Scholarly Communication and Publishing Issues

What is Happening in Scholarly Publishing

Covers trends as well as publishing models and initiatives. Increases awareness about needs related to infrastructure and long-term access of digital content.

Key Principles

• DC Principles for Free Access to Science
• Key Principles for an Improved Scholarly Communication System (Tempe Principles)
• Keystone Principles (pdf)

About Publishers and Publishing

Due to the volatility of the journal publishing market, many mergers have occurred during the past two decades. For details, see:

• The Academic Publishing Industry: A Story of Merger and Acquisition
• Access to the Literature: the Debate Continues (Nature Magazine)
• American Library Association’s Report on Library Funding in the United States; 41 States Report Cuts
• Call for Action on Problems in Scholarly Book Publishing
• CERN Workshop on Innovations in Scholarly Communication
• Create Change
• Eugene Garfield’s Home Page, Founder and Chair Emeritus, Institute for Scientific Information (ISI)
  • The Web of Knowledge: A Festschrift in Honor of Eugene Garfield
• The Future of Scholarly Publishing (MLA Ad Hoc Committee) (pdf)
• The Influence of Academic Values on Scholarly Publication and Communication Practices
• Issues in Scholarly Communication (ARL)
• Jeon-Slaughter, Haekyung; Herkovic, Andrew C.; and Keller, Michael. “Economics of Scientific and Biomedical Journals: Where Do Scholars Stand in the Debate of Online Journal Pricing and Site License Ownership Between Libraries and Publishers?” First Monday 10(3) (7 March 2005)
• JISC International Colloquium Statement
• John Ewing’s Webpage, Executive Director, American Mathematical Society
• Just Say No to Exploitative Publishers of Science Journals (Access limited to Chronicle of Higher Education subscribers)
• Publication and the Internet: Where Next? (A ‘Back Page’ Essay of the APS News, April, 2005) (pdf)
• Publisher Mergers: A Consumer-Based Approach to Antitrust Analysis (pdf)
• Punch List of Best Practices for Electronic Resources (Revised May, 2005) (Eng Lib Div, Am Soc Eng Educ) (pdf)
• Rethinking Scholarly Communication: Building the System that Scholars Deserve
• Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography (in Digital Scholarship by Charles W. Bailey, Jr.)
• Scholars Debate the Implications of Information Technology for Scientific Journal Publishing (NSF InfoBrief)
• The scientific publication system: a key issue for EU Research Policy
• Scientific Publishing: Knowledge is Power (Morgan Stanley In-Depth Equity Research Europe: Media — September 30, 2002) (pdf)

Pricing

For financial information about publishers, choose resources listed in “Research Guides: Company Information,” prepared by the Stanford Jackson Business Library. Hoover’s Online is a good place to find basic information about companies such as business description, history, summary financials, and a list of key competitors.

• 2009 Study of Subscription Prices for Scholarly Society Journals
• Choosing Sides — Periodical Price Survey 2005 (Library Journal, April 15, 2005)
• Create Change
• Electronic Scientific, Technical, and Medical Journals Publishing and Its Implications
• Journal Cost-Effectiveness Calculator (by Ted Bergstrom, Economist @ UC-Santa Barbara, and Preston McAfee, Business, Economics, and Management @ Cal Tech)
• Periodicals Price Survey 2003: Big Chill on the Big Deal? (Library Journal, April 15, 2003)
• Periodicals Price Survey 2004: Closing in on Open Access (Library Journal, April 15, 2004)
• The Promise of Value-based Journal Prices and Negotiation: A UC Report and View Forward (January 2007) (University of California)
• Publisher and Journal Profiles (University of California Office of Scholarly Communication)
• Scholarly Communications Report
  • Learned Societies Publishing Income (from Scholarly Communications Report, 8 (6):6-7, June 2004)
• Scholarly Journal Prices: Selected Trends and Comparisons
• Scientific Publishing: Knowledge is Power (pdf)
• Serial Vendor Information: Ebsco, Swets
• Sticker Shock (Cornell Univ)
• Sticker Shock (UCSF)
• Trends in Scholarly Journal Prices 2000–20006 (Loughborough University, UK)

Pricing — Subject Specific Information

• American Mathematical Society Journal Price Survey
• American Chemical Society Journals — Cost Per Page Analyses, for more info see LiveWire
• Are Chemical Journals Too Expensive and Inaccessible?: A Workshop Summary to the Chemical Sciences Roundtable. Ned D. Heindel, Tina M. Masciangioli, and Eva von Schaper, Editors, Chemical Sciences Roundtable, National Research Council (50 pages, 8 1/2 x 11, 2005)
• Gordon and Breach Science v. American Institute of Physics and American Physical Society
• Ted Bergstrom’s Journal Pricing Page (Economics, Cross-Disciplinary Studies)
  • Data on Economics Journals
  • The Economics of Scholarly Publishing — Case Study: Ecology

