"We send Science around the world"
"We send Science around the world"
With the increasing number of subscription cancellations of scientific publications by university libraries, publishers are facing an economic challenge: how to continue to publish quality research at the same time subscription revenues and financial support are on the decline.
This month, library consultant Albert Henderson addresses some areas of concern for today's scientific researchers and publishers, including the growing number of researchers, areas of specialization, and information along with library budget cuts.
Currently serving as the editor of the Publishing Research Quarterly in Bridgeport, Connecticut, Mr. Henderson has organized a campaign to change federal legislation to have university overhead assessments paid directly to university libraries rather than into the general university overhead fund. He is currently circulating a petition and resolution to editors of scientific journals.
We would like to thank Mr. Henderson for his contribution to this issue and for his continuing efforts in support of scientific publishing. We hope this information has been helpful to you. Should you have any questions or comments regarding this subject, please contact Mr. Henderson.
Also included with this newsletter is a list of Allen Press and Allen Marketing and Management services. If you would like more information, or a quote on any of these services, please complete and return the enclosed form. If you have questions, please feel free to contact me directly.
—John Breithaupt
Division Director
Allen Marketing & Management
by Albert Henderson
Consulting and Training
Editor, Publishing Research Quarterly
The Editor's annual report usually provides quantitative information about the number of transactions involving manuscripts, referees, and subscribers that support the statement of income and expenditures. It also may include a forecast that can be used for setting budgets and prices. The field of publishing research can point to some major "marketplace" trends that may help interpret the Editor's report and, for association publishers, clarify concerns beyond the scope of a single publication. This year the research community faces considerable economic challenges. By comparing notes, we can address common issues more perceptively and effectively.
Many publication boards share the position of balancing the interests of researchers and those of the librarians. Research information systems are producer-oriented, being driven by the activity and output of researchers. Although many users are also producers, it is the producers who determine where and when information is released. As the research community grows, so does the generation of and need for information as well as the complexity of the average researcher's information problem.
There are fewer and fewer libraries where one can browse an up-to-date and comprehensive assembly of books, journals and reports. Library collections have not grown at a rate parallel to the growth of research. A pattern of subscription cancellations has prevailed for the last 20 years while the number of researchers has more than doubled. This contradiction is rooted in the economic organization of the information system: its economic foundation depends on librarians who neither produce nor use most research publications.
University librarians once worked closely with research and teaching faculty to determine a library's budget. Librarians' contact with users/producers in the modern university setting has been buffered by an enormous bureaucracy. They have been beset by competition for funds both from the faculties they serve and the administrators to whom they report. As a result, librarians have less purchasing power.
Over the last 20 years, university managers have cut library budgets while increasing administrative expenditures at an unparalleled rate. In 1989 the Association of College and Research Libraries abandoned its Standard for University Libraries which asserted that poor collections could hamper research. Recently, the top 120 North American research libraries have purchased 100,000 fewer books each year. Such losses have contributed substantially to the inflation of subscription prices.
In every discipline, the increase in researchers leads to an economic demand to increase the total number of pages published. It also leads to demands for new publications when existing journals are unwilling or unable to cater to emerging areas of specialization. It is the librarian, not the researcher, who has discretion over actual spending and holds a powerful role in the marketplace for information. Attempting to balance these interests, a publication's board is most likely to choose: (A) to minimize price increases by extending coverage to new specialties while risking the dilution of individual users' interests; or, (B) to limit price increases and the number of pages by narrowing coverage and excluding segments of producers and users. A variation of choice (A) is to "bundle" several publications in a single discounted 'prix fixe' rate more attractive than ordering 'a la carte'. Neither strategy has abated losses in circulation except when applied to member and personal subscription rates.
In Mertonian terms, the rules of the research society are no longer controlled solely by the researchers. Because of the emergence of a powerful and willful bureaucracy, publication boards must often consider the information interests of producers and users after meeting the economic needs of librarians or, at least, within those constraints. Authors would prefer that their articles were read when published, rather than be issued in an 'omnibus' publication and discovered mainly through the use of secondary information sources. Users would prefer a journal focused on their interests that they could scan and read cover-to-cover. In this market climate, addressing these needs by spinning off or starting a new journal means a considerable investment. The library subscriptions are often needed to sustain basic costs and may not materialize.
Similarly, many publishers question the wisdom of investing in unproven electronic distribution formats for a market yet to be established, in parallel with traditional distribution. This means diluting resources that might serve researchers better if applied to editorial content.
A very substantial part of the technology question has to do with copying. Everyone agrees that information should flow freely. However, publishing requires financial support which, for the most part, must come from the marketplace: i.e., libraries. The introduction of the modern photocopying technology in the 1960s and the recent proliferation of a digital generation of that technology have excused, in the eyes of many university administrators, the downgrading of their library collections. Many publishers have heeded the prediction of Carnegie Mellon economists by sharply increasing the royalty fees charged for document delivery photocopying and pursuing the enforcement of copyrights. The unanswered question has to do with academic libraries that cancel subscriptions and offer their faculty interlibrary "borrowing" (often a violation of CONTU guidelines established in connection with the 1976 Copyright Act).
