Copyright 1998 EDUCAUSE. From CAUSE/EFFECT Volume 21, Number 2, 1998, pp. 6-7. Permission to copy or disseminate all or part of this material is granted provided that the copies are not made or distributed for commercial advantage, the EDUCAUSE copyright and its date appear, and notice is given that copying is by permission of EDUCAUSE. To disseminate otherwise, or to republish, requires written permission. For further information, contact Jim Roche at EDUCAUSE, 4840 Pearl East Circle, Suite 302E, Boulder, CO 80301 USA; 303-939-0308; e-mail: [email protected]
Reducing the Barriers
by Richard P. WestA tenet of CNI is that data communications networks can have a profound impact on the availability, timeliness, and production costs of scholarly information. The Internet, by gaining widespread acceptance, would allow a single journal article to be shared by all. For current information there would be no need for inter-library loan transactions! Unfortunately the vision and hope of improved dissemination of scholarly information via the Internet hasn't yet occurred. What are the barriers that keep us from using the technology to the fullest extent possible? Not all the barriers are technology related. Today's networks have difficulty easily transmitting all things that are possible to be placed on a printed page. Images of a certain complexity still aren't what we need in electronic versions to replace the print medium of the same quality. Most scholarly works, however, can be transmitted without problem across the network. Most of the barriers to improving the dissemination of scholarly material involve economic and security issues, not technological ones.
CNI has looked at the distribution of scholarly information from all aspects, not just technical. A few years ago, a task force sponsored by the Association of American Universities (AAU), with significant CNI participation, looked at the functions of scholarly publishing and how they might be affected by the use of networked information technologies. Many of the functions such as printing and distribution could be done much more easily via the network than through a printed form. Certainly, the speed with which information could be transferred from creator to user could be enhanced substantially by the network. Precisely because of the ease of access and transfer of information, barriers to the use of scholarly information were also enhanced.
In the cycle of scholarly publishing, authors particularly place high value on publishers' assurance that the author's work retains its integrity as the author intended. In print form, the publisher creates an article that is not easily modified once published. With networked technologies, the author's work can be too easily modified and can be misrepresented intentionally or by accident. Also, publishers (and to some degree authors) want to obtain some economic return or payment on the use of the scholarly work. Only from sales do publishers gain revenue to allow for the funding of the publishing process.
The publishing process has several important economic stakeholders: authors, publishers, and the buyers of scholarly information. Most often the purchasers of scholarly information are university and other research libraries. During the last decade, the cost of scholarly journals, particularly in the sciences and technical fields, have increased at a rate faster than inflation. Certainly, university library budgets have not kept pace with the increased costs of the journals and monographs that would keep universities' libraries current with the information needs of the major academic disciplines. As prices of scholarly journals have outpaced budgets, libraries have had to reduce the number of subscriptions to reduce costs. Those libraries would need to rely on inter-library loans to obtain copies of articles for their faculty and students and move to a pay-per-view approach for funding the information needs of their clientele. Since the dominant amount of the costs in preparing a journal are in producing the first copy of the journal, the total cost of the journal needs to be spread over fewer subscribers. Or in other words--a price increase to the remaining subscribers of the journal. Further, the task force found there were a limited number of journals in the sciences, and most research programs needed the most highly valued journals for their programs. The libraries felt the need to subscribe to a significant core of these journals, regardless of price. Subscriptions throughout the library had to be rationed to have the same dollars acquire a set of higher-priced journals.
The situation of supply-and-demand relationships in the scholarly journal market did not allow for the wide dissemination of scholarly information. Quick dissemination of information is a particularly good characteristic of the Internet; however, the advantage of the Internet is compromised by the economic barriers. The question became how to create a better market for the publisher, the author, and the universities that buy the peer-reviewed journals.
The Association of Research Libraries (ARL) has designed a project to help create a market in scholarly publishing. Working with publisher partners, the Scholarly Publishing & Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC) will support introduction of new, lower-cost, high-quality scientific journals that are alternatives to existing titles. By switching to the new alternatives, the ninety-four ARL library members of SPARC will create sufficient predictable revenue that the publisher can cover its costs of peer review, editing, and publication. With a more certain market, prices can be lower and price increases more in line with inflation rather than market conditions. The predictable market also allows the publisher to concentrate on shortening the time it takes to deliver information to readers. The first collaborator with the SPARC initiative is the American Chemical Society, which will introduce three new alternative titles over the next three years. The SPARC project deals with the economic barriers to the distribution of scholarly information. As those problems are addressed, we are in a better position to use network technology to find new ways to store, distribute, and present scholarly information. These types of substantive experiments pave the way to delivering more fiscal and intellectual return on our collective institutional and national investment in data networks. Congratulations to ARL and the American Chemical Society for the first SPARC project. A successful start of the SPARC effort will enable the CNI program to fulfill its potential to our members.
CNI Report is a regular CAUSE/EFFECT department that provides reports about the activities of the Coalition for Networked Information (CNI), formed by the Association of Research Libraries, CAUSE, and Educom in 1990 to promote the creation of and access to information resources in networked environments.Richard P. West ([email protected]) is senior vice chancellor of business and finance for The California State University System. He has chaired the steering committee of the Coalition for Networked Information since its establishment in 1990.
