Action Faculty Can Take to Influence the Journals Crisis

The journals crisis in the sciences has been caused by a complex combination of factors. Among them:

• An explosion in the number of pages published each year, due in part to publishing pressures within academe
• The dominance of commercial publishers in scholarly communication
• The need for publishers to recover income lost through cancellations
• The existence of markets (e.g., pharmaceutical firms, the chemical industry) for science journals that can more easily absorb price increases
• The fluctuating value of the dollar in European markets

In response to these contributing factors, librarians and faculty must assume a more active role in ensuring access to scholarly research, becoming more conscious consumers of the journal literature, shaping and changing the publishing industry where possible, and establishing a balance between ownership of journal articles and access to journal articles from suppliers outside the University.

The Association for Research Libraries, Association of College and Research Libraries (a division of the American Library Association), and SPARC (the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition) have developed a program entitled "Create Change" that offers scholars a variety of methods for reclaiming scholarly communication.

Specifically, librarians urge faculty to

• Become more informed about the high costs of journals in your field: ask your subject librarian about prices for particular titles or publishers that are consistently raising prices far above general inflation
• Refuse to support journals with exorbitant prices: refrain from submitting articles to these publications or serving on their editorial boards
• Expand your role as an editorial board member by discussing pricing issues with the journal's editors and publisher: encourage them to limit increases in the number of pages published each year and to make their acceptance standards more stringent
• Support the professional society, association, and university publishers
  • Choose to submit your articles to their publications
  • Recognize and encourage their leadership in the publication of electronic journals; recommend that they offer these journals at lower prices than print journals
  • Encourage them to continue to charge less for their journals than commercial publishers and to keep inflationary increases to a minimum
• Support the Open Access Initiative by submitting articles to journals that are freely available online
• Discuss journal pricing issues at faculty forums within the University and at meetings of professional societies and associations
• Take advantage of Alternate Means of Accessing Journal Articles.