Hardin Scholarly Communication News

A Newsletter for the Health Sciences Campus at the University of Iowa

September 2007 | Issue 3.07

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 Hardin News.

Table of Contents:

Campaign against Open Access and Public Access to Federally Funded Research
Scholarly Publishers Issue Position Paper on Author/Publisher Rights
Scholarly Publishing Out of Step with the Academy
A Medical Publisher’s Unusual Prescription: Online Ads
Faculty Attitudes and Behaviors Regarding Scholarly Communication
BioMed Central Announces Open Access Publishing Agreement with Howard Hughes Medical Institute
Flattening of the U.S. Output of Scientific Articles: 1988–2003
Do Open Access Articles Have Greater Citation Impact?
The Irony of a Web Without Science - Financial Times article
Canadian Inst. of Health Research Introduces New Open Access Policy
Yale Libraries Pull Out of BioMed Central Over Cost of Publication
L.A. Times Editorial: Accessing NIH research

The Association of Research Libraries (ARL) this week issued a statement criticizing a new initiative in what it called an “ongoing PR campaign” against public access legislation, supported by the Association of American Publishers (AAP). ARL officials said the latest effort, dubbed PRISM (Partnership for Research Integrity in Science & Medicine), “frequently distorts the nature of ongoing and substantive discussions about open access and public access to federally funded research.”

The PRISM web site argues that public access efforts will undermine peer review and harm journal publishers; will open the door to “scientific censorship in the form of selective additions to or omissions from the scientific record”; subject the scientific record to “the uncertainty that comes with changing federal budget priorities and bureaucratic meddling”; and will introduce “duplication and inefficiencies that will divert resources that would otherwise be dedicated to research.”

ARL officials noted that the PRISM arguments closely follow the advice of PR “pit bull” Eric Dezenhall, whom publishers consulted in the last year to develop a strategy for fighting public access legislation. Nature first reported publishers’ plans to launch their PR campaign in January of 2007. ARL officials said the PR campaign offers libraries and researchers an opportunity to engage the campus community “concerning the changes to the scholarly communication” and provides a memo with talking points it hopes will help guide that discussion.

OA public access supporters have already hit the blogs, both dissecting PRISM’s arguments and expressing their displeasure over the coalition’s tactics. Alma Swan, a researcher and consultant specializing in scholarly communication wrote that the PRISM initiative made her feel sad and disappointed. Swan wrote on her blog that “the level of dishonesty and distortion in PRISM’s language,” suggested that “the partners in this ‘coalition’ are just not doing what I had hoped they would eventually do, which is to see clearly and act well.

Library Journal Academic Newswire, Sep 7, 2007

Project of Publishers’ Association Is Criticized by Some of Its Members and Open-Access Advocates
By JENNIFER HOWARD
Chronicle of Higher Education, Sept. 11, 2007

The Association of American Publishers has landed in hot water with university presses and research librarians, as well as open-access advocates, thanks to a new undertaking that is billed as an attempt to “safeguard the scientific and medical peer-review process and educate the public about the risks of proposed government interference with the scholarly communication process.”

That effort, known as the Partnership for Research Integrity in Science & Medicine, or Prism, is the latest twist in a continuing public-relations war between the association and the open-access camp.

In January, the association created a ruckus by hiring Eric Dezenhall, a high-powered media consultant described by the journal Nature as a “pit bull” (The Chronicle, January 26). Mr. Dezenhall’s advice to the publishers’ association, says Nature, included a suggestion that it focus on messages such as “Public access equals government censorship.”

Read on to find out about backlash against PRISM: http://chronicle.com/daily/2007/09/2007091103n.htm

Issue Brief from the Association of Research Libraries

AAP PR Campaign against Open Access and Public Access to Federally
Funded Research: Update re the PRISM Coalition
September 4, 2007

Excerpt:
A new initiative has been announced in an ongoing public relations campaign sponsored by the Association of American Publishers (AAP) against initiatives concerning access to federally funded research (public access) and open access generally. PRISM (Partnership for Research Integrity in Science & Medicine), a new coalition, is attracting substantial criticism from a broad spectrum of researchers. The PRISM message corresponds directly to plans described in internal publisher documents leaked to reporters to “develop simple messages (e.g., public access equals government censorship)” that are aimed at key decision makers.

As news of this initiative evolves, it presents an opportunity to engage in conversations with members of your campus community concerning the changes to the scholarly communication system and how this may affect scholarly journal publishing. This memo provides talking points to assist you and your staff in working with members of your campus community with regards to the recently disclosed publishers public relations campaign against open/public access initiatives and legislation concerning access to federally funded research….

