From the October 2004 Anthropology News

Creating Cultural Change in Scholarly Communication Systems

Myra Appel
UC Davis
Brita Servaes
NYU

Sustaining the excellence of research collections has become increasingly difficult for academic libraries over the past decade. Forces both internal and external to the academy are posing unpre-cedented challenges for libraries in fulfilling our mission of making scholarly information accessible to our faculty and students. Statistics compiled by the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) show a dynamic and alarming picture. From 1986 to 2002 the number of scholarly journals published worldwide increased by 58% while, concurrently, the publication rate of monographs, or books, doubled. This dramatic growth reflects not only the heightened importance of the global exchange of research, but also the increased expectations within academic communities for promotion and tenure, the upswing in the number of doctoral students producing and publishing their research, and the evolution of new directions in intellectual inquiry. At the same time libraries received flat or, all too frequently, reduced budgets as their parent institutions suffered economic downturns in funding.

A second startling picture emerges from the ARL statistics. North American research libraries spent 227% more on journals in 2002 than in 1986. In comparison the Consumer Price Index rose only 62% during this same 16-year period. And, despite the increased and substantial financial commitments that libraries assumed to preserve access to academic journals, the number of titles held by these same libraries actually decreased by 5%. Disciplines that traditionally enjoyed less costly publications have not been immune from double-digit inflation in the price of their journals. Van Orsdal and Born in an April 2003 issue of Library Journal reported that the average subscription cost of an anthropology journal was $259.21 in 1999. In 2003 the average cost had gone up to $353.44, an increase of 36.55%.

Changing Business Models
What has precipitated this crisis that threatens scholars’ access to publications containing intellectual content that they themselves create? Certainly, inflated subscription costs reflect escalating costs of production. And a devalued US dollar that lost strength in foreign markets is especially significant to research libraries whose journal collections might easily contain over 50% of titles published outside of North America. One major factor contributing to the inability of libraries to sustain access to scholarly information is a changing pattern of economic models in the publishing industry. Several large commercial publishers acquired through purchase, merger, or takeover competitors’ publishing ventures, along with extensive lists of scholarly journal titles. These same large multinational publishers also acquired many notable journal titles previously published by learned scholarly societies. With each change in ownership, the cost of a journal title typically increased, sometimes dramatically. A report, UC Libraries: The Economics of Publishing, notes that these consolidation practices can lead to a 20-30% increase in the cost of an academic journal. Annual posted profits of 40% for these expansive commercial ventures have not been extraordinary in this fluid multi-billion dollar environment. The trends continue.

At the same time the marketplace is being reshaped by publishers’ shift from print publications to both print and electronic access to content, and gradually to electronic-only access for many titles. While the electronic format offers numerous advantages to scholars and libraries alike, the service adds an additional cost to strained library budgets caught in the midst of the transition from print to electronic access. Many users accustomed to print continue to prefer that libraries make titles available in both the print and electronic format. Publishers and aggregators of the electronic versions frequently “bundle” their entire list of titles and require libraries to license all or none of their publications. Other electronic vendors refuse to adopt the “best practices” and licensing policies that ensure that libraries and their users will have recourse to fair and adequate archival and interlibrary loan rights.

Library Responses
Libraries have adopted a range of strategies to minimize these threats of loss of access to scholarly content. We reduce our ongoing financial commitments by embarking on massive journal cancellation projects. We cancel dual formats of titles, typically opting for the less costly electronic format, if available. We prioritize the importance of titles in our holdings by identifying the journals that our faculty and students need and use most frequently today, canceling low-use and no-use titles that round out and enrich our collections and make our libraries centers of research excellence. At the same time we add few, if any, new journal titles and purchase fewer monographs or books each year. We increasingly rely on interlibrary loan to bring to our faculty and students the less frequently used materials that we once would have purchased for our own collections. We develop consortia relationships with other institutions to take advantage of discounts for electronic access. And we form cooperative collection development groups to share the financial burden of acquiring specialized or low-use print and microform materials that can be shared regionally. Still, our buying power diminishes and we lose access to content.

