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 | Library Journal's Periodicals Price Survey 2008: Open Access Hits Critical Mass
Open access has moved from revolutionary rhetoric to an impending reality, note Lee C. Van Orsdel and Kathleen Born in Library Journal's April 15 article "Embracing Openness: Periodicals Price Survey 2008,". But don't expect to see positive results reflected in your serials bill any time soon. "The open access movement suggests dramatic changes are coming to the journals marketplace," the authors acknowledge. "But if you ask the typical librarian, it still looks pretty much like a serials crisis."
Prices for "subscribed journals" for 2008, driven by a range of factors, including a weak dollar, increased "nine to ten" percent, the authors report. That's up from previous years. And things aren't looking much better for next year. "Given the continuing slide of the dollar, expect increases in 2009 to approach 10 percent overall."
Nevertheless, things are changing as open access continues to make big strides, from the successful passage of the NIH public access mandate to further experimentation with open access by commercial publishers. But no open access foray, the authors write, has spoken louder than Harvard University's historic faculty mandate. Although publishers have fought against the mandate at the NIH, reaction to the Harvard measure has been noticeably muted, they note. "Perhaps because the Harvard mandate was created by the very scholars whose work fuels the current publishing system," Born and Van Orsdel observe. "The new edict threatens the traditional order of things but in such a prestigious setting and with such lofty idealism that it is hard for publishers to criticize." If other universities follow suit, they add, the Harvard mandate could be "the hole in the dike through which a deluge may pour."
Meanwhile, the commercial marketplace for scientific journals is facing some serious decisions. A recent Outsell study indicates that in 2006, 53 percent of the $16.1 billion periodicals market was pulled in by ten publishers. Five of the top six, meanwhile-Elsevier, Springer ACS, Wiley, and Blackwell-only showed single-digit growth. The largest of those publishers, Elsevier is responding to such less-than-desired profits with cost-cutting, as well as some major investments and divestments-including the sale of Reed Business Information, the company that owns LJ and Publishers Weekly. "You have to wonder to what degree Elsevier intends to extract itself from scholarly publishing," the authors muse, "and whether other for-profit publishers would follow Elsevier's lead."
A number of bright harbingers lighten the overall picture. The pace of "publishers' experimentation" with open access is picking up, and more publishers are examining simpler pricing policies, meaning that at some point in the not-so-distant future it may not take months or even years to negotiate an access deal for journal content. But getting there will take some more time and effort. "When you push past the hype," the authors write, "most publishers don't object to open access as concept so much as they object to it as a business model."
The complete Periodicals Pricing Survey 2008 is available in the April 15 issue of LJ.
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STM: No Such Thing as Free Publishing
Following a wave of recent high profile developments in the open access movement, including the recent Harvard University faculty mandate and the April 7 implementation of the NIH's public access policy, the International Association of Scientific, Technical and Medical Publishers (STM) has released a position paper on STM publishing asserting the "value added" by publishers in the current system of scholarly publishing and questioning emerging alternative models.
The report's executive summary states that publishers "welcome the cooperation" of stakeholders, including governments, libraries, researchers, institutions, and other service providers in extending access to research. However, the report flatly states, "there is no publishing for free."
Indeed, if the report makes a key point it is that STM publishing-from large commercial publishers to university presses and scholarly societies-is big business. The paper reports that the journals industry numbers roughly 2000 publishers worldwide, publishing some 23,000 scholarly journals, employing 90,000 people, and producing 1.4 million articles annually-a number that grows each year by as much as 3.5 percent. The industry has invested heavily in going electronic, STM adds, and annual article downloads number some 1.4 billion annually and are "growing exponentially."
