will the parasite kill the host?

28
Will the Parasite Kill the Host? Sally Morris Morris Associates

Upload: nomlanga-fitzgerald

Post on 30-Dec-2015

38 views

Category:

Documents


2 download

DESCRIPTION

Will the Parasite Kill the Host?. Sally Morris Morris Associates. What I’m going to talk about. An alternative (ex-publisher’s) view: Are Institutional Repositories a fact of life? What is the likely effect on journals? Does it matter? What should we do about it?. - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

TRANSCRIPT

Page 1: Will the Parasite      Kill the Host?

Will the Parasite Kill the Host?

Sally MorrisMorris Associates

Page 2: Will the Parasite      Kill the Host?

What I’m going to talk about

An alternative (ex-publisher’s) view:

Are Institutional Repositories a fact of life? What is the likely effect on journals? Does it matter? What should we do about it?

Page 3: Will the Parasite      Kill the Host?

Where I’m coming from

Publisher for >25 years Publisher of ~50 medical/nursing journals for

>10 years Representative of scholarly and professional

publishers for >8 years Now editor of a journal about publishing

Page 4: Will the Parasite      Kill the Host?

Are IRs becoming a fact of life?

Not much evidence that academics actually want them

But if self-archiving becomes mandatory, most say they will comply

Growing number of research funders and institutions leaning towards voluntary or mandatory self-archiving policies

Page 5: Will the Parasite      Kill the Host?

What is the likely effect on journals?

IRs are parasitic on journals – but will they kill the host?

Page 6: Will the Parasite      Kill the Host?

What is the likely effect on journals? (1)

Two surveys showing very clearly that when a sufficient percentage of the final version of author articles is freely (and easily) available, cancellations will follow

Mark Ware: Factors in Journal Cancellation (ALPSP, 2006)

Chris Beckett & Simon Inger: Self-archiving and Journal Subscriptions – co-existence or competition? (PRC, 2006)

Page 7: Will the Parasite      Kill the Host?

Ware 340 responses 81% said availability in an

OA repository would be a ‘very important’ or ‘important’ factor in cancellation decisions (but behind pricing (95%), usage (95%), user needs (93%))

Preprint/postprint versions not seen as adequate substitute (but PDF is)

32% think publishers should not be worried

11% think they should 54% think it’s too early to

tell

Beckett & Inger 424 responses ‘a significant number

of librarians are likely to substitute OA materials for subscribed resources, given certain levels of reliability, peer review and currency’

Author’s unrefereed, uncorrected original MS is least adequate substitute

Post-peer review version (irrespective of publishers’ editing) is adequate

38% think publishers should not be worried

38% think they should

Page 8: Will the Parasite      Kill the Host?

What is the likely effect on journals? (2) Publishers’ experience to date: usage

London Mathematical Society: articles self-archived in ArXiv received 23% fewer downloads on the publisher’s site

Institute of Physics: journals whose content is largely mirrored in ArXiv see marked drop in usage on publisher’s site. Note also that High Energy Physics community making

active move to OA publication Ware found that usage was a ‘very important’ or

‘important’ factor in cancellation decisions for 95% of librarian respondents

Page 9: Will the Parasite      Kill the Host?

What is the likely effect on journals? (3) Publishers’ experience to date: subscriptions

British Medical Journal: when all content was free on BMJ site, print subs (and ads) fell dramatically. Now that only research articles are free, revenue has almost recovered

Molecular Biology of the Cell: in the 3 years following introduction of 2 month embargo, average annual subscription growth fell from 84% to 8%

Proceedings of the National Academy of Science: 1 month embargo in 2000 11% fall in subscriptions in 2001; 6 months embargo reduced this to 9% in 2002

It makes sense to me! What rational librarian, faced with the need to cancel some

journals, would not choose those whose content is freely available elsewhere?

Page 10: Will the Parasite      Kill the Host?

Humpty Dumpty

Through the Looking Glass, Lewis Carroll (ill. John Tenniel), 1871

Page 11: Will the Parasite      Kill the Host?

Does it matter? (1)

If many subscription journals disappear, will this matter?

We all need to be aware of the likely consequences of our actions

Page 12: Will the Parasite      Kill the Host?

Peer Review

Journals are currently the framework for conducting peer review on research findings Academics value this very highly, e.g.

Authors and Electronic Publishing (ALPSP, 2002) – 96% of respondents ‘strongly agree’ or ‘agree’ that they prefer to submit articles to journals that maintain formal peer review

Other frameworks have been proposed Open Peer Review (e.g. Nature experiment) Peer Review applied directly to repository contents

(e.g. J Smith, ‘Deconstructed Journal’)

Page 13: Will the Parasite      Kill the Host?

