Newsletter on Serial Pricing Issues 093 (August 29, 1993) URL = http://hegel.lib.ncsu.edu/stacks/serials/nspi/nspi-ns093 ISSN: 1046-3410 NEWSLETTER ON SERIALS PRICING ISSUES NO 93 -- August 29, 1993 Editor: Marcia Tuttle CONTENTS 93.1 FROM THE EDITOR, Marcia Tuttle 93.2 TRLN MODEL COPYRIGHT DOCUMENT (PART 1) 93.1 FROM THE EDITOR Marcia Tuttle, tuttle@gibbs.oit.unc.edu. The _Newsletter on Serials Pricing Issues_ presents for discussion the revised version of the TRLN Model Copyright Docuemnt. The editor will be happy to receive your comments and include them in a future issue of the newsletter. The committee responsible for this document has, as will be seen, considered your response to the earlier version and has responded to criticism of the policy. Because of the length of the document, it is divided between two issues of the newsletter. The second part will follow immediately. Gary Byrd has asked me to tell you that the document is available by gopher and FTP. Here are the instructions; To view the document via Gopher: Point your gopher to gopher.unc.edu OR Telnet gopher.unc.edu and login: gopher Then select the following: --> 8. UNC-CH Information and Facilities --> 7. TRLN Model Copyright Policy To access the document via FTP: ftp sunsite.unc.edu login: anonymous Password: your own id ftp> cd pub/docs/about-the-net ftp> get trln-copyright-paper 93.2 TRLN MODEL COPYRIGHT DOCUMENT (PART 1) Triangle Research Libraries Network Model University Policy Regarding Faculty Publication in Scientific and Technical Scholarly Journals A Background Paper and Review of the Issues July 1993 The Copyright Policy Task Force of the Triangle Research Libraries Network Durham, Raleigh and Chapel Hill, North Carolina The attached model policy was drafted by a joint committee of faculty, librarians and university press editors from Duke University, North Caro- lina State University, and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. This effort is part of a two-year project of the Triangle Research Librar- ies Network (TRLN) to develop strategies and plans for cooperative informa- tion resources development in the sciences and engineering. Grant support for the project has been provided by the Council on Library Resources in Washington, D.C. The distribution of this policy document is intended to stimulate debate and consensus building among faculty, librarians, university administrat- ors, and scholarly publishers throughout the United States and abroad. The TRLN Task Force does not expect that such a policy will be adopted unilat- erally by any one institution. Rather, we believe the eventual widespread adoption of such a policy by consortia or national associations of univer- sities could help to reduce the current barriers to the effective dissemi- nation of new research, especially in science and engineering scholarly journals. Since the widespread distribution of the first draft of this model univer- sity policy regarding faculty publication in scholarly journals, the Task Force has received dozens of letters and electronic mail messages with both positive and negative reactions to the model, many offering specific sug- gestions to change, clarify or improve the policy. While the majority of those writing supported the thrust of the proposed policy and encouraged the Task Force to find ways to work towards its adoption by universities, a substantial minority expressed concerns about specific features of the policy or a confusion about the problems being addressed and the goals to be achieved. With this paper the Task Force seeks to clarify its view of the problems which the current system of scholarly communication through journals is causing and to share a vision for a future where these problems are removed or, at least, alleviated. In the process this essay will also respond to the primary criticisms received regarding the first draft of the model policy. Finally, with this paper the Task Force is distributing a model policy document incorporating many of the specific suggestions it received for improvement. University and other national research libraries have supported and helped to fuel the astounding growth in scientific and technical research, both by serving as the primary locus for the dissemination of new research results and as comprehensive archives for access to the historical record of past research. However, the numbers and prices of scholarly journals, especially that portion published in scientific and technical disciplines, have in- creased at annual rates that far exceed general rates of inflation and the acquisitions budget resources of research libraries. The result is that, individually and collectively, research libraries are acquiring a smaller and smaller proportion of the world's published research and the balance of these acquisitions has been skewed away from books to pay the spiraling cost of journals. The unrelenting growth in both numbers and prices of scientific and techni- cal journals has also exacerbated distortions in the general economic mar- ketplace for research information. This marketplace, unlike the free market ideal posited by economic theorists, is characterized by producers (academ- ic researchers) who give over gratis, through copyright transfer, the own- ership of their products (journal articles) to sellers (both not-for-profit and commercial publishers). Publishers, in turn, cover costs or earn prof- its by selling, not primarily to the ultimate consumers (other researchers and their students), but largely to public or not-for-profit agencies (re- search libraries) who are responsible for organizing, storing, and