Scholarly Publishing in an Electronic Era: International Yearbook of Library and Information Management 2004‐2005

Part 1 – Overview of scholarly publishing in the twenty‐first century

Chapter 1. This part consists of two chapters that set out the principal issues and indicate their significance. Rowland characterizes traditional publishing as change resistant until after the early 1990s when a number of initiatives began to evolve. These are noted as library consortia, new pricing structures, usage‐based subscriptions and open access publishing.

Rowland introduces the chapter with the key functions of the scholarly journal: priority, quality control, archival, and dissemination; and then moves on to factors that are driving change‐technological and commercial. In the mid‐1990s, the stage was set for scholarly journal literature to move to electronic publication on a large scale as was evident in consortia formation and the “Big Deal”. Questioning the rational and basis for the Big Deal in the face of accountability and usage came the need for usage statistics and smaller deals such as pay‐per‐view. Radical reforms in the scholarly communication system gained impetus from the new, free, electronic‐only journals that started in the early 1990s, in the name of open access.

Rowland concludes the chapter with speculations on the future of not‐for‐profit publishers in terms of sustainability of their operations in the context of open access. Two radical alternatives: the subversive proposal and the deconstructed journals were put forth. The quality control mechanism of the scholarly communication system has been attacked and some changes in the process are likely as more journals move to open peer review or open peer commentary.

Chapter 2. Dwelling on a shared challenge as the central theme of the chapter, Dr Wise outlines the commonality of the roles of the librarian and the publisher. And dare predict that both professions will be much more service‐oriented than content‐focused in future. It is his opinion that current debate about scholarly publishing and access to scholarly publishing literature has enhanced the profile of publishers and information professionals with key stakeholders in academia, government, and funding agencies. What needs underlining is that as the information chain evolves into a new model, we are finding that librarians and publishers have a great deal in common, and many benefits to derive from collaboration in meeting the challenges of scholarly publishing.

The common areas of concern shared by the two are given as copyrights and moral rights, e‐science, e‐learning, e‐commerce, and preservation. The chapter concludes with recommendations for funders, and the main stakeholders of the scholarly communication system.

Part 2 – Institutional perspectives on scholarly publishing

Chapter 3. Steele takes a librarian's perspective on scholarly publishing. He argues that the twenty‐first century has seen a transformation of the library' role in the access and storage of scholarly material and also in the creation and distribution of scholarly publishing. He urges librarians to become more active players, citing the case of library involvement in institutional repositories.

The rest of the chapter discusses the impact of STM publishing on university libraries, with subsections under the Big Deal, academic authors, the framework for scholarly publishing (specifically on the UK and Australian government reports), and the changing information frameworks of user populations. There are sections on the future of libraries … as museums, shopping malls, or bookshops. He asserted that the future will undoubtedly see a convergence of electronic publishing between libraries and bookstores particularly through virtual learning environments and the requirement to print off electronic material through “print on demand” facilities.

The closing sections cover institutional repositories, copyright and peer review, open access initiatives, and monograph and electronic scholarly publishing. The future of scholarly publishing is likely to be a hybrid one with a number of emerging models.

Chapter 4. John Cox provides a perspective on the challenges facing the publisher in the evolving scholarly publishing revolution. He presents scholarly publishing as a global business dominated by the USA, UK, and Europe and cautions the widening gap between the growing scholarly literature and library budgets. The merits and demerits of the Big Deal are also brought to light.

A brief on international subscription agents – RoweCom, Blackwell's, Faxon, Swets and EBSCO – introduces the emergence of online journal publishing which changed the role of subscription agents. This ushers in the challenge of open access publishing meant to remove the traditional journal subscription model. Open access journals form less than 5 per cent of current scientific journal literature (Ulrich's Periodicals Directory, 2004) (Prosser, p. 101). Revenue generation is through payment by author's institution or institutional annual membership fee. Two principal open access journal publishers are noted as Public Library of Science and BioMed Central.

Open archive, self archiving and institutional repositories are important components of the open access movement. However, Cox is concerned with uncertainties about the model.

Part 3 – Access and preservation initiatives in scholarly publishing

Chapter 5. The chapter discusses scholarly electronic publications from two perspectives – access and usability. It looks at the various channels of access, discusses issues and studies surrounding usability, and finally the major problems of access, with suggestions to resolve some of them. The web has facilitated the creation and the redesign of many information access channels yet information systems continue to be difficult to use. Usability issues bother on technical issues including interface design, retrieval mechanisms, and interoperability of multiple channels and databases. There is research evidence in human information behaviour showing that often users find it difficult to specify clearly their information needs. Chowdury presents a very detailed discussion on usability studies and guidelines covering user interfaces, digital libraries, and usability testing methods and criteria.

Chapter 6. The chapter on how open access will transform scholarly publishing traces the brief history of scholarly communication from the second half of the sevententh century. All went well till the second half of the twentieth century when the “serials crises” set in. According to Prosser: “The combination of institutional repositories and open access journals is increasingly being seen as giving libraries and researchers their first chance to change fundamentally the way that scientific information is communicated” (p. 103).

The situation today on the serials crisis and its origin is vividly given with the work of SPARC and SPARC Europe which champion the change in scholarly communication by advocating the need for change and advancing the benefits of change, as well as the mechanisms for recovering costs. SPARC and its partners have looked at the continued development of the internet and new electronic publishing tools and have asked whether it might no be possible to re‐engineer totally the scholarly communication process.

