Hardin Scholarly Communication News

A Newsletter for the Health Sciences Campus at the University of Iowa
October 24, 2005
Issue 7.05

Hardin Scholarly Communication News brings together a variety of topics that affect the current system of scholarly communication, with emphasis on new developments, open access and alternative publishing models in the health sciences. This newsletter aims to reflect the interests of its readers so please forward comments, suggestions and entries to include to karen-fischer@uiowa.edu. Subscribers will also receive our newsletter News@Hardin.

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Table of Contents:

Open Access Journal Publishing: the Views of Some of the World’s Senior Authors

2005 Pricing Trends for STM Journanls

OA Publisher to Start Clinical-Trials Journal That Welcomes Negative Results

NIEHS May Privatize its OA Journal

The Lancet Urges Reed Elsevier to Divest Role in Arms Show

UK’s Wellcome Trust Mandates Open Access

The Debut of PLoS Pathogens

University of Pennsylvania Cuts 2,255 Subscriptions

The Problems with Impact Factors

PLoS Editorial: Measures of Impact

More on ACM vs. PubChem

Possible Springer IPO

Is the FBI Spying on the American Library Association?

New and Forthcoming Journals at BioMed Central

Usage Statistics as an Economic Factor in Scholarly Communications

Patriot Act Verdict is Appealed

"Open Access Journal Publishing: The Views of Some of the World’s Senior Authors," published in a recent issue of the Journal of Documentation, details a major survey of the views and experiences of nearly 4,000 senior authors from 97 different countries in regard to Open Access publishing.  The results show that views were divided sharply along subject and geographical lines.  Authors in biomedicine comprised 28% of respondents.

Some of the results:

Researchers based in Australia (61%) and North America (60%) were more likely to agress that OA will result in less papers being rejected while those based in Africa (39%) and South America (47%) were least likely to agree. 

Authors in Africa (91%) and Asia (83%) believe OA will make it easier to access papers, while only 76% of Western Europeans and and 79% of North Americans thought the same.

Respondents from immunology, material science and medicine (42, 41 and 43% respectively) thought that authors would publish more with OA, compared to 27% of computer science respondents and 27% working in environmental sciences. 

Those publishing in mathematics (61%), agriculture (59%) and pharmacology (56%) felt that OA will improve services to authors while those in arts and humanities (35%), social sciences (28%) and immunology (34%) were less likely to agree.

34% of respondents knew nothing about OA, 11% have published in an OA journal, 46% knew about OA but have not published in one, 8% do not know about OA.  Researchers based in the US (40%), Australia (38%) and Western Europe (31%) were more likely to report knowing "nothing at all" about OA.  The article’s authors conclude that there is general ignorance of OA publishing on the part of senior authors.  They recommend an educational campaign to bridge the knowledge gap between publishers and authors.  Currently, authors are not knowledgeable enough to influence the OA debate.

Those publishing in biochemistry (30%), neuroscience (22%), mathematics (22%) and material science (22%) were more likely to report knowing a lot or quite a lot about OA.  In contrast, authors in arts and humanities (59%), social sciences (52%) and economics and business (48%) were most likely to report knowing nothing at all.

Those authors with previous experience with publishing on the web were more likely to have published in OA journals.

Researchers Australia, North America and Western Europe (places with the lowest amount of OA publishing) associated OA with ephemeral publishing, poor archiving and no career advantage.  In contrast, locations with a relatively high proportion of authors publishing in OA were more positive and associated OA with high quality and good indexing.

The belief that authors pays for OA publication was again more likely to be held in countries where authors were least likely to publish in OA, especially Australia and North America.

