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Faculty Perspective on Scholarly Communication
Abstract: The means and method of scholarly communication are changing as new and faster forms of communication become accessible to scholars. The potential for electronic scholarly communication via the Internet and the World Wide Web to positively affect the current state of affairs is very good. It may provide the means to address the hegemonic tendencies of the large for-profit scholarly publishers. Many matters need to be addressed though. Some of these are: copyright and ownership of intellectual property; the methods used for assessing the work of scholars; development of the communications infrastructure, both within and among institutions; and provision of equipment and services to those in the scholarly community. This paper examines these issues in the Canadian context.
Résumé: Les moyens et méthodes de communication savante sont en train de changer à mesure que des formes de communication nouvelles et plus rapides deviennent accessible aux chercheurs. La communication savante électronique à l'Internet et au World Wide Web a un très fort potentiel d'avoir un impact positif sur l'état actuel des choses. En effet, la communication électronique pourrait permettre aux chercheurs de contrebalancer les tendances hégémoniques des grandes maisons d'édition académiques à but lucratif. Il est nécessaire dans ce contexte d'adresser plusieurs questions. Parmi celles-ci, il y a : le droit d'auteur et l'appartenance de propriétés intellectuelles; les méthodes utilisées pour évaluer les ouvrages académiques; le développement d'une infrastructure pour la communication, autant au sein d'institutions qu'entre celles-ci; et la fourniture d'équipement et de services à la communauté savante. Cet article examine ces questions dans un contexte canadien.
Introduction
Scholarly communication begins with the desire of scholars to communicate the results of their work to peers in the scholarly community. Gutenberg's development of mechanized printing using movable type led to wide distribution of research findings, which previously was limited to those with access only to handwritten manuscripts. The monograph soon became the primary vehicle for the communication of scholarly work. With the establishment in 1664 of the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, research writers acquired another means of disseminating the fruits of their labours, the print journal. This is not so huge a leap in the development of vehicles for scholarly communication as one might think. James O'Donnell provides an explanation of the difference between monograph and article: "It is crude but effective to say that a monograph is an article that is too long for any journal to accept it, and so it must be printed and bound separately" (1993, p. 29).
This system of scholarly communication has remained practically unchanged since the time of Gutenberg. But things are changing and rapidly. Enormous advances in information technology over the past three decades present new ways of communication independent of paper-based systems. The established practices of peer review, publication in prestigious journals, and the surrender of copyright are all coming under close scrutiny as scholars explore the uncharted waters of scholarly communication in an electronic environment. The potential for vastly enhancing scholarly communication is very great, but there are also costs involved in shifting from a firmly established system to one still in embryo.
The urgency with which those in the scholarly community are moving to utilize these new tools and channels of communication is only partially due to the new means and media of communication -- hypertext, multimedia, and a degree of interconnectedness among academics that until recently was unheard of. Another element that is creating a climate of urgency is the continuing erosion of funding for post-secondary education in many countries, particularly in Canada. The costs of information are not falling but rising. This is most evident in the continuing escalation of serial prices. As funding to universities has declined so has the purchasing power of university libraries. Libraries have thus been forced to cancel journal subscriptions in order to stay in line with overall university budget decreases. This crisis has fueled much activity in electronic publication of scholarly journals and also in the repatriation of copyright in scholarly works -- initiated in order to loosen the stranglehold journal publishers have on the market for communication of scholarly research.
New developments in electronic and information technologies are having a variety of effects, including the impact of electronic information exchange on scholarly communication; shifts in government funding away from support of post-secondary institutions toward private sector development of information technology; and the adjustment of scholars and institutions to the changing demands of the new information environment.
The ironies are numerous. The new technology is popular, but only uncertainly effective. Indeed, the more it spreads, and the more it is used in the chaos of the Internet, the less effective it becomes -- or so some would like to say. And the obvious irony is that a device for saving money has become a permanent reason for spending ever-larger amounts. This paper will have served its purpose if it has put flesh on the bones of these ironies.
