Terry,

How many of your physicists actually get the information they use day-to-day for research from these journals? I suspect they get the latest information needed for their work either from ArXiv or directly from colleagues. If they really can wait until the journal articles are published they are not really at the forefront of their subject. Over 20 years ago physicists (and researchers in related subjects) had the most advanced preprints distribution system with an index at CERN, I doubt if they have slipped backwards in this regard.

I recently interviewed a young post-doc researcher in our Computer Science department regarding his information gathering techniques. For him journals were just background reading when he had time or places to publish mature research (to get the kudos) which had already been published online or in conference reports. He never used INSPEC but instead preferred Google Scholar and CiteSeer.

Regards,

John Smith,
The Templeman Library,
University of Kent, UK.


-----Original Message-----
From: An informal open list set up by the UK Serials Group [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Bucknell, Terry
Sent: 19 March 2007 16:17
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Summary paper from the Publishing Research Consortium

<TEXT DELETED>

As a research-led institution, access to the latest issues is
imperative. Embargoed Open Access (or embargoed content in an aggregated
subscription product) is no substitute for a subscription to a journal
that is required for research purposes. Embargoed access is only
acceptable for journals that we only envisage being used for student
coursework, student project work etc (i.e.nice to have but not
essential).

I am not aware of any subscriptions here that have been cancelled
because embargoed Open Access is available. The report questions why
more of us haven't cancelled more physics subscriptions despite the high
availability of articles in arXiv. In our case it is because the
academics have not chosen to do so. They appear to prefer to spend their
library budget on the key physics journals, even if much of the content
is already available in arXiv, than to spend their budget on 'second
string' physics journals instead.


Terry Bucknell
Electronic Resources Manager
Sydney Jones Library
University of Liverpool
Chatham St, PO Box 123
Liverpool, L69 3DA, UK
Tel: +44 (0)151 794 2692
Fax: +44 (0)151 794 2681


-----Original Message-----
From: An informal open list set up by the UK Serials Group
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of David Prosser
Sent: 19 March 2007 15:24
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Summary paper from the Publishing Research Consortium

The Beckett and Inger paper 'Self-Archiving and Journal Subscriptions:
Co-existence or Competition?' gives us a hypothesis (p. 11 of the
summary
paper):

 

'In the extreme case of 100% availability of content on the
institutional archives and a 24-month embargo, still nearly half the
market for subscription journals has disappeared.' 

 

So, if 100% of the journal's content is freely available the journal
will, all other factors being equal, lose a massive proportion of its
subscription base.  Decreasing the embargo to zero increases the
predicted fall in the market from 50% to approximately 70%. 

 

Can we test this hypothesis?  If we look at journals hosted by HighWire
Press we can see that a large number make papers freely available after
6, 12, or 24 months (see
http://highwire.stanford.edu/lists/freeart.dtl).  For these journals,
the final versions of papers are made available to all.  If the
prediction made by Beckett and Inger was true then these journals should
have started to haemorrhaging subscriptions following the opening-up of
the archives.  Is there any evidence that they have?

 

Back in 2005, John Sack wrote, in a history of HighWire Press
(http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/alpsp/lp/2005/00000018/00000002/a
rt00
008): 

 

After several years of content was online, Nick Cozzarelli (PNAS), Bob
Simoni (JBC) and Michael Held (Rockefeller University Press) presented a
concept of 'free back issues' to their colleague HighWire publishers.
Their view was that librarians and researchers were subscribing because
they needed access to absolutely current issues, and that there was
significant educational benefit in issues that were months old. They
proposed that back issues (6 or 12 months old) be made freely available
to the public to support educational uses, and expected that this would
have no significant effect on subscription count. Gradually more and
more journals came to this same belief, and today the programme
comprises the largest archive of free full-text research articles that
we know of: over 825,000 articles from about 220 journals.

 

(Emphasis added). There does not appear to be a mass retreat from the
free back file programme  - are publisher sanguine in the face of 50%
declines in their subscription base?

 

Of course, most of the HighWire hosted journals offering free backfiles
are in the biological and medical fields, but as the summary does not
break-down the response of librarians by subject area, it is difficult
to tell what predictions are being made in these fields.  

 

So, we have a hypothesis and we have some test-cases. If the
HighWire-hosted journals are managing to survive despite the predicted
massive falls in subscriptions they should have experience, why should
we take the Beckett and Inger study as a credible warning of what might
happen as self-archiving become more widespread?

 

David

 

David C Prosser PhD

Director

SPARC Europe

 

E-mail:  [log in to unmask]

Tel:       +44 (0) 1865 277 614

Mobile:  +44 (0) 7974 673 888

http://www.sparceurope.org

 

 

-----Original Message-----
From: An informal open list set up by the UK Serials Group
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Sally Morris
Sent: 19 March 2007 12:43
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Summary paper from the Publishing Research Consortium

 

To help the scholarly community better understand and evaluate how open

archiving might impact journal subscriptions, the Publishing Research

Consortium has released the summary paper 'Self-Archiving and Journal

Subscriptions: Co-existence or Competition?'.

 

 

 

This paper is a condensed version of the earlier analysis released in

November 2006.   It looks at librarian purchasing preferences, and
concludes

that mandating self-archiving within six months or less of publication
will

undermine the subscription-based peer review journal.  The summary
paper,

together with the original report, is freely available at

http://www.publishingresearch.org.uk/. 

 

 

 

 

 

Sally Morris

 

on behalf of the Publishing Research Consortium

 

 

 

Email:  [log in to unmask]

 

 

 

Website:  www.publishingresearch.org.uk