Editorial

Should Authors Pay Publishers? The Desperation of the New Paradigm

by Albert Henderson

A proposal to replace library subscriptions with author subsidies to solve the li- brary crisis and promote lnternet communications is flawed.

D istress over the growth of undisseminated research has spurred untold effort into devising rationales for universities not to pay the piper. The

latest subterfuge is bundled with electronic innovations and propagated in the pages of Nature and American Scientist. 1 Steven Harnad, Thomas J. Walker, and others have latched on to the concept of author subsidies--page charges, sub- mission fees, subventions, etc.--to replace subscriptions as the economic basis to deliver peer-reviewed literatures over the Internet. The central figure in this scheme is Harnad who backed up Walker's article as the dogmatically biased "moderator" of an online forum sponsored by Sigma Xi, publisher of American Scientist. Their proposal is that authors pay for publication, thus granting "free access to all." They promise to free the |earned world from "tolls" imposed by "Subscriptions, Site-Licenses, and Pay-Per-View" (which Harnad frequently abbreviates as "S/SL/PPV'). They would also lift a great responsibility and economic burden from universities. The idea is not really new, having been considered thirty years ago by a National Academy of Sciences panel in the context of "the so-called copying revolution. "2 Can it work? Or are they tilting windmills?

The present system is clearly out of balance, creating friction between uni- versity managers and researchers. Over the last fifty years, the growth of re- search outran the commitment of universities to purchase and conserve its work product--published articles and monographs. While policy insiders readily admit they seek relief from supporting equivalent library growth, they continue to claim that blame for poor libraries belongs to publishers and to the traditional "publish or perish" test for tenure. 3 Modem universities clearly have lost some of their integrity along with any interest in the priority of knowledge and other traditional gold standards of academe. 4

4 Publishing Research Quarterly/Winter 1998/99

TABLE 1 Average Growth of Ten Library Collections 1938--1997

Year Average Collection Size Comment

1938 1.2 million vols. (Rider's figure) 1953 N/A 1968 2.7 million vols. (ARL statistics) 1983 4.1 million vols. (ARL statistics) 1997 5.7 million vols. (ARL statistics)

Statistics suggest that universities started shaving library growth around the time of World War II. They sliced more deeply into library funding after the commercial success of the Xerox 914 plain paper copier and the legislative endorsement of library photocopying (resource sharing) by the Copyright Act of 1976. Derek de Solla Price noted that pre-war libraries and technical publi- cations grew at the same exponential rate, doubling roughly every fifteen years or so. 5 Library growth then slowed to half that rate while research proceeded as before. Particularly revealing was the quickness with which administrators, confronted with the Soviet space achievements in the late 1950s, confessed to the inadequacy of American information resources. As a political football, Sput- nik and the Cold War space race permitted libraries a decade of renewed support before their financial support was cut again. Then, measured in con- stant dollars, major academic libraries got zero increase during the 1970s in spite of a 65 percent growth in world research literature. Table 1 extends Fremont Rider's statistics of ten one hundred-plus years-old academic library collections beyond 1938 with new data published by Association of Research Libraries [ARL]. 6

In Table 1, compare the 1997 figure with 19 million volumes projected if pre- war growth had kept pace with the work product of world research activity. By way of reference, Library of Congress presently reports 24 million volumes in its collections.

The imbalance of supply and demand decimated publishers' sales, cropped libraries' services, compromised research productivity, interfered with instruc- tion, and changed the practices of many editors, publishers, teachers, and researchers. The American Physical Society's [APS] Physical Review, for in- stance, while hugely successful in attracting papers, has seen its subscription sales to both members and libraries nose-dive. 7 Current nonmember circula- tion averages less than half pre-1968 sales in spite of printing four times as many pages. Member sales fell even more sharply.

APS invented author page charge payments during the Depression, a period when feelings of desperation sprung from very different circumstances. Page charges are probably not the solution to improved dissemination. For one thing, most payments are administered by the same offices that cut support to libraries for thirty years--agencies with no interest in research results. Au-

Henderson 5

thors' institutions have no obligation to pay, while publishers are forbidden to require paym en t - - a key element manda t ed by Federal policy. The difficulty in predicting how many pages will actually be paid makes budgets impossible. In 1968, universities suddenly refused to write checks and thus put many association publishers into the red. 8 They could do it again, at any time.

