Date: 25 May 2005 11:39:36 -0000
From: Shahab <smshahabuddin(a)rediffmail.com>
Peer Pressure
Scholarly Journals' Premier Status Is Diluted by Web
More Research Is Free Online Amid Spurt of Start-Ups;
Publishers' Profits at Risk
A Revolt on UC's Campuses
By BERNARD WYSOCKI JR.
BERKELEY, Calif. -- From a stool at Yali's caf, near the University of Cali=
fornia campus, Michael Eisen is loudly trashing the big players in academic=
publishing. Hefty subscription fees for journals are blocking scientific p=
rogress, he says, and academics who think they have full access to timely l=
iterature are kidding themselves. "They're just wrong," Dr. Eisen says. He =
suggests scholarly journals be free and accessible to everyone on the Web.
This may sound like the ranting of a campus radical, but Dr. Eisen is a wel=
l known computational biologist at a nearby national laboratory and a Berke=
ley faculty member. He is also a co-founder of a nonprofit startup called t=
he Public Library of Science, which produces its own scholarly journals, in=
competition with established publishers, distributed free online.
It's a campus twist on a raging Internet-era debate about who should contro=
l information and what it should cost. For decades, traditional scholarly j=
ournals have held an exalted and lucrative position as arbiters of academic=
excellence, controlling what's published and made available to the wider c=
ommunity. These days, research is increasingly available on free university=
Web sites and through start-up outfits. Scholarly journals are finding the=
ir privileged position under attack.
The 10-campus University of California system has emerged as a hotbed of in=
surgency against this $5 billion global market. Faculty members are competi=
ng against publishers with free or inexpensive journals of their own. Two U=
C scientists organized a world-wide boycott against a unit of Reed Elsevier=
-- the Anglo-Dutch giant that publishes 1,800 periodicals -- protesting it=
s fees. The UC administration itself has jumped into the fray. It's urging =
scholars to deposit working papers and monographs into a free database in a=
ddition to submitting them for publication elsewhere. It has also battled w=
ith publishers,
including nonprofits, to lower prices.=20
"We have to take back control from the publishers," says Daniel Greenstein,=
associate vice provost for the UC system, which spends $30 million a year =
on scholarly periodicals.
The clash between academics and publishers was exacerbated last year when t=
he taxpayer-funded National Institutes of Health proposed that articles res=
ulting from NIH grants be made available free online.
That prompted protests from Reed Elsevier, John Wiley & Sons Inc. and sever=
al nonprofit publishers such as the American Diabetes Association, which ar=
gued such a move would hurt their businesses.
The NIH retreated and in February made the program voluntary. It now asks a=
uthors to post on an NIH Web site any articles based on NIH grants within 1=
2 months of publication.
The debate comes at a time when it's easier than ever to find scholarly art=
icles by using simple Internet tools such as Google. In late 2004, Google I=
nc., in Mountain View, Calif., launched Google Scholar, a free service that=
can search for peer-reviewed articles as
well as theses, abstracts and other scholarly material, much of it in scien=
tific fields.
Traditional publishers argue that the expensive process of selecting and ed=
iting journals is a necessary filter to help scholars sift through vast amo=
unts of research. The nonprofit publisher of the prestigious Science magazi=
ne makes content available free after 12=20
months. Other publishers note that with a combination of free abstracts, fr=
ee distribution to the developing world and public-library subscriptions, m=
uch of the globe already has access to what they produce.
"The vast majority -- 90% of researchers in the world -- have access online=
to our material," says Karen Hunter, senior vice president at Elsevier, th=
e science and medical division of Reed Elsevier that publishes the company'=
s journals. Elsevier's scholarly journals bring in about $1.6 billion in an=
nual revenue with an operating-profit
margin of about 30%.
Publishers have been entrenched in academia for decades. One big concern, t=
he U.K.'s Taylor & Francis Group, now part of T&F Informa PLC, was founded =
in the 18th century. The venerable nonprofit Science was founded in the 188=
0s by Thomas Edison. The industry became firmly established in the 1950s an=
d 1960s in the wake of the Soviet space program, whose success spurred a wa=
ve of scientific publishing.
Although learned societies such as the American Physical Society hold sway =
at the top of the prestige pyramid, commercial publishers have created a se=
cond tier, producing thousands of niche periodicals from Addictive Behavior=
s to Zoology, both Elsevier titles. Scholars are generally grateful that pu=
blishers take the risk of starting new titles, which often take years to br=
eak even.=20
The publishers' prestige derives from the rigorous system of peer review, i=
n which a journal's editorial board will select experts in a field to vet a=
rticles. At some top scholarly journals, less than 10% of submitted articl=
es make it into a publication. In turn, the peer-
review system lends authority to a scholar's work, and has long been a spri=
ngboard to academic advancement.=20
In the late 1990s, Dr. Eisen was studying the yeast genome, a booming field=
that has a large overlap with the human genome and 200 journals publishing=
related research. He wanted all these journal articles freely available at=
his fingertips, an impossible request because many are behind subscription=
barriers.