Publish or perish
Although these words may seem démodés, for academics the publish-or-perish imperative is an important motivating factor in their professional lives. In an article published in the journal Nature, John Maddox writes:
People's research programmes, even their careers, may depend on what their sponsors or employers see in print. It is not surprising that within reason authors will go to endless trouble to meet conditions laid down by journals and their editors. In the process, they are moulding accounts of their research in response to external demands. (1989, p. 657)
The pre-eminence of paper-based journal publishing in providing the fora for this aspect of career development is well established. Publication of scholarly work in journals respected by one's peers is critical to the establishment and maintenance of one's career. It is almost a rule of thumb that consideration for tenure and promotion includes an examination of one's record of publications, either of monographs or articles, by publishers or in journals that are considered the most important in the particular field of study. It is not surprising, then, that many academics give little thought to the implications of this kind of system. This imperative provides the perfect environment for a profit-making publishing industry working with an audience that is captive and thus more or less immune to market pressures.
Some think universities ought to de-emphasize the number of publications in tenure review and promotion, with several beneficial effects. Firstly, it might slow the flood of scholarly writing fueling the expansion of the scholarly publishing industry. It would also limit what Paul Ribbe, in his paper on cost / quality in academic journals calls "fragmentation and `shingling' of research reports," which allows researchers to get more "bang for the buck," as it were, out of their research publications (1990, p. 133). This is not to say that publication of research results would cease to occur. Rather, as a result of this and with aid of other aspects of electronic communication, it might stem the flood of scholarly writing.
The carrying out of research is an integral part of the scholarly endeavour and will continue whether or not there is a strong emphasis on it for tenure and promotion. This de-emphasis may also create an environment that is more conducive to doing research at a natural pace, rather than at a speed driven by the demands of institutions, thus further assisting in stemming the flood of scholarly writing and returning it to a more natural flow.
For academics in Canada, a change in the emphasis placed on publication for tenure review and promotion will be accomplished only with systematic changes in the collective agreements of some 75 universities. After all, rules for evaluation of professors are laid out in those agreements, as indeed they should be. In a university system where academic senates cannot be expected to evaluate professors' research and teaching, and where administrators have proven themselves incapable of balanced judgments of teaching and research, there is only one way to do the job: through peer review, openly and freely conducted on a regular basis. (Senates are not suitable for evaluating the teaching and research of academics for one primary reason, senates are the academic policy-setting bodies of our universities and as such are responsible for setting the policies on teaching and research consequent on the mission of the university. They are not well placed to carry out evaluations of the teaching and research of individual faculty; rather they work at the levels of course offerings and above.)
Peer review must continue to play a role in the area of scholarly communication. It is through review and criticism that knowledge expands and increases. Ideas first presented by one or a group of academics in the form of research results are placed in the academic arena where fellow peers can examine and analyze the work, incorporating it where appropriate into the body of knowledge in the discipline.
The perception among scholars that work published electronically is less legitimate from a scholarly standpoint than work published on paper in a prestigious journal is diminishing. As scholars become connected to the Internet and involved in electronic communication they see the enormous benefits to be had. One stumbling block to broad acceptance of electronic scholarly communication is the view, whether valid or not, that work published in an electronic journal will not be given as much weight by those reviewing a scholar's work, as work published in an established prestigious journal.
Industry Canada through its Virtual Products Division has been actively promoting the development and use of electronic communication for the dissemination of scholarly work. In addition, the Canadian Association of University Teachers (CAUT) has taken the position that work published electronically should be viewed on the same level as work published in paper-based journals in cases of tenure review and promotion, provided that the electronic journal has a rigorous peer review system. The issue then is not one of the medium used for publication, but rather whether there is peer review. There will, of course, always be journals with reputations that put them above all others in a discipline; however, the ease and efficiency of Web-based communication means that other, perhaps marginalized, voices will have an opportunity to be heard.
Peer review in the electronic environment
Whether the current form of peer review remains in place for long is of importance only inasmuch as it remains a viable measure of the life of the scholarly community. It is widely agreed that the current scholarly communication system of editorial boards, reviewers, and publishers will continue in place for at least another decade and probably much longer. Although the number and variety of scholarly publications that are exclusively electronic has grown tremendously since the late 1980s, there has not yet been the kind of fundamental change that would spell the end of the current regime and the start of a new regime. Rather, there is a gradual transformation. As more scholars establish their own communication networks and the credibility of the work being disseminated grows, the efficacy of this new means of communication will become evident and attractive.
