Prabha, Chandra. Shifting from Print to Electronic Journals in ARL University

1

Terrill Taylor

ILS 560-S 70

Annotations – Unit 11

April 6, 2007

Annotated Bibliography of Current Literature on Serials and Scholarly Publishing

Prabha, Chandra. “Shifting from Print to Electronic Journals in ARL University

Libraries.” Serials Review. 33.1 (March 2007): 4-13. LISTA. Ebsco

Host Databases. Accessed 3/28/2007.

Prabha statistically describes the current shift in ARL library resources from print to electronic format. He notes that over the past ten years, print journal collections have become hybrid collections of print-only, electronic-only and print and electronic format journals as well as collections of full text articles from aggregator databases. The study surveyed journal titles subscribed to by ARL libraries, identified a sample of 529 titles and collected data from OPAC’s and journal listings at these libraries in 2002, 2004 and 2006.

In 2002, the breakdown was: 64% print-only journals, 31% print and electronic format journals, and 5% electronic-only journals. By 2004, print-only journals were down to 47% and electronic-only had increased to 19%. In 2006, electronic-only journals amounted to 36% and exceeded print-only journals (30%) for the first time. The percentage of journals subscribed to in both formats remained approximately the same throughout this period, resulting in total subscriptions to print journals (including those accompanied by an electronic version) falling from 95% in 2002 to 63% in 2006. At the same time, all subscriptions to electronic journals (including those with a print copy) went from 35% to 70%.

At this rate, by 2008 print format journals will have dropped to under half of the collection (47%) and electronic format journals will have increased to 87%. To Prabha, the most significant findings are that the “tipping point” between print and electronic has been reached and that libraries no longer have perpetual access to their titles and must now pursue long term access options such as LOCKSS.

Ball, David. “Signing Away Our Freedom: The Implications of Electronic Resource

Licences.” Acquisitions Librarian. 18.35/36 ( 2006) : 7-20. LISTA. Ebsco Host

Databases. Accessed 3/28/2007.

Ball discusses the consequences of the “big deal” business model for serials acquisition and the threats it presents to library collection development and independent publishers. He traces what he calls the “information value chain” from creation to publication to aggregation to access to use. Roles in this chain are changing as publishers or serials agents become aggregators and libraries no longer have control over collection development or the monopoly over access.

In purchasing electronic serials, the library is purchasing a service rather than a product. The ramifications are that the library no longer retains perpetual access to the resource which is only licensed for a time-limited period; the content of the purchased resource may change as titles or articles can be withdrawn subsequent to purchase; and access to the resource may be limited by the license to certain types of users or certain sites.

Ball notes that in scholarly publishing, the publisher “reaps the rewards” and provides statistics to show that a publisher such as Reed Elsevier had a higher net profit margin than 473 of the Standard & Poors 500 in 1997. The scholars and institutions reap the indirect awards of prestige, promotion and research funding and are thus vested in the process. Ball makes the point, however, that the user is “insulated” from prices and inflation because he generally is not paying for the information and therefore price does not determine demand.

Using the “big deal” model, a library subscribes for a three or five year period to all titles from a particular publisher for an annual fee with a contracted rate of increase and a no-cancellation clause. Benefits to the library are that users gain access to a wider range of resources and libraries know how much their costs will increase. The publisher has the security of guaranteed revenue and no cancellations. Ball argues that the benefits may not be as great as they seem. Statistics that show users consulting newly available journals may be skewed by lack of comparison data and by the fact that users are downloading more articles because they are free, where previously they might have limited themselves to the abstract. Ball quotes statistics from a study that shows that 28% of Science Direct titles produced 75% of the downloads at UNC-Charlotte to support his contention that there is still a core collection.

Ball feels that the dangers of the “big deal” outweigh the dubious benefits. He quotes research that shows an increase in citations from journals owned by “big deal” publishers and notes that this trend could destroy journals from smaller publishers by decreasing their impact. He shows that while librarians are losing the right to select the collection to the aggregators, the process is also not user-centric. From the user’s perspective the article is most important, then the journal title and only then the publisher. In the big-deal process of collection development, the publisher becomes the primary factor. Finally, the publishing monopoly is solidified because the library has to buy all or nothing from the publisher. If the publisher raises prices at renewal, the library will be reluctant to cancel a “big deal” since so many essential titles are included and may therefore cancel titles not covered by the “big deal,” thus perpetuating a vicious cycle which swallows up the smaller publishers.

