An interesting perspective on e-journal deals.
------- Forwarded Message Follows -------
Date: Thu, 8 May 1997 18:16:48 -0700 (PDT)
From: Phil Agre <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: The Serials Crisis in the Age of Electronic Access
Reply-to: [log in to unmask]
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
This message was forwarded through the Red Rock Eater News Service (RRE).
Send any replies to the original author, listed in the From: field below.
You are welcome to send the message along to others but please do not use
the "redirect" command. For information on RRE, including instructions
for (un)subscribing, send an empty message to [log in to unmask]
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
[http://sunsite.unc.edu/reference/prices/1997/PRIC177.HTML]
NEWSLETTER ON SERIALS PRICING ISSUES
NO 177 - May 7, 1997
Editor: Marcia Tuttle
ISSN: 1046-3410
CONTENTS
177.1 THE SERIALS CRISIS IN THE AGE OF ELECTRONIC ACCESS, Ken Rouse
177.1 THE SERIALS CRISIS IN THE AGE OF ELECTRONIC ACCESS
Ken Rouse, Head, Chemistry Library, University of Wisconsin-Madison,
[log in to unmask]
I am surprised and alarmed that there has been very little mention of the
package deals that some commercial publishers, especially Elsevier and
Academic, are currently promoting to academic libraries for purchasing
their print/electronic journals. Acceptance of these offers, I believe,
would be a watershed event in the history of scientific/technical/medical
(STM) journal pricing. Perhaps the word has simply not gotten around yet,
but from what I have heard, time is running out. Some major libraries
or library consortia (OhioLink, the CIC, the University of Michigan, the
University of Minnesota) are either seriously considering these proposals
or may have already signed on the dotted line. In hopes of provoking some
discussion, I would like to describe the offer that Elsevier has presented
to my university and make some comments. I do not have all the details,
but here in essence is the package:
THE DEAL
A) The University of Wisconsin-Madison is offered electronic access to
most of the Elsevier group STM journals, about 1200 titles. A few medical
titles belonging to one Elsevier subsidiary are not included, e.g.,
Excerpta Medica. We currently subscribe to about 600 of the 1200 titles.
B) The cost will be based upon the number of Elsevier subscriptions held
in 1995 -- calculated at the 1997 prices -- plus an annual surcharge.
The contract would run for three years. First year cost: 1997 list price
of 1995 subscriptions plus 7.5%. Second year: cost of first year plus
9.5%. Third year: cost of second year plus 9.5%. In 1997 we paid Elsevier
$844,677 for the 600 subscriptions. We have not finished compiling the
list of titles held in 1995, so I do not have an exact figure, but my
administration estimates that this formula would result in a price in
excess of one million dollars for the first year of the deal. If my meager
math skills have not misled me, it appears that Elsevier would collect an
additional $449,348 over the three year period, i.e., assuming first year
costs of one million and then adding in and compounding the 9.5% increases
for the second and third years. Moreover, the initial estimate for the
cost to a library of mounting the database is between $70,000 to $100,000.
WHAT'S WRONG WITH THIS PICTURE
It seems obvious to me that this deal is designed to carry Elsevier's
enviable profit margins safely into the electronic era. Or, seen from the
perspective of a librarian, it is a way to perpetuate the "serials crisis"
into the indefinite, electronic future. Admittedly, some universities
might find this very seductive. Imagine! All that access and Elsevier
locked into what might be considered modest increases for this publisher
for two years.
But just how valuable is this access? We should keep in mind that we are
being asked to pay not only for the more successful titles that we have
been forced to retain despite their mind boggling prices, but also for
all the low-use, high-cost titles that many of us have canceled years ago
-- those titles, in other words, that we never should have bought into
in the first place. In my mind, the publishers have hit upon a brilliant,
"back-to-the-future" strategy, a return (via electronic vehicle) to the
good old days of sum-sufficient serials budgets when librarians such as
myself eagerly subscribed to every promising journal, knowing that the
money would not come out of our budgets, but from some vaguely understood
but seemingly limitless central library fund.