Stevan Harnad, the publisher of the electronic journal Psycholoquy, characterizes scholarly communication on the Internet as the "fourth cognitive revolution" (Harnad, 1992, p. vii). He argues that two of the previous three cognitive revolutions have had the effect of slowing the natural tempo of the brain. These brakes on brain activity, handwriting, and the reading of print require more time than speech (the first cognitive revolution) to carry out, and therefore they force the brain to slow down to an unnatural tempo (Harnad, 1992, p. vi). Harnad likens paper-based scholarly communication to handwriting and reading print in that it slows down creative scholarly activity. It can require months, if not years, for a piece of research to be disseminated to the scholarly community, and then it may take a year or more for the community to respond, at which point the author of the original research has probably gone on to other things. With scholarly communication on the Internet, the time from dissemination to response is greatly reduced, allowing the creative process to occur in a more timely and natural fashion, similar to the speed and fluidity of conversation.
In the case of articles submitted to Psycholoquy, authors are not expected to submit fully formed accounts of research, but rather preliminary or partially completed reports. These reports are vetted by a member of the editorial board of the journal in order to insure a high level of quality. But here the similarity ends between this journal and other more traditional journals, for the vetting is expected to be done within a few hours of the receipt of the submission. Once vetted, the article is posted to the electronic journal and the "scholarly skywriting" (1992, p. ix), as Harnad calls it, begins. Harnad states quite plainly that
Scholarly skywriting in Psycholoquy is intended especially for the prepublication "pilot" stage of scientific inquiry in which peer communication and feedback are still critically shaping the final intellectual outcome. This formative stage is where the Net's speed, scope, and interactive capabilities offer the possibility of a phase transition in the evolution of knowledge. (1992, p. ix)
Harnad's system does not remove the necessity for vehicles in which to publish the finished work of a particular project. However, his scheme, if widely accepted, would reduce the numbers of print journals, providing another forum in which to communicate and discuss ongoing work, leaving print journals to publish the final reports of the completed work.
This model of pre-print publication on the Net has taken on even greater importance in the communication of research findings in the area of high energy physics. Paul Ginsparg (1994), the developer of the e-print archives at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, states that preprints, even in hard-copy form, have "largely supplanted journals as [the] primary communication medium." The growing popularity of e-prints as a means of getting reports of research out quickly is understandable. Once a network of scholars has been established and a way of managing it has been found, then the Internet becomes the ideal channel for disseminating and discussing scholarly work.
Rather than a radical shift away from the scholarly communication system that we know, we see an expansion and enhancement of the system, mitigated by the speed and interconnectedness of the Internet and by the recognition of scholars that this is a medium providing a forum for global scholarly exchange. This globalization of scholarly communication via the Internet is having the effect of tearing down national borders and blurring the lines of attribution of scholarly work to specific individuals. There is much greater opportunity for far-reaching collaboration in the development of ideas, manifesting itself in more frequent interdisciplinary exploration of ideas. This particular outcome of the globalization is placing stress on the classical idea of copyright as it applies to academics.
Copyright
The purpose of copyright in Canada is, among other things, to insure the droit d'auteur or the natural-law right of an author to his / her work. This includes both an economic right and a moral right. In the first case, the author or creator has the right to remuneration for the use of her work. In the second case, the author or creator has a right of integrity in her work such that it cannot be modified in any way which damages the reputation of the author/creator.
In the scholarly community, well-established common practices guard against the improper use or appropriation of another scholar's work. In the very recent past, the three Canadian granting councils, the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC), the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC), and the Medical Research Council of Canada (MRC), required that all universities obtaining grants from them have policies on academic fraud and misconduct in order to further guard against unscrupulous use of the work of others. It is reasonably safe to say that in the scholarly community there is zero tolerance for this type of behaviour. A scholar's career is dependent on the work that he /she has published. All academics know this and most respect the work of others. For those instances where such respect has broken down procedures in policies on fraud and misconduct in research come into play.