Ball urges libraries to fight the effects of this dangerous publishing model by (1) building library consortia which he feels are the only groups that have a chance of having an impact on the market; (2) regaining control of the purchasing process – the purchaser not the supplier should do the specifying; (3) supporting alternative publishing models such as SPARC; and (4) making users aware of cost consequences and consulting them about purchases.

Cameron, Brian D. “Trends in the Usage of ISI Bibliometric Data: Users, Abuses,

And Implications.” Portal: Libraries & the Academy 5.1 (Jan 2005) : 105-125.

LISTA. Ebsco Host Research Databases. Accessed 4/4/2007.

Cameron discusses the use of citation data in serials selection and the distorted importance of impact factors. The impact factor developed by the Institute for Scientific Information and published in Journal Citation Reports is the ratio of articles published by a journal over a 2-year period to articles cited. Eugene Garfield, founder of the Institute for Scientific Information, developed the Science Citation Index in 1955 in an attempt to improve indexing of the wealth of scientific information published in the post-World War II research boom. Perhaps in a quest for a universal index to scientific literature, Garfield saw the advantages of a citation index for showing relationships between research articles and thus tracing the development of scientific thought as well as for allowing machine indexing and avoiding dependence on subject specialists for indexing and on subject terms that could become obsolete. Librarians had looked at citation patterns previously for serials collection development (P.L.K. Gross and E.M. Gross in 1927), but on a more direct count basis. Garfield’s impact factor was intended to account for differences in journal size, frequency of issue and length of issue. Garfield’s approach of measuring the impact of a publication based on the number of articles that referred to its articles is now widely accepted and is the basis for Google’s page-ranking system.

Although the impact factor is enormously influential in ranking serials, it does have some weaknesses. First of all, the ISI impact factor includes only citable articles or reviews in its calculation of articles published, but it includes all documentation, including letters, reports of meetings, etc., in its enumeration of citations. This can skew results for a publication which prints a large amount of correspondence. The time period (2 years) can have a negative effect on impact factors for journals in fields where research takes a longer time to develop and publication cycles are slower. Number of journals also varies from one discipline to another and will effect the impact factor, as will the size of the journal, as journals publishing a larger number of articles will show more citations over time. Finally, as not many foreign language journals are included, the impact factor is skewed toward English language, Western publications. ISI journal coverage is limited – in 1997, ISI covered only 2.5% of world science journals published.

Although Garfield developed the impact factor as a means of selecting journals for Science Citation Index, and it was then promoted as a “selection tool” for libraries, it is increasingly being used to rank the research performance of both scholars and institutions. Garfield has warned that impact factors were not designed for this purpose, but has also issued conflicting statements and promoted use of his data. Universities are using the data for promotion decisions, ranking faculty by the number of publications multiplied by journal impact factors. In 1998, 5,000 departments in US universities were using citation data in faculty evaluation. It has even been proposed in Nature magazine that more peer reviewers could be attracted if the impact factor of the publications to be reviewed could be used in evaluations.

Cameron warns that librarians need to be aware of how impact factors can be manipulated by both publishers and scholars and also how journal bundling “exacerbates the problem.” In 1996, OhioLINK reported that 68.4% of articles downloaded were from Elsevier journals. Obviously the conglomerate publishers are affecting citation numbers and thus journal impact factors. Examples of publisher manipulation include changing the proportion of material in the journal that counts for citation but not for articles to skew the ratio as well as asking authors to provide more citations or even specific references to a publisher’s journal articles.

Cameron recommends “judicious use” of citation data with understanding of its limitations. He sees Open Access initiatives in publishing as the “best hope” for easing the dependence on impact factors.

Bergman, Sherrie S. “The Scholarly Communication Movement: Highlights And Recent Developments.” Collection Building. 25.4 (2006): 108-128. Emerald Library Suite. Emerald Group Publishing, Ltd. Accessed 4/1/2007.

This is an excellent survey article on serials and the state of scholarly communication. The author identifies two factors which have led to the “scholarly communication crisis”: the growth of the Internet and accompanying technologies allowing scholars to communicate freely and exchange research; and at the same time, skyrocketing journal prices and the growth of publishing conglomerates which impede public access to this research. The combination of factors has given rise to Open Access models for scholarly communication, defined as “digital, online, free of charge, and free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.”

