From the University Presses -- Open Access and the Future of Scholarly Communication Sanford G
Against the Grain
Volume 21 | Issue 5 Article 30
November 2009 From the University Presses -- Open Access and the Future of Scholarly Communication Sanford G. Thatcher Penn State Press, [email protected]
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Recommended Citation Thatcher, Sanford G. (2009) "From the University Presses -- Open Access and the Future of Scholarly Communication," Against the Grain: Vol. 21: Iss. 5, Article 30. DOI: https://doi.org/10.7771/2380-176X.2666
This document has been made available through Purdue e-Pubs, a service of the Purdue University Libraries. Please contact [email protected] for additional information. From the University Presses — Open Access and the Future of Scholarly Communication Column Editor: Sanford G. Thatcher (Director, Penn State Press, USB 1, Suite C, 820 N. University Drive, University Park, PA 16802-1003; Phone: 814-865-1327; Fax: 814-863-1408)
Column Editor’s Note: This article is the Where I began my publishing career, at Princ- and, even more recently, cooperative ventures text of a talk given at the University of Roch- eton University Press, this was a problem only among groups of presses or between presses and ester on September 23 under the auspices of indirectly since Princeton did not consider itself other institutions on their own campuses to pub- its Andrew Neilly Lecture Series, which on a major publisher of journals, having at that time lish monographs in fields where—to borrow the this occasion was meant to help celebrate the only four in its portfolio. But the evidence of the language made famous through the Gutenberg-e 20th anniversary of the University of Roch- impact of the so-called serials crisis on the bread- project — books are “endangered species” (a phrase ester Press. The author would like to thank and-butter monograph publishing that was that coined, by the way, by my mentor in publishing, the press’s director, Suzanne Guiod, and the press’s core mission soon became clear. I trace my Herbert Bailey, Jr., director of Princeton Uni- library’s director, Susan Gibbons, for extend- own awakening to the crisis and its baleful effects versity Press at the time, and then put to effective ing the invitation and being such congenial on scholarly book publishing to internal discussions use later by Robert Darnton, who had served hosts. — ST at Princeton that led to the publication of a series on the press’s editorial board during this period of articles in the journal called Scholarly Publishing and had many conversations with me and others (later expanded to Journal of…) over a two-year at the press about the “crisis”). As I wrote in “A s a term of art, “open access” (OA) has period between April 1972 and April 1974. The Post-Mortem for Gutenberg-e: Or, Why Ross been widely used for not even a decade titles of these articles were, in succession, “The Atkinson’s Dream Is Still a Dream” (Against yet, probably gaining its popularity after A Impending Crisis in University Publishing,” “The the Grain, January 2009), none of us who served a series of declarations identified with the cities of Crisis—One Year Later,” and “The Crisis—Is It on the advisory board for these eBook initiatives Budapest, Bethesda, and Berlin made it a familiar Over?” Not long thereafter appeared an NSF- before they were proposed to Mellon for funding phrase to many early in this new century. It came funded study that brought this crisis to the attention believed that they could be self-sustaining beyond into being in roughly the same period as the word of librarians in a most dramatic way. In their report the point at which the original funding had been “open source,” with which it is sometimes unfor- published in 1975, librarians Bernard Fry and exhausted. Even though the Humanities E-Book tunately confused but with which it has in common Herbert White found, for the period 1969-1973, Project claims to be paying its own way now, it is the inspiration of a democratic ideal of open and free that the ratio of book to journal expenditures in the doing so only because of the addition to the core communication and the sharing of knowledge. largest academic libraries had dropped over that new monographs of a large corpus of scanned older As any librarian in this audience can tell you, five-year period from