by Liz McBride, Woodruff Library Social Sciences Coordinator

[President Chace and former Provost Chopp, together with the libraries' Digital Futures Seminar, presented this issue to the campus community over the 2000/2001 year. It reflects concern about the migration over recent decades of academic journals to commercial publishers which has meant increased cost and decreased scholarly control; the aggregation of products in bundles to libraries which has decreased libraries' discretion in acquisitions; and the consolidation of the production and distribution of information in the hands of international conglomerates with accompanying efforts to restrict fair use as well as raise prices.]

Would you rather put a down payment on a house or pay for Emory's subscription to Brain Research? Brain Research will cost Emory $17, 444 this year, which is a down payment on a very nice house. Brain Research is only the tip of the iceberg, however, in the escalating cost of academic journals. Subscription prices for eleven of the most expensive science journals now average nearly $8000 a year for a total of $86,000. Since 1995 the average price of these journals has increased by nearly 70%. At this rate, by the year 2015, their total cost will be $415,000.

Are you thinking how relieved you are to be in the humanities or social sciences and not impacted by these journal prices? Well, think again. Price increases of commercially produced journals in the social sciences regularly exceed 10 percent a year although the U.S. Consumer Price Index has been increasing under 4 percent a year. Commercially published journals in fields such as economics regularly cost four times as much as nonprofit titles. In addition, many of your colleagues use those science journals. Take a look at the selected list of social science journal titles, publishers, and prices at the end of this article and you will get a taste of what is happening.

We are currently facing a crisis in scholarly communications. What's going on? Until the 1960's most journals were produced by smaller companies and nonprofit organizations. Since then, a handful of companies have recognized that academic journals, particularly science journals, could yield enormous profits. The cost of scholarly journal publication is minimal. Researchers contribute their papers for free or even pay a fee for publication. Other researchers provide free editorial services including review. Because key journals are the lifeblood of scholarship, academic institutions such as libraries must subscribe. Essentially universities pay for scholarly journals twice--once for faculty to generate the articles and then for libraries to buy them. "Journals have historically been one of the world's great businesses," says Martin Maleska, a former president of Simon & Schuster professional publishing and now a managing director of an investment bank who is quoted in The New York Times. The article (NYT, 11/3/2000, Sec. C, p. 1) goes on to report that most commercial journal publishers report operating profits of nearly 40 percent of revenue which is twice the profit margin in the rest of educational publishing.

Commercial publishers claim that their resources support development of electronic publications which is good for everyone. This is true, but most libraries find that they are required to purchase paper copies of journals to obtain the electronic versions and that the electronic versions frequently cost additional funds.

Researchers who have studied publishing, including Mark McCabe, an economist at Georgia Tech, also note that most journal price increases come after a merger, which suggests that monopolistic pricing is at work. With increasing consolidation of the commercial publishers, many of them European, a small number of companies dominate publication of technical journals and increasingly other fields as well. Only the action of the European Union prevented the acquisition of the publisher of WestLaw by the publisher of Lexis-Nexis. European regulators were worried about the impact on legal publication. As most of you realize, WestLaw and Lexis-Nexis are the premier publishers of U.S. legal resources as well.

What happens in academic institutions when the prices of scholarly journals soar? First there are the cutbacks in the acquisition of other journals. Emory Health Sciences Library has cancelled over 50 titles this year. Woodruff General Libraries cancelled over 100, including 40 in the social sciences. Next year will likely bring another round of cancellations.

Books also feel the impact. As libraries move more money into journals, less of the budget is available for books. If libraries don't buy, academic books don't get published. Ten years ago publishers expected to sell about 2500 copies of a scholarly monograph to libraries. Today the figure is more like 1,000 or 1,500. If you are having difficulty attracting the interest of a publisher for your book, this may be why.

What to do?

• Educate yourself on the issues. You and your department are being adversely impacted by what is currently happening in scholarly publishing.
• If you are an editor of a scholarly journal, keep it in the nonprofit sector. If it is already a commercial title, be aware of pricing and challenge the publisher in the case of exorbitant costs. If there is an electronic version of your journal available, does it cost extra? Does your journal require print subscriptions to get the electronic edition? Do you know the rationale behind such decisions? Are they reasonable?
• When you are considering where to submit an article, think about the journal's publisher and subscription cost. If you don't think it appropriate, raise issues with the publisher. Have you thought about your intellectual property rights? Do you realize that IP rights are negotiable in your contract with publishers?
• Some faculty are going further. The editorial board of the Journal of Logic Programming recently quit to start a cheaper competing journal. An economist at St. Andrews University has taken a six-month leave to create the Electronic Society for Social Scientists. He hopes to set up a nonprofit making trust to publish scholarly journals. The new journals would pay for contributions, have peer review, and be available at low cost via the Internet. This proposal is being backed by Sir James Mirrlees, winner of the 1996 Nobel Prize in Economics and many others.

Expect to hear more about this issue throughout the year within Emory, in your professional associations and in the news.

More Information

SPARC, The Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition, is a worldwide alliance of research institutions, libraries and organizations that encourages competition in the scholarly communications market, particularly in the sciences. Find more at http://www.arl.org/SPARC

CreateChange is a partnership between the Association of Research Libraries and the Association of College & Research Libraries to encourage development of new systems of scholarly communication. Find more information, including a list of the 100 highest priced journal subscriptions at http://www.createchange.org

Measuring the Cost Effectiveness of Journals: The Wisconsin Experience."ARL: A Bimonthly Report on Research Library Issues and Actions from ARL, CNI, and SPARC no. 205 (Aug. 1999): 1-6. This article studies the relative costs of commercial vs. nonprofit journals in economics, physics and neuroscience. http://www.arl.org/newsltr/205/wisconsin.html

"Journaling, but at a Cost; Sticker Shock: Prices of Science Publications Squeeze Library Budgets," Atlanta Journal and Constitution, Dec. 24, 2000, p. 2D. "Provosts Propose Solutions to Journals Crisis."ARL: A Bimonthly Newsletter of Research Library Issues and Actions no. 202 (Feb. 1999): 1-5. http://www.arl.org/newsltr/202/intro.html

Kaser, Dick. "PSP 2003 annual conference: the future of journals." InformationToday. Vol. 20 No. 3 — March 2003. http://www.infotoday.com/it/mar03/kaser2.shtml. Interview with Pieter Bolman, Elsevier executive.

The Specialized Scholarly Monograph in Crisis Or How Can I Get Tenure If You Won't Publish My Book? Washington: Association of Research Libraries, 1999. Contains the perspectives of faculty, scholarly publishers, and librarians presented at a conference sponsored by the American Council of Learned Societies, Association of American University Presses, and the Association of Research Libraries. http://www.arl.org/scomm/epub/papers/index.html

Wyly, Brendan, "What Publishers Profits Reveal" and McCabe, Mark J. "Impact of Publishing Mergers on Journal Prices: A Preliminary Report," in ARL: A Bimonthly Newsletter of Research Library Issues and Actions, no. 200, October 1998. http://ww.arl.org/newsltr/200/intro.html

SELECTED LIST OF SOCIAL SCIENCE JOURNALS & PRICES

NONPROFIT