Copyright

• ©ollectanea! (blog portal from Univ. Maryland)
• Copyright Clearance Center
• Copyright and Fair Use
• Copyright Issues (Association of American Universities)
• Copyright Management for Scholarship: Key Issues and Good Practices > Issues for Agreements with Publishers
• Copyright Resources for Authors (from SPARC)
• Creative Commons: A Non-Profit that Offers an Alternative to Full Copyright
• Public Symposium on “Intellectual Property in the Digital Age: The Tragedy of the Commons Revisited”: April 27, 2005
  • Event Flyer
• Reserving Rights of Use in Works Submitted for Publication: Negotiating Publishing Agreements (from Indiana University-Purdue University Copyright Management Center)
• Retain Certain Copyrights
• Science Commons
• Seizing the Moment: Scientists’ Authorship Rights in the Digital Age (from AAAS)
• SHERPA Publisher Copyright Policies and Self-Archiving
• STM/PSP/ALPSP Statement on Journal Publishing Agreements and Copyright Agreement “Addenda” (March 2008) (pdf)
• U.S. Copyright Office

Licenses for Digital Content

• Publishers’ License Agreements
• Licensing Electronic Resources: Strategic & Practical Considerations
• Principles for Electronic Journal Licenses
• LibLicense: Licensing Digital Information, A Resource for Librarians
• Statement of Current Perspective and Preferred Practices for Selection and Purchase of Electronic Information (International Coalition of Library Consortia, October, 2004)
• Licensing Issues (ARL)
• LicensingModels.com

Open Access

• Bethesda Statement on Open Access Publishing (June 2003)
• Calculating the Cost per Article in the Current Subscription Model
• The Case for Open Access (Harvard Crimson, 12 Feb. 2008)
• Complying with the National Institutes of Health Public Access Policy: Copyright Considerations and Options (February 29, 2008)
• Conference on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities
• DC Principles for Free Access to Science
• Directory of Open Access Journals
• FreeMedicalJournals.com
• Harvard Faculty Adopts Open-Access Requirement (February 12, 2008)
• At Harvard, a Proposal to Publish Free on Web (The New York Times, February 12, 2008)
• The Impact of Open Access Journal: A Citation Study from Thomson ISI (pdf)
• Implementation of Policy on Enhancing Public Access to Archived Publications Resulting from NIH-Funded Research (effective May 2, 2005)
• Implementing Public Access Policies (ARL)
• Information Liberation (The Wall Street Journal, March 7, 2008)
• JISC/OSI (Joint Information Systems Committe/Open Society Institute) Journal Authors Survey Report (80 pgs, Published by Key Perspectives Ltd, 2004) (pdf)
• NIH’s PubChem Database
  • The American Chemical Society and NIH’s PubChem (overview from University of California)
  • SPARC Support for NIH’s PubChem Database (May 24, 2005)
• OA Self-Archiving Policy: Harvard University Faculty of Arts and Sciences
• Open Access Directory: A wiki to organize information about the open access movement
• Open Access ‘Economically Viable’ (Report from Wellcome Trust, April 2004)
• Open Access — A Matter for Definition (Society for Scholarly Publishing, June 2004)
• Open Access News Blog (Peter Suber)
• Open Access: Publishers Struggle with Demands for Free Scientific Literature (Chemical & Engineering News (May 16, 2005, Volume 83, Number 20 pp. 40-44)
• Open Access Publishing (LANL)
• Open Access and Scholarly Communication — A Selection of Key Web Sites (Issues in Science and Technology Librarianship, Summer 2005)
• Open Access: Where You Publish Makes a Difference (Stanford Lane Medical Library)
• Publishers weigh the risks and benefits of free online journal access (Chemical & Engineering News, May 16, 2005, Volume 83, Number 20, pp. 40-44)
• Put Up or Shut Up. Interview with Derk Haank, former Chairman of Elsevier Science and current CEO of Springer Science+BusinessMedia, discusses open access. (Information Today, September 2004)
• Scholarly Communication Issues (American Association of Universities)
• SPARC Open Access Newsletter
• SPARC, Science Commons, and ARL offer options for university implementation of new NIH Public Access Policy (February 29, 2008)

Publishing Initiatives

• HighWire Press
• DSpace Federation
• eScholarship
• The Open Archives Initiative
• Caltech Collection of Open Digital Archives (CODA)
• NARCIS

Digital Preservation

• Internet Archive
• LOCKSS: Lots of Copies Keep Stuff Safe
• LOCKSS-DOCS: Exploring Distributed Access to Web-Based US Government Information
• National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program
• Open Archives Initiative
• Preserving Access to Digital Information (Subject Gateway)
• Requirements for Digital Preservation Systems (D-Lib Magazine, November 2005)

Cyberinfrastructure

Includes resources that discuss infrastructure that needs to be put into place in order to deliver digital content on a large scale.

• NSF: CyberInfrastructure Report (Jan 2003)
• ACLS Commission on Cyberinfrastructure
• ARL 229: Opportunities for Research Libraries in the NSF Cyberinfrastructure Program (Aug 2003)
• E-Research and Supporting Cyberinfrastructure: A Forum to Consider the Implications for Research Libraries and Research Institutions (Oct 2004)