Background
Current Situation
Escalating Journal Prices
What Faculty Can Do
Solutions
Related Web Pages and Academic
    Organizations

Background

As stated on the e-library@Iowa State University Web site, scholarly communication refers to the formal and informal processes by which the research and scholarship of faculty, researchers, and independent scholars are created, evaluated, edited, formatted distributed, organized, made accessible, archived, used, and transformed.

The current system of scholarly communication is changing. Libraries and their institutions can no longer keep up with the increasing volume and cost of scholarly resources. The promise of the digital revolution to decrease costs and increase access has been thwarted by commercial publishers interested in maximizing revenues through raising prices and restricting use. Projects and proposals to transform the system are being shaped primarily by stakeholders outside of the faculty. Involvement by faculty is critical in ensuring a new system that meets your needs and those of future scholars.

Current Situation

• The Impact of Serial Costs on Library Collections. ARL Bimonthly Report 218, October 2001
• The Impact of Technology and Economics on Scholarly Communication. Presentation by Joseph J. Branin, Director of Libraries, The Ohio State University, and Stanley Chodorow, University of California, San Diego
• Reading List  from The University of Connecticut Libraries

Escalating Journal Prices

The e-library @ Iowa State University Web site reports the following information on the high costs for print journals and books:

• Academic libraries in the U.S. spent 152% more to purchase 7% fewer journal titles in 1998 than in 1986. While the Consumer Price Index went up 49% from 1986 to 1998, the cost of journals went up 175%.
• Journals have gone up in price an average of 9% a year since 1986, while the consumer price has increased only 3.4% a year.
• The major players in science journal publishing, and increasingly in social science journal publishing, are commercial publishers who report profit margins of 20-40%.
• Academic libraries in the U.S. are purchasing 25% fewer monographs today than they did 15 years ago due to high journals prices and resources in new formats.

    Articles on Escalating Journal Prices

• Journal Price Study Core Agricultural and Biological Journals (Cornell University)
• Impact of Scientific Journal Costs (Scripps Institution of Oceanography Library)
• Measuring the Cost Effectiveness of Journals: The Wisconsin Experience, ARL Bimonthly Report 205, August 1999
• University of Oregon Libraries Serials Cancellation Project
• MIT 1995/96 Serials Review and Cancellation Project
•  Biomedical Journal Costs and Trends (Indiana University Medical Library)
• Newsletter on Serial Pricing Issues (The University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill)
• Yale University Science Libraries Journals Cost Update Information

What Faculty Can Do

• "Create Change: A Resource for Faculty and Librarian Action to Reclaim Scholarly Communication." (ARL)
• "Moving with Dispatch to Resolve the Scholarly Communication Crisis: From Here to NEAR." By David Shulenberger, Provost, University of Kansas
• "A Provost Challenges His Faculty to Keep Copyright on Journal Articles."The Chronicle of Higher Education, September 18, 1998, Volume XLV, No.4

Solutions

Readings and Articles on the scholarly communication crisis and some proposed solutions:

• Budapest Open Access Initiative
• The Case for Institutional Repositories: A SPARC Position Paper
• Scholars' Forum: A New Model For Scholarly Communication
• Policy Perspectives: To Publish and Perish From ARL
• Principles for Licensing Electronic Resources From ARL
• The Future of Scholarly Communication: A Proposal for Change.
• "Scholarly Communication and the Need for Collective Action." A statement by the Chief Academic Officers of the Big 12.
• "Reforming Scholarly Publishing in the Sciences: A Librarian Perspective." Notices of the American Mathematical Society, April 1998, Volume 45, No. 4
• "SPARC Whitepaper." From the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition
• "When Libraries Faced the Future." By Ron Feemster. University Business, Spring 2000.
• "Principles for Emerging Systems of Scholarly Publishing."

Related Web Pages and Academic Organizations

• Association of Research Libraries
• Big12Plus Consortium
• BioLine International
• Coalition for Networked Information
• Digital Future Coalition
• EDUCAUSE
• International Consortium for the Advancement of Academic Publication (ICAAP)
• Librarians Association of the University of California
• National Humanities Alliance
• NLII - National Learning Infrastructure Initiative
• Roquade
• Scholarly Communication Subcommittee
• Scholarly Communication Working Group
• Shared Legal Capability (SLC)
• SPARC: Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition
• American Economics Association: Scholarly Communication.
• California Institute of Technology: Scholarly Communication.
• Cornell University: "Electronic Publishing Steering Committee Report on Electronic Publishing Strategies for Cornell University."
• Indiana University: Committee on Scholarly Communication.
• Iowa State University: The Crisis in Scholarly Communication: Impact and Solutions for the Iowa Regent Universities.
• Librarians Association of the University of California: New Horizons.
• North Carolina State University: Scholarly Communications Center
• University of California Berkeley: Reading List on Scholarly Communication.
• University of Kansas: Scholarly Communication and Library Collections.
• University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill: Scholarly Communications Working Group.
• University of Pittsburgh: Current Issues in Scholarly Communication.
• University of Tennessee, Knoxville: Scholarly Communications Issues
• University of Virginia: Issues in Scholarly Communication.
• University of Waterloo: The Crisis in Scholarly Publishing.
• University of Wisconsin: Annual Report of the 1998-1999 University Library Committee.
• Wayne State University: University Library Committee on Scholarly Communication.