The objective of this report is to audit and evaluate the available evidence relating to scholarly journals publishing, and furthermore to distil what we do and do not currently know for certain about this market.
The report provides a snapshot of the evidence base about the scholarly journal publishing process and seeks to provide a basis of shared knowledge which policy-makers and research funders can draw on to consider if and how the system might develop, to ensure that the research publishing process delivers best value and best practice....
The report presents...as authoritative a base of evidence as concurrently be constructed in the key areas of:
the volume and value of the academic journal market, including such key issues as the splits between commercial and learned society publishers, and between print and electronic revenues; acquisition and cancellation trends; the split of publisher revenues between academic, corporate and personal subscribers; and the value of pay-per-view sales
journal supply-side economics, including the effort and costs incurred by researchers and by publishers as part of their contribution to the publishing process; any differences between commercial and learned society publishers; and costs of launching new products
usage, including the split between the leading journals and the rest; the extent and potential of unmet demand; and the barriers to that demand being met
citations and impact factors, and such key issues as whether articles in subscription journals are more likely to be cited than those in open access journals, or vice versa; any resultant variation in impact factors; and any relationships between citations and impact factors on the one hand, and large-scale collaborative research on the other
disciplinary differences, and whether there are significant differences between researchers as readers or authors in different disciplines
costs and impact of open access journals and of digital repositories, and the differences between these new models and of publishing conventional journals....
Whilst some evidence does suggest that [OA] repositories are an important new factor in the journal cancellation decision process, and one which is growing in significance, there is no research reporting actual or even intended journal subscription cancellation as a consequence of the growth of OA self-archived repositories.
Subscriptions are reported to have been declining over a period of 10+ years, but for a number of reasons. Proving or disproving a link between availability in selfarchived repositories and cancellations will be difficult without long and rigorous research. In this connection, the outcome of research recently announced by the Research Councils UK (RCUK),1 with the co-operation of Macmillan, Blackwell and Elsevier, will be eagerly awaited, even though a report is not due until late 2008.
There is no evidence as yet to demonstrate any relationship (or lack of relationship) between subscription cancellations and repositories. Work in this field would need sufficient, representative and balanced samples, and the collaboration of all stakeholders, including especially research institutions and publishers. Any such study will need to be maintained over a fairly extended period, with regular reports, since it seems likely that the position could change with time if the contents of self-archiving repositories become progressively more comprehensive....
Comment. The report takes at face value the 2004 Cornell calculation that high-output research universities will pay more for OA journals (in author-side fees for their faculty) than they pay now in subscriptions. That is, the report does not acknowledge or correct the known flaws in the calculation, the two largest of which are (1) the assumption that 100% of OA journals would charge author-side fees (when only a minority do so today) and (2) the assumption that 100% fees would be paid by universities (when universities pay almost none today and a growing number of funding agencies have expressed their willingness to pay them).
Update. EPS has posted a set of PPT slides summarizing the report.
Posted by
Peter Suber at 10/03/2006 09:27:00 AM.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
I recommend the OA tracking project (OATP) as the best way to stay on top of new OA developments. You can read the OATP feed on a blog-like web page or subscribe to it by RSS, email, or Twitter. You can also help build the feed by tagging new developments you encounter.
