Colloquy Live: 3/7/2001: A New Challenge to Journal Publishers

A New Challenge to Journal Publishers

Wednesday, March 7, at noon U.S. Eastern time

Are journal publishers charging too much for subscriptions while failing to compensate authors and reviewers for their efforts? Could a new publishing model successfully challenge the dominance of the industry giants?

A new nonprofit organization, the Electronic Society for Social Scientists, is preparing to challenge the companies that dominate journal publishing. ELSSS, as it is known, says that by eliminating the huge profit margins of the companies, the group will be able to offer scholarly journals to libraries at much lower rates than the companies currently charge. And unlike the traditional model of scholarly publishing, ELSSS plans to pay authors and peer reviewers. Many scholars are excited about the project and say they hope it will provide some much-needed competition to the big publishers. But the existing publishing companies say that ELSSS's efforts are based on a misreading of the economics of publishing, and that electronic distribution of journals is already bringing down prices.

» A Revolutionary Idea in Publishing (3/9/2001)

Manfredi La Manna is the founder of ELSSS and teaches economics at St. Andrews University, in Scotland. He is currently organizing the project and raising financial support for it. He will answer questions and respond to comments about his challenge to the journal-publishing companies, and about new models for journal publishing, on Wednesday, March 7, at noon U.S. Eastern time. Advance questions are encouraged.

This is a transcript of the chat from Wednesday, March 7.

A transcript of the chat follows.

Vincent Kiernan (Moderator):
Good afternoon, and welcome to Colloquy Live. I'm Vincent Kiernan, a senior editor here at The Chronicle, and our guest today is Manfredi La Manna, an economist at St. Andrews University, in Scotland.

Mr. La Manna is creating an online-publishing venture for economists, which he calls the Electronic Society for Social Scientists. He says that a major goal of ELSSS is to challenge the dominance of commercial journal publishers. Mr. La Manna says subscriptions to ELSSS's journals will be half the cost of subscriptions to journals from commercial publishers, and he says that authors and reviewers for ELSSS's journals will be paid.

Thanks for joining us, Mr. La Manna.

Manfredi La Manna:
I'm very happy to have been invited to this chat. I'll do my best to answer whatever questions are asked about ELSSS. ELSSS is an inclusive enterprise and we welcome comments from the librarian and academic communities.

Question from Vincent Kiernan:
I'll kick off our chat. The basic premise of ELSSS seems to be that there's a lot of room to reduce the profits of journal publishers. But online technology -- on which ELSSS will rely -- is expensive to develop, operate, and maintain, and commercial publishers say they need to make a profit on their journals so they can plow money into online technology. With sharply lower profit margins, how can you be sure that you will have the funds needed to keep the ELSSS journals online decades into the future?

Manfredi La Manna:
Well, I don't want to burden people with too many statistics but there are two figures that are significant here. If we take the six most cited economics journals, they are all from nonprofit publishers and their price averages $180 a year. Of the 20 most cited journals only five are owned by commercial publishers and their average price is about $1,660 per year. And the nonprofit journals are not run at a loss. In fact sometimes they support the learned societies that sponsor them. So in those two figures I think lie the answer to the question.

Question from David Goodman, Princeton Univ. Library:
Could not prices be reduced even further by not paying the contributors? At present academic authors write primarily for promotion and tenure and the lack of direct monetary payment does not seem to inhibit them.

Manfredi La Manna:
There's been a lively debate amongst ELSSS supporters on the initial suggestion that authors should be given a monetary reward. The consensus now agrees with Mr. Goodman's sentiments and in fact the latest version of the ELSSS Web site suggests that authors are not paid directly but perhaps some prizes can be offered to the best articles. What I would like to point out is that the issue of payments to authors is really a side issue here because in the overall picture it amounts to a minute percentage of the budget. Slightly more significant is that ELSSS will give a small reward to referees for full and prompt reports. This may be a problem that is specific to economics but in economics it's not unusual to have to wait from anywhere between 6 months to a year to get the first reports.

