Scientists Should Just Say No To High-Cost, Low-Value Journals

If you don't like the pricing of certain journals, the simple answer is don't support, either intellectually or financially, any journal that you think is overpriced. Many such individual decisions would add up to a statement by the community. Purchase is a value judgment. The value in dollars of a journal subscription is determined by what rational purchasers will pay. Thus, if you buy or recommend purchase of a journal, by definition it is not priced beyond its value. We make the decision. If we refuse to buy journals that are marginal, either they will change their ways or they will drop out of the race. There is a need to examine the value of journals in many ways. Henry Barschall and others have recently used citation statistics and price. The American Geophysical Union did such a study in the mid-1970s. We found that the kiloword equivalents per dollar ranged from a high of over 80 for the Astrophysical Journal, down to 3 or 4 for Marine Geology, Tectonophysics, and Astrophysics and Space Sciences. In citations per dollar the spread was even greater. There are, of course, lots of elements to the value judgment, such as continuity, the treatment of special subfields, and speed of publication. No one study can be conclusive. The decisions are a very individual matter and should be dealt with by individuals. As a scientist you have it in your power to control the future of scientific journals. There are both short- and long-term strategies that you can pursue. You can start immediately. Decide on the value of the publications that you read and contribute to. Are they worth what your library is paying for them? If not, urge that your library discontinue its subscription. The second thing you can do is refuse to submit papers to such a publication. Make your judgment of price and value a primary consideration in all of your interactions. Your paper in a marginal journal helps the journal more than it helps you. If you can find another source, don't reference papers in such journals. Don't allow your name to be used with a journal that does not represent values and qualities that you can actively support. You may be surprised at how important your name is on the masthead of a journal. You may be flattered, but in putting it there you are causing the library a problem. If just one good paper appears in each issue, that journal may be viewed as critical. Don't let your papers or your name keep a bad journal alive. Let's consider preparing regular reports on indicators of the value/price relationship for journals. We should be monitoring and reporting on such indicators as price per 1,000 characters, price per citation, time from submission to publication, and impact factor. We must take care, however, not to be misled by statistics. Bad ones that are frequently cited include price per title and percentage increase in price per title. These take no account of the size of the publication. Another problem is comparability. There are many factors that affect comparability that should be considered when using any indicator. For example, impact factors vary with the size of a discipline's constituency and perhaps with the discipline's referencing practices. As a long-term strategy, we must consistently pursue value and buy rationally. A major asset of the scientific community is ownership, through its scientific societies, of at least half, if not more, of United States scientific publishing. It is incumbent on the officers, directors, and members of these societies to assure both that the publications produced by their societies are of the finest value available and that these publications are financially secure. We must meet the highest standards of review. We must produce our publications in a way that serves the needs of the community they serve without wasting resources. We must price and sell the publication so that societies and their publication programs are financially secure and able to expand to meet new technological, economic, and societal challenges. Societies must become aggressive and highly competitive. Our scientific journal publication enter- prise, both for profit and not-for-profit, is locked in a struggle with large conglomerates that have very little interest in scientific communication per se. Their interest is in profit. I believe we can win this struggle, but the next 10 years are likely to be extremely difficult for us. There will be temptations to take short-term gains by making arrangements with these goliaths. There will be suggestions that government take a larger role. I say it is time for us to become price conscious. It is time for us to become rational buyers. It is time for us to begin to help solve the library crisis. But, even if we do solve the value for price problem, will that solve the library crisis? Probably not. Remember that increases in population, changes in technology, and decreasing institutional subscriptions are still going to keep costs ahead of inflation. In particular, improving the access to the increasing tide of material that is coming out will require considerable effort. At some point, we may have to recognize that we need more money for the information system. When we can honestly say we need more, when we have looked at the values and decided that we must have something we cannot afford, then it is time for us to go out and get more money. Scientists - as contributors to and purchasers of scientific journals - must begin to accept the responsibility that comes with the complete control they have of the system. Only then will there be any chance of moving toward the goal of maximizing the accessibility of research results to scientists worldwide. Through the individual scientist's choice of publication outlet, he or she plays a pivotal role in determining which journals the library must have. No publisher or editor can create an outstanding journal without the support of discipline leaders. A.F. Spilhaus, Jr. is a geophysicist and executive director of the American Geophysical Union in Washington, D.C.

Scientists Should Just Say No To High-Cost, Low-Value Journals

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