Reporting back… Meeting researchers’ information needs

At this year’s STM Annual conference, an entire day was devoted to the topic of the unmet information needs of researchers and whether the current publishing system could ever meet those needs.

Talking about his own presentation at the conference, Dr Ian Rowlands said, ‘Based on the research I conducted in 2005 of just over 5,500 authors of journal articles, I focused primarily on the suppliers of articles, the authors, while subsequent speakers addressed the use being made of the publications. The full text of my report can be found at  http://www.ucl.ac.uk/ciber/ciber_2005_survey_final.pdf

‘My research was a follow-up to a successful study of author attitudes to scholarly communication, conducted in 2004 by the UCL-based research unit CIBER. The study aims to provide an objective, non-partisan assessment of the subject, and contribute both to the development of public policy and more realistic commercial strategies. The responses I received from the email questionnaire sent out helped to identify what it is that authors want from the publication system.’

Authors’ responses
The responses revealed that the prestige and reputation of a journal still carries the greatest weight when choosing where to publish. This was followed by the readership and the impact factor of the journal but there was a low interest in retaining copyright. Over 96% of the respondents indicated that peer review was ‘very’ or ‘quite important’, highlighting the enormous value the scholarly community attaches to peer review in regulating the quality of what is published.

Open access
Rowlands found that there is more awareness of open access now than there was a year ago, but that there is still some confusion over the definition of the term.

‘As I see it, open access means that scholarly materials are freely available to readers on the Internet without any financial restrictions. This so-called ‘gold route’ is an ideal situation for researchers because it makes high quality materials available for nothing.

The ‘green route’ to open access is a compromise: authors who have written a paper can put the preprinted version onto their own or a university library website, otherwise known as Institutional Repositories (IRs). Of those authors questioned, over 3,000 knew nothing about IRs, while only 453 knew a lot.’

64% of the respondents agreed that open access was disruptive because it is turning the old publishing model on its head, but 62% felt that this was a good thing. The old model meant that there was open access for the author. Now the open access is for the readers.

‘A good way of underlining the peculiarity of the situation is by describing it in terms of the wider economic model,’ said Rowlands. ‘Generally, it is the end user who pays for the product, a tin of baked beans for example, it is not the producer of the baked beans that pays us to eat them; but this is essentially the effect that open access has had.’

From the results of the survey, Rowlands identified six groups within the author community who fit not only certain attitudinal characteristics but also demographic characteristics:

• The mainstream group is Anglo-Saxon, late in their career, hostile to open access and not interested in copyright
• The old guard is mainly American, European and Australian, older in age and generally to be found in the life sciences.
• The pragmatists are willing to change. They are early in their career, mostly found in Europe and working in the applied science areas.
• Open access supporters make up 15% of the author population and are found among the younger researchers in chemistry, computing and physics.
• Open access enthusiasts comprise 16% of the population. They are generally found in the applied subject areas and give little support to the refereeing process.
• Pessimists are the oldest group and again found in biomedicine. They have a bleak view of the future.

‘In short, the most acceptance of open access seems to lie in the emerging economies of the Far East and Africa and amongst the younger generation, who tend to be more digitally and web aware. Having said this, the typical cost of publishing a paper, which is around USD 1,500, can be prohibitive for authors, particularly in developing countries, unless they are receiving funding from a body that agrees to bear these publishing costs. There were also concerns that as a result of the high costs of publishing, articles will simply not get published because the author doesn’t have the financial wherewithal.’

Paying the price
A persistent theme in author responses was the degrading effect of the ‘publish or perish’ culture on academic discourse. An academic’s reputation, career and access to funding are often determined by his or her ability to be published in high-quality and reputable journals.

‘Open access journals may in time gain the same status as printed ones - the BiomedCentral journals are open access and these days well-respected - but until then, academics have to play the game of publishing in journals with a high impact factor. This is despite the fact that there was a widespread perception that journals are too expensive, and that libraries may be forced to cut titles as a result,’ said Rowlands.

Other models
There are other publishing models on the market as well, including hybrids of those mentioned above. One of these is delayed access.

Rowlands explained, ‘Rather than being wholly driven by subscribers, the delayed access model initially allows articles to be accessed exclusively by subscribers but after an embargo period of, say, six months, the older articles become available through open access.

‘Another model requires the author to pay a fee in order for the article to be open access. If he or she does not have the means to do this, the article remains available to subscribers only. While I agree that the many new options being experimented with at the moment will lead to an interesting and variegated publishing landscape, all the models beg the question: are they sustainable in the long term?’

Other viewpoints
The following two speakers at the conference, Dr Michael Kurtz, an astronomist, and Dr Peter Murray-Rust, a chemist, both agreed that the publishing industry needs to move with the times in order not to be left behind. Dr Kurtz supported open access because it dramatically reduces the waiting time between research being completed and published in printed form.

‘I myself have had to wait as long as 18 months for a paper to be published, and I understand that everyone wants results to be disseminated faster,’ Rowlands said. ‘However, I believe that there are huge differences between disciplines, and what could work extremely well for astronomy may be completely unsuitable for a discipline such as social sciences.’

Representing the Wellcome Trust, Robert Terry’s view was that history has proved that different models can live alongside each other. One of the examples he gave was that video players have not seen the disappearance of cinemas. Rowlands would even argue that videos have raised cinemas’ profile. ‘Likewise, I can see the open access model being instrumental in increasing the audience of scholarly publications, rather than being detrimental,’ he said.

‘The most ideal situation, but one I do not anticipate becoming reality, is that publications and university libraries are funded at a national level, giving everyone with an interest access to a range of free, quality materials.’

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