better than 2 to 1 to 1.16 to 1 titles, which make the overall package attractive the original and still sustaining impetus behind the (Fry/White 1975: 61), with every expectation that enough to libraries to subscribe. In a mostly quite open-access movement was the challenge for aca- this trend would only get worse — as, indeed, it did. positive review of HEB in this month’s issue of demic libraries that the costs of journal subscriptions Fry and White’s prognosis for university presses the British online Reviews in History, Winthrop posed to their budgets as serial prices increased at a was particularly gloomy: their situation, they said, University library dean Mark Herring raises this rate greater than inflation, sometimes much greater. “can be described, without exaggeration, as disas- question of sustainability over the long term even There are many reasons for this, and the pressure trous. Already heavily encumbered by operating while recognizing that HEB is currently self-sup- on commercial publishers to keep profit margins deficits…, university presses appear…to be sliding porting. This is a problem, he says, that “must high is only one of them, though perhaps the most even more rapidly toward financial imbalance” be worked out. Whether it will or not remains a prominent in the rhetoric of OA advocates. Other (Fry/White 1975: 11). mystery, and that mystery may well prove to be the reasons include the growing productivity of scien- How, in light of this prediction of impending undoing of many digital sources, not to mention the tists (and the problem exists in its most extreme whole eBook enterprise.” He goes on to remind us form for what are known as STM journals) as disaster, could Bill Becker, the CFO at Princeton University Press and author of that final article in that there is a second major problem that has mostly research funding increased dramatically after the just been swept under the rug for the time being: end of World War II and the careers of scientists, the series, consider the crisis possibly to be past? His explanation was that, “except for the smaller digital preservation. People don’t want to talk about especially in universities, came to depend on the it these days because it is “unglamorous.” Yet “we number of publications even more than their qual- ones, presses for the most part have managed to sur- vive their financial difficulties quite well by making have not solved the problem…, and it does not look ity; this growth led not only to the proliferation of like we will, at least in the short term. When I raised journals but also to an increase in the number of a host of adjustments, including radically increased book prices, substantially lower discounts, econo- this matter at a cyber-conference it was not greeted issues published and in the length of each issue as with much more than ho-hum, not-so-polite throat- it had to accommodate more articles per issue. On mies achieved in book production costs, slashing staffs, publishing more books with sales potential clearing and a general, ‘Next question.’ Finally, top of these exigencies of sheer growth came the a technician stood up and said he wanted to allay temptations of new technology as the transition from and fewer which cannot pay their own way, special inventory sales, and so forth.” Still, Becker went my fears. ‘We’ll fix all that,’ he said. ‘Consider it print to electronic added substantial extra costs for done.’ That was ten years ago.” publishers to provide all kinds of services beyond on to wonder, how much more could such methods just the delivery of content online. Many journal be used without becoming at some point self-de- What has happened, though, is another develop- publishers, including even small ones like our Press, feating? Ominously and — as we can now see with ment in technology that has occurred mostly out of now use very sophisticated editorial management the wisdom of hindsight — presciently, he ended public view and that has effectively bought some systems that offer a wonderful resource for both the by pointing to “the increasing danger that presses more time for university presses before they have academic editors and the publishers’ staff (though will turn more and more to publishing books on to meet the grim reaper. Just in the same way that it needs to be noted that many scholars who edit the basis of saleability rather than