The role of the libraryas access point to

scientific communication

Raf DekeyserUniversity Library, K.U.Leuven (Belgium)

(raf.dekeyser@bib.kuleuven.ac.be)

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1. Mechanisms of scientific information Introduction

Active usage of full-text journals (i.e. "writing")Secondary databases - JCRPassive usage of full-text journals (i.e.

"reading")The serials crisis

2. Electronic publishing and electronic archives Overview of some existing e-print servers Collectors and portals Discussion

3. Towards a new method for scholarly communication: OAI – peer review – overlay journals

Overview

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1. Mechanisms of scientific information

Introduction• Library passive container of information

but strong relation with research centres• budget tailored to research profile• library = beginning and end of research• librarian must be aware of mechanisms of

scientific information!• Differences between research fields:

• more international communication in exact sciences

• monographs versus journals

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• Data collecting (e.g. historical sources)• Communication about ongoing research• Registration of results:

- certificate of quality control - establishment of intellectual rights of author

+ professional & educational use

Many roles played by information (R.Hayes):

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Different types of publications

• Books:– Monographs– Collection of papers (e.g. Proceedings)– Series (e.g. Springer Tracts in...)

• Journals:

• Databases– Bibliographic– Data

• Letter journals

• Review journals

• Research journals

• Commercial journals

• Society journals

From weak monitoring to strict peer review

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Active usage of full-text (writing)

• Researchers want - maximal and rapid dissemination - but also publication in prestigious journal (somehow contradictory, due to high prices!!)

• Preprint-archives turn into main channel of information, with paper publication for recognition, not for communication…

• Validation by refereeing is important tool for quality control Remains important in electronic media!

Reviews and monographs ?• Writing of review articles considered as important task• Monographs are undervalued, both by authors and libraries• Better value-for-money in books than in journals

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Secondary databases

• Bibliographic databases: Very important tool in electronic format

• Less intensively used in domains with strong exchange of information (preprints…)

• Special use at crossroads of research• Alerting service for continuous update of information• Improved facilities: e.g. linking to full text• Special databases: Citations (Web of Science, JCR,...)

Citation and article counts are important indicators of how frequently current researchers are using individual journals. Used for evaluation of both researchers and journals!

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Journal of Citation Reports (JCR)• Article counts (current and previous product year)• Total Cites (number of total citations to articles in the

journal for the current JCR year)• Cited half-life (the number of publication years from the

current year which account for 50% of current citations received)

• Citing half-life (the number of publication years from the current year that account for 50% of the current citations published by a journal in its article references)

• Immediacy Index (calculated by dividing the number of citations to articles published in a given year by the number of articles published in that year)

• Impact factor (calculated by dividing the number of current citations to articles published in the two previous years by the total number of articles published in the two previous years)

• Each journal in the ISI database is assigned to at least one subject category

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• Very important for beginning researchers and at turning points• Use is limited through intensive direct exchange of information• Researchers expect library to deliver documents (ILL) – will libraries become service centres?• Subscription prices have increased very rapidly (“journal crisis”, see next pages))• Electronic package deals • Possibility for pay-per-view - role of library?• Possibility for selective “print on demand” instead of package journals?• Conclusion for acquisition budget: “access” to ephemeral information sources, archiving of matured research reports

Passive usage of full-text (reading)

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Established journal system

• Author sends article to journal/editor.• Editor sends article to referee.• If not rejected: some corrections may be required, but

finally paper is accepted and printed in journal (many months after writing of the paper!).

• Title and abstract are included in databases, readers start referring to it, which is registered in citation database.

• Problems: Role of journal prestige (from impact parameter): leads to higher status of author, giving rise to uncontrollable subscription prices.

• Old-fashioned technology… (even in electronic format)

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journals

books

index Rel

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ices

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The journal crisis

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T i t l e P r i c e i n 1 9 7 0 P r i c e i n 1 9 9 8

B i o c h i m i c a & B i o p h y s i c a A c t a

4 7 5 $ 9 9 8 4 $

J o u r n a l o f t h e A m e r i c a n C h e m i c a l S o c i e t y

5 0 $ 2 0 5 3 $

N u c l e a r P h y s i c s 4 4 2 $ 1 6 6 7 4 $

From 1970 to 1995 (corrected for increase of index of consumption prices):

- increase of the STM-subscription prices with 471%

- increase of the price per unit surface with 270% (entomology)

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The vicious circle of price increases and cancellations

• Price increase Cancellations New price increases to compensate loss of income etc...

• High impact parameter attracts better papers further increase of impact parameter journal prestige allows unreasonable price increases

• Some learned societies follow example of commercial publishers

• Collection policy is compromise between wishes of users and possibilities of budget

• Consequences: poor library collections, increase of ILL, less acquisition of monographs

• No solution in view from the electronic products...?

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• Publisher receives articles at no cost – proof-read and digitised!