Summarizing these trends raises questions of quality. Standards of quality depend on the information infrastructure, a term that today includes Internet newsgroups and e-mail, tele-meetings, "invisible colleges," electronic indexes and abstracts, libraries and other traditional elements. Researchers are limited by the capability of their information infrastructure. The capacity of new technology to enhance productivity is similarly hindered. At stake is not only the editorial product but the actual productivity of research and the effectiveness of education. Editors attempt to achieve reliability in the peer review process by sending a submission to two or more referees; however, the independence of the referees is compromised by its reliance on a common infrastructure which provides coverage that has systematically been curtailed. The growth of the research community has resulted in quantities of "scientific evidence" that are so massive and scattered that knowledge on a given topic often can be neither screened nor evaluated by a single expert. In most cases, the index services cannot be trusted to provide a bibliography that is relevant and comprehensive. Further, if evidence collected by many studies is correct, a critical examination of the published research in nearly any field will probably eliminate 25 to 75 percent as trivial or wrong! For example, a few years ago the Canadian automobile insurance industry hired a McGill University task force to provide a best evidence synthesis of research on "whiplash-associated-disorders." The 34-member task force screened 10,382 titles identified in searches of MEDLINE and other sources. Only 294 articles survived the first cut. Of the 232 articles that were then rejected by teams of specialists who independently examined each article, 76 percent were judged relevant but failed because the results were not considered valid. In its summary, the task force emphasized the need for more rigorous peer review of research proposals, clearer statements of purpose, appropriate methodology, and other such criticisms aimed at the preparation of the research. It is also clear by inference that, in order to identify and define the most useful lines of research, to adopt the most appropriate methodology and analysis, and to avoid duplication; today's researcher must often engage a task-force review of the enormous literature or risk resources on work that may be judged harshly.
The contribution of information to research productivity is a particularly timely topic. The U.S. Congress appears to be planning a 40 percent reduction in financial support of research within the next few years. This reduction in funding should behoove research directors to allocate more resources to understanding the research literature before plunging into laboratory or field work. Publishers can assist by eliciting more review articles that evaluate and summarize the state of research. Publishers can also eliminate the duplication of labor by seeking out, standardizing and compiling laboratory and field data that may be of use to many researchers. In order for publishers to advance these information advantages, however, the vitality of the marketplace must be restored.
The U.S. government has not formulated a modern policy that addresses science information either as a resource or as the work product of its $11 billion annual investment in academic research. Vannevar Bush addressed the role of universities to conserve knowledge. He pledged financial support of infrastructure essential for universities to carry out basic research. The concept was lost in what the Congressional Research Service found to be a confusion of special interests. As a result, the 1992 President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology report on Research-Intensive Universities omits any mention of libraries. The only connection between government science policy and university libraries has been a short paragraph in the arcane regulations governing reimbursement of "indirect overhead" expenditures connected with Federal research grants. Our examination of the history of OMB Circular A-21, as this document is called, suggests that it was designed for the convenience of administrators rather than for the underwriting of essential resources. For instance, many universities told their libraries to cancel thousands of subscriptions to science journals in 1989 through 1991 after a devaluation of the U.S. dollar because there was "no money." The recent slip in the value of the U.S. dollar below 1.5 deutche mark will surely result in additional cancellations of subscriptions by academic libraries this year.
Prior to World War II, the U.S. imported most of its technology. Recent studies reported by the National Science Board indicate that U.S. researchers are less familiar with the world literature than their foreign counterparts (who author over 60 percent of mainstream science articles). The continued failure of the policy expressed in OMB Circular A-21 to make adjustments should be of concern to every scientist and scientific association.
To draw attention to this "policy vacuum," researchers have formed an ad hoc committee. At this point, approximately 400 scientists and other researchers have endorsed a petition requesting policy reforms connected with government support of university libraries. Many also have circulated a resolution supporting better funding of libraries on their own campuses. While this area of concern is probably beyond the scope of any publication board's activity, it is central to the effective dissemination of information espoused in the charters of many societies and can be expressed by every academic researcher.
The vast complexity of available information and information sources in conjunction with the growing constraints of library budgets have brought us to a precarious point. To steady the sway, journal publishers must work as a community to set quality standards for published work and demand adherence to them. Publishers must continue to demonstrate excellence in the traditional journal product and show its value to both association members and purchasing agents.
Ed.—If you'd like to be part of Mr. Henderson's petition drive, please feel free to contact him at the address below.
Albert Henderson is a principal in Henderson Associates Training and Consulting where he offers professional hands-on management and marketing experience in publishing. His career spans over 25 years during which he was director of publications for the American Solar Energy Society, vice president and treasurer of the British Book Centre, and editor of Johnson Reprint Corporation, a division of Academic Press.
He has lectured on publishing to classes at NYU and SUNY-Albany. His articles and letters have appeared in Against the Grain, Association Management, Book Research Quarterly, CBE Views, Chronicle of Higher Education, Circulation Management, Contemporary Psychology, IEEE Spectrum, Learned Publishing, Library Journal, New York Times, Newsletter on Serials Pricing Issues, Online Review, Physics Today, Scholarly Publishing, Science and Technology Libraries, The Scientist, Serials Librarian, Small Press, and many others. He currently serves as editor of publishing Research Quarterly and secretary for the Committee for the Preservation of Scholarly and Academic Information Resources.
Address for correspondence:
Albert Henderson
2423 Noble Station
Bridgeport, CT 06608-0423
Tel.: 203-367-1555
Fax: 203-380-1703
e-mail: 70244.1532@compuserve.com