Scholars also want their work to be widely disseminated in the scholarly community. If this requires that some photocopies be made, then so be it. The fact that the work is being circulated is of far greater importance than the making of a few copies. An important point to remember is that in the world of scholarly publishing, with the exception of monographs, authors surrender the copyright in their work to the publisher. The publisher is then free to sell the work of scholars for whatever price the academic community is willing to pay and reap all the benefits from the sales.
In his paper examining the issues of cost /quality and the proliferation of academic journals, Paul Ribbe, series editor of Reviews in Mineralogy and professor of mineralogy at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, wrote, "Nearly every professional paper is written by someone whose salary is paid by someone else and who is provided with a place to work. Thus the concept of `unsupported' research is mythical in the absolute sense" (1990, p. 129).
The benefit, then, to the scholar of having a paper published in a prestigious journal is one of enhanced career opportunities and greater scholarly recognition. There is little or no direct monetary gain for the scholar. However, the hegemony that scholarly journal publishers hold over the academic community means that, as noted above, academic libraries, which are required to provide access to the resources necessary to support the research and teaching at the university, are at the publishers' mercy when it comes to buying back the very research that scholars have provided free -- particularly when the contributors have surrendered their copyright to the publisher.
The interim report of the AUCC-CARL Task Force on Academic Libraries and Scholarly Communication suggested that
Institutions must revisit the current model in which they forgo or ignore their statutory ownership of scholarly output. The new model could still yield to the interests of the scholar, but might require automatic granting of non-exclusive licences for using the intellectual property within an institution, within a group of institutions, or within the national or international scholarly community. (1995, p. 5)
The emphasis under "their" is mine. It is important to remember that the person in whom copyright resides is the author/creator and not the institution. This principle has recently been recognized at the international level by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), of which Canada is a member. In the WIPO Copyright Treaty, Article 6 states:
(1) Authors of literary works and artistic works shall enjoy the exclusive right of authorizing the making available to the public of the original and copies of their works through sale or other transfer of ownership.
(2) Nothing in this Treaty shall affect the freedom of Contracting Parties to determine the conditions, if any, under which the exhaustion of the right in paragraph (1) applies after the first sale or transfer of ownership of the original or a copy of the work with the authorization of the author. (1996, Article 6, p. 3)
Although this Article refers to the transfer of ownership and not permission to copy without remuneration, it reinforces the fact that authors and creators are the rightful holders of the copyright. Parenthetically, this treaty is directly related to the Berne Convention, to which Canada is signatory.
Clifford Lynch makes a somewhat convincing argument against the AUCC-CARL proposal:
While this would probably make a major impact on the economic bind facing libraries, it seems highly unlikely that such a shift could be accomplished. Faculty would besiege university administrations, and publishers (and others) would challenge such policies in the courts and legislatures.... If nothing else, the bureaucratic ineptitude of many large institutions would threaten to become a major barrier to the dissemination of new knowledge. (1993, p. 15)
One can well imagine the reluctance of faculty to give to their administrations one more element of control over their professional lives. This control could conceivably mean that an author would not be free to choose the place in which he /she wished to have their work published, but would have to seek permission from an administration. If the aim of this type of arrangement is to gain greater control over the publishing process, then that permission may well not be given. As noted above, academic careers are built, in part, on a record of scholarly publishing in the right places and this would seem to undermine a scholar's efforts at establishing and maintaining a career. There may also be a natural reluctance on the part of publishers, who have for a long time reaped the benefits of a scholarly publishing system that gives them all the opportunities for making profits from the very people that provide them with the means. Lynch concedes that a move of this type would have a major effect on the budgetary crisis that university libraries have been experiencing for at least five, if not ten, years.
One possibility not discussed by Lynch is the retention of copyright by the authors of the works, that is, the scholars. If scholars retained copyright to their work, then publishers would probably not be as anxious to raise prices exorbitantly or to divide their journals into areas of greater and greater specificity in order to get more "bang for the buck" from the articles being published.