In recent years, scholarly publishing has moved from university and society presses to commercial publishers and through a process of consolidation by mergers and buyouts, the market is dominated by two “international conglomerates.” Springer publishes 1,500 journals and 5,000 books per year and Reed Elsevier surpasses that at 10,000 journals and books and ownership of LexisNexis. During the period from 1986 to 2002, journal prices rose 227% while the consumer price index increased 64%. The author notes that the effects of this pricing crisis have prevented libraries from acquiring the same number of journals and the “bundling” of electronic titles by the publishers has resulted in fewer titles that they want. In 2004-05, Bowdoin College spent $612,019 more on journals than in 1993-94 and subscribed to 247 fewer print journals. Strategies employed by Bowdoin to counteract the pricing crisis include canceling print journals in its electronic collection, joining Portico for archiving purposes and pursuing a shared collection development plan through the Colby Bates and Bowdoin consortium.

The author describes a number of cooperative efforts under way to increase access to scholarly communications including the SPARC alliance which is working to develop alternative publishing models and support lower priced journals and advocacy efforts; as well as the Public Library of Science, “a nonprofit scientific publishing venture that provides scientists with high-quality, high-profile journals in which to publish their work, while making the full contents open access.” Other models include Bio Med Central and the physics community archive arXiv. She also notes the institutional repository movement in which universities are “self-archiving” scholarly work from their own institutions through tools such as DSpace.

In evaluating the current effect of the Open Access movement, the author observes that: “Government-supported research increasingly is being viewed as a public commodity.” This is evident in the establishment of the Alliance for Taxpayer Access in 2004 to promote open access to “taxpayer-funded research” and in the passage of the NIH Public Access Policy, effective May 2, 2005. NIH-supported researchers are encouraged to deposit their research in PubMed Central within 12 months of publication. A number of international efforts are cited as well as an indication of the momentum of this movement.

Further proof that Open Access supporters are being heard is the fact that both Springer and Elsevier are reassessing their pricing structures and experimenting with limited Open Access initiatives. Springer established Open Choice in 2004, a program that will permit free online access to an article if the author or the funding source pays a $3,000 fee. Elsevier is testing Open Access for one of its journals. Can these be indications that the “Big Deal” model is on the way out?

The author notes that it is likely that Open Access will “coexist” with traditional publishing models in the near future as the traditional scholarly “publish or perish” system is well entrenched and Open Access journals must still work out a way to recoup their costs without burdening the user. Some are charging processing costs to the author, but different models may arise in different disciplines. In the meantime, librarians will need to include Open Access resources in their collections.

Park, Ji-Hong and Qin, Jian. “Exploring the Willingness of Scholars to Accept

Open Access: A Grounded Theory Approach.” Journal of Scholarly Publishing. 38.2 (Jan.2007 ): 55-84. LISTA. Ebsco Host Databases. Accessed 3/30/2007.

Park and Qin examine scholars’ opinions of open access from two perspectives:

(1)publishing – what influences scholars’ attitudes on publishing in open access journals;

and (2) use – what affects scholars’ attitudes towards use of open access journals as a basis for

research. The authors note that while open access presents advantages such as availability and wider dissemination of articles published, some scholars do not hold open access journals in as high regard as the traditional print journals and some are also concerned about publication fees. There is a tension between scholar’s attraction to the lure of wider dissemination and concerns about career prospects based on possibly “unrecognized” journals.

The study is based on qualitative data obtained from interviews with 14 faculty members and doctoral students at Syracuse University. The authors attempted to achieve a balance between tenured faculty and still un-tenured research students. Analysis of the data showed that the following factors had a positive relation to scholar’s willingness to publish in open access journals: perceived topical relevance (related to their field), perceived journal reputation (strongly linked to topical relevance), perceived availability, and perceived career benefit. Interestingly, perceived availability had a more positive correlation with perceived career benefit to the tenured faculty who found the wider dissemination of their work an advantage than it did to the untenured group who were more concerned with journal reputation as it related to career benefit. Perceived cost was found to be a negative factor in decisions about publishing in open access journals because some are charging publication fees to the author.

Factors that had a positive relationship to scholars’ willingness to use open access articles in their research were: perceived journal reputation, topical relevance, perceived availability, content quality and ease of use. Scholars had less concern about using open access articles in their research than they did about publishing in open access journals. Topical relevance was more important than whether the article was open access or restricted access. Content quality was a very positive factor in the use scenario – the higher the research quality appeared to be the more willing the scholars were to use it – although a similar relationship did not apply in the publishing area, where perceived journal reputation was more important.

In studying relationships among factors, the authors found that while a factor such as perceived availability has a positive effect on perceived career benefit and ease of use, it may still have a negative effect on perceived content quality, as scholars still perceive less value in content that is widely available even though open access journals do employ peer review.