Question from Melissa Blankenship, AOCS Press:
Is there a place for the small scholarly/nonprofit publisher in this new publishing model? It is extremely difficult for us now to compete with the commercial houses because (1) they can afford to compensate authors with perks like free reprints and no page charges, and (2) when they impose a double-digit price increase, librarians often react by cancelling niche journals such as ours to cover the increased costs.

Manfredi La Manna:
I think this is a very important issue and I cannot stress enough that ELSSS is aimed squarely at those commercial publishers that in the last 10 years or so have created what is now known as the journal crisis with their almost extortionist price increases. What ELSSS aims to do is to provide an alternative to the high-priced commercial journals so as to reduce their overwhelming influence in the market so that they will be forced to reduce prices and have to accommodate equally or even more prestigious journals run for the benefit of the academic community. I think the market is really segmented into three clear sections in economics. I cannot generalize about other disciplines. The top journals in economics are published by nonprofit publishers. Then there's a set of mainly specialist journals published by commercial publishers. And finally there is a sector of small society-sponsored specialist journals. And I agree with Ms. Blankenship that it is this sector that has paid the highest price of the monopolistic behavior of the commercial publishers.

Question from Eamon, Permissions Agent:
This is a comment, not a question. Whether an author receives too much, not enough, or just the right amount of compensation depends upon the agreement he or she has with the publisher. If compensation is not adequate for the author he or she need not sign an agreement with the publisher.

Manfredi La Manna:
Well, this would be the case if authors had a choice. But, again, in economics, especially if you want to publish in a prestigious specialist journal, very often you have only a handful of journals you can submit to. So if you refuse to submit to the high-priced journals you are effectively damaging both your career and the diffusion of your ideas.

Question from Bill Rao, UNSW, Sydney, Australia.:
On Journal prices: Have you got any cost estimates to get some insight into the publisher profits? True some publishers have set very high prices. I doubt if they want to make more than normal profit. Nevertheless, it is possible to reduce journal costs and one option is to get it typeset, print and distribute, say from low labour cost countries like India.

Manfredi La Manna:
I have two comments to make. One is that on the ELSSS Web site there's a reference to a forthcoming article by Ted Bergstrom at the University of California at Santa Barbara where among other things he estimates the annual profit of a typical high-priced economics journal and his estimate is $1,260,000. My second comment is that I don't think that farming out the production of journals to low-wage countries is a solution in so far as there may be a technological answer to the problem. And that is precisely what ELSSS will be engaged on in the next few months -- that is to create a software template that will allow the editing, production, and diffusion of journals, both electronically and in print in the most efficient fashion.

Question from Tracy Mitrano, Cornell University:
I am fascinated by your proposal. What would you advise start-ups in other disciplines (mine being history and law) to read, do, or with whom to talk to begin similar projects?

Manfredi La Manna:
Well, Tracy, visiting the ELSSS Web site would be a start. And I have two suggestions to make in the short term and in the long term. In the short term, people who are interested in the ELSSS saga should get in touch with me and I will be more than happy to share with them the strategy that I followed so far. In the longer term, the software template that I've just referred to can and will be made available to other researchers and disciplines provided they subscribe to the ELSSS principles of fair publishing and respect of authorship.

Question from J. David Velleman, University of Michigan:
Your model of academic publishing alters but still retains the system of paying for access to scholarship -- a system that has become unnecessary in the age of the Internet. With only a fraction of the funds that academic institutions currently spend on journal subscriptions, they could jointly publish the same material on the Internet for free -- without subscription or licensing fees. Please comment.

Manfredi La Manna:
I think this is a key question and the state of affairs that Professor Velleman has described is clearly the optimal state. What perhaps he has not addressed is the transition from the current state of affairs to the ideal outcome. And, again, I can only comment about economics but I suspect that a similar story could be told for other disciplines. I would like people to ask themselves the following question: If they have a high-quality paper today, will they send it to a respectable and prestigious high-priced journal or will they post it on some archive? An additional problem in economics is that the pool of high-quality referees is both small and overused. I should also like to stress that all ELSSS publications will be available free in all developing counties and transition economies. So effectively what ELSSS will be charging libraries in the developed world for is for the admittedly small distribution costs and for the reward of prompt and full refereeing.