The position paper also addresses both pricing issues and the rising open access movement. "Journals pricing is a hot topic of debate," the paper acknowledges, noting that "perceived" high prices have "driven the discussions around open access." Corporate profits, however, are not a problem, but rather a major source of "reinvestment and innovation." The paper puts serials inflation on a host of other factors, including: the number of new articles published annually, the length of articles, increased special requirements such as graphics, value added attributes like linking and searching, currency fluctuation, inflation of raw materials and labor costs, and the inefficiency of new journals when they start up. It puts the average cost of producing an article within a broad range of between $1500 and $4000. Unfortunately, during this same period, the paper notes, "library journal acquisition budgets have not grown accordingly," with budgets up less than one percent annually.
The April release of the "position paper" seems timed to counter headlines made by open access advocates in recent months. The paper raises concerns that current archiving mandates-such as the NIH's-do not adequately budget for the long-term and could undermine science publishing. "There is strong evidence," the paper notes, "that the free availability of any post-peer review version in systematic subject repositories or interlinked institutional repositories will undermine the ability to sell subscriptions." It also cites "serious risks" in terms of quality control. To evaluate the current STM landscape, the paper says STM has partnered with stakeholders to submit a funding request to the European Commission for a study to determine whether "large-scale archiving" will affect the viability of journal publishing.
While the paper asserts that STM publishers are mostly "neutral" as to which business models to use, it puts forth five key criteria for any new models: be "truly sustainable," ensure quality, preserve peer review, recognize the value added by publishers, and allow authors to choose where to publish.
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| Library of Congress, Saudi University Form WDL Partnership
The Library of Congress (LC) and Saudi Arabia's soon-to-open King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) this week announced the World Digital Library (WDL) partnership to promote scholarly research about manuscripts and other rare and unique materials relating to science in the Arab and Islamic worlds.
Library officials said the partnership will enable the LC and KAUST to jointly develop the history of science in the Arab and Islamic worlds "as a major theme" in the WDL. An ambitious international effort launched in 2007, WDL aims to "make available on the Internet, free of charge and in multilingual format, significant primary materials from cultures around the world." Sponsored by the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), the WDL is scheduled to go live in early 2009.
LC and KAUST will work over the summer to organize an international advisory committee, which will have its first meeting in the fall of 2008. KAUST, an international, graduate-level research university, will also open in 2009 in Saudi Arabia, joining the National Library and Archives of Egypt and the Bibliotheca Alexandrina as WDL partners in the region.
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| CSU, Channel Islands Christens New Library
The California State University (CSU) library system has officially christened a new jewel-the $62 million John Spoor Broome Library at the new Channel Islands (CI) campus, in Camarillo, was dedicated at a ceremony this month. The library is named for its first major donor, a local rancher and philanthropist who gave $5 million to the fledgling campus in 1999. Construction began in October of 2005 and wrapped up recently. CSUCI opened its doors in August 2002, as the 23rd member of the CSU system. CSUCI president Richard Rush told more those gathered for the event that the library was a "symbol of this university's and this community's commitment to higher education."
The 137,000-square-foot library was designed by renowned architect Lord Norman Foster, and is considered the architectural centerpiece of the picturesque new campus. It currently houses roughly 75,000 bound volumes, and as a library born in the digital age, it features digital resources and collections and collaborative learning spaces, with a number of classroom and meeting spaces.
The library's signature element is a large, central reading room with a translucent glass ceiling over the building's third floor, which offers natural light to much of the building. Outside, a canopy extends over a plaza and a reflecting pool. CSUCI officials describe the new library as a beautiful melding of styles, as well as functionality-"an integration of existing structures-Mission Revival and Spanish Colonial Revival architecture built in the 1930s-with clean lines and the open space of glass, metal, and concrete"
The library also includes many "green" features, including carpet that is "100 percent recyclable and has a 100 percent recycled backing; natural lighting; and the use of existing structures, "which means less new materials were needed for construction and less solid [waste] was sent to a landfill during construction." Paul Adalian, dean of the University Library, said the campus community now has a library that fits its current needs and "can expand to meet the needs of a growing student population for many years to come."
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Library Journal Academic Newswire
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