• University staff “peer reviews” the articles – mostly for free

• Publisher acquires all rights: first publication, copyright, republication, digitisation rights,…

• Author receives no financial compensation (only indirectly…)

• Author loses control over further use, he should even pay for distribution of copies to students!

• Universities have to pay many times for same material:

– Salary of the researcher

– Price of book or subscription to journal

– Duties for photocopying

– Duties for using as classroom material

• Questionable business model for distribution of knowledge!

• Hinders free access to knowledge

Complaint:

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How should acquisition collection be built ?

• Know your customers: – undergraduate students: introductory textbooks– graduate students: more advanced monographs– research staff: more specialised journals, adapted to

local research profile • Interlibrary loan agreements for seldom used materials• Measure use of library material• Find instruments for measuring the quality of the journals:

citations, impact parameter,... Remember to test the relevance of these measures for your local situation!

• Check the quality versus price relation: cost per article, cost per page, per usage...

• Maximise potential use of material within the limits of the available budget (eventually per discipline)

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Title $ #p $/kCh ../Imp Physical Review C 1160 15456 1.03 0.517

Journal of Chemical Physics 3175 21576 2.14 0.608

Reviews of Modern Physics 360 1304 4.00 0.198

Physics of Fluids 1310 3984 4.68 2.904

Journal of Mathematical Physics 1535 6752 4.77 4.554

Physica D 2836 4673 11.98 7.697

Nuclear Instruments & Methods 8344 8594 15.57 15.003

Nuclear Physics A 7294 10753 18.30 10.028

Annals of Physics 2100 3045 19.51 8.938

Fortschritte der Physik 765 751 21.77 28.378

(According to a study at the University of Wisconsin in 1997)

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$ Impact $/kCh ../Imp

Physics: Non-Profit Average 1261 2.33 5.76 8.23

Physics: Commercial Average 2540 2.13 13.83 14.61

Economy: Non-Profit Average 97 0.96 3.91 11.55

Economy: Commercial Average 451 0.64 15.32 42.62

Neurosciences: Non-Profit Average 431 4.49 2.38 0.64

Neurosci.: Commercial Average 1535 3.77 15.47 8.69

(According to a study at the University of Wisconsin in 1997)

• Other suggestion: compare the subscription price of a journal with the cost of an individual document delivery. and the expected number of requests.

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Traditional solutions

• cancellations and increased ILL• distribution of preprints to colleagues• electronic preprint distribution (e-mail or web page)• arrival of large free-access archives

(see further)• SPARC (Scholarly Publication and Academic Resources

Coalition): new possibilities through competition (new journals) • publishers offer their own e-formats; some protest against self-

archiving…

• ICOLC publishes Statement with standards for licence agreements

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http://www.arl.org/sparc/home/index.asp?page=0

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2. Electronic publishing and archives

• Los Alamos e-print archive with 15 mirror sites (physics and mathematics) – started in 1991 (Ginsparg)

• Unrefereed author self-archiving: contributions reappear in standard journals• Free access (Arguments for free dissemination when author and reader communities coincide)• Fast dissemination!• 150.000 articles; in 2000: 13 million downloads• Now at Cornell University

How will we optimise scientific information through new media?

Some recent initiatives for fast and cheap channels of communication!

Overview of some existing e-print servers

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http://arxiv.org/

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Similar initiatives:

• CERN Document Server (DCS) (physics)– Different types of documents; 430.000 bibliogr. Records,

170.000 full texts– Free registration

• Chemistry preprint server (CPS) at ChemWeb– Free registration– Still rather small collection

• Cogprints (Cognitive sciences: psychology, neuroscience, linguistics,…)

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http://cds.cern.ch/

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http://cogprints.soton.ac.uk/

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Collectors and portals

• MPRESS and MathNet: index of mathematical preprints from 110 sources.

• Electronic Library of Mathematics (ElibM): free portal to journals (50), proceedings and monographs.

• PhysDoc (part of PhysNet): similar to MPRESS, but for physics.

• RePEc: similar, for economics.• PubMedCentral (NIH): free access to biomedical journals (with

delay…).• E-BioSci (EMBO): EU equivalent, but free access only to the

metadata.

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http://www.math-net.de/

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http://www.emis.de/ELibM.html

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http://www.eps.org/PhysNet/journals.html

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http://www.repec.org/

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http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/.

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History of PubMed Central

• May 1999: National Institute of Health (H.Varmus) proposes E-biomed as new central electronic publishing site (life sciences)

• database for reviewed papers and repository for the rest• aim: free, fast and full access (with support from publishers? possibility for delayed access...)

• Renamed to PubMed Central - mixed reactions to proposal• Many enthusiastic letters• “Government should not interfere with private sector”• Repository = taxpayer-supported junk• Initiative will jeopardise existing journals and reduce communication

• January 2000: start on limited scale (2 journals with short delay - 10 more coming - no self-archiving)• BioMed Central launched as new peer-reviewed electronic journal with access through PubMed Central

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How were these initiatives accepted?