Another worrisome aspect of these deals is that they seek to restrict
the use of electronic text for interlibrary loan purposes. So the future
begins to shape up like this: we agree by contract to support every
journal that the publishers serve up to us, i.e., we forfeit the only
effective means we have to make a point about high journal prices, namely,
cancellations. Then, in the same contract we agree to limitations on the
borrowing and lending of copies of articles between libraries, which --
given ever rising royalty fees -- will soon be the only affordable way to
get a copy of an article from a canceled journal. That Elsevier has their
eye fixed on an all-electronic future is suggested by another aspect of
the contract: a 10% discount is offered for each print subscription that
is canceled.
Now, it is not unthinkable, I suppose, that Elsevier and other publishers
will decide that in the brave new world of electronic journals they will
have to go easier on libraries, if only out of fear that they might kill
the academic golden goose that has been so kind to them so far. For my
part, I would be concerned that more "normal" price increases might return
at the expiration of the three year contract. What constitutes normalcy
in this regard is reflected in the price histories of some of Elsevier's
more popular chemistry titles. Take Tetrahedron Letters for example, which
cost $200 in 1974 but now carries a price tag of $6845. Even allowing for
dollar devaluation, inflation, increase in size (about 50%), I believe we
can agree that this is an amazing increase in price, particularly in the
light of declining production costs during this period. And, lest anyone
should think that this is an isolated example, in just one year (1996 to
1997) the companion journal, Tetrahedron, increased in price by $1176, or
$118 more than libraries paid for a 1996 subscription to the ACS's premier
organic chemistry journal, the Journal of Organic Chemistry.
The publishers, of course, can hardly be blamed for wanting to make lots
of money. As others have observed before me, the publishers have only done
what successful companies do: identify a promising new market (growing
numbers of scholars/scientists who must publish to survive), devise a
product to meet the need (new journals), and then charge as much as the
market will bear. I suspect, in fact, that the publishers themselves
have been amazed when they learned that their customers, mainly academic
libraries, seemed willing and able to bear any burden. For some reason I
am reminded of an old cartoon I once saw (Bill Mauldin?) which illustrated
the black humor of the American military during World War II. It showed
two German soldiers hunched over their machine gun and peering out over
the battlefield. The one is saying to the other: "It's amazing, Heinrich.
The Americans seem to have an inexhaustible supply of 2d Lieutenants."
It may be pointless to begrudge the commercial publishers their success,
but I believe we should all be appalled at the end result of the high
prices: convenient access to the research published in these titles is
increasingly beyond the reach of many individuals and libraries. In recent
years the situation has become truly grotesque in some cases. The prices
of some journals -- a few Gordon and Breach titles come to mind -- have
risen so high that, as far as I can tell, not a single academic library in
the U.S. can afford them. Ironically, these journals survive, sustained no
doubt by a handful of companies, for whom a subscription constitutes a new
species of proprietary information. That much of the information in these
journals is produced by scientists supported by public universities or
funded by government grants, should give us all pause.
SOLUTIONS: BACK TO THE FUTURE
Since I am suggesting that we should reject these deals, it is only fair
that I also say what I think we might do instead. In the first place,
I believe we need to admit that libraries have failed miserably in the
struggle for affordable journals. We librarians have failed because,
except for canceling journals, we have no effective way to influence the
publishing process. We have merely been empowered to pay the bills. After
all the years of talk and agitation by librarians at all levels (the last
eight years of it collected in the Newsletter on Serials Pricing Issues)
we have succeeded only in ushering in the era of the $10,000 journal
(Surface Science, BBA) with an annual inflation rate that can vary between
10% and 80%.
Second, we must dedicate ourselves to doing whatever it takes to ensure
that the next phase of the struggle for affordable journals is conducted
by that group that has not only the most to lose by continuing our present
course, but also the power to chart a new one: the scholars and scientists
who are the producers and consumers of the literature. As a colleague of
mine has written recently in an article aimed at historians, we will only
begin to pull ourselves out of the sinkhole of run-away journal prices
when the scholarly community decides to "take the publishing process
firmly and irrevocably back into its own hands." (David Henige "Averting
Armageddon: A Modest Proposal," Editing History, v.13, No. 1, spring,
1997). Putting it bluntly in the context of my own field, unless academic
chemists -- whether through their professional societies or other
collective efforts -- set about the task of establishing affordably
priced, new journals that compete with the Tetrahedrons and the Surface
Sciences, the era of the $10,000 print journal will very soon be succeeded
by the era of the $20,000 electronic journal.
