Patricia Wilson Berger, National Institute of Standards and Technology, Gaithersburg MD 20899.
[Pat Berger sent the text of her remarks to the Publications Board of the American Institute of Physics on April 3, 1992. You may remember that she asked for -- and received -- recommendations from Newsletter readers as to topics to present to this group. -ed.]
I am here to discuss with you some of the issues which divide us and some which should unite us. In every case, publishers and librarians need to be concerned.
The persistently rising costs of scientific serials continue to sow suspicion between librarians and publishers and sometimes, between authors and publishers as well. Moreover, in one instance suspicion resulted in suits filed in courts of law in several foreign countries. Other issues have surfaced. For example, attendees at two seminars sponsored by the Society for Scholarly Publishing asked:
To what extent do rising journal costs erode scientific and scholarly communications? In the future, will the journal, as presently structured and priced, be economically viable? Given the above considerations, is it time to rethink the ways scientists and scholars communicate? Not if, but when, and as, elecronic journals evolve, will they, _can_ they, satisfy all the functions presently satisfied by paper-based journals? How will electronic publishing be managed, especially with regard to copyright issues? What will be the associated costs?
For some years librarians have alleged that they and their library patrons are victims of price gouging by certain journal publishers, especially by certain commercial journal publishers. This practice has distorted many a library budget by forcing repeated allocations of obscene numbers of dollars to meet "adjusted" serials prices. Each time this occurs, it distorts the library's ability to provide a full range of information resources, thereby distorting an important channel of scientific communication as well. If it is true that librarians and publishers continue to share a common goal to foster and encourage healthy scientific communications then clearly, the practice of price gouging is counterproductive to that common goal.
Today, some scientists and administrators believe that their libraries are buying back at obscene prices knowledge which was created, refereed, and edited in their own institutions. The feeling is strong that this scenario is wrong and must be changed. Some institutions are considering heavier reliance on their own publishing capabilities, for example on in-house presses, in order to control what it costs to access data and knowledge they assembled, created and "massaged" in the first place.
Time was when publishers believed librarians would never cease to accommodate excessive price hikes if such accommodation would guarantee uninterrupted access to the "significant" journals. That time is no more. Today, patrons and administrators alike understand that librarians must compile and will implement journal cancellation "hit lists" whenever they cannot meet sharp escalations in journal prices. As a rule the titles on such hit lists derive from assessments of journal usage rather than from assessments of journal prestige.
Today NIST staff and associates can access our online library catalog from anywhere on our Gaithersburg MD campus. My staff and I are working toward providing "virtual information services" as well. That is, we will deliver not only access to the bibliographic records of our information resources but also to the full contents of those resources. The virtual information services concept raises interesting challenges, however, especially copyright challenges. It also raises interesting questions regarding present information "packaging" practices of publishers and whether these packages need to be reconfigured or at least rewrapped. For example, should scientists and/or their institutions begin now to restrict the benefits of copyright to those who create intellectual property rather than to continue sharing those benefits with second and third party disseminators? What about multiple subscriptions to a single journal? In tomorrow's online environment multiple subscriptions may be difficult to identify. Will they then become relics of the past? It would seem that future pricing structures for scientific journals will need to accommodate some very basic changes in both institutional subscription requirements and in user access patterns.
Interest is high regarding future applications of copyright law. Last year John Garrett and Joseph Alen of the Copyright Clearance Center completed a study for the Corporation for National Research Initiatives on this matter. Their report is entitled, "Toward a Copyright Management System for Digital Libraires" and the work was undertaken for two reasons:
First,...(to describe) the social, political, organizational, legal, and economic context of...emerging digital libraries, and...(to outline) the major assumptions which frame them. Second,...(to present)...the major issues involved in implementing an effective rights conveyance system in digital libraries.In the end, the authors concluded that:
- the current legal framework for intellectual property will obtain for
the foreseeable future.
- The social, political and economic framework which envelops this and
other technological systems is an essential part of the system itself.
- The basic concept of intellectual property ownership will remain
essentially unchanged. The social, political and administrative
structures for collecting, assessing and distributing ownership and
royalties will evolve to take advantage of new technological capabilities.
- A critical function of digital libraries is to address effectively the
balance between access by users and the rights of owners.
- ...the current copyright framework provides a satisfactory starting
point for establishing a contract-based system to generate, select,
store, transmit, and utilize information in a digital environment.
However, the system may also be influenced by other non-copyright
legal regimes....
While I do not agree with all of Garrett's and Alen's conclusions, I continue to hope that in the future, all copyright stakeholders will consider it essential, vital even, to negotiate in an environment free of the Godawful vituperation and acrimony which marked the environment of the 70s, when copyright law last underwent comprehensive overhaul.
The Garrett-Alen report has received wide distribution and attention. Recently, it was distributed to the 159 member-insitutions of the Coalition for Networked Information. In addition to librarians and computer scientists, coalition members include commercial publishers, university presses and scientific societies. I was surprised, therefore, to discover that AIP has yet to join. It would seem to me that membership and active participation in the coalition would be an excellent way to sustain dialog with librarians and to learn first-hand what your competitors propose for tomorrow.
