Kansas Provost Explains His Proposal to Reduce the Cost of Scholarly Journals
Staff -- Library Journal, 3/9/1999
This past October at ARL's Membership Meeting U. of Kansas Provost, Dr. David Shulenburger, presented his solution for bringing down the cost of scholarly journals: make all scholarship part of the public domain. Shulenburger proposes that when a manuscript prepared by a faculty member at an American institution is accepted for publication by a scholarly journal, a portion of the copyright of that manuscript would be retained for inclusion in a single, publicly accessible repository, after a 90-day lag following publication in the journal. According to Shulenburger, free or low-cost access to such a repository would diminish the ability of publishers to charge high prices for journals. Shulenburger talks to LJ's Academic Newswire about why his proposal would work and how it's being received. LJ: If libraries still have to pay to get the information in the first 90 days, why do you believe that this will bring down the cost of journals? LJ: Has the proposal changed at all since you presented it in October? LJ: You say in your proposal that authors might berequired by federal law to transmit their articles to a national repository.Have you talked to any legislators about the odds of passing such a law? LJ: Have you talked to any commercial or society publishers about the idea? LJ: What kind of response have you seen in universities? LJ: Will this proposal work with organizations like SPARCor do you see it as something that would make SPARC unnecessary? LJ: How are you promoting the proposal? This article originally appeared in Library Journal's Academic Newswire. For more information about the Academic Newswire, see http://www.bookwire.com/ljdigital/newswire/newswire.html.
DS: I 'm certain it would because there's some price at which everyone would wait. I think that some extraordinarily high-priced journals would have to come down in their prices. The only concern is that 90 days might not be long enough for some low-priced journals to stay available so perhaps we would need to make it 120 days or some longer period. It would have to be a long enough period so that the journals that are modestly priced would still have subscribers. Clearly we don't want to drive journals out of business because they provide too valuable a service.
DS: The substance of the proposal hasn't changed. There's been some sharpening. I need to make it really clear that this would only apply to scholarly journals not to other kinds of publications.... Also, clearly this proposal ought not to deal just with the U.S. community -- it should be expanded to the world as it is possible. I recently addressed the U.S. academic community because getting something like this through is complicated enough. But it's a global problem.
DS: No, and the reason I haven't is that we need some consensus in the academic world before we go forward. I've been speaking to other groups and hoping that publicity from ARL will help bring about some consensus. It would simply be premature to talk to legislators.
DS: No, but I suspect commercial publishers would be unhappy with the proposal and probably some society publishers would also be unhappy. But it's also premature at this stage.
DS: The response I've gotten from library, faculty, and administrators alike thus far has been positive, though the concerns about the 90-day period and about the proposal being international came from this group. The thing I'm not getting is outrage from faculty membersabout tampering with their rights. Before authors could give away all oftheir copyrights. Now, we're essentially saying you can't give away theright forever -- and the reaction from faculty is one of understanding. Theyknow that this problem is real. I've been heartened by that. The fact isthat with this proposal faculty can still choose an outlet for publishing and that makes a difference.
DS: It probably would make SPARC less necessary. But SPARC is real and this is just a proposal. I certainly want SPARC to continue. The fact that they have relationships with professional groups to publish journals in key areas shows that they're making great progress. The only negative is that this is a tiny fraction of the number of journals so it is necessarily slow progress.
DS: I'm speaking to as many people as possible.... This notion of putting articles in public domain is not an original idea, but I'm pushing it because I believe it's time to get on with it now. The time is here. It's urgent.... I wish someone would seize this idea and run with it.