provid- ing free or low-cost access to these products. As Herbert White, then dean of the Indiana University School of Library and Information Science, said, "natural selection and the pressures of the marketplace simply do not apply here" (see White, Library Journal, 1988). An increasing percentage of scientific and technical journals are now pub- lished, not by professional societies and universities, but by a relatively small number of very large commercial publishing conglomerates, many based in Europe. At the same time, the subscriber base of many of these journals has shifted so that it is now almost exclusively research libraries rather than individual research scholars. And, as many economists have noted, this growing for-profit journal publishing industry presents almost ideal condi- tions for an effective monopoly: a) libraries are reluctant to cancel sub- scriptions when the prices go up (they have a low "price elasticity of demand" for these products) because there are few if any alternative sour- ces for the information contained in each journal; b) the small number of publishers relative to the number of library subscribers permits more con- trol of supply than in a more competitive industry; and c) many opportuni- ties exist for price discrimination, between institutions and individuals as well as between U.S. and European subscribers, based on differing price elasticities of demand and currency fluctuations. Feeding this publishing industry is an academic tenure and grants system which rewards researchers with grants and career advancement when they publish large numbers of papers (see White, 1993). In trade and mass market publishing, both authors and publishers feel encouraged or constrained by the forces of the economic marketplace; both recognize the potential value of profits to be earned from sales, future film rights, etc., with these intellectual "properties." Thus, authors in this more commercial environ- ment reasonably transfer only limited rights to publishers and negotiate royalties. By contrast, in scholarly journal article publishing, authors do not assume they will earn any direct economic rewards from their articles, so they "make a contribution" to the literature by freely assigning all ownership rights to publishers. The basic problem in the current system for publishing scholarly journal articles, therefore, is incompatibility between the non-economic goals of academic researchers and the largely economic goals of commercial and even some not-for-profit publishers. Academic researchers publish with the goals of ensuring widespread distribution of their research results, personal credit and recognition, and career advancement. Many commercial publishers create and market journals with the sole goals of identifying potentially profitable market niches or monopolies for their products. The recent growth and market power of several very large international publishing corporations have brought into focus the distortions and potential dangers when commercial interests intrude too heavily into the international chan- nels of scholarly communication. In an indirect but important and fundamental way, copyright practices in scholarly publishing aggravate the marketplace monopoly distortions caused by the growth of the large for-profit scientific and technical journal publishing conglomerates. When authors of scholarly journal articles assign copyright in their intellectual property to commercial publishers, they also give away the ability to control the conditions under which their research results are disseminated. For this reason, the Task Force believes a first step towards controlling the spiraling costs of scientific and technical journals is to bring the products produced (the articles) back under the control of the producers (the research scholars and their univer- sities). The Task Force hopes the above brief statement of the problem is helpful. For a more complete understanding of the scientific and technical journal pricing problem and its various ramifications for research libraries and the entire scholarly communication system, see the articles and books lis- ted in the bibliography at the end of this paper. ---------- This model university policy is just one part of a whole series of changes needed in the current system of scholarly communication through journals. A major hurdle to be surmounted is the considerable investment all partici- pants have in perpetuating the current system. Scholarly journals have been published according to essentially the same rules and in essentially the same format for well over 200 years. Returning ownership and control of research results to the individuals and institutions who generate them in the first place is a critical first step in moving towards a future where research results are peer reviewed and then disseminated electronically to the worldwide scholarly community at reasonable costs. Research universi- ties with their research libraries and presses as well as national and international associations of scholars in the various scientific and tech- nical disciplines should be working together closely as partners. This will help to ensure that research results are disseminated at reasonable cost to those who need it. Researchers and all other participants in the scholarly communication system must come to a clearer understanding of and consensus about the fundamental goals of scholarly communication. These fundamental goals can be reduced to three: 1) To ensure that the worldwide community of researchers has rapid, con- venient access at reasonable cost to the validated results of all rele- vant research. 