This last possibility raises interesting questions about what scholars might demand if they retained owners' rights. Some may decide that they should receive royalties from the publication of their work. This could have a considerable impact on the costs to users for making use of this material. This may well sound attractive to a copyright collective such as CANCOPY, which would view the inclusion of scholars in their collective as a means of extracting more money from all manner of institutions with which they have licences. Therefore, the savings to libraries that Lynch refers to in the quotation above may not amount to much, as the profits would simply be shifted from the publisher to the creator. As equitable as this may seem, it would defeat the cost-saving purpose of author retention of copyright.
Still, practically speaking, no unsupported research occurs in the scholarly community. The benefits scholars receive for their efforts, one hopes, are tenured appointments and increases in prestige, and thus the incentives to reap greater profit from one's research may be minimized. However, it is the right of the authors /creators to grant or not grant, as the case may be, "non-exclusive licences" for the use of their work.
It is current CAUT policy that
The general principle of a proper copyright policy is that the copyright should belong solely to the creator(s) but that where the university has commissioned a work dealing with the operations of the university itself or where it requests the member to edit a university publication, the university and the member may make alternate arrangements. (1987, Preamble)
The policy goes on to stress the importance of language in faculty contracts that ensures that copyright -- not only in books, but also in films, videos, works of art, lectures, and computer programs -- does reside with the creator and not the institution, because the language in the Copyright Act permits employers to claim copyright in the work of their employees (CAUT, 1987, Preamble). Entrenching this principle in faculty contracts makes substantive recognition of the scholar as creator.
The issue of copyright and who holds it is a difficult one to manage as the section above illustrates. All of the scenarios suggested have advantages and disadvantages. It is critical, therefore, that more work be done by all the Canadian organizations involved in post-secondary education on a fair and equitable system of copyright -- a system that recognizes and rewards the creators and, at the same time, facilitates use of research material.
Bill C-32
The new amendments to the Canadian Copyright Act, found in Bill C-32, provide an opportunity to address this issue by means of exceptions for copying of single articles for the purposes of research and study by those associated with libraries, museums, or archives. Unfortunately, these exceptions are fettered by restrictions on what type of material can be copied, that is, only articles from scholarly, scientific, or technical periodicals, excluding other types of periodical literature not of a scholarly nature, for a period of a year after publication. In addition, language has been added to qualify the applicability of some exceptions by requiring that institutions be members of copyright collectives before exempt copying can take place.
The first of these limitations can be dealt with by providing broad definitions of scholarly, scientific, and technical periodicals, thus capturing the greatest variety. The second of the restrictions places libraries, museums, and archives at the mercy of copyright collectives. All of these institutions will have to be members of a copyright collective in order to avoid prosecution. This will require that more money be spent on making research material accessible, placing further strain on already severely reduced budgets, and benefiting not only the collective but also the publishers. The only solution to this problem is removal of this qualification from the Bill.
Funding of technological development
The increasing ease of network communication and the growing number of people utilizing it are precipitating the development of electronic scholarly communication. Practically all those involved in scholarly communication, from government to publishers to the universities to scholars, are looking closely at the medium as a means of answering pressing financial and political questions.
For government, the issues are manifold. Canada, like others in the G-7, is active in building and maintaining a Canadian communications infrastructure that will be able to support the growing use of electronic network communication. In the report of the Information Highway Advisory Council (IHAC), the prevailing theme is private-sector development of not only the infrastructure but also the products disseminated on it. One can only think that the reason for this particular perspective is the now commonly held position of many politicians that people want less government and more free-market capitalism.
This certainly seems to be the case with funding for post-secondary education. The federal government is actively decreasing the post-secondary education funding it provides to the provinces, which in turn are looking for ways to shift the cost of operating universities away from themselves and onto the individual institutions, and encouraging greater use of private sector funding. Therefore, it appears less and less likely that government will provide funding to develop a system of electronic scholarly communication when other spending on education is being reduced.
The federal government has not yet officially accepted the recommendations of the IHAC. Yet, over the past few years, it has been systematically commercializing its information-providing services. In its 1994 brief to the IHAC, CARL made a number of valuable points about government funding policies and the rising cost of information.
The collections and services of the National Library have been severely reduced due to federal budget restrictions; CISTI has been obliged by federal policies and those of its parent body (the National Research Council of Canada) to become a commercial information provider whose rates are so high that the use of its excellent services by non-profit organizations is in jeopardy.
