APPENDIX 113
Memorandum from the Chartered Institute
of Library and Information Professionals (CILIP)
CILIP: The Chartered Institute of Library and
Information Professionals is the professional body that represents
over 23,000 library and information workers in the United Kingdom.
Under the terms of its Royal Charter, The Institute has a duty
to promote high quality library and information services and to
advise government, employers and others on all aspects of library
and information provision.
CILIP is aware of and supports the submissions
of evidence made to the Inquiry by organisations such as the Museums,
Libraries and Archives Council (MLA), the Society of College,
National and University Libraries (SCONUL), the Consortium of
University and Research Libraries (CURL), the Joint Information
Systems Committee (JISC) and by individual expert members of the
library and information profession.
The evidence below is provided on each of the
specific points raised by the Committee and is made in light of
the evidence supplied by esteemed colleagues.
What impact do publishers' current policies on
pricing and provision of scientific journals, particularly "big
deal schemes", have on libraries and the teaching and research
communities they serve?
Between 1998 and 2003 the average price of an
academic journal rose by 58%, this is in comparison to an 11%
increase in the UK Retail Price Index over the same period.
Between 1996-97 and 2000-01 the information resource
budget of UK university libraries has decreased by 29% in real
terms, while the average journal price over the same time period
increased by 41%.
The proportion of university library information
resource expenditure on journals has increased from 47% to 52%,
but this increase has failed to maintain the actual number of
journal subscriptions.
An increasing problem for academic library budgets,
as a result of a shift towards electronic publication, is VAT.
Online information is VAT rated at the standard rate of 17.5%,
as opposed to print-based resources that are zero-rated. This
is not only an extra cost, but also a disincentive to the transfer
to electronic access. Government could ease this pressure on academic
and research library budgets by exempting these institutions from
payment of VAT on electronic information resources, including
electronic journals.
Journal publishers have introduced a number of
"big deal schemes". These schemes have been made possible
by the development of electronic journals. They provide a library
with access to all the journals of a particular publisher, at
a price larger than the subscription paid for the publisher's
journals received in print. Such deals often provide access to
an increased number of journals. However, very little choice is
offered in the content of the "package". Some titles
are well-used and valuable while others are not relevant to the
research and teaching undertaken at a particular university, and
receive very little, or no use.
To the publisher the cost of providing electronic
access to all titles is virtually zero.
Publishers are ensured greater stability with
the two or three year duration of some of these deals. However,
as has been illustrated, the library is faced with a decline in
the purchasing power of its budget. As these schemes become established
the library has to make cancellations elsewhere to finance the
maintenance of the "big deal".
What action should Government, academic institutions
and publishers be taking to promote a competitive market in scientific
publications?
A major problem in promoting a competitive market
is the increasing monopolistic position of the publishers.
This monopoly position can be evidenced by, for
example:
A spate of mergers and takeovers in the past
few years—Reed Elsevier and Harcourt; Kluwer and Springer
under the auspices of Candover Cinven
Reed Elsevier reported an adjusted operating
profit margin in 2002 of 33% for its Science and Medical Division
The top five publishers now produce around 37%
of the nearly 8,000 scientific journals (44% of articles) rated
as worthy of citation analysis by the Institute of Scientific
Information (ISI)
All future merger proposals should be strictly
monitored, and investigated. This will help to avoid the further
enhancement of monopoly market power. It is also essential, given
the international nature of the journals market, to extend co-operation
across Nation States.
What are the consequences of increasing numbers
of open-access journals, for example for the operation of the
Research Assessment Exercise and other selection processes? Should
the Government support such a trend and, if so, how?
Publicly funded researchers in the UK publish
their findings so that other researchers, anywhere in the world,
can access them, challenge them and use them as the basis of further
research. This process of "scholarly communication"
reduces duplication of effort, ensures quality, and increases
the productivity of research and development.