Persuading academic chemists to assume the burden of founding new journals
in a time when the unavoidable demands of grantsmanship are already eating
away at the time available for research might seem like an impossible
task. It would require, as Henige suggests in his article, "a serious
reorientation of value systems in academia, which esteem and reward
authorship, yet at the same time in practice denigrate its equally
necessary observe, editorship." He envisions -- as a remedy -- the
recruiting and training of a "cadre of editorially-minded historians" who
would receive meaningful recognition (e.g., tenure, promotion) for the
critically important contribution they would be making to their field.
Changing the value system of chemists or other academic scientists
would surely be as long and difficult an undertaking as it would be for
historians. And in the case of chemistry which has the dubious distinction
of having spawned the most costly journals known to mankind, the stakes
are even higher. Since the Elsevier/Academic deals suggest that we may
not have much time, I believe that libraries must countenance some strong
measures which might jump start the process. Academic scientists must
be given not only powerful career incentives for assuming the burdens of
editorship, but also the fiscal resources they would require.
GIVE THEM THE MONEY
It has occurred to me (and certainly not to me alone) that a major reason
why faculty have difficulty focusing on the problem of run-away journal
costs is the same reason I could not do so in the 1970s. The money being
spent is not THEIRS, but the library's. Let me hasten to add that my
faculty and, I suspect, most chemistry faculties have been very supportive
as the library has struggled to maintain an adequate collection. They have
given advice about cancellations, taken the publishers to task for their
prices, refused to submit articles to certain publications, and even
turned down offers of editorships. But since the money was not theirs,
they were naturally inclined to keep their distance. As much as they might
"feel our pain," they have been reluctant to enter into the fray. Since
I am now suggesting that the faculty must lead the charge, obviously this
must change. I believe the libraries must give them the money.
This may seem a bit extreme at first, but it is actually a very
conservative notion, another "back-to-the-future" strategy, if you will.
After all, for a long time many university science libraries were managed
and funded by academic departments. I would not burden the departments
with the entire library operation, of course, or even the entire serials
budget. The idea would be to add up the current subscription prices of
all commercially published journals and then move the money back into the
budgets of the appropriate departments. Of course, the transfer of cash
would have to be organized on a national or ideally on an international
scale to be meaningful. And once the deal was struck, the event should
be accorded the appropriate amount of pomp and symbolism -- a ceremonial
banquet, perhaps, where a librarian of sufficiently high status (the
director of ARL?) would be captured by the cameras as she/he presents
one of those five-foot-long, symbolic checks with an incredible number of
zeros on it to an appropriately illustrious representative of the academic
science community.
Once the various departments have the money in their budgets, several
things are likely to happen. First, the faculty will begin to ponder the
implications of continuing the status quo. I believe they would soon begin
to hear a noise akin to the Perot-style "great sucking noise" which became
famous in a recent presidential election. In this case, however, what
they would be hearing would be the sound of research dollars flowing in
the direction of journal budgets. Secondly, as the noise grew inexorably
louder, they might begin to wonder if a million dollars (just in the case
of Wisconsin) is not just a tad more money than a single university in a
state with relatively modest economic resources should pay for access to
literature from one STM publisher.
At that point, the idea of launching some affordable, alternative journals
could come under serious consideration, and a way to underwrite the costs
would be staring them in the face. Think of the war chest that could be
assembled (I can't seem to escape these militaristic metaphors) if all the
larger universities in the US decided to continue a policy of aggressively
canceling any commercial journal that they could possibly live without
and then pooled a small percentage of the savings! Remember that the
University of Wisconsin-Madison alone would have to pay more than a half
million dollars EXTRA over three years if it were to accept the Elsevier
forumula. A trifling contribution of $50,000 per year from each of the
ARL-size universities alone would amount to $3,000,000 per year, certainly
enough to stimulate the founding of a few journals.