It should be added that the trend to view information primarily as a commercial commodity has led to drastic increases in the cost of Statistics Canada data, information essential to research on how rapid social change is reshaping the country. And as government departments move from paper to electronic publishing, the Depository Services Program is finding it increasingly difficult to carry out its mandate of providing federal information to the nation's libraries. (Canadian Association of Research Libraries, 1994, p. 5)
Since CARL made these points, the federal government has continued to divest itself of its information-providing services with the privatization of the Canada Communications Group, the body responsible for publication and dissemination of most government information.
On the infrastructure side, if one uses the Canadian Network for the Advancement of Research, Industry and Education, Inc. (CANARIE) (originally started as a government-funded organization that supported network communication technologies by both public and private sector institutions) as a bellwether of the government's direction, then the recently initiated Technology and Applications Development (TAD) Program is an indicator of the move toward private sector development.
The TAD has been established to assist the private sector in the development of "Canada's communications infrastructure" (CANARIE, 1996). The condition for being an applicant for funding from TAD is:
Lead Contractors must be incorporated under the laws of Canada, a province or a territory, at the time the application is submitted. CANARIE requires for-profit corporations to lead projects, since they normally will be in the best position to commercialize the results of projects.
The Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) document goes on to say that "public sector corporations which receive an appropriation from the Canadian government and public sector corporations such as hospitals, universities or school boards are not eligible as a Lead Contractor."
These two statements alone show that the government intends to assist the private sector, before all others, in developing "Canada's communications infrastructure." The reason is that commercialization of the communications infrastructure will encourage the private sector to do the development work and to reap the benefits, while the public sector and universities, in particular, are to play a merely supporting role.
In its final report, IHAC recommends privatization of CANARIE, which is now under way (IHAC, 1995, p. 152). In addition, the IHAC report recommends that research and development carried out by universities, in particular, be of the kind that eases the use of new information technologies. If IHAC's recommendation is followed, these technologies will have been developed by the private sector for private-sector gain (IHAC, 1995, p. 160). IHAC has also recommended to the federal government that private industry be provided with incentives to develop the communications infrastructure in the form of tax breaks for the purposes of R&D, deregulation in order to remove barriers to greater competition, and the relaxation of foreign ownership limits to give businesses better access to foreign capital.
From what is described above, it seems a safe bet that the development of the national communications infrastructure will very probably be carried out by the private sector. It is abundantly clear from the IHAC final report and from the initiatives of CANARIE that the profitability of any development will be a major consideration. As a result, the Canadian government will have succeeded in shifting the costs of the publication and dissemination of information, and the development and maintenance of the information highway, to the private sector. In doing so they will have compounded the difficulties for universities seeking to cope with issues around the fast-evolving world of information technology.
Given (a) that the federal government and many provincial governments are reducing their funding to post-secondary institutions, (b) that they are creating a communications infrastructure, and (c) that publication and dissemination of government information is fertile for exploitation by the private sector, we in the scholarly community should be worried that a class structure among and within institutions will develop. Some will be able to make the transition from the current system of scholarly communication and some will not.
The private sector will see profit margins and the bottom line as important in the development and use of the communications infrastructure. Karen Hunter, vice-president and assistant to the chairman of Elsevier Science Publishers, notes that the rules governing the development and implementation of electronic communications are
... being established by others. Those others include our authors and readers on the one hand and such megapowers as the government, the telephone and cable companies, and... perhaps even power companies. All have the potential to control computerized access to the home and, via the home to every individual. (Hunter, 1994, p. 127)
The emphasis is mine, pointing to the proprietary attitude of this publisher to creators and readers.
