Are academic journals becoming obsolete

1
Are academic journals becoming obsolete?
Ted Bergstrom University of California, Santa
Barbara
2
Traditional Role of library

• The obvious way for scholars to share printed
  journals was to have their university library
  subscribe to them and store them.
• But are libraries needed for electronic
  journals?

3
Electronic Site licenses

• Libraries buy site licenses for electronic
  access.
• Supply workstations at library.
• Also buy permission for faculty and students to
  access from office or home.

4
What is librarys role?

• Most users of electronic journals do not go to
  the library.
• It is feasible and easy for users to subscribe
  directly with publisher.
• Libraries have become revenue collectors for
  publishers.
• Is this beneficial for academic community?

5
Are site licenses beneficial?

• For nonprofit society journals, site licenses
  give publisher revenue to recover the cost of
  production, yet allow access to individuals for
  free.
• This is an efficient arrangement--better than
  charging individuals for access, since marginal
  cost of serving a reader is zero.

6
But not always.

• Site licenses allow profit-maximizing publishers
  to closely estimate willingness to pay and
  extract extremely high profits from academic
  sector.
• See Bergstrom and Bergstrom, PNAS, Jan 2004
• http//www.econ.ucsb.edu/tedb/Journals/mypapers.h
  tml

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Publishers traditional role

• Publishers have provided
• Referees comments, quality control,
  classification by interest.
• Copy editing and typesetting.
• Bundling articles into groups.
• Subscription management.
• Printing and distribution.

8
Publishers old business model

• Combine the functions of certification,
  classification and distribution.
• Collect revenue from users supported by a
  monopoly on distribution of articles that have
  been submitted for certification.
• This model was sustainable with paper-only
  journals. Distribution was difficult and costly.
  This shaped industry.

9
New institutions for new technology?

• With electronic access and computerized type
  setting, distribution is much less costly.
• Author can typeset own article in TeX or Word,
  and post it on own website or a public archive.
  
• Separation of classification and certification
  from distribution is now possible.

10
Functions of traditional referees

• Checking the work for mistakes.
• Read carefully and suggest improvements.
• Determine whether paper is important and useful.
  (A much more ambiguous process.)
• Certify quality of work to non-specialists who
  determine authors promotion and salary.

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What motivates referees?

• Referees are paid little or nothing.
• Obligation to their field.
• Desire to influence direction of work.
• Cultivate good will of editors so that they are
  more likely to be published.

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Certification Models

• Traditional refereeing without publishing.
• Authors submit papers to editorial board.
• Editorial board sends papers to referees.
• Editorial board lists recommended papers and
  provides links to paper on archive site.
• Who pays the costs?
• Note that costs can be small.
• Author fees
• For submission
• For publication
• Voluntary university subscriptions

13
Non-traditional Certification

• Non-exclusive publication
• Article could be recommended and linked by a
  publication with no requirement that it not be
  published or recommended elsewhere.
• New models of refereeing. Interested readers
  could comment after publication. Author could
  respond. This neednt be refereed, since storage
  costs are very low.
• Indexes of citation and downloading.

14
Professional societies

• Professional societies are likely to remain
  important.
• Coordinating device for recognizing high quality
  scholarship.
• Currently publish the top journals in most
  fields.
• Annual meetings and social functions complement
  publishing.
• Can expect some support from universities to
  cover costs.

15
University Presses

• University Presses publish some journals to
  advertise their university. Usually run as
  non-profit or with small loss.
• A helpful coordinating device and source of
  funds.
• Also allows for healthy decentralization.

16
Journals of the future?

• Low cost society and university press journals
  with traditional refereeing process.
• Non-traditional certification journals without
  publishing.
• A few high-end journals with high costs, staffs
  of editors and promotional people.
• Science, Nature, PLOS journals, some flagship
  society journals.
• Traditional commercial journals?

17
Things to strive for

• Promote open internet access to scientific
  papers.
• Encourage evaluation and quality standards
  without discouraging innovation.
• Avoid intellectual monopolies and cliques.

18
Suggestions for Chinese scientific publishing

• Support open access archives for scientific work.
  
• Insist that government supported research be
  posted in these archives.

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Further suggestions

• Encourage independent scientific societies and
  university presses.
• More than one per discipline, to prevent monopoly
  and cliques
• Encourage innovative journal substitutes
  with alternative forms of evaluation and
  certification.

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• Look for new solutions to match new technology.