[N]either public access policies to federally funded research or open access journals alter the traditional practice of peer review.

* Peer review is already built into open access journals and to policies concerning access to federally funded research thus showing the fallacy of the predicted demise of peer review.
* The peer review system, based almost completely on the voluntary free labor of the research community, is independent of a particular mode of publishing, or business model.
* Publishers’ own studies have found that open access journals are peer reviewed as frequently as comparable subscription journals.
* The existing National Institutes of Health (NIH) policy and legislation concerning access to federally funded research called for submissions from only peer-reviewed journals and “includes all modifications from the publishing peer review process.”
* Finally, journal publishers do not create the content they publish, nor do they generally pay authors for that content or compensate reviewers for the time they spend ensuring the quality of published research through their contributions to the peer review process. The academy supports and provides the peer review.
* Public access to federally funded research policies proposed to date have all incorporated embargo periods to protect publishers from any rapid shifts in subscription revenues….

PRISM doesn’t speak for Rockefeller University Press

Mike Rossner, Executive Director of Rockefeller University Press, sent the following letter to the Association of American Publishers (AAP):

To the Association of American Publishers:

I am writing to request that a disclaimer be placed on the PRISM website indicating that the views presented on the site do not necessarily reflect those of all members of the AAP. We at the Rockefeller University Press strongly disagree with the spin that has been placed on the issue of open access by PRISM.

First, the website implies that the NIH (and other funding agencies who mandate release of content after a short delay) are advocating the demise of peer review. Nothing could be further from the truth. These agencies completely understand the need to balance public access to journal content with the necessity for publishers to recoup the costs of peer review. After extended discussions with publishers, these agencies have determined that delayed release of content (none of them are advocating immediate release unless publishers are compensated handsomely for such release) is consistent with the STM subscription business model, in which peer review is a basic tenet.

Second, how can PRISM refer to bias when the government is mandating that ALL papers resulting from research they fund be released to the public after a short delay? The major potential for bias by the government and other funding agencies has already occurred when they decide what research to fund (e.g., stem cell research).

Third, PRISM takes issue with government spending on a repository of papers resulting from government-funded research. The government has been forced into this position by those publishers who refuse to ever release most of their content to the public.

Fourth, PRISM maintains that published papers are private property. Most of the research published by STM publishers only exists because of public funding. No public funding - no research,­ no millions in profit. Publishers thus have an obligation to give some of their private property back to the public, on whose taxes they depend for their very existence.

Finally, we take issue with the title: Partnership for Research Integrity in Science and Medicine. The use of the term “research integrity” is inappropriate in this context. The common use of this term refers to whether the data presented are accurate representations of what was actually observed. In other words, has any misconduct occurred? This is not the primary concern of peer reviewers, who ask whether the data presented support the conclusions drawn. It is thus incorrect to link the term research integrity directly with peer review.

I could go on, but I think you will get the point that we strongly disagree with the tack AAP has taken on this issue. We urge you to put a disclaimer on the PRISM site, to make it clear that your assertions do not represent the views of all of your members.

Yours sincerely,
Mike Rossner, Ph.D.
Executive Director
The Rockefeller University Press

A coalition of scholarly publishing groups released a “position paper” on balancing author and publisher rights in scholarly journals. The paper Author and Publisher Rights for Academic Use: An Appropriate Balance, was assembled by the International Association of Scientific, Technical, and Medical Publishers (STM), along with the Association of American Publishers Professional and Scholarly Publishing division (AAP PSP), and the Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers (ALPSP). The paper suggests that the needs of scholarly authors and the need for publishers to obtain copyright transfers or exclusive licenses can be balanced, and need not conflict.

“Academic research authors and their institutions should be able to use and post the content that such authors and institutions themselves provide for internal institutional non-commercial research and education purposes”—something most publishers allow—the paper states. Publishers, meanwhile, “should be able to determine when and how the official publication record occurs, and to derive the revenue benefit from the publication and open posting of the official record (the final published article), and its further distribution and access in recognition of the value of the services they provide.”

Despite what STM called “overheated” discussions of new models and practices, the scientific record is best-served, the paper emphasizes, by a professional publishing model. In that model, exclusive rights preserve the scientific record and ensure that journals are viable, thus supporting editing, peer review, and “electronic delivery and investments in such systems,” as well as supporting the administration of a copyright regime.

