On 18 Sep 1998, David Lenander <d-lena[_at_]maroon.tc.umn.edu> wrote:
>
> Responding mostly to Albert Henderson <noblestation[_at_]compuserve.com>:
>
> > Great anguish has been expressed by authors and publishers
> > of intellectually challenging works, the type of material
> > that depends on research libraries as the core of its market.
>
> Do authors and publishers have a right to sales to libraries?
The interest in good library collections is in the mission of the libraries -- one of service to society. The concept is often attributed to the great library at Alexandria as you probably know. One of the positive effects of that mission, over hundreds of years, has been to provide an economic market that promotes publication. We are speaking of the major academic and public research libraries, not satellites.
> > The decline of this market, prompted by a combination of
> > resource sharing (library photocopying and packing patrons
> > off to some other collection) and the cannibalization of
> > library allocations to promote administrative bloat,
> > has had a tremendous impact.
>
> You have frequently spoken of the cannibalization of library
> allocations to promote "administrative bloat," but I don't think this
> is at all clear. Some of the numbers chosen to show that library
> allocations have declined show the decline partly because of the point
> in time chosen as the starting point for the comparison.
OK. Derek de Solla Price noted that libraries and technical publications grew at the same exponential rate, doubling roughly every 15 years. (SCIENCE SINCE BABYLON 1961 enl ed 1975 p. 173) Library growth has slowed to half that rate while research proceeds as before. Here is an extension of the statistics on the average growth of ten 100+ years old academic library collections (collected by Fremont Rider and cited by Price) with new data published by Association of Research Libraries.
1938 1.2 million vols.
1953 not available
1968 2.7 " "
1983 4.1 " "
1997 5.7 " "
Compare the last figure with 19.2 million vols. projected at pre-1938 growth, if keeping up with the work product of world research, had continued.
By way of reference, the Library of Congress presently reports 24, Harvard 13.6, Yale 10, CISTI 8, NAL 2.3, NLM 2.2, and Smithsonian 1.2 million vols.
> What about administrative bloat in publishing houses? Several studies
> have indicated that costs of non-academic publishers' journals have
> risen much faster than those of academic presses and learned societies.'
> (I've seen at least one where page count WAS compared). There has
> also been a lot of press given to the takeovers of publishers by larger
> corporations which then expect higher returns (sometimes because of
> leveraged buyout costs?) which requires a higher return on publications.
A well-managed commercial publisher is less likely, because of the profit motive itself, to carry the kind of excess middle management and to sponsor non-essential administrative initiatives found in academe. Commercial firms of every kind abhor excess layers of personnel.
I think the analyses you may be referring to are trying to compare niche journals -- small circulation publications targeted at some specialty -- with wide-ranging editorial content of some association journals. The difference in price has to do with high fixed cost that is divided by different numbers of sales units. So, if you compare the circulation of journal A from 5000 to 2000, and journal B from 500 to 200; And, both have a fixed cost per article of $4000, you will perceive a more dramatic price rise in the latter even though the factor is the same:
Journal A
circ. 5000 2000
price per article $0.8 $2
Journal B
circ. 500 200
price per article $8 $ 20
Librarians seem to like the "low price per production unit" for obvious reasons. Researchers complain about the few items of interest that they must wade though or consult indexes (another expense) to locate. The advantage of a niche journal, in terms of the quality of research, is its focus and the likelihood it will provide bibliographies, reviews, and other editorial material not found in a journal packed solely with reports of primary research.
The fairest comparison of a journal is with itself. When you compare journals that differ in many respects -- and you don't have all the facts -- you can easily mislead yourself and others. One area of information that is not available to outside inquiry is circulation (sales units sold). R. Noll and W. Edward Steinmueller criticized the infamous 1989 ARL report on just this point. (An economic analysis of scientific journal prices: Preliminary results, in Serials Review. Spring and summer. 1992:32-37)
> Certainly in Academe we constantly suspect that administrative
> positions and salaries have risen at the expense of faculty salaries and
> library allocations, but I've also been aware of several very competent
> people working hard to document this with little success. Many new
> administrative positions are actually required by federal and state
> requirements, or by clear need to respond to likelihood of litigation.
> And administrative salaries (at least in public institutions) are much
> more modest than private companies' (like publishers).