In the final report of the AUCC-CARL /ABRC Task Force (1996) it is recognized that governmental support is essential to "help [universities] build the technological infrastructure needed to network their campuses" (p. 13). It is of critical importance that government not only support the internal development of network capability in universities, as AUCC and CARL suggest, but that it also ensure that access to the national communications infrastructure be affordable and equitable. In order to accomplish this, an independent federal agency should be established to regulate the development and costs of the communications infrastructure, with, inter alia, a specific mandate that public educational institutions be charged substantially reduced rates. Of equal importance is an increase in governmental support of the publication and dissemination of government information. In this latter case the government produces information with public money, then it is sold back to the very people that supported its creation. This system seems remarkably similar to that currently practised in scholarly journal publication, a system that obtains, free of charge, information produced with public money, publishes it, and then sells it back to those who supported its production. If one of the goals of a new scholarly communication system is to deal with the buying back of information provided free of charge, then we must work to ensure that the inequity of the current system is not replicated in a new one. Government should therefore take back its publishing function in order to provide all Canadians, at a reasonable cost, with information produced with public funds.
Publishers
Publishers, both commercial and not-for-profit, are actively working to incorporate the latest enhancements in computer and information technology into their publications. The embedding of hypertext links in texts, allowing instant access to cited articles and three-dimensional illustrations and graphs, is greatly enhancing the utility of articles published electronically. In addition, as noted above in the description of Psycholoquy and the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) e-print archives, the speed with which reports of research can be disseminated and responded to is mitigating the move of scholars, particularly in the sciences, away from a reliance on paper-based journals for publication of their works to the electronic environment.
However, the transition from paper to electronic formats is slow by today's standards, where computer software manufacturers come out with new versions of their software about every six months. Part of the reason for this, as Karen Hunter says, is a result of the unevenness of the development of the information infrastructure.
In full-text scholarly publishing, the necessary electronic infrastructure is growing but is far from uniform, particularly outside of the United States and in less well-funded parts of the country. It is certainly not such that one can shift existing products from paper to electronic form only. That means parallel publication of both paper and electronic formats, increasing overall costs. (Hunter, 1994, p. 128)
From the commercial point of view there is another reason:
Consider the much touted "multimedia revolution." Publishers privy to the truth know that with very, very few exceptions, sales of a multimedia bestseller number in the (low?) four digits. That is very small relative to the cost of creating such products. Increased market readiness will be the catalyst to product introduction. (Hunter, 1994, p. 128)1
The first of these points is important considering the commercial development of the information infrastructure. If profit is to be the driving force behind network development, then it is fairly easy to imagine a scenario where network service in major urban centres is excellent, but as one moves away from those centres to areas where there is a smaller population base, service declines. For these areas with smaller populations probably the main means of accessing the network will be over long-distance communications lines, at long-distance rates. Under these conditions there will be a gap between those who have ready access to network communication facilities and those who do not, the haves and the have nots. It is essential that governments establish regulations to ensure that access to communications networks is equitable and affordable both for individuals and universities. Here again an independent federal agency could regulate access and costs.
There is yet another aspect of unevenness in the establishment of the electronic infrastructure in institutions. The AUCC / CARL Task Force report recommends that governments support internal network development in universities (1996, p. 15). This is crucial given that many universities do not provide the basic tools for electronic communication, that is, personal computers, to their faculty. Most faculty have to rely on personal research funds to purchase such equipment or one-time-only start-up funds available to new faculty upon being hired. This is fine for those few faculty who, in these days of fiscal restraint, are lucky enough to get a tenure-track position, but it ignores the needs of established faculty.
University libraries are also struggling to develop the necessary electronic infrastructure in order to provide access to these new forms of communication. Karen Hunter's comment about parallel publishing of both paper and electronic versions is especially pertinent to libraries. She notes that publishers are incurring additional expenses to maintain this parallel system. There can be little doubt that some of these additional costs are being passed on to the subscribers, the bulk of which are academic libraries. In addition, the costs of equipping university libraries with the necessary hardware and software to access and use electronic publications is enormously expensive. With funding to libraries being cut as a result of the trickle-down effect and libraries having to undertake massive serial cancellation programs in order to balance the books, it is fairly easy to see a time in the not-too-distant future when access to information through libraries will be severely limited.
Government and the universities should, in brief, provide the necessary support to assist the libraries in establishing an electronic infrastructure and at the same time maintain paper subscriptions where necessary.
The mechanics of publishing
Whatever savings a publisher might experience by shifting from paper to electronic will be offset by decreases in revenue of one sort or another. In a cost / benefit analysis of paper-based versus electronic journals done by Vijay Jog (1995) for the Virtual Products Division of Industry Canada, it is quite clear that the savings from the conversion would be offset by a loss in revenues from subscriptions.