In a recent editorial in Scientific American however, researcher and consultant Alma Swan questions some of the core positions put forth by publishers and suggests individual authors, through self-archiving and rapid dissemination on the web, can take matters into their own hands. “Research is expensive enough that the world can scarcely afford an antiquated, inefficient, and high-cost system of information dissemination,” Swan writes. “The bickering over varied business models, and the side arguments over public access to publicly funded results, obscure a larger, more important question: Can open access—the fundamental change to a system where scientists no longer face barriers to accessing others’ work (or their own)—advance science?”

Swan argues yes. “While commercial publishers, scientific societies, and librarians struggle over business models and tough longer-term issues such as who will maintain the record of science in a digital age,” she writes, “it remains the individual investigator who has the tools at hand to speed science along.”

Library Journal Academic Newswire, May 10, 2007

Publishing makes the academic world go round, but, despite a great range of opportunities to distribute academic work in the Web 2.0 world, a new report issued by Ithaka argues that universities are still not enabling or sufficiently supporting publishing opportunities at their institutions. A commitment to publishing “in its broadest sense,” the report argues, could not only enable universities to more realize the “potential global impact of their academic programs,” but even potentially reduce costs.

“In American colleges and universities, access to the Internet and World Wide Web is ubiquitous. Consequently, nearly all intellectual effort results in some form of ‘publishing,’” writes Ithaka president Kevin Guthrie in his preface. “Yet universities do not treat this function as an important, mission-centric endeavor. The result, he says, is a scholarly publishing industry many scholars see as “increasingly out of step with the important values of the academy.” Ithaka “is an independent not-for-profit organization with a mission to accelerate the productive uses of information technologies for the benefit of higher education worldwide.”

The paper was authored by Laura Brown, former president of Oxford University Press USA, with support from Ithaka’s Strategic Services group, along with Matthew Rascoff and Rebecca Griffiths, who did the research. Despite such extensive research, Guthrie notes, “this is not a report presenting findings from an objective, empirical survey of the field.” Rather, it is a “qualitative review,” informed by a combination of survey results, interviews, and the knowledge of the investigators.

With the advent of powerful information and communication technology, the report explains, “the responsibility for disseminating digital scholarship is migrating in two directions–towards large (primarily commercial) publishing platforms and towards informal channels operated by other entities on campus, mostly libraries, academic computing centers, academic departments, and cross-institutional research centers.” The latter offers new opportunities for universities to reduce costs and to claim a greater stake in the research they subsidize and produce. It also creates challenges for university presses.

One thing is certain: change. “Publishing in the future will look very different than it has looked in the past,” the authors note “The next stage will be the creation of new formats made possible by digital technologies, ultimately allowing scholars to work in deeply integrated electronic research and publishing environments that will enable real-time dissemination, collaboration, dynamically-updated content, and usage of new media.”. This means both a range of new methods of “content creation” as well as new commercial models and marketplace innovations for distribution, and also an expanded role for libraries in maintaining “alternative distribution models” such as institutional repositories, pre-print servers, and open access journals. “Different economic models will be appropriate for different types of content and different audiences. It seems critical to us that there continue to be a diverse marketplace for publishing a range of content.”

So, in the digital future, every university that produces research should have “a publishing strategy,” if not a press, the authors suggest. “Universities give up too much by withdrawing from publishing,” they argue. “There is a great need, as well as a great opportunity, to revitalize the university’s role and capabilities in publishing.”

Library Journal Academic Newswire, July 27, 2007

To read the complete Ithaka report go to: University Publishing In A Digital Age

Related Article: New Model for University Presses
From Inside Higher Education, July 31, 2007. Scott Jaschik, New Model for University Presses

It’s the nightmare-come-true scenario for many an academic: You spend years writing a book in your field, send it off to a university press with an interest in your topic, the outside reviewers praise the work, the editors like it too, but the press can’t afford to publish it. The book is declared too long or too narrow or too dependent on expensive illustrations or too something else. But the bottom line is that the relevant press, with a limited budget, can’t afford to release it, and turns you down, while saying that the book deserves to be published.

That’s the situation scholars find themselves in increasingly these days, and press editors freely admit that they routinely review submissions that deserve to be books, but that can’t be, for financial reasons. The underlying economic bind university presses find themselves in is attracting increasing attention, including last week’s much awaited report from Ithaka, “University Publishing in a Digital Age,” which called for universities to consider entirely new models.

One such new model is about to start operations: The Rice University Press, which was eliminated in 1996, was revived last year with the idea that it would publish online only, using low-cost print-on-demand….