To read the whole article, go to (for U of Iowa affiliates and subscribers only): http://proxy.lib.uiowa.edu/login?url=http://www.emeraldinsight.com/10.1108/00220410510607499

Gene Kean, 18th Annual Study of Journal Prices for Scientific and Medical Society Journals, JP: The Newsletter for Journal Publishers, No. 3, 2005. (Thanks to Colin Steele.) Excerpt:

For more than 18 years, prices of periodicals have increased at the rate of three times the Consumer Price Index, more than those of most consumer goods and services in the U.S. While the CPI has risen about 2.8% to 3.1% annually, the ALA Library Materials Price Index Committee studies show that prices of all U.S. periodicals increased annually about 9.4% on an average between 1988–2005. The 2005 edition of the U.S. Periodical Price Index (USPPI) brings better news than recent years’ studies, which featured double-digit increases in both 1998 and 1999, according to the LMPIC. In 2005, the average U.S. periodical (journal) price rose from $328.47 to $349.79, a 6.5% increase, lower than the 8.2% increase in 2004. The scope of this LMPIC study was a selected sample of 3,912 periodical titles published in the U.S….In general, library budgets have not kept pace with serials price increases. In addition, because of a weak dollar in some years, U.S. research libraries have had to bear price increases of 20% or more for some overseas journals. All of this has contributed to the current condition of the library market, which is very tight and selective in the purchase of new titles. All libraries and journals have been affected by budget cuts. Most libraries no longer purchase new titles without cutting at least one or two other titles….Our Allen Press 18-year study shows that prices for U.S. society-published journals increased an average of 7.4% annually during 1988–2005. The journal price increase was above the CPI but substantially below the average annual price increase for all U.S. periodicals of 9.4% during the same period. Librarians interviewed said that nonprofit society journals tend to be lower priced and have much smaller price increases than commercially published journals. Because of this, librarians consider society journals good buys.

[Open Access News, 10/17/05]

San Francisco, USA, October 18, 2005 – The Public Library of Science (PLoS) announced PLoS Clinical Trials, an innovative new journal devoted to peer-reviewing and publishing reports of randomized clinical trials in all areas of healthcare (http://www.plosclinicaltrials.org).  The journal differs from other medical journals in one crucial respect.  It will publish all trials that are ethically and scientifically sound and entered into an internationally accepted registry, regardless of the trial’s size or whether the results are positive or negative.  PLoS Clinical Trials is now accepting manuscripts in advance of its spring 2006 launch.

Around half of all completed trial reports are thought to go unpublished.  These unpublished trial reports differ systematically from those that are published in the direction and strength of the findings, thus distorting the evidence base for decision-making in healthcare.

"Unpublished results undermine the trust between patients and investigators and slow the vast potential of medical progress," says Dr Christian Gluud of Copenhagen University Hospital, a member of the Advisory Board of PLoS Clinical Trials.

Traditional medical journals publish only the highest profile clinical trials (typically positive trials), partly because the journals must attract revenues from subscriptions and selling reprints.  PLoS Clinical Trials avoids this problem — it doesn’t have to sell subscriptions or reprints to be viable, so it can publish the broadest range of trials.

Citation: Veitch E, PLoS Medicine Editors (2005) Tackling publication bias in clinical trial reporting. PLoS Med 2(10): e367. 
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pmed.0020367

PLoS Clinical Trials Call for Papers: http://clinicaltrials.plosjournals.org/ 

Also, read an article in the Chronicle of Higher Education on PLoS Clinical Trials (for U of Iowa affiliates and subscribers only): http://chronicle.com/temp/email.php?id=wxft69ybjhvfmzfe1mncsgb4fl4mkvsm

Environmental Health Perspectives is a peer-reviewed, open-access journal published by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS), one of the institutes within the NIH. On September 19, the NIEHS requested public comments on the "potential privatization" of the journal. Excerpt:

NIEHS conducts ongoing review of all its research, training, and communications programs and has recently determined that it is now appropriate to consider phasing out Institute sponsorship of this journal. NIEHS has not reached a final decision about potential privatization of EHP nor has an implementation plan for carrying out such a decision been developed. Should such a decision be reached, it is our goal to implement it in a manner that will be least disruptive to the field and to authors, reviewers, editorial board, staff, and subscribers. The current request for comment poses a series of questions around core elements that may comprise an implementation plan for privatization of EHP. These elements include: (1) Feasibility of privatizing EHP, (2) a business plan for continuation of the journal, (3) a timeline and plan for transfer of responsibility, (4) an editorial policy plan, and (5) continued online access….