Seen as an unreliable source of income, page charges have been reduced and eliminated in favor of shifting the economic burden to libraries. After the red ink of 1968, APS divided its Physical Review into several sections in order to realize a substantial price rise. Later, Amer ican Institute of Physics el iminated page charges for Review of Scientific Instruments and reduced them for other journals. Again they increased library rates to offset the loss of page charge r e v e n u e . 9

There are many other major faults in the Harnad-Walker proposal. One is the appearance of conflict of interest. Outside of journals that recognize Fed- eral policy, some publishers will not publish wi thout subsidies of some kind. Some will not consider a submission wi thout extorting a fee. Shouldn ' t au- thors make full disclosure of payments to publishers w h e n submitt ing bibliog- raphies for review to tenure committees? Are author-financed publications to be counted equally with those that are unpaid? The objectivity, commitment , and quality of the publisher is also called into question w h e n the author pays. One of the characteristics of much "grey literature" is the presence of self- serving financial support of publication. Subsidies are justified as promot ing dissemination but more often reveal administrat ive convenience. Lack of inde- pendent interest may signify lack of valuable content.

A particular problem of author-based "free for all" economics is that the elimination of risk invites management indifference. Gone with the need to recover investment is every motive to require excellence and to take business matters seriously. Lack of care may result in giving authori ty to inexpensive clerks. Only a few years ago, a young editor explained to me h o w he wou ld sponsor any work for which the author suppl ied a grant and two scholarly reviews.

It is also surprising to see Walker misattr ibuting early scientific publishing to associations rather than to entrepreneurs. The first scientific journals, The Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society and Journal des s~avans were pub- lished for profit in 1665. Commercial publishers have had a major presence ever since. Physical Review, for example, was first publ ished by Macmil lan over 100 years ago when the American Physical Society was far f rom the center of the mainstream. Springer-Verlag was founded about forty years before that. Walter J. Johnson, the late co-founder of Academic Press, Inc., often character- ized himself as a fifth-generation publisher. This is not to say that associations and academies have no place. Like commercial publishers, their objective in- vestment of resources, based on objective advice, elevates a work. Such invest- ments identify findings and authors for recognition.

6 Publishing Research Quarterly / Winter 1998/99

TABLE 2 Economic allocation of journal costs, 1977

10% 12% 14% 64%

libraries acquisition and maintenance authors' time and expenses publishers' production and distribution users' reading, searching, subscriptions and copying.

How does Harnad's vision of journal economics compare to an assessment of the economics of science journals twenty-two years ago, when library pho- tocopying was authorized by Congress? National Science Foundation (NSF) studies suggested the above division of all costs, including the value of re- searchers" time (Table 2). l~

The proposal by Harnad et al. appears to envision an allocation that might well arrive at the following (Table 3). I offered this comparison to Harnad and Walker via email. They provided no alternative view.

Finally, the Harnad-Walker solution bears a challenge if for no other reason than its narrow horizons. More than two-thirds of science articles originate outside the U.S.; nearly a third of U.S. papers are generated by non-academic authors, according to National Science Board figures. 11 That suggests the plan might apply to well under one-fourth of all science and technology papers and rarely to all papers in any given journal. Paying author subsidies is not the practice of foreign researchers or their sponsors. Many Federally funded au- thors submit their papers to commercial niche journals--publications with small circulations and high prices-per-production unit. At one time, Federal agencies denied payment of page charges to such publishers. Then, seeing no justifica- tion for continuing the ban, they authorized them. The general lack of interest on the part of commercial publishers in billing page charges suggests to me that most researchers, including many Americans, prefer not to use grant re- sources to make up for the failings of universities. Outside Federally funded science, researchers are pressed to use personal resources. They seek help from their universities, organizations having no interest in the product of research and unwilling to support libraries. The implication is that scholars lacking extra resources may become victims. 12

The following forty-year bibliographical round-up and discussion of page charges was first published in 1976 with such little enthusiasm that it ap- peared mainly on microfiche. In hindsight, it could have been better. Federal grants for general collection development were part of the Higher Education Act of 1965 Title II-A, providing a decade of data for the studies suggested by the introductory essay. Mentioned but not scrutinized is the frailty of the dependency of the subsidy system on the universities that monopolize Federal research grants. Unlike libraries, Federally funded research concerns a very small portion of the university faculty and student population.

Omitted entirely was any real attention to the argument that robust funding for library collections would provide far better dissemination than production

Henderson 7

TABLE 3 Future economic allocation of journal costs

30% authors' time, equipment, and expenses 70% users' reading, searching, equipment, and supplies.

subsidies funneled through authors. Part of its aversion to support ing libraries probably stems from association publishers ' anticompetit ive dread, expressed by a National Academy of Sciences task force, that libraries wou ld probably spend science money on non-science purchases or, perhaps worse, on com- mercial science publishers. 13 Oddly, no one fears profits when it comes to computers, communications, supplies, travel, energy, or entertainment. This reminds me that the major associations have mainta ined an unexplained si- lence, wi thholding their considerable political influence and accreditation pow- ers for thirty years, and thereby encouraging rather than resolving the library crisis. The only reasonable explanation is that their envy of commercial pub- lishers exceeds their commitment to mission and members ' interests. 14 Per- haps they hope that commercial publishers will quit when academic libraries die. Please somebody convince me there is another reason for their silence.