Alternatives to Scholarly Communication
Recently libraries have begun to assume another role, that of publisher, and to provide new opportunities for scholars to disseminate their research free-ly, inexpensively and fairly. In response to the growing crisis of unsustainable access to scholarly content, the Cali-fornia Digital Li-brary (CDL) developed the eScholar-ship Repository that offers free access and permanent electronic archiving for working papers and peer-reviewed articles alike. Other institutions, such as Cornell Univer-sity or Indiana University with its Digital Library of the Commons, have developed similar venues for the distribution and access to scholarly information created by their faculties. Many institutions add their financial and philosophical support to scholarly publishing ventures that include the Public Library of Science and BioMed Central. Forward-looking professional societies have taken the proactive step of exploring new models for publishing the work of their members in a business and technological model that is affordable and accessible for all partners in the research process. AnthroSource, developed by the AAA, promises to be one of the more creative and acceptable models on the horizon.

Agents of Cultural Change
Anthropologists have the opportunity to take part in shaping a new culture of sustainable access to scholarly information. In fact, anthropologists with their cross-disciplinary and interdisciplinary interests are especially well-poised to take a significant role in charting the directions for change in the systems of scholarly communication. The Association of Research Librar-ies, the Association of College and Research Libraries, and the North American and European organization of the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC), joined together recently to publicize the crises in the traditional system of scholarly communication. The campaign, known as Create Change, identifies the many issues and problems that libraries and scholars face in retaining access to intellectual content. More importantly, Create Change points out many of the policies and practices that researchers and scho-lars can adopt to participate in shaping a new culture of sustainable access. The Create Change website, www. createchange.org describes the issues and lists recommendations for research-ers to follow in retaining rights to their own publications, supporting publishers and publications that offer fair business models and open-access to content, and educating themselves about alternative publication models.

The AAA also offers a venue, the Scholarly Communications Interest Group, where members can articulate their concerns and inform themselves of recent developments. Recognizing the complexity of the evolving digital environment for scholars and the need for anthropologists to become actively engaged in thinking about the scholarly communication process in order to effectively respond to and participate in this transformation, Wade Kotter, Suzane Calpestri and Brita Servaes, anthropology librarians active in AAA, in collaboration with Susi Skomal, AAA Director of Publications, founded the Scholarly Communications Interest Group (SCIG) in 2001. SCIG’s membership now includes anthropologists, publishers, editors and librarians who meet at the AAA conferences to consider a wide range of issues pertaining to scholarly communications and the issues of discovery, management, preservation and access to anthropological knowledge in the evolving digital environmental. At the upcoming 2004 conference in San Francisco, SCIG will sponsor a panel discussion “Publishing in the Digital Age: How Does It Affect Your Scholarship?” Panelists Martha Macri (UC Davis), Ben-jamin Orlove (UC Davis and editor of Current Anthropology), and Christine Szuter (U Arizona Press) will examine this question from three different perspectives in the context of changing trends in the creation, publication and distribution of anthropological research. SCIG invites all AAA members to attend the November 18 program and participate in a thought-provoking and challenging discussion.

Myra Appel is head of the humanities and social sciences department, Shields Library, University of California, Davis, and co-convenor of the Scholarly Communications Interest Group. Brita Servaes is librarian for anthropology and gender studies, New York University, Bobst Library, and co-founder of the Scholarly Communications Interest Group.

Significant Scholarly Publishing Statistics

• From 1986 to 2002 the number of scholarly journals published worldwide increased by 58% while, concurrently, the publication rate of monographs, or books, doubled.
• North American research libraries spent 227% more on journals in 2002 than in 1986. In comparison the Consumer Price Index rose only 62% during this same 16-year period.
• Despite the increased and substantial financial commitments that libraries assumed to preserve access to academic journals between 1986 and 2002, the number of titles held by these same libraries actually decreased by 5%.
• The average subscription cost of an anthropology journal was $259.21 in 1999. In 2003 the average cost had gone up to $353.44, an increase of 36.55%.
• Consolidation practices by commercial publishers can lead to a 20-30% increase in the cost of an academic journal.
• Annual posted profits of 40% for these expansive commercial ventures have not been extraordinary.
• The average subscription cost of a AAA journal was $52.63 in 1999. In 2003 the average cost had gone up to $61.56, and increase of 16.97%.
• Subscription income currently accounts for 51% of the revenues that support publication of AAA’s scholarly journals.