scholarly merit.” the changes university presses initiated in the early journals are not eager to learn how to use these And, while noting the temporary mitigating effects 1970s kept the sinking ship afloat for another three systems properly and have to be coaxed, if not even that a generous grant from the Mellon Foundation decades, digital printing came to the rescue in the sometimes forced, to go through the training). There to presses for publishing books in the humanities late 1990s just as presses were beginning to despair are open-source alternatives like the Open Journals might have, he asked: “But what then?” (Becker of keeping their heads above water for much longer. System of the Public Knowledge Project that are 1974: 202) What Cambridge sociologist and publishing entre- available for use, but in my experience they are not Indeed, one might ask that last question preneur John Thompson identified as “The Hidden at the level of sophistication that the commercially also in the wake of further grants that the Mel- Revolution” in his state-of-the-business study titled developed products are, and may never be. At any lon Foundation has generously provided Books in the Digital Age (Polity, 2005), which I rate, whatever one may think about corporate greed, to fund other book-publishing projects, in- highly recommend to you as the most up-to-date it is not the only factor that explains the spiraling cluding (through the AHA and ACLS) the and comprehensive treatment of academic publish- cost of serials acquisitions for libraries. Gutenberg-e and Humanities E-Book Projects continued on page 79
78 Against the Grain / November 2009
80 Against the Grain / November 2009
From the University Presses
from page 80 American Economic Journal Economic American American Economicine Journal: access to vanderbilt.edu/AEA/membership.htm.0 per year, depending Members on publishing in books. That is unfortunate as what American Economic Journal Journal of EconomicAmerican I call the new “digital divide” between book and American American Economic Journal g print copies
journal content will only grow wider as more of American Economic Journal Microeconomics American Economic Journal Economic American
R. J. AUMANN AND J. the latter is made available to OA while only a Assessing Strategic Risk Macroeconomics American Economic Journal Microeconomics H. DREZE ATTILA AMBRUS AND trickle of the former gets into that mode. And what Asymmetric Networks in Two-S ROSSELLA ARGENZIANO ALI HORTAÇSU, F. ided Markets RICARDO REIS AND JASON DOUGLASASÍS MARTÍNEZ-JEREZ, Optimal Monetary Policy Rules in an Estimated Sticky-Information AppModel lied Economics The Geography of Trad sense does it make, intellectually, to have those two Evidence from eBay ande Mercadoin Online Transactions: SUNGBAE AN, YONGSUNG CHANG, AND SUN-BIN KIM Macroeconomics Libre Can A Representative Agent Model Represent a Heterogeneous Agent JASON ABREVAYA SANDEEP BALIGA AND TOMAS SJÖ Economy? Are There Missing Girls in the United States? Contracting with Third Parties forms of scholarship so separated from each other Evidence from Birth Data STRÖM BENJAMIN F. JONES AND BENJAMIN A. OLKEN
Hit or Miss? The Effect of Assassinations on Institutions and War 1 Number 1, Volume 2009 February LEONARDO J. BASSO,
Applied Economics ALAN S. GERBER, DEAN KARLAN, AND DANIEL BERGAN AND THOMAS W. ROSS MATTHEW T. CLEMENTS, TORSTEN PERSSON AND GUIDO TABELLINI Does the Media Matter? A Field Experiment Measuring the Effect Moral Hazard and Custom in cyberspace? None. JOURNALJOURNAL OF OFDemocraticAT Capital:URE The Nexus of Political and of Newspapers on Voting Behavior and Political Opinions Economic Change er Loyalty Programs BER 2 ANTONI CALVÓ-ARMENGOL MARTIN EICHENBAUM, CRAIG THOMAS PIKETTY AND NANCY QIAN AND MATTHEW O ECONOMIC LITER BURNSIDE, AND SERGIO REBELO Income Inequality and Progressive Income Taxation in China and Like Father, Like Son:. JACKSON Soc ECONOMICVOLUME LITERATURE XLVI, UnderstandingNUMBER the 1 Forward Premium Puzzle: India, 1986–2015 Externalities and Par JUNE 2009, VOLUME XLVII, NUM A Microstructure Approach ial Network What is happening is that there are more experi- MARCH 2008, in Behavior ent-Child Correlation July 2009 Volume 1, Number 2 Adam Smith CHRISTINA M. FONG AND ERZO F. P. LUTTMER CHARLES ENGEL What Determines Giving to Hurricane Katrina JUAN D. CARRILLO AND AKITO MATSUMOTO The American