Read the complete article: http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2007/07/31/ricepress

Lastly:
The Scholarly Publishing Office of the University of Michigan has released the Ithaka Report in CommentPress which allows readers to share online, paragraph by paragraph annotation and commentary of the Report. CommentPress was recently developed by the Institute for the Future of the Book to allow readers to share annotations and commentary on texts. The hope is that all of us that have a stake in the outcomes of the Ithaka Report will share our thoughts and commentary in this new forum.

By MILT FREUDENHEIM
New York Times
Published: September 10, 2007

Excerpt:

By some measures, the medical publishing world has met the advent of the Internet with a shrug, sticking to its time-honored revenue model of charging high subscription fees for specialized journals that often attract few, if any, advertisements.

But now Reed Elsevier, which publishes more than 400 medical and scientific journals, is trying an experiment that stands this model on its head. Over the weekend it introduced a Web portal, www.OncologySTAT.com, that gives doctors free access to the latest articles from 100 of its own pricey medical journals and that plans to sell advertisements against the content.

Over the weekend it introduced a Web portal, www.OncologySTAT.com, that gives doctors free access to the latest articles from 100 of its own pricey medical journals and that plans to sell advertisements against the content.

The new site asks oncologists to register their personal information. In exchange, it gives them immediate access to the latest cancer-related articles from Elsevier journals like The Lancet and Surgical Oncology. Prices for journals can run from hundreds to thousands of dollars a year.

Read the entire article in the New York Times.

Related Blog post:
A Closer Look at OncologySTAT: Elsevier’s Version of Open Access?, DigitalKoans

The University of California Office of Scholarly Communications just released “Faculty Attitudes and Behaviors Regarding Scholarly Communication: Survey Findings from the University Of California.” The report analyzes over 1,100 survey responses covering a range of scholarly communication issues from faculty in all disciplines and all tenure-track ranks. The report provides summary and detailed evidence of a UC community of scholars where:

* There is limited but significant use of alternative forms of scholarship, with 21% of faculty having published in open-access journals, and 14% having posted peer-reviewed articles in institutional repositories or disciplinary repositories. Such publishing is seen as supplementing rather than substituting for traditional forms of publication.

* Faculty appear unwilling to undertake activities, such as forcing changes on publishers, that might undermine the viability of the system or threaten their personal success as traditionally evaluated.

* Many respondents voiced concerns that new forms of scholarly communication, such as open access journals or repositories, might produce a flood of low-quality output. Faculty showed broad and strong loyalty to the current peer-review system as the primary means of ensuring the quality of published works now and in the future, regardless of form or venue.

* On matters of tenure and promotion Assistant Professors show consistently more skepticism about the ability of tenure and promotion processes to keep pace with or foster new forms of scholarly communication.

* The survey results overall suggest that senior faculty may actually be more open to innovation than younger faculty. Senior faculty are free from tenure concerns, and although many are still driven by a desire for promotion, they appear more willing to experiment, more willing to change behavior, and more willing to participate in new initiatives. Therefore, senior faculty may well serve as one starting point for fostering change. Furthermore, because senior faculty are both involved in making academic policy and serving as role models for junior faculty, their efforts at innovation are likely to have broader influence within their departments.

The Howard Hughes Medical Institute and BioMed Central have announced a membership agreement under which HHMI will pay the article processing charges for all research published by HHMI investigators in BioMed Central journals. Articles published under this agreement will be made immediately and freely available on the web in their final published form, and will be deposited in international archives including PubMed Central (PMC). The agreement between HHMI and BioMed Central takes effect for articles submitted after September 1, 2007.

This agreement complements HHMI’s recently announced open access policy, which requires that the results of research funded by the Institute must be deposited in PubMed Central, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) free digital archive of biomedical and life sciences journal literature, not more than six months after publication.

HHMI News: http://www.hhmi.org/news/bmc20070820.html

U.S. Output Flattens, and NSF Wonders Why
Jeffrey Mervis

Science 3 August 2007:
Vol. 317. no. 5838, p. 582
DOI: 10.1126/science.317.5838.582

Excerpt:
A new study by the National Science Foundation (NSF) showing that the overall number of publications by U.S. scientists has remained flat for more than a decade calls to mind the opening words of a classic 1960s folk rock anthem: “There’s something happening here; what it is ain’t exactly clear.”

The study (nsf07320) reveals what NSF officials call an “unprecedented” and mysterious trend: Despite the continued expansion of the peer-reviewed literature, the total output of U.S. scientists stopped growing in the early 1990s and hasn’t budged since then. The pattern, which cuts across all disciplines, reverses decades of steady expansion and leaves NSF officials scratching their heads for an explanation.

