Scholarly Communication in the United States

Scholarly Communication in Several Disciplines

The divergence among the disciplines is noteworthy. For example, scholars in the sciences rely on articles published in journals, rather than monographs, to report as rapidly as possible the results of research. Dramatic increases in prices, much higher than the Consumer Price Index, particularly for non-U.S. scientific publications published by commercial presses, have occurred since 1985.

In some areas of the humanities, such as history, monographs, instead of journal articles, are critical for tenure and promotion. Monographs are increasing in price at a slower rate than are journals, but fewer and fewer monographs are purchased by libraries because of the need to fund expensive journals, particularly those in the sciences. Rapid dissemination of results is less important in the humanities than in the sciences, and older publications are consulted more frequently than in many scientific disciplines. However, there are some areas of the humanities, such as philosophy, where monographs play a much smaller role than do journal articles.

In business, journal articles are the main outlet for research results. Monographs and conference proceedings are of secondary importance. Both association and commercial journals are important. Association journals are significantly cheaper than commercial journals and electronic versions of journals and working papers are becoming more common.

The field of law is radically different from both the humanities and the sciences. Articles are generally not peer-reviewed, but are most often reviewed by students who edit the law journals. The journals are inexpensive and largely subsidized by the universities which publish them; commercial journals are not the most prestigious, but rather the prestige of a law journal generally comes from the ranking of the law school that sponsors it.

In relation to the impact of the various scholarly communications norms and practices within disciplines on academic libraries, historical United States data from the 110 member libraries of the ARL indicates that despite cancellation of hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of journals since 1986, ARL libraries spend 124% more on serials to purchase 7% fewer titles in the years 1995-1997.

An Example of Allocation

Another historical example: the IUB Libraries serials budget grow by 126% in the period 1984-1997; however, an increase of more than 230% werew required to keep pace with U.S. serials prices alone. The proportion of the IUB Libraries collection budget allocated to broad disciplinary groups remained relatively stable in the period 1986-1997 despite the obvious increases in costs for serials, in general, and scientific publications, in particular. The overall 1998-99 IUBL materials budget wass allocated 65% to serials and 35% to monographs, (having shifted from a 60/40 split ten years ago). However, there were wide variance among the broad disciplinary groups in this apportionment, as might be expected due to the relative importance of these respective publishing formats:

Sciences are 90% serials and 10% monographs
Social Sciences are 73% serials and 27% monographs
Area Studies are 41% serials and 59% monographs
Humanities are 30% serials and 70% monographs

The relatively stable allocation in the IUB Libraries was possible for several reasons, one of the most significant of which ws that between 1989/90 and 1997/98, the IUB Libraries canceled 2,795 subscriptions valued at $741,700, averaging $265 per subscription. In the period 1991-1997 alone, the IUB science libraries have collectively canceled (net) 443 subscriptions at a reduction in costs of $222,340. In 1998/99, the IUB Libraries canceled another $130,000 in journals. Similarly from 1989/90 to 1997/98, the Ruth Lilly Medical Library canceled some 283 subscriptions at a total value of $151,386, averaging $535 per subscription and has already canceled an additional $21,000 in journals this year. With 5% increases to the IUB collection budget in past years, monograph purchases have remained constant.

Moreover, more than $900,000 in end-of-the-year one-time funds from the campus administration had been necessary to cover serials deficits and fund new database acquisitions in the five-year period 1991/92-1996/97.

The largest single fund in the IUB Libraries, close to $400,000, was devoted to networked databases; in 1993/94 this fund was $40,000. Electronic resources was estimated in 1998 to constitute almost 10% of the collection budget. Since the pricing of electronic resources is frequently tied to continued purchase of print counterparts or represent increased costs for enhancements in the digital version, acquiring these resources typically incurs additional expenses.

