DOCUMENT RESUME ED 437 979 IR 057 630 AUTHOR Barrett, G. Jaia, Ed. TITLE ARL: A Bimonthly Newsletter of Research Library Issues and Actions, 1999. INSTITUTION Association of Research Libraries, Washington, DC. ISSN ISSN-1050-6098 PUB DATE 1999-00-00 NOTE 106p.; Published bimonthly. For the 1998 issues, see ED 428 761. AVAILABLE FROM Association of Research Libraries, 21 Dupont Circle, Washington, DC 20036 (members $25 per year for additional subscription; nonmembers $50 per year). Tel: 202-296-2296; Fax: 202-872-0884; Web site: http://www.arl.org/newsltr/newsltr.html. PUB TYPE Collected Works Serials (022) JOURNAL CIT ARL; n202-207 Feb-Dec 1999 EDRS PRICE MF01/PC05 Plus Postage. DESCRIPTORS *Academic Libraries; Copyrights; Distance Education; Federal Legislation; Global Approach; Higher Education; *Information Services; Library Associations; Library Collections; Library Cooperation; Newsletters; Publishing Industry; *Research Libraries; *Scholarly Journals IDENTIFIERS Association of American Universities; *Association of Research Libraries; *Scholarly Communication ABSTRACT This document consists of six issues of the ARL (Association of Research Libraries) newsletter, covering the year 1999. Each issue includes some of the following sections: "Current Issues"; reports from SPARC (Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition), Coalition for Networked Information, Office of Leadership & Management Services, and Office of Scholarly Communication; "Diversity"; "Access Services"; "Statistics & Measurement"; "Federal Relations"; "ARL Activities"; and a calendar of events. "Current Issues" articles cover: provosts' solutions to the journals crisis; what the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and Term Extension Act mean for the library and education community; distance education and the copyright law; measuring the cost effectiveness of journals; and the impact of publisher mergers on journal prices. One special issue (October 1999) focuses on the AAU (Association of American Universities)/ARL Global Resources Program. (MES) Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original document. alb ARL: A Bimonthly Newsletter of Research Library Issues and Actions, 1999 U.S. DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION Office of Educational Research and Improvement PERMISSION TO REPRODUCE AND EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES INFORMATION DISSEMINATE THIS MATERIAL HAS CENTER (ERIC) BEEN GRANTED BY U) This document has been reproducedas received from the person or organization originating it. C.A. Mandel Minor changes have been made to improve reproduction quality. Points of view or opinions stated in this TO THE EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES document do not necessarily represent INFORMATION CENTER (ERIC) official OERI position or policy. 1 By G. Jaia Barrette Ed. 2 BEST COPY AVAILABLE 711",111kn 1 A A BIMONTHLY NEWSLETTER OF RESEARCH LIBRARY ISSUES AND ACTIONS PROVOSTS PROPOSE SOLUTIONS TO JOURNALS CRISIS by Mary M. Case, Director of the ARL Office of Scholarly Communication It is time we ...focus on panaceas, for this crisis is In their presentations, however, both preceded these growing to the point that scholarship and education explanations with descriptions of the journals crisis will be damaged significantly if we do nothing. and key components that any solution must include. Shulenburger noted that he "no longer believes that With these words, University of Kansas solutions that fail to deal with ultimate ownership of Provost David E. Shulenburger prefaced scholarly communication, i.e., copyright, are viable." his proposal to solve the journals crisis He notes that scholarly articles have market valueas the creation of the National Electronic Article demonstrated by the pricing practices and extraordinary Repository (NEAR), a centralized, public-domain profitability of commercial publishers. He is concerned server of faculty works. Shulenburger argues that that non-profit scholarly societies also recognize this by requiring authors' works to be submitted to market value and, judging by data collected at Kansas, NEAR within 90 days of publication, publishers have begun to exploit it, as well. Shulenburger believes would be forced to reassess the value they add that limiting the rights that faculty authors can transfer and reduce prices accordingly. 