Science Publishing Evolves: Greed or Need?

At Cornell University there is "preliminary discussion on a national symposium" to be held at the upstate New York campus to discuss, among other things, the rising costs of subscriptions to commercially published academic journals, according to Ross Atkinson, Cornell's deputy university librarian. The backdrop for the potential symposium? A number of recent significant events in the world of academic publishing: The release in December 1998 of the Journal Price Study1 by a Cornell University faculty committee. The study of 314 agricultural and biology journals concluded commercially published journals in these two areas are far more expensive than those published by nonprofit academic societies. The prices far exceed factors such as exchange rate (most commercial publishers are in Europe) and cost of living. "The journal costs charged by commercial publishers as institutional costs are extraordinary compared to costs charged by other types of publishers," the study found. Purdue University and ier Science reached a one-year agreement starting in January 1999 that would appear to hold journal prices in check. Emily Mobley, dean of libraries and professor of library science at Purdue, refused to discuss details of the agreement, hinting that to do so would harm her "strategic position." The resignation of the entire editorial board of Evolutionary Ecology over price increases by the journal's publisher, Kluwer Academic Publishers of the Netherlands. The board, headed by editor Martin Rosenzweig, professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Arizona, began to publish this year a competing journal, Evolutionary Ecology Research. The establishment in 1998 of the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC) by the Association of Research Libraries to publish journals competing directly with those commercially published. High journal-subscription costs have been a simmering topic in academic library circles for several years. And a number of academics don't hesitate when asked why commercially published journals are so costly. "They have stockholders that are interested in profits, I presume," says Kraig Adler, professor of biology at Cornell, who chaired the committee study. "We didn't come right out and say it's greed, but I don't see any other really good explanation." Martin Rosenzweig "Profiteering is what I call it," asserts Rosenzweig, adding the commercial publishers are concerned about pleasing stockholders at the expense of others, such as libraries and authors. Although John Tagler, director of corporate communications at ier Science, a New York branch of the Amsterdam-based publisher, says the study is well done and agrees at least at ier the journal prices do outstrip increases in cost of living, he points to journal growth as one explanation: "Very often journals will go up significantly in cost because they've expanded in size. Many journals will go from a quarterly to maybe a monthly. That's one driving force." Tagler points to the dollar's gyrations as a second factor affecting the prices of most of ier's journals, which are published in Europe. "[T]he [dollar's] ups and downs over the last several years [have] also been a driving force. In each of the last couple of years, our European package of journals has gone up less than 5 percent. ... [S]ome of the Dutch journals, when the dollar has been strong against the guilder, went up 1 percent. There are other years where they've gone up 20 percent on exchange rate alone." Academics see things differently. Rosenzweig maintains that commercial publishers simply don't have any interest in disseminating their journals as widely as possible. He claims it's in the best interest of their bottom line to actually cut down on the number of subscribers to printed journals, "because they're not returning enough profit on the dollar. It costs money to fulfill subscriptions and deal with a large public. If you're dealing with three, four hundred libraries on a regular basis, you can cut your administrative costs to the minimum, take the money you save, and invest in another journal that's going to do something similar." Not so, counters Tagler: "It's not our goal to cut the number of subscribers by any means." He argues that ier is working hard to develop electronic publishing with a service called ScienceDirect, which will expand the readership of its journals. ier, Tagler notes, publishes many journals that are not for individual subscribers, but for research libraries. These are small-circulation, highly specialized journals whose costs must be spread over a relatively small base. One example he cites is a chemistry journal called Tetrahedron Letters, for which the subscription costs $8,600 annually, and slightly more than $9,000 for the online edition. He also argues that as a for-profit company, ier pays taxes; nonprofit publishers don't. And ier invests in new equipment and technology. SPARC, of course, is out to cut into the profitability of academic publishing by offering alternatives. The effort is a new approach in journal publishing, says SPARC executive director Rick Johnson. "Traditionally, scientific publishers have not launched competitive journals. They've launched journals that have filled the gap between two existing journals. What we're doing is offering an incentive [for] competitive journals. We're doing that by working with societies to start journals that are willing and able to go head to head with existing journals or [by] using technology to offer alternatives," he says. SPARC so far is supporting three journals: PhysChemComm, in cooperation with the Royal Society of Chemistry, Organic Letters (to begin publishing in July) in cooperation with the American Chemical Society, and Evolutionary Ecology Research. All three are accessible electronically. SPARC is bankrolled by a range of membership fees from "academic institutions and independent research libraries." More than 150 libraries and consortia so far are supporting the effort. At Purdue, Mobley doesn't deny that her ability to negotiate a deal with ier was based on being one of ier's largest customers. The deal apparently involves ScienceDirect, but neither she nor Tagler will reveal anything of substance about the arrangement. "ier and Purdue have reached a resolution that Purdue has been very happy with," she says, although she would have preferred that the deal last longer than one year. Her concerns about being "out of kilter" with ier came after two rounds of cancellations of more than $1 million in journal subscriptions due to cost. ier, however, did not suffer disproportionately compared to the number of subscriptions lost by other publishers, she says. An important factor in Mobley's efforts was "educating" faculty on journal costs. In 1991 when she needed to cut her serials budget, Mobley formed a committee including about 20 faculty members--two from each of Purdue's 10 colleges--to help them understand the library's financial crunch due to rising subscription prices. Mobley credits her ability to negotiate an agreement with ier to strong backing by faculty and the university administration. The faculty involvement at Purdue seems to be an exception, though. "Many faculty are basically clueless about the cost of journals," complains Kenneth Frazier, director of the General Library System at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and president-elect of the Association of Research Libraries. E. Mobley, "Ruminations on the sci-tech serials crisis," Issues in Science and Technology Librarianship, Fall 1998. (An online journal only) www.library.ucsb.edu/istl/98-fall/article4.html Scholarly Publishing & Academic Resources Coalition Dupont Circle, Suite 80021 Washington, DC 20036 (202) 296-2296 Fax: (202) 872-0884 www.arl.org/sparc "The journal thing is very serious, but most faculty either don't know about it or are not willing to take action. Some of my favorite journals are published by ier, which is the biggest bad boy of the industry," says Jo Handelsman, professor of plant pathology at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. But Frazier does say that the publicity surrounding Rosenzweig's action--starting Evolutionary Ecology Research and leaving a major publisher over cost issues--may have highlighted the issue in the minds of many faculty. Adler says university administrations can play an important role. For example, if a faculty member is asked to become an editor of a journal whose costs the administration feels is out of line, administrators might deny the prospective editor needed secretarial help as a way to make faculty aware of costs. "That's the kind of answer I might give. How many deans would have the gall to say something like that? I don't know." Adler, himself an editor of journals published by an academic society, also urges faculty to consider more than prestige of a journal if asked to be an unpaid member of the editorial board. He also advises asking about rates for students and subscription costs. Whether such efforts will bear any fruit, he notes, is yet to be determined. But Adler and others clearly hope that faculty can have a major impact on journal prices by selecting journals in which to publish based on subscription costs and by venturing into areas such as the economics of publishing academic journals, which they have traditionally ignored. Harvey Black (73773.2227@compuserve.com) is a freelance science writer in Madison, Wis. "Journal Price Study, Core Agricultural and Biological Journals," Faculty Taskforce, College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, Cornell University.

Science Publishing Evolves: Greed or Need?

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