Is Emergence Of Two Molecular Evolution Societies A Sign Of Progress Or A Journal Publishing Face-Off?

Progress Or A Journal Publishing Face-Off? Author: RON KAUFMAN, p.1,6,22.. Early this year, the Society for Molecular Biology and Evolution (SMBE) was officially established to provide molecular evolutionary biologists with information about their field. Just two months later, a different group of scientists formed the International Society of Molecular Evolution (ISME) with a similar mission. While both societies claim that the advancement of their discipline was an important motivation for their formation, the two sides also acknowledge that a significant reason for their existence is the promotion of their respective scholarly journals--a publishing, rather than scientific, matter. But some molecular evolutionists view the situation as a sign of healthy competition that ultimately will assist in the maturation of this still-evolving field. "I would never have started the Society for Molecular Biology and Evolution if Springer-Verlag [New York Inc., sponsor of ISME and publisher of the Journal of Molecular Evolution (JME)] would have done what we wanted in the first place and lowered their journal's subscription price. The only reason [Springer-Verlag is backing ISME] now is because we exist," says Walter Fitch, president of SMBE and the editor of the society's journal, Molecular Biology and Evolution (MBE). In January, Fitch, head of the department of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of California, Irvine, officially activated SMBE. The society had existed since the start of the journal in 1983, but in name only, since its sole members were the 44 participants on the MBE editorial board. Fitch says that adding the journal's 600 subscribers to its membership base will eventually make the society a "leading international organization for people who are interested in comparative DNA sequence analysis, which is molecular evolution." The society's first meeting will be held at the University of California, Irvine, July 8-10. Molecular evolutionary biologists from Japan and Australia as well as the United States are expected to attend. The bimonthly MBE was started to provide those studying molecular evolution with an affordable alternative to the higher-priced JME, says Fitch. Becoming a member of Fitch's nonprofit organization, and thereby subscribing to MBE, costs $54 for professionals and $43 for students. Fitch's society is being funded through a five-year, $60,000 grant from the New York-based Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. The publisher of the society's journal is the University of Chicago Press, which also provides funding support for the publication. Meanwhile, Springer-Verlag, the sponsor of ISME, publishes the 22-year-old JME, a monthly journal with subscriptions costing $740, generally affordable to only large institutions or libraries. The company, founded in Berlin in 1842, claims it is the world's second-largest publisher of scientific periodicals. In February, according to Shawn Morton--a Springer-Verlag assistant journal editor--the publishing company made inexpensive personal subscriptions to JME available for $99 through membership in ISME. The group gained 100 members in its first eight weeks of existence, society officials say. The acting president of ISME is Giorgio Bernardi, a molecular biologist at the Laboratoire de Gentique Moleculaire in Paris. Its organizers expect ISME to be incorporated by the year's end; at that time an official governing body will be voted on by the members. Fitch says the journal rivalry that spawned the two societies represents a pragmatic concern for researchers in the discipline as well as a difference in approach to servicing molecular evolutionary biologists. "A scholarly journal is something that should be designed not for libraries, but for scholars," says Fitch, who will resign his post as editor of MBE in July and concentrate on his role as president of the new society. Fitch was an associate editor of JME from 1976 to 1982. He quit, he says, because he became disillusioned with the subscription pricing policies of Springer- Verlag. "We started this whole journal as a basis for making the field approachable at a reasonable price to the members and practitioners in the field," Fitch says. He also asserts that Springer-Verlag's creation of ISME two months after he officially established his society shows "they are clearly worried about us." Data in the Journal Citation Reports published by the Institute for Scientific Information in Philadelphia show that papers published in Fitch's MBE are, in fact, cited at a higher rate. In 1991, the last year of available statistics, MBE's impact factor--a ratio calculated by dividing the number of citations in a given year by the number of papers published during the previous two years--was 4.13. The impact factor per article for the competing JME was 2.97. But Emile Zuckerkandl, editor-in-chief of JME, contends that a harmony between the two groups can be found. "The creation of this second society [ISME] was not done in the spirit of competition with the existing society," he says. "On the contrary, it is hoped there will be collaboration of the two and the subscribers can very well be part of both." Yet, he also maintains that the ideal situation for molecular evolution would be to have one journal.

Is Emergence Of Two Molecular Evolution Societies A Sign Of Progress Or A Journal Publishing Face-Off?

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