The rise of part-time instruction is notorious, replacing full-time faculty with assistant professors whizzing through a revolving door. A 1996 National Center for Education Statistics report indicates "there has been an increase in the percent of full-time faculty that are not on a tenure track since 1975." (NCES 96-323) Better than statistical summaries, however, are the findings of auditors looking into abuse of research overhead. They apparently found real estate investments, travel, party expenses, etc. posted to research by universities that had no money to continue subscriptions to science journals.
> > - Ken Auletta of the New Yorker convened a conference
> > on The State of the Publishing Industry. It focused on the
> > problem of midlist books but never got to the bottom of the
> > problem as I describe it here.
>
> Perhaps because the problem is NOT as you "describe it here." Not
> that you don't make a number of points with which I privately agree.
No, my experience is that trade publishers assume the library market is just there. They almost never focus on it. Their attention is held by book stores and media, where they spend a lot of time selling. How often does a salesman from Random House visit your library?
> But studies I have seen often seem to have some of the same flaws as your
> recent arguement that because use of photocopiers grew at the same time
> as some subscriptions dropped, there was a direct and causal link. As
> I've pointed out, you ignored the fact that more and more journals were
> started at the same time, which may have cannibalized sales from other
> journals, rather than merely generating new sales.
You might have a point. The evidence of "resource sharing" turning into "access not ownership" as background to the statistics that (A) show universities cutting library share of spending (B) show library growth slowing while research growth continues is pretty compelling. When you notice that "dissemination" and "libraries" are omitted from science policy documents starting with the passage of the Copyright Act of 1976, you must see a pattern. The recent proposals of Cal Tech provost Koonin and the Bachrach et al. group published in SCIENCE, nailed it shut for me. They want to get rid of the expense of libraries entirely.
> > - University administrators are attacking tenure and publication of
> > research as a requirement for tenure so they can cut the cost of
> > instruction as well as libraries.
>
> I don't see the connection to cost of instruction. I have heard other
> arguments for attacking tenure, and I think that there's more emphasis
> on publication for tenure than there ought to be. Instruction hardly
> enters into people's tenure decisions, though administrators will
> insist otherwise--at least in public.
Tenure has several strengths that compete with administration for resources. One is that full-time faculty are more expensive than part-timers. The latter work cheaper and are expected to underwrite their own research costs and maybe even office space. Tenure also demands publication and is perceived as yet another problematic argument in support of library spending.
> > - Since 1945, administrators have increased their share of university
> > spending 40% while cutting instruction and libraries each about 15%
>
> I'd have to see what is covered in that 40%. And do you mean that
> libraries receive 15% less of the total university expenditures
> compared to what they received in 1945? They're doing pretty well, then,
> considering that Universities now have to allocate money to new kinds
> of laboratories, computer infrastructure, and far more to insurance,
> litigation, etc. And the research component has certainly taken far
> more money than instruction, no wonder that has declined.
The research money comes largely from outside (about 60% Federal) and it comes with its own overhead. Over a third of Federally funded academic research goes to overhead. This is supposed to include libraries, but librarians never see it as far as I can tell.
> > - Between 1960 and 1995 academic R&D in the US increased 7 times
> > while the largest academic libraries increased only 4 times. (Both
> > based on constant dollars spent. Sources: National Science Board
> > and Association of Research Libraries)
>
> But has anyone studied to see if the difference is appropriate? Many
> kinds of research is very expensive these days. Costs of libraries
> haven't increased in the same ways.
British economist David J Brown says the stunted growth of libraries indicates they are unable to absorb the output of research. I would add they are unable to disseminate what they cannot absorb. The decimation of collections is well documented. The inability of scientists to keep up with science is widely acknowledged and recognized even by the Speaker of the House (as I describe in Society).
Study of science communications was cut off from Federal funding about the time the Copyright Act of 1976 became law. One of the last reports was Statistical Indicators of Scientific and Technical Communication prepared by King Research (Donald W. King) for NSF and released in May 1977. NTIS PB-278. NSF shut down its div. of science information.
Now we have the serials crisis, don't we? If library spending had increased at the same rate as research, we would not be having this exchange.
> > - Interlibrary borrowing (mostly photocopying) skyrocketed.
> > Commercial document delivery, which presumably pays royalties
> > was born as a separate industry.
>
> So would you be happy if libraries paid royalties on what is currently
> copied and loaned via interlibrary loan? Which, by the way, has nothing
> to do with "fair use" which is covered under a separate section of the
> law from library copying.
