You blow like a Russian whore

[j here: This message seems to be some kind of comment spam. I deleted the many other comments repeating this message. I've left this one as a temporary example because of an e-mail I sent out to a support list Tuesday (6/1/04) morning. It will magically disappear soon.]

Werner Vogels, who’s on the Computer Science faculty at Cornell, posted on this. Apparently some faculty are arguing that they shouldn’t submit articles to Elsevier, though I thought I also read that Elsevier isn’t very big in CS publications. Werner makes a great point that universities have done this to themselves, as publication in respected journals is typically a criteria for tenure.

http://weblogs.cs.cornell.edu/AllThingsDistributed/archives/000323.html
(link activated by j, 11/13)

And self-publishing versus peer-reviewed publishing is an entirely separate issue that gets even messier. Yikes! I don’t think I want to go there. At least not yet. = )

Great points. My only clarification would be that what I’m envisioning is not things as they are, but as they could be. I’m not suggesting a simple change to electronic formats, with the show still run by publishing houses. I’m suggesting that scholars change their model entirely and self-publish. No more journals, no more subscriptions. Maybe intentional communities that aggregate scholarship, maybe websites that attempt to distribute prestige or collect reviews, but no more million-dollar-a-year bundlings or subscriptions. Route entirely around the journal publishers and the gatekeepers, and let the chips fall where they may. I’d pop open the champagne the day Kluwer or Brill disappeared from the face of the planet. =)

But you’re right–that sort of idle dreaming has little to do with the issues librarians and scholars are facing right here and right now. And you’re also right that the main issue is the business practices of big publishers. We’re still living in a world of gatekeepers, and librarians have an obligation to deal with the gatekeepers for the benefit of their patrons. But I do think we’re at the threshold of something big, and scholars can and should start to take baby-steps toward unleashing the big publishers’ grip around our collective throats. =)

Actually, there are many more benefits to print versions of journals than what Ryan mentioned above. And moving print media into an electronic format isn’t always an easy thing to do. It’s much more difficult to jettison print subscriptions for electronic subscriptions for many reasons. One of them is that when you subscribe to a print format, you get the physical item. When you cancel your subscription, you can keep that physical item/those physical items. When you subscribe to a journal in an electronic format and access it over the Web, what happens when you cancel your subscription? Do they send you a CD with the run of journals your institution essentially bought? Or does the institution lose all of its access to those journal issues?

Another issue is technology. Some of us are lucky enough to be at institutions that use lots of technology and are highly wired. Many institutions aren’t. Many libraries aren’t. International libraries are often way behind libraries in the United States when it comes to the use of computer technology in libraries. Let’s not forget that there’s an information technology gap.

And there’s preservation, too. Many librarians hesitate when it comes to electronic formats because of issues of longevity. Damage to the format and changes in hardware and software are big “what ifs” many librarians don’t want to approach. Paper and microfilm still outrank digital formats for preservation in many areas.

Some fields and scholars still don’t consider publishing on the Internet–in any context: a personal homepage or a peer-reviewed site–to be at a scholarly level. Changing that mindset is difficult and where some of this conversation about moving from print to electronic formats needs to begin.

But what’s at issue here isn’t the print versus electronic journal debate. It’s about the rising cost of journals and the way certain publishers do business. Some of those companies would still use the same business practices if their journals were only available electronically. A format change isn’t going to magically change those issues. Refashioning the way some scholarly articles are published is a step in the right direction, but it’s not the entire solution to the problem Cornell and other institutions face.

With all apologies to biibliophiles out there who love the romance of the book and the smell of paper, this is exactly why we need to smash the journal publishing industry. Completely. Right now the only benefits of print journals are their ability to mobilize respected scholars for peer-review and to authenticate scholarship and distribute prestige by publishing articles.

These are all things that can be done just as well, and in many cases better, on the internet. There’s absolutely no reason for libraries to spend millions on print journals, other than entrenched interests and the technological cluelessness of many academics.