Conclusions

The issues surrounding scholarly communications are many and vary widely among disciplines. Some are surprised by how widely the norms of scholarly publication and the markets for scholarly materials differ among disciplines.
No single institution is likely to be able to effect meaningful change. We believe that collective action is almost certain to be necessary. This is likely to involve colleges and universities working together, the participation of scholarly and professional societies, and collaboration with organizations outside of the academic community.
Any meaningful change in the norms of scholarly creativity and publication in a single discipline, much less across the academy, will require substantial changes in the academic culture. Those changes will obviously be neither easy nor quick. One important part of motivating those changes will be educating faculty about the divergent range of scholarly communications norms.
There is an important distinction between “access” to information as opposed to “acquisition” of the physical objects in which information may be contained. Although access presents many issues (including, for example, those relating to the predictability of costs, compliance with copyright laws, and stable archiving/continued access), some libraries are persuaded that focusing on access rather than acquisition is one key part of coping with and taking advantage of changes in scholarly communications. This shift in focus has important implications for many aspects of the libraries. Effective implementation of this concept will require that faculty become more aware of the copyright implications of their agreements with publishers. Faculty also need to become more aware of the implications of copyright on their research and teaching. Faculty are often not the best stewards of our own intellectual property, and the need for greater faculty education about the issues and their alternatives is clear.
It is already clear that the rapidly escalating cost of many commercial serials, especially in the sciences, is a critical issue. To some degree, it is uncertain as to whether anything can be done to reverse this trend or meaningfully diminish its impact, but some libraries have given preliminary favorable consideration to a collaborate with other libraries to establish a thoughtful, open process for identifying scholarly publications which fail to meet clearly specified, objective criteria for pricing and licensing. The collaborating organizations would then decline to purchase those publications and would encourage their faculty neither to submit material to those publications nor to serve on their editorial boards. While the details of such a program would need to worked out carefully and antitrust issues would need to be considered, this type of approach could offer ethical and practical force to the arguments against anticompetitive pricing and licensing practices, and help change the posture of many universities from merely complaining about such practices to seeking to actively combat them. There is special justification for the academic community scrutinizing the practices including pricing and licensing practices of publishers of scholarly material because colleges and universities both support the creation of most scholarly material and are its primary audience.
While economic issues are clearly critical, they are not the only points for future discussion relating to scholarly communication. For example, coping with the ever-expanding volume of information and improving the “filtering” and “navigation” services of libraries are vital to future scholarly activities.
There is no evidence to suggest that the demand for funds to acquire printed and electronic material is likely to decrease in the foreseeable future. Modest increases in library funding have barely made it possible for some libraries to make any pretense of “keeping up” with the expanding number and price of scholarly materials, and even that has come at the cost of significant cancellations of subscriptions and through the availability of end-of-the-year one-time funding. Electronic scholarly resources, while often offering new levels of access and service to faculty and students, have to date, in many cases, not resulted in any net cost savings. Quite the contrary, making available powerful new electronic information services poses increased demands on library budgets.

Copyright Issues

Some Universities have explored and, in some cases, applied, the following approaches related to copyright issues of the scholarly communications:

Explore the feasibility of developing a policy that further encourages (even requires) faculty authors to retain at least minimal rights for future use of their own work.
Further explore the feasibility of authors reserving not only the rights of future use of the author’s own work by the author, but also retaining the rights of future use for education and research by any member of the author’s own university community or by colleagues in the discipline at other institutions.
Develop model language that faculty authors may append to their publication agreements.
Explore the feasibility of establishing a copyright permission service that would obtain permission from third party copyright owners for the purpose of allowing the uses of copyrighted works in connection with teaching and research.
Systematically review the author’s agreements used by journals published at the University to ascertain their terms for copyright management and for making the articles available to scholars at the University and elsewhere with minimal restrictions.
Work with faculty who serve on editorial or advisory boards of journals to encourage those journals to adopt standards that broadly facilitate scholarly communication and that provide for minimal restrictions from copyright.
Investigate whether publications written under government-sponsored grants could achieve the same status as government publications, i.e. no copyright restrictions.