• Some publishers (e.g. APS) accept archivesand co-operate.Others try to impose ‘Ingelfinger rule’, monopolising the publication.

• Steven Harnad’s ‘subversive proposal’ and crusade for freeing the refereed research literature by author self-archiving.

• Appeal by ‘Public Library of Science’ for free access to archival data (+ threat of boycott).

• Public debate on Nature website.• ESA (entomology) offers authors option to pay for free

access (59% success rate!).

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3. Towards a new method for scholarly communication

• In spite of new possibilities of Internet, no real breakthrough yet (except in physics) – authors are afraid of taking risks.

• Commercial publishers take strong position in market for e-journals (mergers, package deals with guaranteed price increases without possibility for cancellations: unstable economical model).

• Need for a good library-driven alternative, to result in more competitive price setting. Not to replace existing journals, but to coexist with them (to prevent monopolies).

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Requirements for new system 1. Possibility for unique access point with powerful

searching and efficient linking (→ OAI).2. High quality scientific validation (peer review).

– It is part of the process through which our global validated knowledge database is built (especially important in health sciences!).

– Important for academic recognition of authors, and therefore for success of communication system.

– Guarantee of quality for the reader, confused by information overkill.

– Evaluation method for academic authorities.– Improves quality of publications

3. (Longevity? Paper format?)– Also commercial journals want to get rid of paper!– Less important in STM-journals.– Solution through electronic legal deposit.

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The Open Archives Initiative (OAI)

(www.openarchives.org)

• October 1999: Idea for Universal Preprint Archive (UPS) as network of servers

• Renamed into “Open Archives” (OAI) and agreement about standards (Santa Fe Convention); prototype created

• Purpose: interoperability between e-print servers.• Metadata Harvesting protocol of the Open Archives Initiative

(OAMH).• Specification for exchange of metadata between archives (‘data

providers’) and harvesters (‘service providers’) (HTTP-based, exchange of XML docs).

• Possible uses: metadata db for large set of archives, SDI, alerting services, linking,…

• Free software from OAI and eprints.org.

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http://www.openarchives.org/index.html

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http://www.eprints.org/

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http://www.bbsonline.org/

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http://www.leeds.ac.uk/educol/index.html

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Workshop on the Open Archives Initiative (OAI) and Peer Review journals in Europe

• CERN (Geneva, CH) 22-24 March 2001.• Organiser: LIBER, with sponsoring from CERN, EBSCO,

ESF, OAI, SPARC.• Among the conclusions: Plan for developing an extension

of OAMH protocol for the exchange of QC metadata.(American Physical Society and the Los Alamos arXiv volunteer to participate in a prototype!)

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The organisation of quality control

• Researchers take care of writing, e-distribution and refereeing; why not of organising?

• Existing editorial boards may take charge of new overlay e-journals.

• Learned societies (the ‘roots’ of the journals!) should take their responsibility for peer review.

• Organisational tools are becoming available (e.g. through Roquade).

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Economical aspects

• Servers: negligible cost (→author institute).• Long-term archiving (→National libraries?).• Peer review organisation is the main cost. Arguments to

charge this to the author:– it is the author who gets the intellectual reward for the

refereed publication;– covering the bill should make the author more aware of

the publication cost;– the dissemination of scholarly work should be

considered to be an essential part of the process of publicly funded research.

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Author

Reader

Editor Referees

Journal

BibliographicDatabase

DB2

DB3

DB4

J2 J3 J4 J5 J...

Preprint

Friends

Web Archive

A2

A3

A4

A5

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Author

A1 A2 A3 A4 A5

S1: Harvester

Virtual Journal

Referees

Reader

OAI

S2: Harvester

+ Peer Review

S3: Harvester

+ Citation Analyser

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http://www.dlib.org/

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Exercise 1

Make a list of the journals available in the library for a given subject category. For each of them try to determine:- type of journal (review? letter? research communications?)- commercial publisher or society journal?- status of peer review?- annual subscription price (e.g. 2001)- number of pages per year (e.g. 2000)- average cost per page- IP (impact parameter) (see JCR)- value (IP x pages) per $Make from these numbers a ranking according to the importance of these journals.Suppose your budget will decrease next year with 30%, which journals do you suggest to cancel?

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Exercise 2Make a list of the VUB-researchers who in 2000-2001 have published in your given subject category. (Ask the librarian, or search in a bibliographic database!) Look up these publications, and count in them the citations to each journal from your list of Exercise 1 (irrespective of the year of the cited article).

For each of the journals in your list determine now • the total number of VUB-citations in 2000-2001• the number of VUB-citations per $• the number of VUB-citations per page published in these journals

Make from these numbers a ranking according to the importance of these journals for the VUB. Compare with the ranking from Exercise 1.

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