Traditionally, research articles are published
in peer-reviewed journals. This accounts for some 2,500,000 articles
per year in approximately 24,000 journals.
The authors of these articles do not expect royalties
or fees for them. Their reward is in the recognition of their
research—providing both visibility and impact.
Open-access journals are available via the web.
Their advantage is that, even where overall production costs are
similar, their content is available to all without financial barriers.
The development of open-access publishing and
self-archiving are complementary initiatives and will re-engineer
the research publication process to be more equitable for the
benefit of research and society in general.
There should be no discrimination by the Research
Assessment Exercise (RAE) for or against open-access journals.
The deciding factor must be the quality of the journal and the
quality of the article.
Traditionally, publishers of peer-reviewed journals
have covered the costs of production and the peer-review process
by charging subscriptions for the paper journal issues. Universities
and research institutions have subscribed to these journals (often
with public money) so that their own researchers could access
and use the peer-reviewed research output of others. This approach
has come to be described as "toll-access".
However, even the richest academic institution
has only ever been able to afford a fraction of the 24,000 journals
published that it might wish to access—and this number is
rapidly reducing as the price of journals continues to outstrip
inflation. Therefore a majority of potential users of any research
article are denied access, and consequently much of research impact
of an article is lost.
The rise of Web technology, by radically reducing
the basic technical costs of access to information, has highlighted
the prospect of a new model in scholarly communication, where
access to research results would be made freely available to any
interested researcher. This would maximise the impact of any piece
of research, and thus the productivity of the whole research process.
This approach is known as "open-access".
Open-access journals are freely available to
users, as they recover their peer-review and other production
costs from the institutions whose researchers contribute the research
articles themselves. This approach is strongly to be encouraged
by Government and others, but currently accounts for only about
5% of total research output.
The remaining 95% continues to be published in
toll-access journals. However, an increasing number of research
organisations worldwide are setting up open-access websites on
which their researchers can "self-archive" full copies
of the articles that have been contributed to toll-access journals,
so that their research results can be widely available and achieve
the greatest possible impact.
55% of journals already officially support this
author self-archiving. Many of the remaining 45% will agree if
asked. Government should do whatever is in its power to persuade
all UK publishers to support self-archiving and all research institutions
to set up open-access archives.
Although a substantial proportion of the publishing
community may be expected to lobby in favour of the status quo,
there is little evidence that open-access archiving damages sales
of toll-access journals. Open-access archiving increases the readership
of research far beyond the individual institutions that can afford
to buy subscriptions.
The extension of open-access models would lead
to a more efficient use of public money in terms of both research
grants and academic library budgets. It would also do a great
deal to bridge the divide between information-rich countries and
those in the developing world.
How effectively are the Legal Deposit Libraries
making available non-print scientific publications to the research
community, and what steps should they be taking in this respect?
We welcome the recent Legal Deposit Libraries
Act. Long-term preservation of the scholarly record of digital
publications is a vital concern, and the national libraries are
well placed to take a leading role in initiatives in this area.
This responsibility requires sufficient funding from Government.
Legal deposit libraries store copies of records,
for archival and preservation purposes. They are not open-access
providers. What should be mandated is that all universities make
their "own" published research articles openly accessible
by publishing them in an open-access journal and/or depositing
them in their own university open-access archives.
What impact will trends in academic journal publishing
have on the risks of scientific fraud and malpractice?
We are not clear why the issues of access and
impact are being considered at the same time as issues of fraud
and malpractice. Fraud and malpractice has been known in both
paper and online journals.
It is true that it is easier to plagiarise, or
to otherwise misuse, an online text than a paper one, but plagiarism
and misuse are more easily detectable online. So the format is
irrelevant.
Fraud has on occasion come to light in the traditional
world of print journal publishing, and it is equally possible
in open-access online publishing. Therefore it is essential that
a robust system of peer review be maintained for paper-based materials
while additional methods of quality control are developed for
an online environment.
February 2004
|