WOULD THE REAL LEMMINGS PLEASE STAND UP
About two years ago Barbara Quint published an article about STM journal
pricing which I found both encouraging and flattering: "The March of the
Lemmings," Information Today, June 1995. Encouraging, because it depicts
the commercial publishers not as clever strategists bent on using their
vast resources and deep understanding of the academic market to secure
their future, but rather as helpless lemmings whose rapacious pricing
policies and other, more recent revenue enhancing schemes were inherently
suicidal. The immediate impetus for her article had been a decision by
John Wiley and other publishers to begin charging secondary publishers
(abstracting and indexing services) for subscriptions. The article was
flattering because librarians were identified as one of the important
forces which were about to "link up against the publishers" and speed them
on their way to oblivion:
How long before angry librarians give journal editors an earful
of explanations of why the journals on which they work so hard
do not appear on library shelves? How long before authors and
editors meet to discuss the problem at faculty get-togethers
with university research press representatives or at sessions
with research funding agencies looking for ways of squeezing more
value from the research dollar?... And who will help the research
funders and article writers convert their scholarship into useful,
electronic-and-print products for sale and re-use at reasonable
prices under reasonable terms? Who do you think: All those
disgruntled librarians and secondary publishers, that's who.
How long indeed? The news that OhioLink and others are about to accept
the long-term access plans currently being proffered by some of the major
STM publishers suggests to me that we are talking about a very long time.
The publishers have shown themselves to be a bit cannier in the ways
of academia than Quint imagined. This was not quite the linkage she had
in mind. In fact, if librarians and the faculties they serve don't come
up with some better ideas, it may be time for a sequel to her witty and
provocative essay -- with different casting for the part of the lemmings.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Statements of fact and opinion appearing in the Newsletter on Serials
Pricing Issues are made on the responsibility of the authors alone, and
do not imply the endorsement of the editor, the editorial board, or the
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Readers of the Newsletter on Serials Pricing Issues are encouraged to
share the information in the newsletter by electronic or paper methods.
We would appreciate credit if you quote from the newsletter.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
The Newsletter on Serials Pricing Issues (ISSN: 1046-3410) is
published by the editor through Academic and Networking Technology at
the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, as news is available.
Editor: Marcia Tuttle, Internet: [log in to unmask]; Paper mail:
Serials Department, CB #3938 Davis Library, University of North Carolina
at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill NC 27514-8890; Telephone: 919 962-8047;
FAX: 919 962-4450. Editorial Board: Deana Astle (Clemson University),
Christian Boissonnas (Cornell University), Jerry Curtis (Springer Verlag
New York), Isabel Czech (Institute for Scientific Information), Janet
Fisher (MIT Press), Fred Friend (University College, London), Charles
Hamaker (Louisiana State University), Daniel Jones (University of Texas
Health Science Center), Michael Markwith (Swets North America), James
Mouw (University of Chicago), and Heather Steele (Blackwell's Periodicals
Division). The Newsletter is available on the Internet, Blackwell's
CONNECT, and Readmore's ROSS. EBSCO customers may receive the Newsletter
in paper format.
To subscribe to the newsletter send a message to [log in to unmask]
saying SUBSCRIBE PRICES [YOUR NAME]. Be sure to send that message to the
listserver and not to Prices. You must include your name. To unsubscribe
(no name required in message), you must send the message from the e-mail
address by which you are subscribed. If you have problems, please contact
the editor.
Back issues of the Newsletter are archived on 2 World Wide Web sites.
At UNC-CH the url is:
http://sunsite.unc.edu/reference/ prices/prices.html.
At Grenoble the url is:
http://www-mathdoc.ujf- grenoble.fr/NSPI/NSPI.html.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
***************************************************
Professor Tom Wilson
Head of Department of Information Studies
University of Sheffield, Sheffield S10 2TN, U.K.
Tel. +44-114-222-2631 Fax. +44-114-278-0300
Email: [log in to unmask]
http://www.shef.ac.uk/uni/academic/I-M/is/lecturer/tom1.html
***************************************************
"A university is an Alma Mater, knowing her children one by one, not a factory, or a mint, or a
treadmill." John Henry Newman
My - haven't times changed!
*****************************************************
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
|
