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October 11, 2007
Librarians Protest Science's Departure from JSTORS
When the American Association for the Advancement of Science announced in late July that it would pull its flagship journal, Science, from JSTOR, the popular, nonprofit digital archive of scholarly publications, the association cast its decision as a natural evolution.
According to the announcement, the AAAS, as the association is known, was merely joining "an increasing number" of large scientific-society journals that were "digitizing and controlling their own content."
Why, then, are so many librarians kicking up a ruckus about it?
Over the last few months, several library consortia have passed unanimous resolutions depicting the move as a major blow to libraries. They also say the association's decision conflicts with its stated mission to "advance science, engineering, and innovation throughout the world for the benefit of all people."
David H. Carlson, dean of library services at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale, has spearheaded the librarians' revolt. "We understand a little better when a commercial, for-profit publisher makes a decision like this, guided by the bottom line," he says. "But when the AAAS, whose members are 98 percent our faculty members … makes a decision that is inimical and in conflict with its stated role, it's puzzling."
Librarians are also examining their options in the wake of the decision, which will take effect at the end of the year. From that time, no further back issues of Science will be stored on JSTOR, although JSTOR subscribers will continue to have access to already-archived holdings. Many librarians see the move as a portent of profound new pressures on their budgets and their facilities.
Bundles and Bottom Lines
Since its inception a decade ago as a project of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, JSTOR has attracted more than 450 publishers and 900 academic journals to its digital archive. More than 3,600 institutions subscribe to the archive's 14 multidisciplinary and discipline-specific collections.
Until now, Science has been available to about 1,600 subscribers, mostly through the archive's Health & General Sciences Collection. Science joined the archive in 1998, and issues have come online five years after their first publication—a somewhat longer delay than is the case with most JSTOR holdings.
The association's decision essentially stops the clock at 2002. No Science issues beyond that year will be added to the archive, but none will be removed. Institutions that join JSTOR after this year, however, will be denied access to the existing Science archive.
In its announcement, the association stated that it would work with JSTOR "to ensure a seamless transition and to make sure that the needs of our mutual customers are fully met."
But many librarians contend that that is merely a contorted way of saying that the AAAS will offer access to Science only through its own Web site, which offers two access plans: Science Online, which includes issues from 1997 on, and Science Classic, a new digital archive dating back to 1880.
Individual subscribers to Science get online access to all issues for $99 to $142 per year. Institutional subscribers, which are charged on a sliding scale based on size and usage, get access to issues since 1997, or back to 1880, by paying an extra $2,200 per year or a one-time fee of $15,000.
For small libraries, such fees are high, especially when combined with JSTOR subscriptions. Fees for the digital archive's bundle of health-and-sciences journals, including Science, are between $750 and $8,000 a year, plus a one-time joining fee of $1,000 to $10,000, depending on the size of the institution.
Revolt of the Librarians
Looking at the AAAS's decision, librarians see more than a clash between profit seeking and the association's mission. They fear that the group's abandonment of JSTOR is the beginning of a trend that will make libraries regret having eliminated print subscriptions and removed journals from shelves. They also wonder how libraries at smaller institutions and in poorer countries will be able to afford new subscriptions to titles removed from "online aggregators" like JSTOR.
Even large library systems say the move, which could push them to return to print journals, may create a new space crunch.
"A lot of us are not looking at getting physical renovations to our buildings anytime soon," observes Celia Rabinowitz, chair of the Council of Library Directors of the University System of Maryland and Affiliated Institutions.
The aggrieved librarians are not standing by silently. Mr. Carlson wrote a resolution condemning the science association's move that was adopted by the Greater Western Library Alliance. Others have used the resolution as a model, including the Maryland council that Ms. Rabinowitz leads and the Consortium of Academic and Research Libraries in Illinois. Several other library groups have voiced their support, and delegates at the annual meeting of the International Coalition of Library Consortia, held this month in Stockholm, adopted a similar resolution that has yet to be ratified by its member organizations.
Some librarians' condemnation of the move is based on other factors as well, including its effect on researchers. Mr. Carlson points to the archive's unintended but useful role as a research tool. Scientists will always look to Science, he argues, but having it on JSTOR has meant that "people who would never think to go to Science find that it is in fact a key resource on a subject. For example, if they are interested in the teaching of evolution, which Science has written about again and again."
Joni M. Blake, executive director of the Greater Western Library Alliance, agrees. "That sort of serendipitous stumbling across information—where one good lead leads to another good lead—is very much the way that science is done. Without it, users are much more likely to hit dead ends," she says.
Mission and Motive
Alan I. Leshner, chief executive of the AAAS, says the decision to part with JSTOR is in keeping with both the association's mission and its bottom line.
Mr. Leshner sees the association's mission as the dissemination of scientific information "in a way that is an effective business model." All publishers, particularly nonprofit publishers, are struggling, he says. "We're doing fine, but we're constantly looking for innovations."
"From a business point of view," he says, "it makes more sense to control our own archive than fundamentally to give it away for free."
Mr. Leshner observes that thousands of libraries have already bought AAAS site licenses, and that the publication is available "in over 100 countries for free." But he acknowledges that the decision does suggest a change in academic publication.
"We'll see many different mechanisms for aggregating and searching content become available, and we want to be able to make arrangements with any aggregator that makes access to Science the broadest possible," he says.
Michael Spinella, executive director of JSTOR, argues that his archive has been a key instrument in making Science available to that broad audience. And he points out that the archive does not demand exclusive rights to content. "So," he says, "there's no impediment to their going out and doing whatever else they want with their content."
Mr. Spinella acknowledges the financial pressures on scholarly societies to maximize revenue. "We very much understand that this is a need of publishers, and we're trying to take some of the cost out of it," he says. But publishers' creating their own sites, he argues, doesn't "change the value or necessity of having a third-party archive."
One thing that won't happen soon is a reduction in JSTOR's own fees, says Mr. Spinella. To compensate for Science's departure, the archive has recently added 16 new titles to its Health & General Sciences Collection, including BMJ (the British Medical Journal) and Science News. Nor does the archive plan to increase its fees for that bundle, which have held steady since its debut in 2000.
Critics such as Mr. Carlson say that publishers are realizing that they can now make money by doing what JSTOR did: bearing the expense of digitizing their back issues.
"We don't want this to be a trend," he says.
Mr. Spinella believes it won't be a trend. "Science is a pretty unique publication, and other publications we've talked with have said that they're perfectly happy to stay with JSTOR," he says. "This is not the tip of an iceberg."
Librarians, however, say they see the need to take a stronger position on behalf of the values they profess. Library deans are "tired of being pushed around," says Ms. Blake, of the Greater Western Library Alliance. "This is not the last issue upon which we will take a stand."
What else will they do?
"That isn't clear yet," she says. "But this is the first step in the push back."
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Posted by schnitzr at October 11, 2007 06:30 PM