“We don’t have a smoking gun,” says Rolf Lehming, who oversees NSF’s biennial compendium of leading scientific and engineering indicators and has been tracking the phenomenon since the late 1990s. The trend is especially surprising given the growth in funding, personnel, and other research inputs over the 1988-2003 period being analyzed, he notes. It also deviates from the pattern in the European Union and in emerging Asian nations, where the output has continued to grow. As a result, their scientists can claim a rising share of global publications.

Read the complete article: http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/317/5838/582

Citation of NSF Report:
National Science Foundation, Division of Science Resources Statistics. 2007. Changing U.S. Output of Scientific Articles: 1988–2003. NSF 07-320. Derek Hill, Alan I. Rapoport, Rolf F. Lehming, and Robert K. Bell. Arlington, VA.

Excerpt from the Executive Summary:
In an unexpected development in the early 1990s, the absolute number of science and engineering (S&E) articles published by U.S.-based authors in the world’s major peer-reviewed journals plateaued. This was a change from a rise in the number of publications over at least the two preceding decades. With some variation, this trend occurred across different categories of institutions, different institutional sectors, and different fields of research. It occurred despite continued increases in resource inputs, such as funds and personnel, that support research and development (R&D).

In other developed countries—a group of 15 members of the European Union (the EU-15) and Japan—the absolute number of articles continued to grow throughout most of the 1992–2003 period. During the mid- to late 1990s, the number of articles published by EU scientists surpassed those published by their U.S. counterparts, and the difference between Japanese and U.S. article output narrowed. Late in the period, growth in the number of articles produced in some of these developed countries showed signs of slowing.

Iain D. et al. - Do open access articles have greater citation impact?
Journal of Informetrics, Volume 1, Issue 3, July 2007, Pages 239-248

Abstract:
The last few years have seen the emergence of several open access options in scholarly communication which can broadly be grouped into two areas referred to as ‘gold’ and ‘green’ open access (OA). In this article we review the literature examining the relationship between OA status and citation counts of scholarly articles. Early studies showed a correlation between the free online availability or OA status of articles and higher citation counts, and implied causality without due consideration of potential confounding factors. More recent investigations have dissected the nature of the relationship between article OA status and citations. Three non-exclusive postulates have been proposed to account for the observed citation differences between OA and non-OA articles: an open access postulate, a selection bias postulate, and an early view postulate. The most rigorous study to date (in condensed matter physics) showed that, after controlling for the early view postulate, the remaining difference in citation counts between OA and non-OA articles is explained by the selection bias postulate. No evidence was found to support the OA postulate per se; i.e. article OA status alone has little or no effect on citations. Further studies using a similarly rigorous approach are required to determine the generality of this finding.

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.joi.2007.04.001 (ScienceDirect)

By James Boyle
Published: September 4 2007 03:00 | Last updated: September 4 2007 03:00

Excerpt:

The US National Institutes of Health invests $28bn annually in research. European spending is lower, although the European Union is closing the gap, helped by a shortsighted American policy of “flatlining” many scientific research budgets. (Perhaps this is because scientists have an annoying tendency to discuss things that conflict with the Bush administration’s view of reality, such as global warming, evolution, the insufficiency of the New Orleans levee system and the medical potential of stem cells.)

Economists on both sides of the Atlantic strongly agree that scientific research spending provides measurable impact on economic growth. The moral case for health research is even clearer.

So much for the input side of research. What about the output? After all, paying for research is not enough. We have to get it to the scientists who might use it which, in an increasingly interdisciplinary world, is hard to predict beforehand. In the case of health research, patients are also looking for information - trying to find out whether the latest research shows that oestrogen therapy increases breast cancer risks, or anti-inflammatory drugs the risk of heart disease.

The outputs of scientific research come in a variety of forms, but the most important is an article in a peer-reviewed scientific journal. While some journals, such as those produced by the Public Library of Science, are “open access” - available in full for free online - most are not.

They can be extremely expensive. The cost of journals has dramatically outpaced both the rate of inflation and the cost of monographs over the past 15 years. These journals may be available online - but they are behind firewalls, available only on payment of a fee.

It is easy to be shocked at some of the excesses - a journal subscription more than $20,000, or the $150 per student that the Journal of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology demands for the right to photocopy a single page. Or one can be indignant that the public sometimes pays once to have the research done, again for the salary of the scientist who peer reviews it and then a third time to read the results.

These are natural reactions. But they miss a more fundamental point; our failure to apply what we learned from the world wide web to the world of scientific research.

Read the rest of the article at: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/39166e30-5a7f-11dc-9bcd-0000779fd2ac.html