Innovations & Controversies in Scholarly Communication:

A Presentation to the Engineering/Science Library Advisory Committee

Anne Smithers

27 February 2003

Publishing Paradox

• Researchers:– Conduct research– Constitute editorial boards– Act as reviewers– Submit articles for publication

• Pay for production costs (e.g., graphics)

–Article accepted for publication–Copyright relinquished to publisher–Publisher charges library to buy back articles

Publishing Environment:Associations vs. Commercial

Scholarly Associations– Not for profit– Communication among community of

researchers– Strive to produce high-quality, lower-cost

journals– Original primary vehicles for scholarly

communication

Publishing Environment cont.Commercial Publishers

– Developed in response to overflow of articles submitted for publication (~6000 per day; Arndt 1992)

– Maximize profit by raising institutional prices (210% increase in unit cost over last 15 yrs; ARL)

– Users demand access = Libraries forced to pay high costs

– Some Associations have “outsourced” journal publishing to commercial firms

– Author relinquishes copyright

Publishing Environment cont.• Examples: (print pricing for 2003)

– Organic Letters

Publisher: American Chemical Society

Institutional cost: $2,850 US (26 issues)– Tetrahedron Letters

Publisher: Elsevier

Institutional cost: $10,345 US (52 issues)

University Role

• Universities exacerbate the problem

• Promotion and tenure criteria recognize publication in:– Prestigious journals– High-impact factor journals

• Journal Citation Reports (Institute of Scientific Information)

Problems Summarized

• Commercial publisher domination• Spiralling costs vs. relatively flat library budgets

– Average cost of health sciences journals are 67% higher than average cost across all academic disciplines (ARL)

• Exacerbation by academia & granting/funding agencies

Solutions?

University, Library & Organizational Solutions

• Build awareness

• Consortial purchasing

• New models of scholarly dissemination & archiving

Build Awareness

• University & Library communication and public debate

– Queen’s Symposium on the Future of Scholarly

Publishing, April 2002

– Regular Updates to the University Community

Consortial Purchasing

• Who?– Local, regional, provincial, national, and

special interest consortia:• CNSLP• OCUL• COAHL

• Why?–Large group purchasing leverages lower costs

Canadian National Site Licensing Project (CNSLP)

• 64 universities participating (1st round)• STM e-journals and databases

• Springer (400 titles), Web of Science

Ontario Council of University Libraries (OCUL)• 17 Ontario universities• All disciplines/subjects covered

• ACS (34 titles), IOP (31 titles), BioOne (54 titles)

Consortium of Ontario Academic

Health Libraries (COAHL)• 5 health sciences libraries: McMaster,

Ottawa, Queen’s, Toronto, Western• Health sciences disciplines

– Ovid databases– MD Consult – E-journal packages

• AMA Journals (12 titles), BMJ Journals(28 titles), Harcourt Health Sciences (164 titles), Lippincott, Williams & Wilkins (210 titles), ProQuest Nursing Journals (~330 titles)

New Models of Scholarly Dissemination & Archiving

• SPARC

• PubMed Central

• BioOne

• BioMed Central

• Public Library of Science

• Open Archives Initiative

• Institutional Repositories

SPARC (The Scholarly Publishing & Academic Resources Coalition)

• Worldwide alliance of research institutions, libraries and organizations

• Encourages competition in the scholarly communications market

• Nurtures creation of high-quality, low-priced publication outlets for peer-reviewed STM research

• Not a publisher

PubMed Central

• Digital archive of life sciences journal literature – NOT a publisher

• Access to PMC is free and unrestricted

• Articles indexed in Medline

• Participating journals include all their peer-reviewed research articles in PMC

• Includes 39 life-sciences titles + 57 BMC (BioMed Central) titles

Journals in PubMed Central• EMBO journal

– Research articles free to all users after 12 months

• Molecular biology of the cell – Most recent issue is December 2002

• Nucleic acids research– Research articles free to all users after 6 months

• Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America– Most recent issue is August 2002

BioOne

• Aggregation of high-impact bioscience research journals

• Collaboration between scientific societies, libraries, academe & private sector

• Articles in the database are reference-linked with other BioOne journals = integrated access

• SPARC partner• Not a publisher

BioOne Journals

• American midland naturalist

• Annals of the Entomological Society of America

• Journal of medical entomology

• Paleobiology

• Radiation research

BioMed Central

• Independent publishing house

• Immediate free access to peer-reviewed biomedical research

• Copyright retained by authors

• Supports PMC – Articles indexed in Medline

• SPARC publisher partner

• Membership fee

BioMed Central Journals

• BMC cell biology (v.4, February 2003)

• Journal of biology (v.2, February 2003)– Includes articles of a standard similar to

those published in Nature, Science, or Cell

• Proteome science (v.1, January 2003)

Public Library of Science

• Non-profit organization of scientists

• Goal: to establish online public libraries of science to archive and freely distribute scientific articles

• 2003 two new peer-reviewed journals, no charges for access

• Authors charged fee for article publication

Open Archives Initiative

• Develops and promotes common technology standards

Institutional repositories

• Reform scholarly communication• Serve as tangible indicator of a

university’s quality

Bringing It All Together

• Traditional publishing models cannot be sustained

• Huge impact of the transition to the digital environment – Online will replace print

• Rapid emergence of new initiatives

• New paradigms of scholarly communication will forge ahead

Late-Breaking News!

• CNSLP negotiations with Elsevier successful!

• Online access to approx.1500 titles on ScienceDirect

• 23 broad subject areas

• Back-file coverage to 1998

• www.sciencedirect.com/science/journals

• Ontario Scholars Portal

Engineering & Science Library

Your route to scholarly communication

References

Symposium on the Future of Scholarly Publishing– http://library.queensu.ca/scholarcomm/2002conf/

summary.htm

CNSLP

- http://www.uottawa.ca/library/cnslp/

SPARC– http://www.arl.org/sparc

PubMed Central

- http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov

BioOne

- http://www.bioone.org/bioone/?request=index-html

References cont’d.

BioMed Central

- http://www.biomedcentral.com

Public Library of Science

- http://www.publiclibraryofscience.org

Open Archives Initiative

- http://www.openarchives.org