Seeking a Radical Change in the Role of Publishing

Universities seek to fix a 'broken system' and to change the way professors are evaluated

By DENISE K. MAGNER

The world of scholarly publishing -- shaken by sharp increases in both the cost and sheer volume of academic journals -- cannot be sustained, according to an agreement

ALSO SEE: 9 Principles to Transform Scholarly Publishing Colloquy: Join a debate on the issues raised in this article

released last week by a group of campus administrators, publishers, librarians, and association leaders. Joining forces, they have crafted a set of nine principles to "guide the transformation of the scholarly publishing system."

The unprecedented agreement, coordinated by the Association of American Universities and the Association of Research Libraries, calls for changes in the relationships among publishers, universities, disciplinary societies, and faculty members.

Among the recommendations for the various players to pursue, working independently or together: reduce the emphasis on the quantity of publications in evaluating a professor's work; speed up the process from submission of an article to its publication; collaborate on new publishing ventures to create alternatives to high-cost journals; improve the archiving of scholarly publications particularly in electronic publishing; and develop common coding standards to assure wide access to scholarship on the Web.

"The current system of scholarly publishing has become too costly for the academic community to sustain," according to an introduction to the agreement. "Numerous studies, conferences, and roundtable discussions over the past decade have analyzed the underlying causes and recommended solutions to the scholarly publishing crisis. Many new publishing models have emerged. A lack of consensus and concerted action by the academic community, however, continues to allow the escalation of prices and volume."

For the first time, said John C. Vaughn, executive vice president of the Association of American Universities, representatives of the various participants in academic publishing "have agreed on a set of characteristics that ought to define the scholarly publishing system." His organization is urging presidents of its member institutions to create special forums on their campuses to discuss the crisis. "If we can get a broad buy-in to these characteristics," he said, "then we've got a template to use to try to fix a broken system."

The problems in scholarly publishing are well-known: the choked library budgets as journal prices in science, technology, and medical fields have skyrocketed; the proliferation in the actual number of journals published; and the "death" of the scholarly monograph in the humanities, as libraries have had less money to purchase books and young scholars have reported increased difficulties getting their first books published.

"Cost is the whole issue," said Daryle H. Busch, president of the American Chemical Society and a professor of chemistry at the University of Kansas who was among the 36 signatories. "Some journals cost more than others, and there are more journals than there used to be." As a result of the cost pressures, he said, at most universities these days, "every faculty member gets a list of journals that are going to be discontinued at their campus library -- this happens once or twice a year on every campus."

The nine principles were first debated last spring at an invitation-only meeting in Tempe, Ariz. In the months that followed, the document was further refined via e-mail. The plan is for participants to circulate the principles -- both the A.A.U. and the A.R.L. plan to send copies of the document to member institutions -- with the goal of reaching a broader consensus across academe about how to proceed. The two organizations also plan to assemble a national committee in the next few months to monitor the debate and try to move it forward.

Even within the circle of 36 signatories, however, consensus was not easy to reach, said Duane Webster, executive director of the research-libraries association. "Academic institutions were concerned about costs. Librarians were promoting access. The presses were concerned with assuring their contributors an effective presence in the marketplace. Where we got agreement was the sense that we have to work together to shape the future."

A handful of large commercial publishers get the most blame for the escalating journal prices, but those companies were intentionally not invited to the discussions. "We thought it was important to specify what the academic community wanted," said David E. Shulenburger, provost at the University of Kansas, which sponsored the Tempe meeting along with the A.A.U. and the A.R.L. "I certainly hope commercial publishers will be a part of the solution, but it's important for those of us in the academic community to express the problem."

He and other signatories say they are trying to wake up faculty members who haven't paid much attention to the crisis in publishing. "The real call is for faculty to understand what is going on in the marketplace, what is going on in technology, and to be a part of the debate," said Mr. Webster, of the research-library group. "And right now, they're not."

One of the more controversial recommendations calls on professors to "refrain from submitting their work and assigning copyright to expensive journals when high quality inexpensive publication outlets are available." The framers of the principles know that is asking a lot. "If you're an assistant professor up for tenure and the most prestigious journal is a commercial journal, then that's where you have to publish," lacking an alternative, said Mr. Vaughn, of the A.A.U.

That's why the agreement urges faculty members, universities, and disciplinary societies to experiment with new publications. Many already are making forays into electronic publishing to offer lower-priced alternatives to the expensive journals. Last May, for example, the chemical society began publishing, in print and on the Web, Organic Letters, a journal intended to compete with Tetrahedron Letters, published by Reed Elsevier. Organic Letters costs $2,438 a year for 26 issues, a third the price of Tetrahedron Letters, a weekly (The Chronicle, July 10, 1998.)

"The control of academic output cannot be in the hands of a few commercial publishers who are seeking to exploit a narrow and profitable market niche," Mr. Webster said.

The agreement also calls on institutions and faculty members to rethink an academic credentialing system that "encourages faculty members to publish some work that may add little to the body of knowledge." That is, in part, a reference to the way that some professors publish research results in a handful of small articles, rather than a single large one, in order to make their record of scholarship look more prolific. The agreement recommends that faculty members be evaluated "on the quality and contribution made by a small, fixed number of published works, allowing the review to emphasize quality" over quantity.

The strongest advocates of that measure among the 36 signatories were university administrators, including Myles Brand, president of Indiana University, and Gerhard Casper, outgoing president of Stanford University.

