Future Scientific Journals
Anna Lundén
Library and Information Science, M.Sc.
EBSCO Information Services
Helsinki, 8 October 2004
Future Scientific Journals
Anna Lundén
Library and Information Science, M.Sc.
EBSCO Information Services
Helsinki, 8 October 2004
Agenda
History
Present
The e-resource life-cycle
Open Access - pros & cons
Summary
Future - Conclusion
History
Scientific journals run by academia up to World War 2
Information explosion -- entrance of commercial publishers
“Serial Crisis” - univ.libraries´ purchasing power has declined, forced to cancel journals
1990-2000 average annual price more than 10% increase
Present Figures
100,000+ serials
20,000 scientific periodicals
1.5 million scientific articles
1 in 5 publications is accessible online
Claiming User IDs Admin module information Preferences (store) Holdings lists Access restrictions View rights for use Provide Support Evaluate
Monitor Problem log Hardware needs Software needs Contact info Troubleshoot/ triage Usage stats Downtime analysis Review problems User feedback Administer New processes introduced Trial use Assess need/budget License terms Order Pay Price Evaluate IP Addresses Register Proxy Servers Catalog Portals/Access lists Campus authentication URL maintenance Acquire Provide Access E-resource life cycle
3,000+ research and scholarly publishers
But 5 publishers produce 5,000 journals (33%)
66% of scholarly jnls outside Big Deals
80% of all jnls outside Big Deals
50% of spend (or more) can be on 33% of the content
Business Models
Traditional - “Reader Pays”
- subscription fee based
New - “Author Pays” or “Pay-to-publish”
- submission fee based
OA Initiatives
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature on the internet. Making it available free of charge and free of most copyright and licensing restrictions. Removing the barriers to serious research.
DOAJ - Directory of Open Access Journals (Lund University Libraries) http://www.doaj.org
SPARC Open Access Forum and Newsletter http://www.arl.org/sparc/soa/index.html
News from the Open Access Movement http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/fosblog.html
Open Access (OA)
OA journals:
OA journals conduct peer review
OA journals typically let authors retain copyright.
Some OA journal publishers (like the PLoS) are non-profit, and some (like BMC) are for-profit.
Open Access (OA)
OA archives or repositories:
OA archives can be organised by discipline (e.g. arXiv for physics) or institution (e.g. eScholarship Repository for the Univ. of California).
When universities host OA archives, they are usually committed just as much to long-term preservation as to open access.
OA archives can contain preprints, postprints, or both.
OA and Libraries
Strongest supporters of OA
Solution to the “serial crisis”
Longer term; “budget crisis” - univ. use OA as an excuse to cut the library budget, must have money to help university scholars pay for author fees in the OA journals.
OA and Researchers
OA´s submission fees increase the expense of disseminating research, which could reduce the amount of research - indirectly harming readers
Subscription fee model reduces number of readers as libraries cancel subscriptions - indirectly harming authors
Gives the researcher a choice
Opinions vary depending on the discipline (i.e microbiology very positive)
OA and Non-Profit Publishers
Broader readership
Combat threats by bundling strategies (“Big Deals” )
Combat decline of individual (non-institutional) subscription
Are the authors (or funding sources) willing to pay?
OA and Commercial Publishers
Less profitable business model
Less market power
OA journals tougher competitors than average
Co-ordinated boycott
Hybrid Example
Springer Open Choice an hybrid example from a for-profit publisher
The one-time Open Choice charge ($3,000) allows the author to make the article permanently archived and freely available via SpringerLink to anyone, anywhere in the world for viewing, full-text searching, and downloading.
OA and Agents
Support efforts to find publishing and distribution models that are economically feasible over the long run for both customers and producers of scientific journals.
Expanding the “membership sales” into money collection from authors/funding bodies seems to be one possibility.
Provide better A-Z services.
i.e. in EBSCO´s A-to-Z list the library is allowed to easily include OA journal packages
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