Making the world anew

Making the World Anew: Are Publishers Really Necessary?

D.G. Law

King’s College London

Keywords: Information Superhighway; Publishing; Electronic Publishing

Abstract: The print on paper journal publishing industry is perceived as no longer providing value for money. At the same time electronic publishing offers low entry level costs for a whole new generation of publishers. Only those who are seen as adding value to the information chain will survive and flourish.

Research shows how much it costs to produce an academic article. The figure varies, but one estimate is that it is in excess of US $10,000 (1). This can then be multiplied by the number of articles published each year. The estimates for this vary from 2 million to 20 million a year, but if we pick a middle figure of about 12 million this means that during every minute of this talk, the intellectual property rights in largely publicly funded research with a cost of $230,000 is given away permanently, inalienably and irredeemably. In other words in a half an hour talk, some seven million dollars worth of research is given away. Now the slightly false logic in such a calculation is all too clear, but it nevertheless highlights why academic institutions are becoming increasingly concerned about asserting their rights.

Or consider a few figures from the recently published and excellent International Serials Industry by Woodward and Pilling(2). In 1989 Elsevier's 16 per cent net margins were the highest in European publishing; in the 1990 financial year its 19% operating margins were Europe's highest after Reuter's; and at the time of the takeover of Pergamon, the scientific publishing business was routinely bringing in annual profits of up to 30%. Pergamon alone reported pre-tax profits of £27 million for the year ending 31st March 1990. In other words, one company had profits equivalent to the budget of a small university and the industry as a whole has profits compared to those of the Mafia. It is those sorts of figures which explain the use of phrases like "ripped off" and "exorbitant" in a recent Times Higher Education Synthesis Supplement on Libraries (3). Prices for 1994 appear to have gone up by an average of 26%. To paraphrase Fred Friend, can you all hand on heart say that your products are 26% better this year than last year? The publication industry appears to be the only one where the introduction of automation has defied the law of gravity.

The emerging information superhighway then presents an opportunity to question quite fundamentally the ways in which the information chain is managed.

Editorial quality and authority is a hugely important issue. It is unlikely that any author really cares whether they are published by one journal publishing house or another. What they care about is the perceived quality of the journal title and its impact. The peer review process also plays a part here, although as a regular cycle of post-publication scandals shows, it is not perhaps as effective as is often claimed. Nor is it self-evident that peer review pre-publication is necessary. Pre-prints test theses pre-publication. In the same way a discipline might put all material into a sort of bulletin board “soup” then at regular intervals archive what is worthwhile. Editorial control reverting to the learned societies is another model which finds favour.

Reliable distribution mechanisms are improved by electronic networks. Any library serials department could write volumes on the horrors of claims and there is evidence of journal claims as early as the seventeenth century. Electronic communication is instant and not subject to the vagaries of warehouses, docks and the postal system. That said, there is a danger of confusing the medium with the message and assuming that other people's jobs are easier or less necessary than they really are. It has been tellingly commented that desktop publishing has brought bad design within everyone's reach. Similarly, it seems unlikely that publishers know - or need to know - about network design and management. The higher education experience of running BIDS, a single secondary data service with use going up by leaps and bounds - up 50% this October - is that running a major server costs seriously expensive seven figure money. There are reputed to be 15000 journal publishers in the UK. Will all of them run a network server? Where will they base their non-UK traffic to deal with network hotspots? Who is studying the network topology issues?. This is a much underregarded problem.

User acceptance of the technology may almost be taken as a given as any student of the spread of technology in universities will know. Now it is clear that a small number of very high circulation journals read by commuters are best on paper, but the typical scientific journal can be accessed in quite different ways. In any case it has been interestingly suggested that “electronic journal” is as useful a concept as “horseless carriage”. New electronic publications which open up new multimedia possibilities may well change the nature of scientific publishing and add quite new value to the research process.

Charging and copyright is worth a lecture in its own right. In the UK we are considering lining up with the Association of American Universities and other major universities to refuse to permit the granting of electronic copyright to publishers except on terms which suit higher education. In the electronic environment we are all equal and all have the same opportunities and there is a need to justify costs and prices as never before, because in extremis, universities have alternative methods of publication. The only justification for high prices is that some value is added by whoever is selling or passing the item on. In the electronic environment no such definition of value addition has really taken place and we tend to bring our previous assumptions with us. The entry costs of electronic publishing are so low that any university can absorb this easily. If you do not believe this look at the mushrooming of web servers where university departments have become instant world publishers and treat the cost as part of the departmental overhead. Web servers look at least as attractive as many journals and some have huge “circulations”. Charging is also an issue which excites strong feelings and where the higher education community is pressing hard for subscription rather than transaction based models and using its corporate purchasing power to achieve this.

Information integrity is the area where electronic information is weakest, starting perhaps as early as the infamous Zimmerman telegram of World War I. But then publishing too, although immutable once on the page, has produced its fair share of notoriously inappropriate misprints. Nevertheless perhaps the most important value added to the author’s manuscript is the guarantee of integrity.

Finally archiving. In the past libraries purchased a product and then retained it whether publishers merged, went bankrupt or didn’t bother to keep an adequate archive. But the game has changed. Now that data tends to be licensed, what have the publishers done about archiving electronic data. What are their plans to make available the scientific record for up to 50 years? What plans are in hand to upgrade equipment and data for the indefinite future. I increasingly believe that publishers are putting the permanence of the intellectual record at risk and that unless electronic legal deposit is soon agreed we shall have the strange sight of publishers paying high profile authors five hundred thousand pounds while failing to invest in the technology which keeps earlier works in print.

So where does all of this lead. Major new players such as Microsoft and AT&T have entered the electronic publishing arena, providing packaged but guaranteed information. Print on paper publishers may no more expect to dictate the development of the electronic market than farriers dictated the development of the automation industry. In the end the survivors will be those who recognise that they must provide what the consumer wants and at the same time add perceptible value to the product. If all they do is add price rather than value, low entry thresholds will allow new players to emerge. Publishers are certainly necessary - but not necessarily the ones we have at present.

Derek Law

Director of Information Services & Systems

King’s College London

Strand

LONDON WC2R 2LS

e-mail bay.cc.kcl.ac.uk::d.law

fax: 0171 872 0207

References

1) Noble, John H. et al. (1992) Faculty Productivity and Costs: a multivariate analysis Evaluation Review 16, 288-314

2) Woodward, H & Pilling, S. (1993) The International Serials Industry London,Gower

3) Friend, Fred (1993) Unacceptable profits and equal rewards THES Synthesis October 15, 1993