Serials crisis

The term serials crisis has become common shorthand for the runaway cost increases of many scholarly journals [ [http://www.unc.edu/scholcomdig/whitepapers/panitch-michalak.html The term “serials crisis” has come to be common shorthand for the runaway costs of many acadmic journals, particularly htose in the areas of science, technology, and medicine (STM) ] ] . The crisis is a result of the cost rising much faster than the rate of inflation [http://www.ala.org/ala/alctscontent/alctspubsbucket/alctsresources/general/periodicalsindex/05USPPI.pdf] ; the cost per journal and the number of such journals proliferates, while the funds available to the libraries remains stationary in real terms.

Problems and causes

The cost of scientific journals is increasing faster than the inflation rate. There are many factors. Among them are:
*Each journal title is a unique commodity and cannot be replaced in a library collection by another less expensive journal on the same subject as one could with many other products. The publisher thus acts as a monopolist.
*In general the cost of academic facilities and services increases faster than the inflation rate.
*As libraries cancel journal subscriptions, many of the fixed costs remain the same and must be paid by the remaining subscribers.
*Currency Exchange rates can serve to increase the unpredictability of serial prices. For example, many of the publishers of scientific journals are in Europe and as the United States dollar has weakened in relation to the currencies of Europe, the prices of journals to US libraries has increased disproportionately. When the United States dollar is strengthening, the prices of journals elsewhere increases disproportionately.
* The increasing domination of scholarly communication by commercial publishers, whose journals are more costly than those of academic societies [http://www.hss.caltech.edu/~mcafee/Journal/Summary.pdf] .
* The increasing concentration of commercial publishing from the continuing merger of commercial publishers. Due to:
*the publish or perish practices of academic institutions, now increasingly found not only in universities, but in non-research colleges and junior colleges,
*the explosion in the number of academic subfields,
*the advance of research and higher education in other than the traditional countries,
*the increase in many countries of people with higher academic degrees
*the increasing complexity of technology

At the same time, libraries have seen collections budgets decline in real terms compared to the United States Periodical Price index. As well as other library expenditures such as computers and networking equipment.

Solutions, alternatives and developments

To contain costs, while maintaining access to the latest scholarly research for their users, libraries are:
*increasingly borrowing journals from one another (see interlibrary loan)
*purchasing single articles from commercial document suppliers (instead of subscribing to whole journals)
*canceling subscriptions to the least used or least cost-effective journals
*switching from printed to electronic copies of journals (except when the publisher charges more for the electronic edition)
*joining in co-operative consortial purchase arrangements for journals,
*engaging in collaborative ventures to bringing together a few titles and publishers to create lower-cost online journals with reasonable subscription terms,
*encouraging various schemes for obtaining free access to journals
*supporting journals that use other publishing models, such as
**open access journals where the reader of a journal or the library at their institution does not need to pay a subscription or pay per view charge to read the articles published in that journal. This free access is achieved through a number of basic models:
*** First, is the publication fee model in which a funding agency, university, or the author(s) of an article pays a publication fee per article to ensure that it will be available to readers free of charge. Sometimes these journals will waive the publication fee if the author cannot pay. Clearly, however, this model is unsuitable for journals who approach leading scientists and ask them to author review content. The publisher cannot ask the author to pay (since they were invited to write the review), nor can they charge the reader under open access - and yet the professional editing of the document and the creation (page-laying/graphics/web-hosting) of the journal still has to be paid for. Scholarly peer-reviewed reviews are integral to the scientific discourse, and the publication fee model offers no solution to this issue.
***Second, some open access journals receive institutional subsidies or are grant funded so as to make it unnecessary for the journal to charge publication or subscription fees. However, this reliance on money from interested parties could conceivably lead to journals being forced to follow the agenda of the funding agency or government and thus may compromise editorial independence. It should be noted that much of research conducted and submitted to scholarly journals throughout the world is funded by the aforementioned interested parties.
***Third, publications funded by advertisements. Clearly a solution for high profile journals - though it is unclear whether a scientist would want branding splashed all over their scholarly paper - but not a solution for smaller society journals who could not attract enough advertising to cover costs.
**hybrid open access journals are traditional subscription based journals that permit authors to pay a fee to make their article available free of charge to the reader. This gives the author the advantages of open access to their published research but subscribers continue to pay subscription fees for such journals to gain access to the restricted content. This model has been adopted by many of the commercial publishers and large scholarly societies. It has the potential to increase revenues for the publisher, while at the same time subjecting libraries to continuing price inflation. This model doesn't serve to end the serials crisis -- unless the subscription price for a hybrid journal should decline in some fashion related to the proportion of the journal that has become open access. Oxford University Press announced on July 25th, 2007 price reductions for 2008 calendar year online-only subcriptions for its "Oxford Open Journals" [http://www.oxfordjournals.org/oxfordopen/2008%20online-only%20price%20adjustments.doc] , however, in many cases these subscription prices are still higher than 2007 calendar year subscriptions [ [http://www.oxfordjournals.org/access_purchase/2007/institution_price_list.html Oxford Journals | Access & Purchase | Institutional Price List 2007 ] ] . The price reductions are only a reduction compared with the price Oxford University Press would have charged in the absence of Open Access content. Springer Verlag has outlined its intention to develop pricing based on changes in the proportion of Open Choice (TM) articles as compared to the subscription model artilces, [ [http://www.springer.com/west/home/open+choice?SGWID=4-40359-12-115391-0&teaserId=55557&CENTER_ID=115382 Open Choice Journals, Academic Books & Online Media | Springer ] ] Hypothetically, this model could serve as an intermediary step in a switch to the widescale adoption of the open access journal model - although whether such a switch is wanted, or whether it would be an evolution or an improvement to the status quo remains a matter of public debate.
**delayed open access journals, are traditional subscription based journals that provide open access after an embargo period from the initial publication date. A subscription or an article purchase would be required to read the materials before this embargo period ends. These journals may additionally deposit their publications in open repositories. Many scholarly society journals have adopted this model. While this model increases access to scholarly research literature for many, libraries that continue subscriptions end up paying for access to a rolling file of the most recent material of the embargo period.
*exploring other mechanisms for the publication of research.