Editing (1) Journals are also the vehicle for carrying

out copy-editing to improve clarity and readability

… and to check accuracy of references, in order that citation linking (highly valued) can actually work

42.7% of editor queries were to do with inaccurate or incomplete references

13.6% were requests for missing data 5.5% led to alterations that materially altered the

sense Wates & Campbell, ‘Author’s version vs publisher’s version’

(Learned Publishing, April 2007)

Page 14: Will the Parasite      Kill the Host?

Editing (2) Good editing is, by its nature, invisible,

but when asked, authors value it (more highly than readers) 60% of respondents thought that content

editing and improvement of articles should be maintained in any new model

50% thought that language or copy-editing should be maintained

46% thought checking citations/adding citation links should be maintained

Authors and Electronic Publishing (ALPSP, 2002)

… but not all journals any longer do much, if any, copy-editing

Page 15: Will the Parasite      Kill the Host?

The journal ‘package’

Journals also provide a convenient ‘package’ for selecting and collecting together content of especial relevance and interest to a particular (sub-) community Information overload makes this increasingly

important But maybe journals as we know them are not the

only way?

Page 16: Will the Parasite      Kill the Host?

Supporting other activities (1) Not all publishers are commercial

Ulrich’s Periodicals Directory, 2005 (analysis by Raym Crow)

Nonprofit and commercial journals (Crow)

38%

17%

45%

Self-publishednonprofit journals

Commerciallypublished nonprofitjournals

Commerciallypublishedcommercial journals

Page 17: Will the Parasite      Kill the Host?

Supporting other activities (2) Nonprofit publishers put any surplus back into

their other activities In particular, Learned Society publishers use surplus

to support: Conferences (33% of respondents applied median 7% of

their publishing surpluses to this) Membership fees (32% of respondents, 15% of surpluses) Public education (26% of respondents, 7.5% of surpluses) Bursaries (26% of respondents, 7.5% of surpluses) Research (21% of respondents, 25% of surpluses)

Christine Baldwin, What do Learned Societies do with their Publishing Surpluses? (ALPSP/Blackwell, 2004)

Knock-on effects for the scholarly community if publishing surpluses are reduced or eliminated

Page 18: Will the Parasite      Kill the Host?

Which journals are most vulnerable? Single- (or few-) journal publishers

‘Over 97% of society publishers publish three or fewer journals, with almost 90% publishing just one title’.

Raym Crow, Publishing Cooperatives: an alternative for society publishers (SPARC, 2006)

Society publishers limited to specific discipline Niche journals

Low circulation higher price Low-profit journals

Less room for manoeuvre

Page 19: Will the Parasite      Kill the Host?

What should publishers NOT do about it?

Publishers raising arguments (valid or otherwise) against IRs are unlikely to do any good

In fact, ‘shroud-waving’ could do more harm than good to the industry

Remember the English Civil War…

Page 20: Will the Parasite      Kill the Host?

‘… the utterly memorable struggle between the Cavaliers (Wrong but Wromantic) and

the Roundheads (Right and Repulsive)’

1066 and All That W C Sellar & R J Yeatman (ill. J Reynolds),1930

Page 21: Will the Parasite      Kill the Host?

What should we do about it? (1) Awareness

Publishers need to make sure that the communities with which we engage understand the likely consequences of widespread mandatory self-archiving

Funders and others need to understand that ‘one size does not fit all’ subjects differ journals differ

The information must be based on factual evidence – research should continue into the actual effects as self-archiving mandates begin to bite

Page 22: Will the Parasite      Kill the Host?

One size does not fit all

Page 23: Will the Parasite      Kill the Host?

What should we do about it? (2)

Make your content as available as possible (without going bust!) Decide if you can switch to Open Access

publishing or not Hybrid/author-choice model a possible first step

(as advocated by David Prosser) If not, decide whether you need an embargo

period to protect subscriptions, and if so how long

Will authors abide by this? At the same time, be creative about adding value

to scholarly communication in new ways

Page 24: Will the Parasite      Kill the Host?

Riding the wave

Page 25: Will the Parasite      Kill the Host?

What should we do about it? (3) Understanding what journals are for

Journals serve authors and readers (directly) and funders and institutions (indirectly)

Both publishers and those whom journals serve need to analyse the functions currently carried out by journals

… establish which of these must be preserved … and work out ways of doing so

Page 26: Will the Parasite      Kill the Host?

There may or not be a role for publishers as we know them!

Page 27: Will the Parasite      Kill the Host?

Conclusions Institutional Repositories are not going to go away They have the potential to do great damage to many

journals We need to make funders and others aware of the

facts … but we must avoid ‘shroud-waving’ Publishers need to work with the communities they

serve, to work out how best to add the value that is really wanted

We cannot assume there is a role in future for journals, or publishers, as we know them!

Page 28: Will the Parasite      Kill the Host?

Thank you!

[email protected]