduce monographs Collective purchase of electronic journals Rely on document delivery or ILL

Effective Year Journal Titles Not Renewed Dollar cost of Titles Not Renewed $160, ,417$263, $17, ,933$371, $196, ,063$213, $41, $93,542 Total6,758 $ 1,358,591 Cancellations history at a Research I institution

Serial & Monograph Costs, North American research libraries ARL Statistics Crisis in a nutshell

Issues for faculty Loss of ready access to journal literature Lack of access to desired literature

Monographs crisis University presses under pressure Library markets in decline Reduced print runs Limited sales of specialized monographs

Monographs crisis How are university presses responding to economic pressures? Publish Bullshit Reduce specialized monographs

Issue for faculty Monograph publishing opportunities in decline MLA Letter from Stephen Greenblatt (2002) Report The Future of Scholarly Publishing (2002)

MLA report Library budgets for monographs declining Far fewer scholarly monographs being purchased Fewer outlets for traditional scholarly monograph Junior faculty between a rock and a hard place Need for alternative forms of scholarly expression Publishing subventions for junior faculty MLA, 2002, The Future of Scholarly Publishing

More on monographs crisis Specialized Scholarly Monograph in Crisis, Or How Can I Get Tenure if You Won’t Publish My Book 1997 conference proceedings on ARL website:

Permissions Crisis Peter Suber’s term: Legal and technological barriers to access Legal copyright licensing terms Technological Digital rights management

Public domain Bono Copyright Term Extension Act Orphaned works Digital Millennium Copyright Act National policy issues

Preservation of electronic information Libraries responsible for preservation of print journals Electronic journals are licensed from publishers Libraries lack control over electronic version Major issue that we are just beginning to address

Growth of published knowledge New journals Book production

Scholarship as a public good Substantial portion is funded by taxpayers supported publicly created in non-profit sector Journal literature is freely given away by authors But journal publishing is largely under corporate control A public good in private hands

Need for transformative change Traditional system is unsustainable Scholars are losing access System of out of the control of researchers and the academy

The Immovable Object Traditional journal publishing system Copyright and licensing

The Irresistible Force Networked technologies, Web Open Access See Paul Courant, “Scholarship and Academic Libraries (and their Kin) in the World of Google,” First Monday, August

Bet on the Force Many reasons for optimism Faculty engagement Librarian engagement Success of OA and other change strategies Progress at the national level

Contact information: Ray English Director of Libraries, Oberlin College

Copyright information Copyright 2006 by Ray English This work is copyrighted under the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial 2.5 License. See: