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Jan/Feb issue of Journal News
- To: epc@iucr.org
- Subject: Jan/Feb issue of Journal News
- From: Pete Strickland <ps@iucr.org>
- Date: Wed, 9 Feb 2005 08:49:38 +0000
- Organization: IUCr
Dear All There are some interesting articles in this issue of Blackwell Publishing Journal News. Best wishes Peter ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ 2005 has started well with annual reports for 2004 showing significant increases in circulation and usage (downloads) and our list of journals growing to 755 titles. Open access has maintained high profile with the NIH's Public Access Policy announced at last and in the UK the House of Commons Select Committee on Science & Technology still complaining about the Government's response to its report on scientific publications. Google Scholar has been another interesting development. We have covered Google in two pieces below and we shall no doubt be reporting again on this popular and influential search engine. Along with the many meetings we hold with societies we have started a series of executive seminars for editors and society officers. The most recent seminar attracted 74 attendees and an overview of the agenda is provided below. Bob Campbell President, Blackwell Publishing NIH Policy on Enhancing Public Access to NIH-funded Research After canceling an announcement on new policy scheduled for January 11, 2005, the director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Dr. Elias Zerhouni, finally issued the policy for public access on February 3, 2005 in the NIH Guide to Grants and Contracts: http://grants1.nih.gov/grants/guide/notice-files/NOT-OD-05-022.html The main points are listed below. * The policy asks authors of NIH supported research to voluntarily submit the author version of the peer-reviewed, accepted manuscript to PubMedCentral for release within 12 months from the publication date. * The author's copy in PubMedCentral will link back to the publisher's copy. Publishers can send the finished publisher version to supersede the author version in PubMedCentral. * There will be no penalty for authors not complying with the NIH policy. Author compliance will be tracked in order to evaluate the policy. * NIH will consider copyright issues and ask its authors to make sure copyrights allow deposit of manuscripts in PubMedCentral. (On the NIH Public Access page, authors will be given information about posting manuscripts on PubMedCentral and implications for copyright.) * The Board of Regents of the NLM will create a Public Access Working Group to consider and advise NIH on progress in meeting the policy goals. The big issue was the length of the embargo. In an earlier interview Dr. Zerhouni had mentioned 6 months but after consulting with publishers and major societies (and thanks to the lobbying from many societies) he moved to 12 months. To quote, however, from his email to researchers: "NIH expects that only in limited cases will authors deem it necessary to select the longest delay period". In this email he also puts more pressure on author to self archive: "We strongly encourage you to submit your final manuscripts to PMC (PubMedCentral) to ensure the permanent preservation of vital published research findings". Currently most publishers allow authors to self-archive their version of the accepted article ("postprint") on publication but as the system of Institutional and Subject Repositories and search engines (eg. Google) become more efficient free access to these archives and especially recently published articles could undermine the subscription base. We are recommending an embargo and shall be consulting with societies. We appreciate that embargo policies may vary: in molecular biology downloading of articles drops markedly over the first few months which suggests that an embargo of 6 months might be appropriate, while in the humanities and social science or, say, ecology, the fall-off is much slower indicating a longer embargo. NIH press release: http://www.nih.gov/news/pr/feb2005/od-03.htm NIH Policy Q&A: http://www.nih.gov/about/publicaccess/publicaccess_QandA.pdf - Bob Campbell, President, Blackwell Publishing The UK House of Commons Select Committee on Science & Technology As is usual the Government responded to the original report (July 2004) of the Select Committee. It felt that enough is already being done to test new models of publishing based on open access and that further funding of such trials and Institutional Repositories for self-archiving is unnecessary. Unusually the Committee responded to the response refusing to accept the Government's view and claiming that the DTI (Department of Trade and Industry) had watered down JISC's (Joint Information Services Committee) support for open access. This left the Government having to respond again on February 1, 2005. It confirmed that it has no intention of requiring researchers to deposit copies of their articles in free-access archives and that it will continue to facilitate a level playing field. The Government held to its line on pay-to-publish: "the government should be supporting the best and most cost-effective way possible to channel scientific outputs, and at the moment it is not demonstrable that the "author-pays" model is the better system." The response also indicated, however, that the RCUK (Research Councils UK) may adopt a common policy that allows scientists to publish in an author-pays journal where they want to do so. A spokesman for the RCUK revealed on January 25, 2005 that money may be included with grants for authors who wish to pay-to-publish. - Bob Campbell, President, Blackwell Publishing Open Access Debate at the Annual Meeting of the British Ecological Society The British Ecological Society (BES) turned part of its annual meeting over to a discussion titled, 'The end of ecological publishing as we know it: pay to read or pay to publish?'. Alastair Fitter, President of the BES, opened the debate by asking for a vote on whether ecological research would benefit from open access. 22 delegates voted that research would benefit (42%) while 30 felt it would not (58%). The vote was followed by four presentations. Ken Norris, Editor of Journal of Animal Ecology, talked from the author's view on how to pay for publication costs and also addressed the possible impact on reviewers. Catriona MacCallum, Senior Editor of PLOS Biology, outlined the case for open access and the future of publishing in an open access environment, while Bob Campbell, President of Blackwell Publishing, presented some scholarship friendly alternatives. Jill Lancaster of the BES spoke about the potential impact of open access on the Society and its journals. Abstracts of the presentations can be found at: http://www.britishecologicalsociety.org/articles/meetings/current/annualmeeting2004/debate_abstracts/ After the presentations attendees were divided into groups to discuss four of the themes covered in the presentations: * How would publication funding work if the model is adopted and would the change of model influence what does get published? * Is there a place or role for subscriber-pays journals in an open access world? * Will ecology gain or lose in an open access world? * How do we pay for societies if they are not subsidized through publications income? These encouraged much debate and each group nominated a representative to report back. A second vote was then taken on the initial question. This time 15 (30%) voted in favor of and 35 (70%) against the question whether research in ecology would benefit from open access. We know that open access is of interest and importance to many of the societies for whom we publish. We encourage societies to consider involving their members in debates around this issue. - Liz Ferguson, Publisher, Blackwell Publishing, Oxford What is Journal 'Quality'? In November, seventy publishers and marketers from around the world met at Blackwell's Oxford HQ to share best practices regarding quality improvement strategies for journals. As budgets continue to be squeezed it is ever-clearer that only the highest quality journals will escape the librarian's axe. With over 600 societies relying on us as publishing partners, Blackwell is very serious about finding the best ways to drive up quality. Strategic Journal Development (SJD) is the name of an in-house program designed to provide a systematic analysis of whether a given journal is meeting the needs of the community it intends to serve, and what steps might be taken to improve its quality. But what does "quality" mean in the context of journal publishing? Well, it can be many different things. Readership is often taken as the best measure of quality, as is its cousin - impact factor. However these can both be notoriously difficult to make sense of. Impact factors can be manipulated, have different benchmarks for different types of article (with review articles always getting more citations), and what counts as a good impact factor varies substantially by discipline. What's more, in some disciplines impact is the be-all and end-all, while in others whole communities are barely interested in the concept. Similarly, in some disciplines, such as medicine, it is sometimes easier to stimulate more readership by publishing more applied articles, whereas the cutting edge research papers may be read less widely. For many researchers, the time it takes to get a paper objectively and courteously reviewed is a highly relevant measure of quality, and for others the degree to which a journal excels at publishing a broad cross section of sub-topics is paramount. In fact there is a pretty long list of factors that a community may choose as its benchmark for quality of a journal or article, and usually a combination of several of these factors are applied. Others include the relative proportions of different types of article (reviews/primary research etc) and the geographic spread of authors as compared to the actual spread of researchers in a given field. In practice, a given researcher usually keeps close track of several titles in fields related to their own, in addition to more regular general searches, or the use of alerting systems, based on keywords etc. The titles will be chosen to give broad coverage of the different subject and quality measures important to them. So, it is crucial from an individual journal's point of view to know precisely what quality means for it, and the community it serves, particularly in relation to other journals serving the same community with different requirements (and journals serving overlapping communities with similar requirements). No one journal, of course, can be all things to all people. SJD gives our staff the tools required to help analyze journals and work with editors to reposition them as necessary, to provide the very best quality as defined by their user communities. And because so many societies partner with us around the world, we have an unparalleled data-bank of experience of what works for society journals - in a wide range of STM, social science and professional disciplines, based in America, Europe, Asia and developing regions. Hence the value of the November meeting is truly significant. An incredible variety of journal case studies were presented and analyzed, leaving everyone with fresh ideas to bring to the titles for which they are responsible. The question always to be asked about such gatherings is whether they are worth it given the air-journeys and hotel bills etc, and the answer in this case is a resounding 'yes'! We passionately believe that because the subject-areas and communities we serve are global then so should we be in our outlook, and in the vision for our journals. The true measure of success is more complex than readership and impact factor (which are rising across Blackwell titles), although they are important as described above. Another measure is the 37 societies who have chosen to join us this year and use SJD to maximize their quality and global relevance. - Jon Walmsley, Director, Professional Division, Blackwell Publishing Editorial Best Practice: Strategies for Developing Journal Quality Following on from the November Blackwell meeting on Strategic Journal Development, we want to provide you with some tools which you may find useful when considering the current standing and future development of your journal. Your contact at Blackwell Publishing can provide assistance with every step summarized below: 1. Identify what sets the journal apart. In retail terms, what is its Unique Selling Proposition (USP)? What draws authors, readers and subscribers to it? 2. Conduct a SWOT analysis for the journal identifying its Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats. You should also do this for the main competitor titles and identify areas of potential overlap or difference. 3. Conduct further analysis of the journal and its place in the community, eg. ISI Journal Citation Analysis, reader surveys, author surveys, editorial office statistical analysis, etc. 4. Set your vision and major objectives for the journal. These should be captured in no more than 5 bullet points and should be realistic and achievable. They should answer the question: how can this journal attract papers or readers from the competition? 5. Agree a short, medium and long-term plan for reaching these objectives. 6. Review the USPs, vision, and objectives for the journal on an annual basis, including monitoring any changes in the community's research and publication needs or the competitor's positions. - Jon Walmsley, Director, Professional Division, Blackwell Publishing Developments at Google (or 'Googleitis') Google is the single most popular search engine for locating content on the world-wide web. Our research shows that students use it overwhelmingly and that even scholars use it frequently if not exclusively in their research. Our aim is to achieve the widest possible readership for our authors and societies. With this aim in mind we were in 2003 the very first academic/STM publisher to allow Google to "crawl" its entire content and we saw a dramatic increase in authorized usage. For similar reasons we encouraged CrossRef to work closely with Google in creating a full-text search system for journal content from a range of publishers' sites. The result of that collaboration is the CrossRefSearch tool which looks certain to be a boon to both authors and readers. Google is a very innovative and independent company. Google Scholar, for example, is an independent attempt by the company to provide more discriminating searching techniques to meet the needs of the scholarly community. It aims to index all versions of an article on the web, including those available from the author's website and from institutional repositories. We believe it is less useful to scholars and professionals than CrossRefSearch. Google's stated mission is "to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful." Since a lot of the world's information isn't yet online, their plan is to develop ways to reach it anyway, such as with Google Print which aims to include book content in Google search results. Recently Google has filed a patent application entitled "Method for searching media". This will enable the search of printed materials including scanned documents with clickable ads and offered on a pay-per-view basis. In any event we have strong commercial and personal ties with Google and believe they appreciate the benefits provided by publishers. We will continue to explore with them new ideas for expanding readership and revenues for our journals. - René Olivieri, CEO, Blackwell Publishing All about Online: New Search Engine Initiatives There has been a burgeoning of new search engine initiatives recently. All are exciting developments and have the potential to really present the right content to the right readers at the right time and drive up the readership of all journal articles. Following is a summary of three of the initiatives and how they compare. About Google Scholar Google Scholar is a beta initiative launched by Google in November 2004. Its aim is to provide a convenient Google-like search interface for scholars seeking authoritative and other content including: peer-reviewed papers, theses, books, preprints, abstracts and technical reports from all broad areas of research (academic publishers, professional societies, preprint repositories and universities, as well other scholarly articles available across the web. For a full description see: http://scholar.google.com/scholar/about.html Try it out: http://scholar.google.com/ About CrossRefSearch CrossRefSearch is a pilot initiative launched in December 2003 as a partnership between the CrossRef organization of member publishers and Google. 35 publishers now participate and allow Google to index the full-text of their journal content. The search results are delivered in a familiar Google format but are restricted to only the high quality content of the publishers' journals, much of which has been peer-reviewed. The major difference between Google Scholar and CrossRefSearch is that results from the latter service are from peer-reviewed published content only and are therefore considered "authoritative." Results from the former include a mixture of authoritative peer-reviewed research as well as non-corroborated content from across the web. For a full description see: http://www.crossref.org/crossrefsearch.html Try it out: http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/servlet/useragent?func=showSearch&type=external About Scirus Scirus is a search engine provided by Elsevier Science. Its stated mission is to provide all relevant content for scientific, medical and technical scholarly information through a search engine and "destination space." It is a very similar service to Google's and is also free. However, whereas Scirus has all of Elsevier's scholarly content and a few other publishers included (eg. IEEE), CrossRefSearch has all the content from a different mix of 35 publishers, excluding Elsevier which chose not to participate as it already has Scirus. Google Scholar has content from the broadest ranges of publishers, as well as content from non-publisher sources, eg. personal websites, repositories, etc. For a full description see http://www.scirus.com/srsapp/aboutus/ Try it out: http://www.scirus.com/srsapp/ What is the future of Google Scholar and CrossRefSearch? The CrossRef group of publishers (Blackwell is a founding member) is working closely with Google to help integrate the two search initiatives following their initial beta trials. There are a number of areas where further integration may be possible, including indexing, ranking, and branding. In addition the CrossRef committee is exploring relationships with other search engines, such as Yahoo. With Google Scholar and the growth in institutional repositories, there is a risk that the differentiation between the "author copy" of articles and the "official final published copy" of articles will be lost. Such a blur in article versions could have consequences for quality-control and subscriptions revenue. We are monitoring the potential consequences and will make any recommendations to counter this risk in due course. - Gordon Tibbitts, President, Blackwell Publishing Inc, Boston Challenging Librarians to Consider "Who Needs Societies?" The most important annual gathering for opinion-formers in the library world takes place in Charleston, South Carolina, each November. Blackwell was one of the sponsors this year and a strong contingent from the company was on hand to hear from librarians and other publishers the latest thinking on consortia, pricing models, back issue digitisation and new business models. Amongst the strong messages coming back were: * A wholesale move to the open access or author-pays publishing model would cost the larger American research libraries far more than subscription purchases would, even if the price to the author (or the author's institution) was as low as $1200. * There is a willingness to pay for digitised journal back issues and the availability of back issues can increase usage of the current volume. * Librarians are divided over Big Deals. Some feel they absorb too much of the library's budget; others feel they provide very good extra value for faculty and students at little extra cost. We were broadcasting as well as receiving at the meeting. Our CEO, René Olivieri, delivered a provocative presentation entitled "Who Needs Societies?". In it he recounted the central role societies have played in the development of the modern peer-reviewed journal, noting that more than 50% of the 21,000 journals listed in Ulrich's Periodicals Directory are associated with a non-profit university or society. Three quarters of the top 200 and two-thirds of the top 500 ISI-ranked titles are owned by societies or other non-profit organizations. Many of these contract out to publishers who are able to offer them greater publishing expertise, economies of scale, technology resources and market reach. What criticism of the current publishing model misses is that societies which generate a surplus from their publishing are re-investing in a wide range of services to the academic and professional community. They fund conferences, subsidize membership fees, provide support for new entrants to the profession, recognize outstanding achievements, lobby, and engage in public debate and education. Open access advocates suggest there may be too many societies and that they should not rely on publishing income to support their activities. We argue that societies are efficient organizations and their journals represent high quality and excellent value for money. More than ever, societies have a central role to play in research, teaching and public policy. Indeed, we suggested that the modern efficient and networked society with its narrow subject focus but global membership is the ideal counterbalance to universities which are characterized by more diffuse and local interests and weighed down by bricks and mortar. _______________________________________________ Epc mailing list Epc@iucr.org http://scripts.iucr.org/mailman/listinfo/epc
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