Some scholars think publishing should operate like the Linux computer opera=
ting system, where programmers build on each other's work in an ongoing, co=
llaborative project. In the scholarly realm, a database called arXiv -- pro=
nounced "archive," as if the "x" were the Greek letter "chi" -- has become =
a repository of scholarship in the physics field. It's owned and operated b=
y Cornell University and partially supported by the National Science Founda=
tion. If the UC administration has its way, something like that would be th=
e norm throughout academia.
To experienced publishers, much of the open-access talk seems naive. "A l=
ot of this is self-righteous talk," says Alan Leshner, executive publisher =
of Science and chief executive of its nonprofit parent, the American Associ=
ation for the Advancement of Science. He says giving away content isn't a=
viable business model because of the tremendous costs of putting out rep=
utable journals.
He notes that Science gets 12,000 submissions and publishes 800 articles a =
year on a $10 million editorial budget. That averages more than $10,000 per=
published article, a high number because of the costs associated with hand=
ling the unusually large number of submissions the journal receives. Indust=
ry experts say typical per-article costs are between $3,000 and $4,000.
If open access takes off, information will flow faster, but publishers will=
make less money. Among those who would be hurt is Reed Elsevier. Sami Ka=
ssab, analyst at investment house Exane BNP Paribas in London, estimates th=
at such a movement could sharply cut the company's profit margin on perio=
dicals to between 10% and 15% of revenue, from the current 30% or more.
Currently, the open-access movement makes up between 1% and 2% of the marke=
t, experts say. While that number seems small, the concept is assuming an i=
mportant role channeling academic discontent.
"There's a lot of sentiment that work is being taken advantage of by the co=
mmercial publishers," says Alessandro Lizzeri, associate professor of econo=
mics at New York University and editor of Elsevier's Journal of Economic Th=
eory. He says that while editors get little compensation for their work, au=
thors and reviewers -- aside from
prestige -- usually get nothing or just a nominal fee.=20
Prof. Lizzeri says that two of the 40 members of his editorial board resign=
ed recently because the journal isn't free to readers. "If half the board r=
esigns I'm in trouble," he says.
These rumblings hit the University of California early on. In October 2003,=
faculty members made a rare display of solidarity with the university admi=
nistration. Two scientists at the University of California at San Francisco=
staged a protest over a $91,000 bill from Elsevier's Cell Press unit for o=
ne year's access to six biology journals. The two professors called for a w=
orld-wide boycott, urging fellow scholars at UC and beyond to refuse to ser=
ve as authors, editors or peer reviewers at the six periodicals in question.
Their timing couldn't have been better for the university administration, w=
hich was just about to begin negotiations with the Reed Elsevier unit over =
a new contract. In the late 1990s, all UC campuses had banded together in=
to a single buying consortium. In 2002, the university hired Dr. Greenste=
in, a history professor turned expert on digital libraries. With the stat=
e of California's budget crisis forcing him to trim library spending to $=
62 million a year, Dr. Greenstein wanted to take a hard line.
"It was the opening shot, really, in struggling head-on with this world of =
scientific publishing," says Keith Yamamoto, executive vice dean at UCSF me=
dical school and one of the boycott's leaders.
The university was paying Elsevier $10.3 million a year for print and onlin=
e subscriptions to most of its 1,800 journals. The university demanded a 25=
% reduction and at one point threatened to walk away from the table.
As the negotiations grew tense, faculty at other UC campuses started to chi=
me in sympathetically. The UC Santa Cruz faculty senate passed a resolution=
urging faculty to boycott Elsevier journals by refusing to submit articles=
or to serve on periodical boards.
"That alarmed us," says a Reed Elsevier spokeswoman in Amsterdam. More than=
100 UC faculty members serve as senior editors of Elsevier journals and ab=
out 1,000 serve on editorial boards. The publisher fanned out across the ca=
mpuses, drumming up support among friendly faculty with breakfasts and ot=
her meetings. The spokeswoman says the company concluded that most UC fac=
ulty members didn't know about the boycott
call or didn't support it.
The negotiations dragged on for two months and grew testy. In late 2003, =
the university won a 25% price reduction to $7.7 million a year for 1,200 E=
lsevier periodicals. Elsevier agreed to throw the six biology journals into=
the deal.
"They got a very, very good deal," acknowledges Reed Elsevier's Ms. Hunter.=
She says the company got some concessions, too. UC gave up access to sever=
al hundred periodicals, for example. UC says Elsevier unilaterally added th=
e titles into the arrangement before negotiations started and says it doesn=
't care about their removal.
Suddenly, the UC negotiation was the buzz of the academic library world and=
an inspiration for others to follow suit. One UC librarian, Catherine Cand=
ee, says a university negotiator elsewhere "called us up and said, 'Thank y=
ou, you saved us $1 million.' "
-----------------
Write to Bernard Wysocki Jr. at bernie.wysocki(a)wsj.com