Victims? Experimental Evidence on Racial AND THOMAS R. PA ments with getting monographs into online systems, The International Diversi cation Puzzle The Compromise Game: Two-Sided Group Loyalty LFREY When Goods Prices are Sticky: Adverse Selection in the Laboratory It’s Really about Exchange-RateEconomic Review ence from theHedging, Field not Equity Portfolios FRANCINE LAFONTAINE OLIVIER COMPTE beyond those established by commercial entities AND JAGADEESH SIVADASAN AND PHILIPPE JEHIEL Stefano DellaVigna Do Labor Market Rigidities Have Veto Constraint in Mec Psychology and Economics: Evid VALERIE A. RAMEY Inef ciency with Correl AND NEVILLE FRANCIS ARTICLES Microeconomic Effects? Evidence hanism Design: PAUL KRUGMAN from Within the Firm ated Types A Century of Work and Leisure The Increasing Returns Revolution in Trade and Geography GARY CHARNES like , , , , The Origin of the Winner'sS AND Curse: DAN A Lab LEVIN netLibrary ebrary Questia MyiLibrary CLARE LEAVER William Easterly GINGER ZHE JIN AND PHILLIP LESLI Bureaucratic Minimal Squawk Behavior: Theory andREBECCA Evidence from M. BLANK, Can the West Save Africa? ERIC WERKER, FAISAL Z. AHMED, AND Regulatory Agencies Reputational Incentives for R KERWIN KOFI CHARLES, oratory Study FUHITO KOJIMA AND PARAG A. PATHAK estaurant HygieneE ces Incentives and Stability in Large Two-Sided MatchingAND Markets JAMES M. SALLEE etc., the eBook reader platforms that are begin- CHARLES COHEN JOSHUA D. COVAL, JAKUB W. JUREK, AND ERIK STAFFORD A Cautionary Tale About the Use of Rachel Croson and Uri GneezyHow is Foreign Aid Spent? Evidence from a Natural Experiment Economic Catastrophe Bonds Administrative Data: Evidence from Gender Differences in Preferen ANTONIO M. BENTO, LAWRENCE H. GOULDER, MARK R. JACOAgeBSE N,of AMarriageND Laws ROGER H. VON HAEFEN ning to extend well beyond the Kindle and Sony Reputation and International Distributional and Ef ciency Impacts of Increased US Gasoline Taxes ree Centuries IAN W. H. PARRY AND KENNETH A. SMALL MICHAEL KREMER Mark Gersovitz Should Urban Transit Subsidies Be Reduced? AND BENJAMIN A. OLKEN A Review of Michael Tomz’s BRIAN R. COPELAND AND M. SCOTT TAYLOR Cooperation: Sovereign Debt across Th Trade, Tragedy, and the Commons A Biological Model of Unions readers, and even Oxford Scholarship Online, NATHAN H. MILLER Strategic Leniency and Cartel Enforcement BARTOSZ MAC´KOWIAK AND MIRKELISEO W HUILLERYIEDERHOLT Optimal Sticky HistoryPrices under Matters: Rational The Inattention Long-Term Impact of Colonial Public NIR JAIMOVICH AND HENRY E. InvestmentsSIU in French West Africa which was a pioneering effort among university The Young, the Old, and the Restless: Demographics and Business Cycle Volatility ARTHUR LEWBEL AND KRISHNA PENDAKUR Tricks with Hicks: The EASI Demand System g reviews of by Robert H. Frank HONGBIN CAI, YUYU CHEN, AND HANMING FANG presses to break the logjam for getting books into zed? Observational Learning: Evidence from a Randomized Natural Field Experiment Also BOOK REVIEWS, includin ard Crunch: Why Do I Feel So Squee ROMAN INDERST AND MARCO OTTAVIANI by Thomas C. Leon Jared Bernstein’s Misselling through Agents The Dismal Science BOTOND KO˝ SZEGI AND MATTHEW RABIN Reference-Dependent Consumption Plans the digital arena. In recent months there have Stephan A. Marglin’s by Emily Oster EconoPower national Law NICK NETZER Evolution of Time Preferences and Attitudes toward Risk Mark Skousen’s GARY CHARNESS AND MARIE-CLAIRE VILLEVAL The Economic Structure of Inter Cooperation and Competition in Intergenerational Experiments in the Field and the Laboratory Joel P. Trachtman’s GABRIELE CAMERA AND MARCO CASARI been announcements by JSTOR, in cooperation by Robert O. Keohane Cooperation among Strangers under the Shadow of the Future