000 to publishers (which would be required for the establish- Shulenburger presented his case at the 133rd ment of NEAR) limits the ability of publishers to control ARL Membership Meeting held last October in and exploit all possible value from journal articles. Washington, DC. ARL member directors also heard Phelps concurs that the market value of journals from Charles E. Phelps, Provost of the University of is being exploited by publishers. He characterizes the Rochester, who offered what he characterized as a issue as "not whether the journals provide valuable complementary solution. Phelps is a proponent of servicesthey do without questionbut rather whether 00.0 taking advantage of the electronic environment to the terms of trade are appropriate." Phelps reviews separate functions currently performed by the sys- several steps that the university community should tem of journal publication. Phelps believes that by take: bringing faculty more closely into the collection .5 paying scholarly societies to conduct peer evalua- decision mechanisms; creating criteria for libraries that tion of manuscripts, functions such as publication reward access and consortial activity; evaluating faculty and dissemination can be left to other entities, e.g., scholarship on the basis of quality, not quantity; and discipline- or university-based servers. This separa-modifying the usual practice of total assignment of tion, or "decoupling," of functions breaks the link property rights. But he concludes that "the issues of between the peer review process, which is essential journal pricing can only be resolved by systematic and to the academic enterprise, and the publication of a widespread introduction of vigorous competition into worka link that is exploited by many publishers, the world of publishing...." Phelps believes that it is up as evidenced in their pricing practices. to universities to introduce this competition and sees the The following pages include excerpts from decoupling proposal as one possible alternative. the talks of both Shulenburger and Phelps, focusing ARL and the authors of these papers encourage primarily on the explanations of their proposals. serious consideration of these proposals. Continued MOVING WITH DISPATCH TO RESOLVE ber is accepted for publication by a scholarly journal, a portion of the copyright of that manuscript be retained for THE SCHOLARLY COMMUNICATION inclusion in a single, publicly accessible repository after a CRISIS: FROM HERE TO NEAR lag following publication in the journal. While the devil is by David E. Shulenburger, Provost, University of Kansas in the details, the details are not important to the principle of my proposal. Moderate alteration of the details I will The following is an excerpt from a presentation at the describe would still leave my proposal a viable solution to 133rd ARL Membership Meeting held in October 1998 in the problem we face. Washington, D.C. Text of the complete talk can be found on At present, essentially all scholarly journals require the ARL website at <http://www.arLorg/arl/proceedings/133/ that all rights to copyright pass from the author to the jour- shulenburger.html>. nal when a manuscript is accepted for publication. In this proposal, only the exclusive right to journal publication of My perspective is that of the provost of a research the manuscript would pass to the journal. The author university. We place high value on the library would retain the right to have the manuscript included in because of the obligation to preserve knowledge the National Electronic Article Repository (NEAR) ninety for the future and because of the instrumental value the days after it appears in the journal. By federal law, by library has both in educating our students and in making funding agency stipulation, or by contractual agreement possible our contribution to the production of new with the university employer, the faculty member's pub- knowledge through research. lished article would be transmitted to NEAR upon its pub- I became actively involved in the scholarly communi- lication. NEAR would index manuscripts by author, title, cation crisis because the KU faculty became alarmed by the subject, and the name of the journal in which they annual notice that some serials would have to be canceled appeared. (The electronic form would be searchable on and because fewer of their requests to purchase new serials many more dimensions.) NEAR would see to it that arti- and monographs were being granted. Faculty alarm grew cles are permanently archived, thereby assigning responsi- as lack of access began to limit their ability to access pub- bility for the solution to another problem brought to us by lished research and even to assign readings to graduate the electronic age. NEAR could be funded by universities students. We responded as you did, with some increased through "page charges," per article included, by federal funding, increased interlibrary loan activity, cooperative appropriation, by a small charge levied on each user upon buying ventures, use of electronic document delivery, etc. accessing articles, or by a combination of these methods. But these responses were palliatives, not solutions. Access I do not expect that this plan will generate