EHP is read in nearly every country of the world. EHP has an impact factor of 3.93 and an Immediacy Index of 1.20, ranking the journal second of 132 environmental sciences journals and fifth of 90 public, environmental, and occupational health journals. As a full open-access journal, EHP provides XML-formatted content to the digital archive Pubmed Central. EHP also has partnerships with Medscape and JSTOR.org (an organization that maintains an archive of scholarly journal) to facilitate access and distribution of EHP’s content. Electronic submission and review are the norm for the 1,200 manuscripts that EHP receives annually, and the rejection rate is about 80%. EHP publishes all articles within 24 hours of acceptance on its [web site] as EHP-in-Press articles. These articles are completely citable using CrossRef’s Digital Object Identifier system. The Web site is visited by approximately 150,000 unique visitors every month.

If you have a comment, send it by email to EHPfeedback@niehs.nih.gov before October 28, 2005.

[Open Access News, 9/18/05]

Editors of THE LANCET, one of the premier medical industry journals and part of the Elsevier stable of titles, have issued an editorial calling on the publisher’s corporate parent to divest its role in the international arms trade. Reed Elsevier owns an exhibits company called Spearhead, a division of Reed Exhibitions that will stage an arms conference in London next week, in cooperation with Britain’s Ministry of Defence. In a column, the editors claimed they were previously unaware of Reed’s involvement with the arms connection until recently. While politely praising the journal’s corporate parent, the editorial suggests that the company cannot credibly maintain a role in health science publishing while supporting the arms trade. "We are deeply troubled by this connection," the editors wrote.

"[Reed Elsevier] has never wavered in backing the journal’s editorial independence, as proven by the publication of this leader comment. We cannot believe that Reed Elsevier wishes to jeopardize that commitment by its presence in a business that so self-evidently damages its reputation as a health science publisher." In an accompanying letter, a Reed Elsevier spokesperson defended the company’s business dealings in the arms trade, saying the defense industry is central to national security.

[Library Journal Academic Newswire (TM), The Publishing Report, September 15, 2005]

The UK’s Wellcome Trust, an early and ardent supporter of open access, is putting its grant money where its mouth is, requiring that grantees deposit articles generated with Wellcome funds into the National Institutes of Health’s (NIH) PubMed Central open access repository. As of October 2005, "all Wellcome Trust grantees will have to submit an electronic copy of the final manuscripts of their research papers into PubMed Central (PMC)," to be made "freely available to the public, via the web, no later than six months after the official date of final publication."

In addition, the Wellcome Trust says it will encourage grantees to embrace open access publishing, by providing them with additional funding to cover the costs of page processing charges levied by open access publishers, including the Public Library of Science and BioMed Central. Wellcome Trust officials also announced that the trust is working with a number of other major science-funders in the UK, including the Arthritis Research Campaign, Cancer Research UK, British Heart Foundation, and Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) to "explore the feasibility of establishing a UK PubMed Central." In a news release, the officials said they were now seeking a formal tender process, to identify a contractor who can "run and develop a UK-PMC service that will be launched early in 2006." The Wellcome Trust is one of the world’s largest biomedical research charities, spending over £400 million ($708.8 million) annually to support 3500 researchers in 44 countries. See <http://www.wellcome.ac.uk/>.

[Library Journal Academic Newswire (TM), The Publishing Report, October 6, 2005]

The first issue of PLoS Pathogens was released on Sept. 30, 2005.  The journal is led by Editor-in-Chief John A.T. Young, a professor in the Infectious Disease Laboratory at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies.

Bacteria, fungi, parasites, prions, and viruses cause a plethora of diseases with significant medical, agricultural, and economic consequences. PLoS Pathogens will publish rigorously peer-reviewed papers that reflect the full breadth of pathogens research. "Understanding pathogens and how they interact with their hosts is one of the most serious scientific challenges we face," Young says.

All works published in PLoS Pathogens are open access–everything published is immediately available without cost to anyone to read, download, redistribute, include in databases, and otherwise use, subject only to the condition that the original authorship is properly attributed.