Journals such as Nature and Science carry a great deal of professional editorial and journalistic content for which the authors could not realistically be asked to pay. While open access serves to reduce the financial burden on libraries for access to primary research, it does not address the issue of continuing the scientific discourse beyond the publication of primary research. In fact, if scientific papers were to be made OA, journals such as Nature and Science would continue to offer subscription-based access to their editorial content, although likely at a reduced price.

In an case, if the pay to publish model were widely accepted, or the hybrid model resulted in a reduction in site license costs, libraries would probably see their funding cut drastically as governments and institutions redirect the money they spend on 'reading' journals into 'writing' them (switch from pay to read to pay to publish). Such a funding cut is not often considered in the equation and would be as unpopular with librarians as paying for journals is.

ee also

* Library and information science
* Open access

References

External links

* [http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/overview.htm Open Access Overview] Peter Suber
* [http://cogsci.ecs.soton.ac.uk/%7Eharnad/THES/thes.html The Post-Gutenberg Galaxy: How to Get There from Here] Stevan Harnad (dead link)
* [http://ezinfo.ucs.indiana.edu/~harter/harter-asis96midyear.html Electronic Journals and Scholarly Communication: A Citation and Reference Study] Stephen P. Harter and Hak Joon Kim
* [http://www.lmcp.jussieu.fr/icsu/Information/Proc_0296/index.html Electronic Publishing in Science] International Council of Scientific Unions/UNESCO
* [http://www.ucsc.edu/scomm/ New Horizons in Scholarly Communication] Librarians Association of the University of California
* [http://www.virtualschool.edu/mon/Academia/DemiseScholarlyJournals.html Tragic Loss or Good Riddance? The Impending Demise of Traditional Scholarly Journals] Andrew M. Odlyzko
* [http://arl.cni.org/scomm/osap/doom/Doomsday.html The Library 'Doomsday Machine'] Anne Okerson and Kendon Stubbs (dead link)
* [http://www.lib.uwaterloo.ca/society/crisis.html The Crisis in Scholarly Publishing] University of Waterloo (Canada) Scholarly Societies Project
* [http://www.coe.uh.edu/~brobin/Educom95/EducomJW/index.html Bridging the Gap Between Traditional and Electronic Scholarly Publishing] Jerry Willis
* [http://www.unc.edu/scholcomdig/whitepapers/panitch-michalak.html The Serials Crisis] A White Paper for the UNC-Chapel Hill Scholarly Communications Convocation, Judith M. Panitch and Sarah Michalak, January, 2005
* [http://www.ala.org/ala/alctscontent/alctspubsbucket/alctsresources/general/periodicalsindex/05USPPI.pdf U.S Periodical Prices -2005] American Library Association