SHORTER PAPERS: S. Maccini and D. Yang; A. Beggs and K. Graddy; P. N. Ireland; L. Kilian; J. Wright with UC-Berkeley, and the Humanities E-Book JUNE 2009 Project of intentions to open their operations to become suppliers of large aggregations of eBooks. Also, Project Muse has begun a pilot project to test the feasibility of bringing monographs into its operation and making them integrated with the journal content already available. Meanwhile, five Four New Journals! university presses have succeeded in persuading the Mellon Foundation to provide seed money to The AEA has expanded its publication program by launching four explore yet another cooperative non-profit venture new journals: in this arena, while Duke has now moved beyond beta testing of its online monographs program (us- tAEJ: Applied Economics (AEJ: Applied) ing ebrary’s technology for its platform) into full tAEJ: Economic Policy (AEJ: Policy) operational mode. All of these proposed schemes, tAEJ: Macroeconomics (AEJ: Macro) however, are simply non-profit variations of their tAEJ: Microeconomics (AEJ: Micro) commercial counterparts, and they all depend on the They join our established journals in providing access to economic research. subscription model to sustain themselves. None is Like the AER, they follow the ‘double blind’ peer-review process. truly open access. More promising along these lines is the scholar-initiated Open Humanities Press, tAmerican Economic Review (AER) which a month ago announced the launching of five tJournal of Economic Literature (JEL) new OA monograph series in critical and cultural tJournal of Economic Perspectives (JEP) theory with the technical support of the University of Michigan Library’s Scholarly Publishing Office All fields of economics are covered in at least one of the new journals. (which functions very much as our ODSP does). It Order at www.AEAweb.org/subscribe.html is also at Michigan, of course, that the university rather dramatically announced that its press would www.AEAweb.org t [email protected] in the future publish monographs online, mislead- ing some to believe that the press would no longer Visit us at Booth #2459 at the ALA Midwinter provide any of its books in print form whereas, in Meeting in Boston, January 15 –19, 2010 fact, what Michigan intends to do is what we have already been doing with our Romance Studies se- ries for four years and what Michigan’s press had already been doing for its Digital Culture books series. Give credit to Michigan, though, for push- ing the envelope. Some of us presses would rather Websites. Most people cheered when Harvard recently been opened to the public and I am both have more evidence of this approach’s economic announced its plan to have the journal articles of anxious and fearful at what I will find when I take feasibility before taking the full plunge with our its faculty in the arts and sciences posted online; I my copyeditor’s eye into its interior. Will I find, entire lists. But if the Michigan administration groaned. As a former copyeditor who used to edit as I did as a copyeditor, that the expert on a famous is willing to put its money where its mouth is and some Harvard faculty writings, it did not come as religious figure will have systematically miscited support this venture even if losses mount, more happy news to think these scholars would be willing the standard edition of his works, or that the author- power to it. Eventually, Michigan may find that to have their work appear, grammatical infelicities, ity on a 19th-century political philosopher will have it is just not worth the effort to maintain a market incorrect citations, clumsy prose, and all, for all the badly transcribed quotation after quotation, or that mechanism at all for cost recovery and just try go- world to see. And it amazed me to hear Harvard so few really understand what a dangling modifier ing OA completely. administrators speak as though this would be for is? As much as I am fundamentally in favor of open My hope is that if monographs do go the route the public benefit and would enhance Harvard’s access, I wish we could avoid the proliferation of of open access as journals already have begun to reputation all the more. Au contraire, I thought to versions of the same work, which is what is happen- do on a large scale, it will be done with full funding myself, what better way to take the bloom off the ing now in journal publishing, with many publishers so that we do not have to suffer the indignities that rose than to expose the bugs inhabiting the plant, (including our Press) reluctantly agreeing to Green come with Green OA. The indignities I mean stem which are only exterminated when the unsung OA just because we feel we cannot stand in the way from the public availability of unedited though peer- heroes of publishing, our copyeditors, do their of progress. But, at what cost, progress? reviewed manuscripts on institutional and personal work of restoration? Harvard’s Website has just Against the Grain / November 2009