Management for Research Libraries Cooperation (Papers from the Association of American Universities and ARL (Association of Research Libraries) Program for Electronic Publishing and Shared Global Resources)

Citation

Revill, D. (2002), "Management for Research Libraries Cooperation (Papers from the Association of American Universities and ARL (Association of Research Libraries) Program for Electronic Publishing and Shared Global Resources)", New Library World, Vol. 103 No. 1/2, pp. 72-75. https://doi.org/10.1108/nlw.2002.103.1_2.72.1

Simultaneously published as Journal of Library Administration, Vol. 29, No. 3/4, 2000.

This volume covers the history of the Research Libraries Project which was initiated by the Association of American Universities (AAU), a body representing 58 major US research and educational institutions, the members being their chancellors, presidents or provosts. The Association of Research Libraries (ARL) was invited to take part in 1992.

The motive was a financial one – an attempt to halt the spiralling prices of serials that have led to fewer subscriptions at higher costs and an associated decline in monograph acquisitions. These rises are charted on p. 85 (1986‐1993), p. 117 (the same chart 1986‐1993) and p. 242 (1986‐1996). They present a picture very familiar to UK librarians.

The cause of this problem is seen as arising, largely, from academic staff and researchers surrendering their copyrights to commercial journals, thus obliging their academic institutions to buy back this information, as journal subscriptions, electronic licences or document delivery charges, all at inflated prices. It is argued that the circle needs to be broken either by institutions retaining some copyrights, greater use of university presses, the creation of alternative (and cheaper) paper or electronic equivalents to existing commercial journals, a requirement being imposed on federally‐funded research that it be published in a publicly accessible electronic repository, and other means. The National Science Foundation is quoted as estimating that 36 per cent of scientific papers are by US authors and about two‐thirds of these are based in higher education (p. 119). So the maximum influence US HE could exert amounts to some 24 per cent of the total. Would this be enough to change the culture, and the various task forces recognised that it requires a cultural change, even given that the whole could be diverted from current channels?

The work acknowledges that there are problems in recreating, in an electronic environment, editorial and peer review processes and systems for distribution, indexing and preservation/archiving.

At the heart of the matter are intellectual property rights (IPR) and who is to own them. “Universities have given little attention to intellectual property governed by copyright law even though copyrighted property is used intensively in the classroom, library and laboratory” (p. 152). The IPR policies of some universities are examined and found to be contradictory in places, not utilising existing rights fully, confusing and generally wanting. I would bet that much the same could be said of UK universities.

One can see that, too often, such matters are regarded as annoyances and administrative distractions and are left to lower‐level staff.

On p. 112, it is stated that: “The economic impact of new models of scientific and technical information management is not fully predictable”. It can be argued that aiming for a reduction in universities’ information costs (generation, publication, distribution, and use) is unlikely to be successful ultimately, in that demand will almost certainly rise to once again outstrip supply and other areas, especially computing, will absorb any “savings” – and how will one know that there have been savings? A comparison of last year’s journals costs against those of the current year is too simplistic without some means of assessing the adequacy of the collection, and its associated costs, in the first place. It is all complicated by the many means now available for acquiring information – purchase, borrowing, leasing, document delivery and the new genie let out of the bottle – costs per use/user, site – the electronic meter running. Such considerations are insufficiently addressed in this volume. Nevertheless, one can only applaud this high level bid to do something.

Three task forces were formed. The Acquisitions and Distribution of Foreign Language and Area Studies Task Force concentrated initially on Latin American, Japanese and German materials to meet the problems of declining foreign acquisitions at a time when the world has gone global. Whatever happened to the Universal Availability of Publications (UAP) programme, where the basic idea was that if every country could control, list and make available its own output, then no country need aim at comprehensive coverage of another’s “bibliographic” production?

The Task Force on a National Strategy for Scientific and Technical Information (STI) looked at the scholarly communication process and how it is changing in the light of electronic developments. Three interesting models were postulated – the “classical” model (basically print based), the “modernized” (where automation of catalogues and document delivery as well as e‐journals happen) and the “emergent”, where collaboration among scholars fundamentally changes roles and means. These models are “not used in a predictive or prescriptive sense” (p. 105) but more as Weberian “ideal types”. There is a nice section analysing the pros and cons of the three models in terms of functions and attributes of performance (pp. 130‐43).

The third task force was on IPR in an electronic environment. where the argument is for the creation of alternative forms of publication, bypassing, and in competition with, commercial journals, the retention of some IP rights by universities and their staff and the possible greater use of university presses. This has led to the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition, launched in Europe, in July 2001, which fulfils the aim of offering new journals as alternatives to high priced commercial ones (SPARC).

While an interesting read, it gets a little repetitive. Dates at the head of each paper would have helped the narrative and have assisted the reader in evaluating the current status and relevance of the content. Some more editorial care could also have been shown – for example, in the first four pages, “finding” is used three times instead of, what one supposes is intended, “funding”. Spell checkers do not find such errors. The items which appear to be verbatim accounts of meetings could also have been seriously trimmed or omitted.

More details about SPARC are available at: www.arl.org/sparc