Question from Stevan Harnad, Southampton University, UK:
Referees steal time from their research to do refereeing for various reasons (civic duty, golden rule, superstition). How much would they have to be paid to make it worth their while? Who has that kind of money? And might it not bias their reviewing? (Would this not have to be carefully tested in advance?)And how could spending more money on that lower journal access prices?

Manfredi La Manna:
On refereeing, again, one has to distinguish between the short and the long run. If you want to provide strong and viable competition to the high-priced journals, you have to achieve "instant reputation." Paying referees for prompt and full reports is part of the strategy of creating such instant reputation. Once the ELSSS journals are fully established, one can see a scenario where payments to referees are reduced if not abolished. At least in economics, economists have no problems with refereeing as a public good. And that's why they referee free for the nonprofit publishers. What they object to is refereeing free for the monopolistic publishers. And the second point regarding the effect of rewarding referees on lowering access prices is that only by creating a credible alternative to the established high-priced journals can you put downward pressure on journal prices across the board.

Question from Janet Croft, University of Oklahoma:
I can see that the major advantage to libraries is, of course, going to be the lower price per subscription. But what sort of licensing model are you using? Will interlibrary loan and electronic reserves be supported? How about distance education students?

Manfredi La Manna:
The model that ELSSS will follow is to allow full access to any user in the domain of the subscribing library. I am sure that issues such as access from r distance-education students can be resolved with goodwill and good faith on the part of libraries, which so far have been very supportive of the ELSSS principles, so I don't expect a problem here.

Vincent Kiernan (Moderator):
We're about half way through the time for the chat. So if you've been thinking about submitting a question, now is a good time to send it in.

Question from Vincent Kiernan:
One gets the strong impression that ELSSS's supporters are distrustful of commercial publishers. Would academe be better off if no scholarly journal was published by a for-profit company? Put another way -- do for-profit publishers offer any value for academic publications?

Manfredi La Manna:
The answer to the first part of the question -- Would academe be better off if no scholarly journal was published by a for-profit company? -- is an emphatic Yes. The question is how to move toward such a state of affairs. And the answer to the last part of the question -- do for-profit publishers offer any value for academic publications? -- is an even more emphatic No.

Question from Ross Atkinson, Cornell Univ. Library:
One problem we have had in the past with new concepts for journals is that they do not replace current (expensive, for-profit) journals, but rather only add more journals for scholars to read and publish in -- and for libraries to buy. Why do you feel that economics scholars will use ELSSS journals instead of -- rather than in addition to -- the currently published journals on economics?

Manfredi La Manna:
This is a crucial issue and, again, one has to distinguish between the short and the long term. In the short term it's quite possible that high-cost journals will be subscribed to in addition to the ELSSS publications, even though one should not disregard the possibility of editorial boards and editors of high-priced journals putting pressure on their publishers to renegotiate their contracts or even migrate to the new and fairer journals. So in the short term there may be additional burden placed on already-stretched library budgets, but this should be seen as an investment because in the longer term either the high-priced journals will have to reduce their prices or they will become dispensable.

Question from David Penniman, consultant:
How can this approach deliver savings of 50% while adding costs at the same time (e.g. paying reviewers, etc.)? Where is the significant cost cutting from the traditional publisher's approach?

Manfredi La Manna:
Well, the main source of saving will not be in terms of cost cutting but will be by eliminating the stratospheric profits that some commercial publishers are earning. I'd like to refer you to my previous answer about the annual profits of commercial publishers. I also think that the software template that ELSSS will be developing will also contribute to reduce costs. And, finally, if I can refer to the ELSSS Web site (www.elsss.org.uk/survey), especially section 3 (www.elsss.org.uk/survey/section3.html), when there's a direct comparison between ELSSS and journal publishers costings.

Question from Ed Barnas, Cambridge UP:
Going back to your answer to the first question, the number of articles delivered per journal can vary widely. How does the average "cost per article" compare for the non-profit and for-profit titles included in your averages?

Manfredi La Manna:
Well, let me refer you to the forthcoming article by Ted Bergstrom, which has data on prices per page. I'd like also to comment on a related matter here. It is interesting that when pressed to reduce the subscription prices of their journals, some commercial publishers respond by offering more journal space. This is an instance where more is less because without a corresponding increase in the number of high-quality submissions the effect of increasing journal space is to reduce the average quality of articles.