I would be happy if libraries subscribed to all the journals ordered by their faculty and permitted researchers to make their own copies as needed -- as they did in the 1960s. On your second point, I believe "library photocopying" is justified as a type of "fair use" governed by CONTU guidelines.
> > - It excused the sacrifice of collection development and
> > knowledge by university managers.
>
> But, as I've suggested before, it's now impossible to really do
> collection development as it was done, "once upon a time." No one can
> really keep up with the enormous literature. If we were to add enough
> librarians to really do the job, we'd need enormous administrative
> growth to coordinate them all and supervise them and house them, etc.
> And an enormous support staff.
You are right that "no one can really keep up." It takes teams and task forces. Much of keeping up is done by publishers of A&I services, review journals, bibliographies, textbooks, handbooks, etc. These publishers have narrowed their coverage, instead of expanding it, because libraries cannot afford them!
The ACRL recommendation that libraries need 6% of university spending to do an adequate job takes into account, I believe, your concerns.
> > - Federal agencies and scientific societies have done
> > nothing to assure the conservation of knowledge and the
> > effectiveness of education and research (i.e. library
> > collection quality).
>
> Seems to me that the National Library of Medicine does a tremendous
> job. Not only is Medline coping with a once-unimaginable growth in
> literature, it's far more useful and effective than the old method of
> using Index Medicus.
NLM does a fine job within its limits. Medline covers a fraction of the literature. (It snubbed the Online Journal of Clinical Trials in spite of its outstanding editorial board and the imprimateur of AAAS, for instance.) It covers no conference papers or books, I believe.
> > - Publishers are discouraged from investing in the
> > dissemination of new knowledge.
>
> Perhaps the dissemination of new knowledge is moving away from
> publishers. They seem to be diversifying in preparation.
The investment of a publisher's resources (even if the author is now often asked to subsidize production)is what validates research and separates "signal from noise." The Internet alternative which is entirely supported by authors is not comparable to publishers' indicia of quality.
> > - Publishers are discouraged from investing in technology
> > (for example, the American Institute of Physics was
> > neatly scooped by Paul Ginsparg and his preprint server
> > even though they had organized a committee to study
> > electronic publishing.)
>
> > So, yes, I am for stronger and longer protection of authors'
> > exclusive rights and publishers' opportunities. I also am
> > for investing in library resources measured by the growth
> > of research and the production of new knowledge.
>
> Perhaps we should nationalize publishing, reimbursing publishers and
> authors by some standard.
The Soviets nationalized publishing along with everything else. Their A&I systems were the focus of much envy after they put Sputnik into orbit. In the end, their system did not work because it was inflexible and subject to overreaching by politicians.
> Somehow, I don't think that would make you happier. But more
> realistically, maybe we should prescribe royalties for making copies,
> including whole copies of out-of-print books, and handle it all through
> an agency like the Copyright Clearance Center. Or perhaps if the
> publishers can't be bothered with keeping mid-list books in print, after
> 5 years (or whatever) there should be an automatic reversion to a
> standard royalty that copiers could forward to the CCC for forwarding to
> wherever the rights currently reside. Didn't they do something like
> that with jukebox revenues?
The UMI copy-on-demand should have been a great success.
> There has been a lot of discussion in the past of taxing the sales of
> photocopy machines with the revenue going to reimburse publishers.
> Would you favor that system?
>
> One other solution you haven't discussed is to put a lid on publishing.
By "put a lid on publishing" you must mean "put a lid on research grants." Journal articles and monographs are the work product of research, controlled by research sponsorship -- not by publishers.
ARL accused researchers of "excessing publishing" in 1989. The truth as revealed by Derek de Solla Price is that a handful of authors are responsible for a disproportionate number of articles. Price's law indicates that twenty percent of authors generate more than half the output. (Big Science Little Science 1963) I wouldn't be surprised if most of these prolific authors had tenure.
> There's a lot of discussion that pressure to publish for tenure and
> promotion results in publishing unneccesary articles. If Universities
> scaled back on these expectations, maybe publishers could scale back on
> the number of journals they publish.
This argument provides an aperceptive view of beancounters. The tenure recommendation is supposed to focus on the research evidenced by publishing, not the number of articles listed on a c.v. Otherwise tenure could be decided by the beancounters.
Albert Henderson, Editor, PUBLISHING RESEARCH QUARTERLY <70244.1532[_at_]compuserve.com> Received on Tue Sep 22 1998 - 21:37:19 GMT
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