"Federal Support of Scientific and Technical Publication" reflects a consen- sus on page charges that seems fairly consistent wi th today's views with two exceptions: (a) the doctrinal exclusion of commercial publishers was eventu- ally rejected by NSF in spite of opposit ion by association publishers and their members; 15 (b) hundreds of scientists and scholars have pet i t ioned the govern- ment to re-evaluate and reform its policies for support of library overhead, rather than bet on page charges to promote dissemination; 16 and (c) the De- pression is over; page charges deserve to rest with other innovations like the Works Progress Administrat ion and Civilian Conservat ion Corps.

References

1. Steven Harnad. 1998 On-line journals and financial tire-walls. Nature, 395:127-128. (Sept. 10). Thomas J. Walker. 1998. Free in te rne t access to t rad i t iona l journals . American Scientist, 86(5). h t t p : / / www.sigmaxi .org/amsci /ar ticles/98articles/walter.html.

2. National Academy of Sciences. Committee on Scientific and Technical Communicat ions [SATCOM]. 1969. Scientific and Technical Communication. A Pressing Natioaal Problem and Recommendations for Its Solution. Washington, D.C.: National Academy of Sciences.

3. To Publish and Perish. March, 1998. Policy Perspectives. 7,4. Co-sponsored by the Association of Re- search Libraries, The Association of American Universities and the Pew Higher Education Roundtable. 12 pages. Published by Institute for Research on Higher Education, 4200 Pine St 5A, Philadelphia PA 19104--4090. 1-800-437-9799. h t t p : / /www. i rhe .upenn . edu /pp /pp -ma in .h tml

4. Robert A. Nisbet. 1971. Degradation of the Academic Dogma. New York: Basic Books. Reprinted 1997 with a new introduction by Gertrude Himmelfarb. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction. Edward Shils. 1975. The academic ethos under strain. Minerva, 13:1-37.

5. Derek J. de Solla Price. 1961. Science since Babylon. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1961. enl. ed. 1975. Cites Rider, below.

6. Fremont Rider. 1944. The Scholar and the Future of the Research Library. New York: Hadham Press. Association of Research Libraries. 1998. ARL statistics 1996-97. Washington, D.C.: Association of Re- search Libraries.

8 Publishing Research Quarterly / Winter 1998/99

7. American Physical Society. 1971; 1990. Editors' reports. Bulletin. Ser. II, vol. 16:700-707; vol. 35,6:1301- 1306.

8. H. William Koch. 1968. Publication charges and financial solvency (Editorial). Physics Today, 21,12:126-- 127.

9. American Institute of Physics. 1986. 1985: a year of expanded activities for/kiP. Physics Today. (July):51- 58.

10. Donald W. King, Dennis D. McDonald, and Nancy K. Roderer. 1981. Scientific Journals in the United States. Their Production, Use, and Economics. Stroudsburg, PA: Hutchinson Ross Publishing Company.

11. National Science Board. 1998 Science & Engineering Indicators 1998. Washington, D.C.: National Science Foundation. (NSB 98--1).

12. Berman, Edward H. 1985. On publishing, probably perishing, and surely paying. Scholarly Publishing, 16:307-312.

13. National Academy of Sciences; Committee on Scientific and Technical Communications [SATCOM]. 1970. Report of the Task Group on the Economics of Primary Publication. Washington, D.C.: National Acad- emy of Science. The task force was requested in May 1969, following a disasterous year for the Ameri- can Physical Society and other publishers that depended on page charges. The chairman was Conyers Herring, an APS editor. In dismissing subsidies to libraries rather than publishers, its comments sug- gests that commercial publishers would simply increase their prices in order to maximize profits (p. 201).

14. Albert Henderson. 1998. Lawful misconduct. The Scientist, 12,2:7-8. Albert Henderson. 1998. The incoherence of science policy. Society, 35,6:38-43.

15. National Science Foundation. 1994/95. NSF grant policy on page charges. Publishing Research Quarterly, 10,4:47-49.

16. Franklin Hoke. 1994. Scientists press for boost in federal library funding. In The Scientist, 8,4:1,5