Volcano Listserv Messages (1999)
- Subject: Publishing in commercial versus professional journals
- From: Jonathan Fink <JONATHAN.FINK@xxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 21 Dec 1999 17:30:08 -0700
Publishing in commercial versus professional journals
I am writing to initiate a discussion among volcanologists of an issue that many other
communities of scientists have been debating for some time, namely the escalating costs
of scientific publishing. For background, I am a former editor of Bulletin of
Volcanology (Springer-Verlag), Journal of Volcanology and Geothermal Research
(Elsevier), and Journal of Geophysical Research-Solid Earth (AGU). I have published
articles in all of these journals as well as a mix of others. I have generally selected
journals to publish in based on the audience I thought I could reach or the quality of
their photographic reproductions, rather than the cost of page charges, or whether the
publisher was commercial (e.g. Springer, Elsevier) or professional (e.g., AGU, GSA, AAAS).
As a university administrator, I have been exposed to a different perspective on this
issue. Like most universities in the USA (and presumably around the world), Arizona
State has a limited budget, and one of the most persistent pressures on this budget
is the cost of maintaining serial collections (journals) in the face of the out-of-
control prices charged by commercial publishers. To illustrate the magnitude of the
problem, I urge you to look at the following website from the Association of Research
Libraries: http://www.arl.org/scomm/change.html
The irony of the present situation is that we as scientists take our most valuable
intellectual products (our scientific ideas), effectively "donate" them to
commercial publishers, and then pay incredible markups in the form of library
subscription rates to buy back access to these same products. In most cases, the
commercial publishers then own the rights to this intellectual property. A by-product
of this arrangement is that we get access to smaller numbers of journals, and our
libraries can no longer afford to purchase monographs (books).
The approach being taken by increasing numbers of biologists and physicists is to
boycott journals put out by commercial publishers, sending articles instead to
journals published by professional associations like the American Geophysical
Union. Personally, I would make exceptions to this policy, because I find that
some commercial journals, like Nature, give excellent value for the subscription
cost. But if you look at the graph in the website mentioned above, you will quickly
see that the present system is unsustainable and needs a response.
I would be interested in your reactions to this issue. Is it worth helping our
institutions by limiting our own publishing options? Should we leave the matter
to other scientists to address?
If you send your comments directly back to Volcano Listserv, Lisa Koenig or I can
compile them and re-send a summary to the Listserv. Alternatively, you can reply to
me directly, at jon.fink@asu.edu.
Thank you.
Jonathan Fink
Vice Provost for Research
OVPR-Box 872703
Arizona State University
Tempe, AZ 85287-2703
(480) 965-1225
(480) 965-0363 (secretary)
(480) 965-8293 (fax)
jon.fink@asu.edu
