In a recent article published in The Journal of Scholarly Publishing, Philippe Baveye discusses widespread misconceptions about the rising costs of academic serials. Many institutions blame the cost increases on the greed of publishers. But Baveye’s research reveals some startling conclusions. Institutions that want to afford access to scholarly publishing in the future may need to examine their own practices more closely.

The rising wave
In his article, Baveye discusses the effect of the recession on the academic serials crisis. Profit mongering by commercial publishers is often given as the key driver. However, a critical analysis of institutional data does not reveal excessive corporate greed in recent years, but suggests instead that the present hurdles stem largely from years of inadequate budget allocations to academic libraries, and from a publishing frenzy fueled by simplistic methods to evaluate faculty productivity.

“To prevent what is likely to be the publishing equivalent of a tsunami in the next few years, universities and research institutions need to urgently re-emphasize quality, instead of quantity, in the publishing process, and must find ways to include peer-reviewing efficiency among the criteria of productivity and impact,” Baveye concludes. Achievement of these goals will require concerted efforts by researchers, librarians, and publishers.

Balancing the scales
In his research, Baveye reveals an alarming trend in institutional funding: “The failure of many institutions to keep library budgets in pace with rising publication costs is at the core of the academic serials crisis,” he says.

Analysis of yearly financial reports at numerous institutions in the US shows that over the last 20 years, operating budgets of libraries (excluding capital improvement expenditures) have risen at a rate rarely exceeding inflation, even in the best of cases. During the same period, libraries were also required to spend an increasing portion of their budget on information technology-related costs, like computer hardware and software, contracts for web page/portal development and maintenance and access to electronic databases, to name only a few. (Bley) As a result, the amount of money available for the purchase of serials and books has steadily decreased, leading to occasionally massive campaigns of serials cancellations and cost containment. (Foudy)

“The stagnant operating budgets of libraries, especially at research universities, now represent only a minuscule, and constantly shrinking proportion of the total budget of their parent institutions (Figure 1),” Baveye concludes. “A striking example, and by no means an exception among peer institutions, is Cornell, which spends roughly 2% of its total budget to operate its libraries.”

FIGURE 1: Average library expenditures as a percent of university operating budgets for 40 libraries, members of the Association of Research Libraries, between 1982 and 2007 (ARL, 2009; Data and graph available at   http://www.arl.org/bm~doc/charts82-07.pdf).

Search and rescue
These and many other factors are contributing to skyrocketing costs for academic serials. In their search for real solutions, Baveye and his peers have identified some key pitfalls.

“Aside from inflation, the key cause of the high prices of academic serials is the astounding increase in the number of articles published since the mid-eighties, fueled in large part by incredibly simplistic metrics adopted by university administrations to evaluate faculty productivity,” says Baveye. “At this juncture, if nothing is done to change the publishing pattern of researchers, journals will be flooded by an enormous number of papers over the next decade.” This skyrocketing number of manuscripts submitted to journals, many of which are of poor quality or ill directed to inappropriate journals, is causing numerous problems for editors, in particular because good peer-reviews are becoming increasingly difficult to secure.

Journals based on the ‘author pays’ business model are not likely to provide a sustainable solution to the academic serials crisis; “if anything, these journals might make things worse,” Baveye’s research concludes. And the way journals are financed changes nothing at all in terms of the need for researchers to spend increasing amounts of time reviewing manuscripts.

Opening the discussion
According to Baveye, this is the best time to enter into real dialogue about the looming ‘publication tsunami’. Other editors agree. A number of top journals are preparing editorials that echo Baveye’s research findings. He encourages the dialogue to continue – and quickly.

“Time is of the essence. Right now, there is still the opportunity for all interested parties to orient the debate as they see fit. There are clear signs, however, that this window of opportunity may not last long.” Baveye cites the nominal (and rising) cost of higher education, the current economic recession and mounting public concern about the cost-to-value ratio of higher education as some of the reasons why.

Baveye invites institutions, researcher and librarians to join the debate. Together, he hopes to turn the tide of current thinking before the publishing ‘tsunami’ strikes. He says there are plenty of incentives for the research community to “reflect carefully on the most rational way to resolve the academic serials crisis and to make scholarly publishing evolve in the right direction.”

References:

1. Robert Bley, ‘Library systems in the electronic era,” Learned Publishing 2, 3 (2008): 176-
186; Martha Whittaker, ‘The challenge of acquisitions in the digital age.’ portal: Libraries
and the Academy 8, 4 (2008): 439-445.

2. Gerri Foudy, and Alesia McManus, ‘Using a decision grid process to build consensus in electronic resources cancellation decisions,” Journal of Academic Librarianship 31, 6
(November 2005): 533-538.

Editor’s Note: the perception of a jump in the quantity of academic papers being published is not new. Michael Faraday made the same observation the century before last. Actually, the number of papers has, since that time, remained more or less proportional to the number of scientists. However, calling for authors to only publish when they have something meaningful, original, and of quality to publish is something that we, together with the academic and clinical communities, support.

To cite this article, please use: Toni Bellanca, “Are we facing a “serials crisis”? On Library budgets and over-publishing”, Elsevier Editors’ Update, Issue 29, March 2010.