Turning to AIP's publications, I asked my librarian colleagues what they wished me to tell you about how they view your publications and publishing practices. What follows is a distillation of their replies:
1. A librarian in a Department of Energy laboratory reported that there:
Librarians and scientists are quite concerned about the rising costs
of physics journals. We spent $132K last fiscal year for AIP journals.
The laboratory also had an institutional membership (in flusher times)
but AIP did not allow the lower membership rates to be applied to the
library's subscriptions. Therefore, we pay full price not only for
library copies but for dozens of subscriptions that go directly to our
scientists but (are) paid for through programmatic funds. We have
never "cheated" AIP by getting member copies of any of their journals
for the library but we are concerned that...we are paying twice for
the same information....We do our share to support AIP as our authors
spent $77K last year for reprints and page charges and then we pay
again to receive the journals themselves. I'd like to see some financial
break granted to those institutional subscribers like us who
routinely support the activities of AIP through its various publications
programs.
I believe her points are well taken.
2. A library director in a Navy laboratory asked that I tell you of:
The great interest of federal scientific-technical libraries in providing
their users with journal information in electronic format. For
example,...[this] library has been tasked with developing an "electronic
library" to provide information of many types directly to users
over the campus-wide network.
We are already well underway with this project with about 20,000
technical reports (about 1.3 million page images) converted to optical
disk storage. A library "LAN" is being implemented to enable
researchers to access a variety of electronic resources (library
catalogs, inhouse and locally mounted commercial databases, CD-ROMS and
the optical disk system) from their offices and laboratories. Providing
users with journals in electronic format is a highly desirable, in
fact one might say in our environment, an essential component of
such an information utility.
To test the feasibility of networking journal information, we are
planning an experiment later this fiscal year. A small number of journals
will be stored electronically for search and retrieval directly
by the...scientists in their offices and laboratories. We will either
scan journals ourselves or, if the publisher prefers, work with an
electronic format provided to us. Please make it clear...that the
purpose of this feasibility study is not to circumvent the cost of
journal subscriptions, but rather to obtain information on the usefulness
of networked journals to our scientific staff. We are, in fact, equally
as interested in back volumes as in current issues. Convenience and speed
of access are thought to be just two of the important benefits. We are
prepared to share information obtained in the experiment with our
publisher partners.
Publications of the American Institute of Physics form a large and
important segment of the library's holdings. We believe the laboratory's
scientists would benefit if these publications were among the first
considered for networking. Toward this end the library has been
consulting with...the Copyright Clearance Center in Salem, Massachusetts.
I believe the interests of that laboratory, its library director and this board would be well served by frequent communication among all parties.
3. A university librarian in the Midwest expressed the following:
For quite a while I've been concerned that the APS leadership has not
been really talking with librarians. Thus, I've regularly heard
reports of... [one] APS officer's idea that librarians only look at
bottom line costs of journals,...not cost per character, or any other
broad measure of cost-effectiveness. I've responded...that I didn't
really think that was true....APS seems very concerned about further
library cancellations of titles such as _Physical Review_. In my own
case, I think that _Physical Review_ would be absolutely the last
title we'd consider dropping, even imagining some future journal
Armageddon, in which we...[would] have [to cancel]...all but 5 or 6
physics titles!
I really wish attention could shift toward how can AIP publications
pull more manuscripts away from ...[other]...publishers of physics. Or
put another way, the general structure of physics publishing ought to
change. Tough as this might be,...the AIP Pubs Board needs to accept
this notion.
Although I decry any situation in which libraries may be "cheating,"
it seems to me that insitutitons may be simply trying to respond to
need to supply the heavy demand which exists for copies of papers in
AIP journals. I don't think the board should be focusing on "punitive"
measures, such as creating self-destructing paper....By the way, why
doesn't AIP or...[its] member societies offer institutional memberships,
a la the American Math Society? I'm saying I'd be willing to direct
more of the budget for physics publications to AIP publications, if they
would be more aggressive toward redressing the society-commercial
balance. I guess this also implies a groundswell of commitment on
the part of the member authors....
4. And finally, a librarian in a European university told me that were he
to address you his message would be to urge you to get into your hands:
An even higher proprtion of the good quality publication than they
have now. Nobody will miss the poor quality work if it is never published
but we must ensure that the good quality work is published by
publishers with academic interests at heart.
So there you have it. We science librarians recognize the importance and
the value of AIP's publications and of the work of this board as well. We
want you to pursue -- aggressively -- capturing and publishing an even
greater volume of the "good stuff." We urge you to extend discounts and/or
institutional memberships to libraries of those or- ganizations which sustain
your publications programs in multiple ways: by preparing many of the
manuscripts you publish; by serving as manuscript referees and as members
of your editorial boards; and by paying your page and reprint charges. In
such circumstances an institution's library ought not to be obliged to buy
back at astronomical prices information the institution created, processed
-- even disseminated for you -- for the most part, for free.
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