Vincent Kiernan (Moderator):
We have time for just a few more questions.

Question from Mark Holland, library publisher:
Who do you plan will be responsible for the basket of activities which existing publishers undertake - marketing, subscription sales and renewals, billing, and cash collection; and back-end functions such as providing user statistics? Are these costs accommodated within your proposed price models, and what proportion of revenues are you allowing to cover them?

Manfredi La Manna:
This is a technical query and the incidence of these costs is likely to be small. However, the issues raised by Mr. Holland will be taken into account when developing the software template that I referred to earlier.

Question from Todd Epstein, Industry Consultant:
Do you think initiatives such as yours and SPARC might have an impact on the antitrust review of the Reed Elsevier acquisition of Harcourt, which I understand is under intense scrutiny both in the US and UK?

Manfredi La Manna:
Well, what I hope will happen is that these initiatives will not be taken as evidence that the high-quality academic journal market is a competitive one, because it isn't. However, I hope that initiatives such as ELSSS and SPARC will help to focus attention on both the market structure and the pricing policies in this market.

Question from John Conley, University of Illinois:
One of the main reasons to support initiatives like ELSSS is to create competition in the intellectual marketplace. However, I echo the concerns of Mr. Goodman and Professor Velleman. Why charge so much? High subscription prices are necessarily exclusionary and limit the free flow of information. As scholars we ought to be doing just the opposite. It seems to me that the objective ought to be to collect just enough money to cover costs, and this need not include compensation levels on the order of $40,000 for editors of the proposed ELSSS journals, for example. I would like to get behind this initiative, but I am quite concerned that subscription prices in the $500-800 range are likely to prove a sever impediment to its ultimate success.

Manfredi La Manna:
The proposed subscription prices for ELSSS journals are based on rather conservative estimates of the subscriber base. The key principle is to charge as low a subscription as possible compatible with the publication of the highest quality research. Paying editors market stipends is a necessary means to create the "instant reputation" I mentioned earlier. Unlike commercial publishers, the long-term aim of ELSSS journals is to reduce prices to the lowest possible level.

Question from Suzanne Calpestri, Univ. of Calif., Berkeley:
The ELSSS model focuses on economic issues as a critical feature for the success of scholarly journals. Can you say something about other elements that contribute to a journal's prestige and the ways in which the ELSSS model addresses these issues?

Manfredi La Manna:
I think that a journal's prestige is determined by the quality of the submissions, the quality of the refereeing, and the quality of the editing. (Notice that all three functions are carried out by academics, not by publishers.) The emphasis on economics of the ELSSS model is merely a strategy for achieving the highest quality in all three functions.

Question from Kathy Green, NC State University:
How do you propose to entice non-tenured faculty to publish in ELSSS journals vs. the better known commercial publications? When promotion and tenure are on the line, it seems that questions of fair pricing and wider access are "back burner issues" to job security. By the time an academic has that job security, she's contributed substantially to the continued perpetuation of the current system.

Manfredi La Manna:
First, I agree completely with Ms. Green's comments. And one of the pleasing aspects of the ELSSS initiative is that apart from attracting support from some of the most highly respected economists it has also received the support of junior faculty. ELSSS journals will have failed in their mission if they are not regarded as equally prestigious or better than the established high-priced journals they wish to replace. The aim is to provide high-quality journals where nontenured faculty can publish and obtain full peer recognition.

Vincent Kiernan (Moderator):
That's all the time we have today.

Thanks, Dr. La Manna, for participating.

Manfredi La Manna:
Closing comments: I have enjoyed a lot trying to answer the interesting questions that have be put forth here, and I'm sure that tomorrow all the right answers will come to me. If people want to give me a second chance and perhaps continue this debate, I would be very happy to continue to discussion by e-mail (mlm@elsss.org.uk).

Vincent Kiernan (Moderator):
And thanks to everyone who sent in questions. We received many more than we had time to answer.

A transcript of the chat will be posted here shortly.

On behalf of The Chronicle, thanks for participating in today's Colloquy Live chat.