2) To assure researchers and students seeking information about research results in any discipline that the results "published" have been care- fully reviewed by peer experts to meet high research quality standards and then carefully edited for clear and accurate presentation. 3) To ensure that future generations of researchers will have undistorted, convenient access at reasonable cost to the results of important re- search conducted today and in the past. What, then, would be characteristics of the ideal scholarly communication system of the future? The Task Force suggests the following key ingredi- ents: a) Initial publication of peer-reviewed and edited research results would be in journals supported by universities, scholarly associations, or other organizations sharing the mission to promote widespread, reasona- ble-cost access to research information. b) Electronic publication via the publicly supported portion of the world- wide Internet would be the preferred means for most disciplines. c) Research libraries would remain the primary access nodes and archival repositories for print and electronic collections of published research results. d) Some publishers would be licensed by individual researchers, university presses, and scholarly associations primarily to publish special com- pilations, indexes, or other value-added products for sale where poten- tially profitable markets exist for these secondary, value-added infor- mation resources. e) The technical systems and scholarly communication policies needed to support this new scholarly communication system would grow out of con- sensus deliberations and collaboration among associations of research libraries, research universities and their publishing arms, and socie- ties or associations of researchers in the various scientific and tech- nical disciplines. The critical responses received after distribution of the original version of the model policy fit roughly into four broad themes: 1) Individual re- tention of copyright and the granting of blanket permission for noncommer- cial reproduction of articles for educational and research purposes, if applied indiscriminately to all publishers, would also threaten the reve- nues of university and association not-for-profit publishers, who should be seen as allies in the struggle to control escalating journal costs. 2) Retention of copyright by academic researchers will not by itself change the pricing practices of commercial publishers. 3) Retention of copyright would place undue burdens on individual researchers. They would struggle to find suitable low-cost publication outlets for their articles and would have to respond to many requests to use or reproduce their published arti- cles. 4) Retention of copyright by authors could impede efforts by publish- ers to license complete collections of articles for electronic distribution via compact disks or over national and international networks. The remain- der of this paper describes how the model university policy and the recom- mendations above respond to these criticisms. ---------- The policy would hurt not-for-profit publishers: University, association, and other not-for-profit publishers are essential to effective scholarly communication and, in fact, need to be strengthened to become once again the primary locus of scientific and technical journal publishing. These scholarly publishers should be partners with research libraries in the struggle to control the escalating costs of scientific and technical jour- nals. The model policy now makes clear the positive role that not-for-prof- it publishers, and others whose subscription prices are rationally related to the actual costs of journal production, have played and should continue to play in providing widespread distribution of research results at reason- able costs. Research published by university and most association presses remains essentially within the community of university research scholars and, thus, under university control. No change in current copyright trans- fer practices is needed with these scholarly presses because they share the fundamental values of university-based scholarly research and a common vision for the future of scholarly communication. Some critics noted that research universities (unlike the commercial pub- lishing conglomerates) are capital-poor and, thus, in a poor position to compete for the scientific and technical scholarly journal market (see Bennett, 1993). As the transformation to a worldwide electronic network for scientific communication accelerates, however, the billions of dollars currently tied up in university research library subscriptions, binding, and storage could be freed to provide the necessary capital. It is also important to note that university faculty and computer centers are largely responsible for the growth and development of the Internet as we know it today. Thus, universities are well-positioned to manage and make efficient use of this scholarly communication infrastructure of the future. But to do so they must seize the initiative. The Task Force hopes the model policy will help to convince university faculty and administrators of the need to take these matters seriously. The policy will not change publishers' pricing practices: Adoption of the model policy by large numbers of universities should help to reestablish the central role of the university and not-for-profit association presses in scientific and technical scholarly journal publishing. Provided that the policy is accompanied by major efforts to strengthen university-based pub- lishing, as recommended throughout this