Jog divides the costs of publishing a journal into two groups. The first group he labels "first copy" costs (1995, p. 5). These are the costs associated with the writing and peer-review stage of the scholarly communication process. As noted above, there are minimal costs associated with this phase of the process. Scholars rarely do unsupported research and referees usually volunteer their services in exchange for the added prestige of serving on an editorial board as an expert in the discipline. Sometimes this service is rewarded with a small honorarium.
It is in the second phase of the publishing process that the main costs of journal production are found. Jog identified six tasks, divided into two groups, which are required for a journal to be published: administration, editorial management, promotion, typesetting, printing, and shipping (distribution) (1995, p. 8).
The first three form the first group; he has identified these as fixed costs. In other words, the tasks of administration, editorial management, and promotion will occur regardless of whether a journal is paper-based or electronic. He does make the point though that currently, for the electronic journals that he examined, these costs were considerably lower because "there seems to be a strong spirit for making the [electronic] journals work, and those involved are donating their time (or their University's) due to their `love' of technology and their interest in using the technology in an innovative manner" (1995, p. 11).
Included among these volunteer editorial managers and journal administrators are systems experts who are necessary to keep the computer hardware and software running effectively.
However, he goes on to say: "This cannot continue to be the case and must be accounted for in the incremental analysis. The estimates are that for a typical E-journal, these system related efforts would require one or two days a week of a system specialist" (1995, p. 11).
The second group of costs -- typesetting, printing, and distribution -- includes those that Dr. Jog, among other commentators, has identified as the places where savings can be found in the move from paper to electronic. This is easy to see, as electronic publications do not require typesetting, printing, or distribution in the same way that paper journals do. In the electronic environment, word processing becomes the equivalent of typesetting, and that is normally done by the author. And, because the distribution is done over telephone lines, there is no need for centralized printing or for labour-intensive distribution, as the information can be distributed to all the subscribers with a few keystrokes.
In his analysis, Jog found the average costs of these two groups to be 57% and 43% of the costs of production, respectively. He also found the average distribution of revenues to be 42% subscriptions, 4% advertising, 1% back-issue sales, 12% association support, 34% government grant, and 8% other funding (1995, p. 9). These figures were obtained by an examination of the financial statements of a sample of five Canadian scholarly journals. In a conversion from paper-based to electronic, Jog points to a number of choices effecting revenues. First, will the journal be offered free of charge on the Internet to a limited group, such as members of a supporting association, while all others pay, or it will be free to everyone? He estimates losses in revenue from a decline in subscriptions as a result of a free offering to individuals who drop their association membership and a decline in advertising, as well as back-issue sales. He assumes, however, that institutions, who in the case of association journals provide much of the subscription revenue, would continue to buy subscriptions to the electronic version. In his conclusion Jog posits that the most likely savings from a switch from paper-based to electronic would be about 7% of expenses (1995, p. 12).
One should not assume therefore that a shift from paper-based to electronic will produce large savings. There are too many variables that offset savings in typesetting, printing, and distribution.
Conclusion
The development of computers and networks opens marvelous opportunities for enhancing scholarly communication. Scholars already use the Internet and the WWW to facilitate research, and the speed of dialogue in the scholarly community greatly encourages the exploration and expansion of knowledge.
However, some legal and political problems have arisen to bedevil the sensible development of an electronic scholarly communication system. These include copyright and the ownership of intellectual property, continuing government support of learning institutions so they can fulfill their missions, and equal and affordable access to the communications infrastructure for all Canadians.
The trend in Canada and the United States is toward privatization of the information infrastructure. Coupled with this is government action helping the private sector in this development to the detriment of the general public good. The information rich are pitted against the information poor.
However platitudinous it may sound, if we are to benefit and prosper as Canadians from the information society, then our government must continue to support the scholars and institutions they work in so that people will have the opportunity to learn and become a part of the information society.
Notes
- 1
- The number of sales of multimedia products was obtained by Karen Hunter from Hawkins (1993).
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