Professors are acting "rationally" by seeking to publish lots of articles, because "that's the way the system works now," said Mr. Brand in an interview. In considering tenure cases, campus personnel committees "place great emphasis on a certain level of productivity," he said. But rather than amass enormous vitae, he would like to see decisions in tenure cases focus on a small number of a professor's most significant pieces of work. "It's beginning to happen already on some campuses," Mr. Brand said. "I know certain departments at Indiana that are placing more emphasis on the quality of scholarship rather than on the quantity." The principles, he said, "will encourage that kind of activity."

Many signatories, however, acknowledged that that sort of a change in academic culture would be a tough sell. Even if one institution urges its faculty members to limit the number of articles they write, those scholars could run into trouble finding jobs on campuses where quantity still counts.

The problem is that it is tough to generalize, said Mr. Shulenburger, of Kansas. "There are some extraordinary scholars who are extraordinarily prolific and everything they produce is gold," he said, and there are some not-so-extraordinary scholars "who produce a lot of articles to make themselves more marketable."

The principle that many participants said was toughest to reach agreement on was the one involving copyright and fair use. That's why the agreement doesn't take much of a stand on either side, other than to call for a balance between the two.

But the agreement does harshly criticize publishers who have forced scholars to sign overly restrictive contracts. In the past, professors have "transferred without direct compensation all of their copyrights to journal publishers in return for wide distribution of their work," it says. "In some cases this tradition has resulted in the need for faculty to seek permission and pay a fee to use their own work. It is critical that faculty authors retain the rights to use their own works in their teaching and in subsequent publications." The agreement urges universities to adopt policies requiring professors to retain such rights, and said professors could use such policies as a bargaining tool in their contract negotiations with publishers.

The report, "Principles for Emerging Systems of Scholarly Publishing," is available on the World Wide Web (http://www.arl.org/scomm/tempe.html).

1. The cost to the academy of published research should be contained so that access to relevant research publications for faculty members and students can be maintained and even expanded. Members of the university community should collaborate to develop strategies that further this end. Faculty participation is essential to the success of this process.
   
   
2. Electronic capabilities should be used, among other things, to: provide wide access to scholarship, encourage interdisciplinary research, and enhance interoperability and searchability. Development of common standards will be particularly important in the electronic environment.
   
   
3. Scholarly publications must be archived in a secure manner so as to remain permanently available. In the case of electronic works, a permanent identifier for citation and linking should be provided.
   
   
4. The system of scholarly publication must continue to include processes for evaluating the quality of scholarly work, and every publication should provide the reader with information about evaluation the work has undergone.
   
   
5. The academic community embraces the concepts of copyright and fair use and seeks a balance in the interest of owners and users in the digital environment. Universities, colleges, and especially their faculties should manage copyright and its limitations and exceptions in a manner that assures the faculty members access to and use of their own published works in their research and teaching.
   
   
6. In negotiating publishing agreements, faculty members should assign the rights to their work in a manner that promotes the ready use of their work, and should choose journals that support the goal of making scholarly publications available at reasonable cost.
   
   
7. The time from submission to publication should be reduced in a manner consistent with the requirements of quality control.
   
   
8. To assure quality and reduce proliferation of publications, the evaluation of faculty members should place a greater emphasis on quality of publications and a reduced emphasis on quantity.
   
   
9. In electronic as well as print environments, scholars and students should be assured privacy with regard to their use of materials.
   
   

Shirley K. Baker, vice chancellor for information technology and dean of university libraries, Washington University Libraries (Mo.).

Douglas Bennett, president, Earlham College.

Myles Brand, president, Indiana University.

Felix E. Browder, president, American Mathematical Society; professor, Rutgers University at New Brunswick.

Daryle Busch, president, American Chemical Society; professor, University of Kansas.

Jerry D. Campbell, university librarian and dean of libraries, University of Southern California.

Mary M. Case, director, office of scholarly communication, Association of Research Libraries.

Gerhard Casper, outgoing president, Stanford University.

Stanley Chodorow, special associate to the president, University of California.

Alan P. Covich, president, American Institute of Biological Sciences; professor, Colorado State University.

Ronald G. Douglas, executive vice president and provost, Texas A&M University.

Rodney Erickson, executive vice president and provost, Pennsylvania State University at University Park.

David Ferriero, vice provost for library affairs and university librarian, Duke University.

Mark S. Frankel, program on scientific freedom, responsibility and law, American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Kenneth Frazier, director, University of Wisconsin Libraries.

Frederick Friend, director of scholarly communication, University College London.

Peter Givler, executive director, Association of American University Presses.

Wyatt Hume, executive vice chancellor, University of California at Los Angeles.

Joanne Jessen, director of publications, American Speech-Language-Hearing Association.

Richard Johnson, enterprise director, Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition.

Arnita A. Jones, executive director, American Historical Association.

Clifford Lynch, executive director, Coalition for Networked Information.

James V. Maher, provost and senior vice chancellor, University of Pittsburgh.

Peggy S. Meszaros, senior vice president and provost, Virginia Tech.

Rush G. Miller, university librarian and director, University of Pittsburgh.

James G. Neal, dean of university libraries, Johns Hopkins University.

Charles E. Phelps, provost, University of Rochester.

Bernard Rous, deputy director of publications, Association for Computing Machinery.

Keith Russell, dean of libraries, University of Kansas.

David E. Shulenburger, provost, University of Kansas.

Carla Stoffle, dean of libraries, University of Arizona.

Suzanne Thorin, dean of university libraries, Indiana University at Bloomington.

Herbert Van de Sompel, University of Ghent Library, in Belgium.

John C. Vaughn, executive vice president, Association of American Universities.

Marlie Wasserman, director, Rutgers University Press.

Duane Webster, executive director, Association of Research Libraries.

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