Open Access News

An important political battle is playing out ... that pits the interests of traditional publishing against the emerging model of open access. ...

The results of this battle will have important consequences for research and for the academy, but in some ways it masks a fundamental transformation in scholarly communication that is inevitable.

The truth is that established publishing conventions and the revenues generated from them cannot be preserved. Nor should they be. Universities and their libraries have danced around this issue for at least the last decade and it is now time to be frank about what the future holds for scholarly communication and how academic libraries will spend the money they devote to collections.

We need to begin with a fundamental fact—the cost of scholarly journals has increased at 10 percent per year for the last three decades. ... Between 1975 and 2005 the average cost of journals in chemistry and physics rose from $76.84 to $1,879.56. In the same period, the cost of a gallon of unleaded regular gasoline rose from 55 cents to $1.82. If the gallon of gas had increased in price at the same rate as chemistry and physics journals over this period it would have reached $12.43 in 2005, and would be over $14.50 today.

Despite these price increases most academic libraries have continued to purchase as many scholarly journals as they possibly could and have decreased their book purchasing to do so. It is now time to ask simply: Why are we doing this? ...

My view is that the time has come to simply stop. But even if libraries wished to continue purchasing journals as they have in the past, they will not be able to do so. The money is simply not there. ...

Some journal publishers will lose income and some may suffer economic hardship as a result of library’s inability to keep up with price increases, but if publishers cannot provide a superior product at a cheaper price, then that is what should happen in the competitive market. If the cost of any other product had risen at this rate, we would have long ago found a cheaper substitute. Unfortunately, in the past there has been no good substitute for subscription-based scholarly journals. Now, fortunately, there is: open access.

... I am convinced that one piece of the puzzle will be that academic libraries will commit to curate open access digital content that is important to their campuses. What does curating content entail? There are at least three things academic libraries should do:

1. Digitize special collections, archives, and other unique material. ...

2. Establish repositories to provide access to and archive the digital documents and data that result from the research done on or of importance to the campus. ...

3. Provide the infrastructure for open access publishing, particularly of journals. ...

While there is sometime external funding available for digital projects, it is important that the curation of digital content be base funded. Libraries are in the business of keeping materials for the long term and this cannot be done on soft money. ...

I would propose a simple budget strategy something like the following:

1. Assume the library collections budget will rise at no more than the rate of inflation ...

2. Subtract 1 to 2 percent of the collections budget every year to add to the curation fund. This would slowly build this part of the budget.

3. Reserve the current percentage of the library’s collection budget that is allocated for books and use it to purchase both print and electronic books. ...

4. For the near term, databases will need to be maintained at about their current level ...

5. Spend the remaining portion of the collections budget on journals—recognizing that this will be a constant or slightly declining amount each year and that given the 8 to 12 percent rate of increase in the cost of scholarly journals, journals will have to be cut from the collection on a regular and continuing basis. While this will be painful, we can expect that over time open access alternatives to the titles we are forced to cut will emerge. ...