Are academic journals Are academic journals becoming obsolete? becoming obsolete?

Ted BergstromUniversity of California, Santa Barbara

Traditional Role of libraryTraditional 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 licensesElectronic 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?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?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.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 rolePublishers’ 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 modelPublishers’ 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 New institutions for new technology?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 refereesFunctions 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?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 ModelsCertification 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 CertificationNon-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 societiesProfessional 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 PressesUniversity 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?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 forThings 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 Suggestions for Chinese scientific publishingscientific publishing

• Support open access archives for scientific work.

• Insist that government supported research be posted in these archives.

Further suggestionsFurther 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 Look for new solutions to solutions to match new match new technology.technology.