PLoS Pathogens
Fulltext v1+ (2005+)
http://www.plospathogens.org/
Print ISSN: 1553-7366 | Online ISSN: 1553-7374

Jesse Rogers, As costs rise, library cuts journals, The Daily Pennsylvanian, October 20, 2005. Excerpt:

Students combing the stacks at Van Pelt Library may notice they have a little extra breathing room. The library has cut 2,255 journal subscriptions from its 2004-05 holdings, as journal prices have increased faster than the library’s budget. But the size of the materials budget — $13.1 million allotted for books, journals, magazines, periodicals, films and electronic resources — is not to blame, library officials said. Rather, officials blame big publishing companies, which they say have raised prices as the companies have bought up academic journals over the last two decades. In 1993, journals accounted for 64 percent of the materials budget. This number has increased to almost 70 percent in the 2005 materials budget. Publishing giant Reed Elsevier claims 18 percent of the market in science, technology and medical journals. An annual subscription to the chemistry journal Tetrahedron, published by Elsevier, costs the library $31,600. The Brown University library system has also criticized price increases. However, it has not had to cancel subscriptions since the early 1990s, as its materials budget has kept pace with journals’ price increases. The 2005 Brown materials budget stands at $5 million, of which 66 percent is devoted to journals. As research libraries across the nation decry price increases, Penn’s library system is calling for reform through its Winning Independence Web site. Linked to the library system’s Web site this September, the site encourages professors to be active on journals’ editorial boards and to push for fair pricing policies. At the heart of the uproar over pricing is frustration — on the part of the library and some professors — with publishers’ restrictive copy agreements. Many journal publishers require faculty members to sign over their copyright as a condition for publication. This prevents professors from submitting published journal articles to online archives such as Penn’s [OA repository] Scholarly Commons, which is one way the library can increase its holdings in the face of a limited budget.

[Open Access News, 10/20/2005)

Richard Monastersky, The Number That’s Devouring Science, Chronicle of Higher Education, October 1, 2005 (accessible only to U of Iowa affiliates and subscribers). Excerpt:

Outside academe, few people have even heard of [impact factors]. Mr. [Eugene] Garfield, though, now compares his brainchild to nuclear energy: a force that can help society but can unleash mayhem when it is misused. Indeed, impact factors have assumed so much power, especially in the past five years, that they are starting to control the scientific enterprise. In Europe, Asia, and, increasingly, the United States, Mr. Garfield’s tool can play a crucial role in hiring, tenure decisions, and the awarding of grants. "The impact factor may be a pox upon the land because of the abuse of that number," says Robert H. Austin, a professor of physics at Princeton University. Impact-factor fever is spreading, threatening to skew the course of scientific research, say critics. Investigators are now more likely to chase after fashionable topics — the kind that get into high-impact journals — than to follow important avenues that may not be the flavor of the year, says Yu-Li Wang, a professor of physiology at the University of Massachusetts Medical School. "It influences a lot of people’s research direction." That influence has also led to a creeping sense of cynicism about the business of science publications. Journal editors have learned how to manipulate the system, sometimes through legitimate editorial choices and other times through deceptive practices that artificially inflate their own rankings. Several ecology journals, for example, routinely ask authors to add citations to previous articles from that same journal, a policy that pushes up its impact factor. Authors who have received such requests say that the practice veers toward extortion and represents a violation of scientific ethics. What’s more, investigations into impact factors have revealed problems with the basic data used by ISI, the company that tabulates citation statistics and journals’ impact factors. Started by Mr. Garfield in Philadelphia, ISI was bought in 1992 by the Thomson Corporation, which has tried to transform the citation enterprise into a more profitable operation by buying up databases and promoting its products. With alarming frequency, editors are finding fault with the impact factors that Thomson has issued….Mr. Garfield and ISI routinely point out the problems of using impact factors for individual papers or people. "That is something we have wrestled with quite a bit here," says Jim Pringle, vice president for development at Thomson Scientific, the division that oversees ISI. "It is a fallacy to think you can say anything about the citation pattern of an article from the citation pattern of a journal." Such warnings have not helped.