document, the policy can help to foster the growth of alternative outlets for publication of research re- sults. As one respondent noted, many commercial and not-for-profit journal publishers already give authors the option of retaining copyright for their articles. These publishers, however, also usually specify in a license agreement the publisher's right to republish or to permit others (with or without the payment of fees) to republish or translate the work. The Task Force argues that retention of copyright is a necessary precondition for the scholarly research community collectively to strengthen existing mech- anisms or to develop alternative low-cost mechanisms for the dissemination of research results. Keep in mind the basic purpose of the scholarly journal communication sys- tem for the creators and ultimate consumers of the articles published: to validate the quality of research results, edit them, and make them availa- ble to the worldwide community of researchers for use in further research and teaching. Only by individually and collectively reestablishing control over the raw materials they produce will research scholars be able to work together with libraries and publishers to ensure a scholarly communication system that addresses the basic goal of widespread, low-cost dissemination of peer reviewed research results, rather than acceptable profit margins for commercial publishing conglomerates. One possible result of general retention of copyright by authors could be a reduction of both commercial and not-for-profit publishers' revenues, with- out a concomitant reduction in their expenses. This decline in revenues could occur both through a reduction of the subsidiary income currently earned by some publishers from the granting of permission for reproduction of articles and through a reduction of the number of their journal sub- scribers. This would be especially true, where access to journal articles becomes readily available through online electronic networks rather than the current system of print journal subscriptions. Adoption of the model policy by large numbers of universities should help to reestablish the central role of university and not-for-profit associa- tion presses in scientific and technical scholarly journal publishing and also to strengthen their financial health. Universities and their faculty must be able to meet their responsibilities to society as well as to pres- ent and future generations of researchers in and out of academia worldwide. Without ready access to the published results of university research, re- search progress would simply not be possible. Only by retaining copyrights within the academic community of research scholars, can those who generate the research results maintain an effective system of scholarly communica- tion that meets the information needs of research scholars and their stud- ents. The policy will put too many burdens on research faculty: If individual faculty, unsupported by their institutions and professional associations, immediately attempt to follow the guidelines outlined in this policy, they would almost certainly find it more difficult to locate appropriate publi- cation outlets for their research results. But when and if the policy be- comes standard practice in most academic settings and suitable electronic or print alternatives to commercially published journals are available, then publication will hinge on the quality and originality of the research results submitted for "publication," rather than on the marketplace viabil- ity (i.e., profitability) of particular journals. The international comput- er and telecommunications networks, with their growing capacity and perva- siveness in research settings, hold great promise as the preferred mechan- ism for most scholarly communication. In the sciences and technology, elec- tronic journals, with worldwide network access mechanisms, eventually will replace traditional print-on-paper journals, especially if these networks are managed to preserve low-cost access for scholarly communication purpos- es. As for the criticism that the policy would force researchers to respond to large numbers of requests to use or reproduce their articles, this issue is specifically addressed with the model policy stipulation that authors, who are unable to locate a university, society, association or other suitable publication channel, insist that a notice be included as a footnote on the first page of the article giving blanket permission "for the noncommercial reproduction of the complete work for educational or research purposes." Thus, routine copying of articles for classroom use in courses and for interlibrary loan would be permitted without the need to request permission from the author. Faculty authors may also want to consider contractual agreements that give the publisher a nonexclusive right to sell licenses, at agreed-upon reasonable rates to commercial copy services such as Kinko's and Copytron which produce "course packs" of photocopied articles for sale to students for specific university courses. --to be continued in no. 94-- +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Statements of fact and opinion appearing in the _Newsletter on Serials Pricing Issues_ are made on the responsibility of the authors alone, and do not imply the endorsement of the editor, the editorial board, or the Uni- versity of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Readers of the NEWSLETTER ON SERIALS PRICING ISSUES are encouraged to share the information in the newsletter by electronic or paper methods. 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