Self‐archiving and open access journals were identified as strategies that could be used to move towards a fairer, more equitable and more efficient scholarly communications system. Prosser says they meet three of the functions of the traditional journal of registration, availability (awareness), and archiving; leaving out certification or peer‐review, the mark of quality for readers, and validation for authors. The many benefits of institutional repositories are stated at the individual, institutional, and societal levels.

The chapter concludes with practical developments in the vision for a fair and efficient mechanism for scholarly communication. It identifies four open source software packages, the rising number of open access journals, made possible by SPARC, BioMed Central, PLoS, and DOAJ. It needs emphasizing that authors must put pressure on their funding bodies to provide grants for publication. To quote the Berlin Declaration by research funding bodies “Our mission … is not complete if information is not made widely and readily available to society” (p. 113). Prosser underscores the fact that there is a growing international momentum in favour of institutional repositories and open access journals and calls for all players in the communication process to take positive action to bring about change in the system of scholarly communication.

Chapter 7. Stephen Pinfield in his chapter on self‐archiving publications stresses its importance to revolutionalize scholarly communications. Harnad, cited by Pinfield, suggests that open access will free research literature from “toll‐gating access” in the form of conventional subscriptions, site licences and pay‐per view charges.

The rest of the chapter discusses the history of self‐archiving, benefits to the research community and the wider social and economic benefits, as well as technological problems associated with this genre mode of publishing. Institutional repositories as open access archives set up and run by organizations such as universities are discussed in detail. The barriers were identified as – quality control, intellectual property rights, unwillingness of some authors to change the status quo, and the lack of incentive for researchers to self‐archive. JISC funded self‐archiving initiatives in the UK, and unresolved issues in the field of self‐archiving conclude the chapter. Prominent among the issues needing attention are discipline differences, what is a publication, versioning, and digital preservation. Others are costing and funding models, and metadata standards. The future of self‐archiving is reviewed with much optimism.

Part 4 – Models and economics of scholarly publishing

Chapter 8. Provides the context of the printed book along with the emergence of the electronic book. Edwards points out that the last decade has seen the rapid expansion of e‐book publishing fuelled by considerable venture capital spent on digitization and fast growth of new workforces in fresh enterprises, mostly based in the USA. These include for example Taylor & Francis' digitization of a backlist of 15,000 titles in 2001.

The chapter presents the advantages of e‐books to include full text search capabilities, the user's ability to link up with other resources ad the control the user has over the way material is presented. Yet the physical attributes of the printed book win out over the computer screen, and there are technological experiments at manufacturing electronic book devices that mimic paper.

JISC‐sponsored research on the perceptions and attitudes of information professionals towards e‐books identified specific barriers and solutions to the uptake of e‐books in UK higher and further education and addressed the views of students, academics and librarians. The real growth area for e‐books is in textbooks, manuals, reference books and professional books, but questions remain as to whether the journal and monograph will eventually merge as form, and how to embed e‐books effectively into institutional learning to accommodate specific market needs of students.

Edwards presents a variety of economic models that have been tried in the e‐book marketplace, including ownership in perpetuity, pay‐per‐view, annual subscription, and short‐term licensing. These are clear challenges posed by e‐book to the printed book.

Chapter 9. The chapter reviews the economics of scientific and professional publishing. It attributes the changes in the scholarly communication system to digitization, online access, and distribution; tracing theses changes to the crisis in scholarly communication. Giving a very forthright synopsis of the crisis, Houghton notes that journal price increases led to cancellation and reduced purchasing as well as reduced access, and the shifting of monograph budgets to serials acquisition.

The very nature of the scholarly communication system is to blame as promotion, tenure, and funding allocations in universities and research institutions are often linked to publications in a few key journals, and to the monopoly power of the large commercial publishers. The emerging opportunities and future directions in the forma of open access challenge the assumptions of the traditional model. Houghton discusses current pricing models, which have included subscriptions, pay‐per‐use, advertiser supported distribution, author charges, and institutionally funded open archives.

Chapter 10. The chapter on usage statistics of publications held in libraries calls for meaningful and sufficient information as the basis for decision making about the relative values of different publications. Statistical information on the value of electronic resources is useful for librarians, vendors, and intermediaries.

Shepherd details the growing awareness of international efforts to develop acceptable global standards for measuring online usage of publications, for example the Project COUNTER initiative. Highlights are given of other significant initiatives and progress in online usage statistics such as ARL New Measures Initiative, E‐measures project of the University of Central England, ICOLC Guidelines for Statistical Measures, and NISO Forum on Performance Measures and Statistics for libraries.

Project COUNTER has been made viable by setting it up as an independent not‐for‐profit company called Counter Online Metrics. It has a six‐member governing board of directors and an executive committee. It specifies the requirements that vendors must met to have their usage reports designated COUNTER compliant. The main features of COUNTER cover definition of terms, data processing and auditing, usage reports, and report delivery. The first version‐Release 1 has been updated, with some amendments, to Release 2.

General comments

There are considerable overlaps between the chapters, which underline the common themes of open archives, journal crisis, repositories and models of publishing. Good points include: very copious and useful index and chapter references that are detailed enough to guide research into the topics discussed. Together with four earlier publications on Collection development, Information Services, Digital factors in library and information services, and Metadata applications and management, (all published by Facet), this volume indicates the trends that bind stakeholders in the scholarly communication process. A better structure of headings and subheading of the text could have improved reading. There are minor typos on pages xiv, and 149.