Electronic Scholarly Publishing To Be Discussed

October 14, 1999

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Electronic scholarly communication is undergoing dramatic changes these days. The fall 1999 Library Digital Initiative Speaker Series will address the transformations taking place in this arena. On Wednesday, Oct. 20, Richard Johnson, SPARC Enterprise Director, will describe SPARC – the Scholarly Publishing & Academic Resources Coalition – and its efforts to promote a more competitive marketplace for scholarly publication. Faculty, library staff, and students concerned about the high costs of library materials are encouraged to attend.

The talk will take place from 10 a.m. to noon in the Lamont Forum Room.

During his visit to Harvard, Johnson will meet with members of the University Library Council and will lead a session with the Science Libraries Council and science faculty. Discussions will focus on mutual concerns about the dissemination of scholarly research, SPARC initiatives and programs, and the roles that faculty, librarians, and libraries can play in transforming scholarly publishing to ensure high quality, peer-reviewed, timely, and less expensive alternatives to existing publications. They will also discuss alternatives that preserve authors’ rights and adequate access to research results.

SPARC
SPARC is an alliance of universities and research libraries that fosters increased competition in scientific journal publishing. Launched in 1997, SPARC membership currently includes about 170 institutions and library consortia in North America and the United Kingdom. SPARC is also affiliated with major library organizations in Canada, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Denmark, and the United States. It is an initiative of the Association of Research Libraries and Harvard College Library is a founding member.

SPARC was formed as a collective response to the spiraling costs of library materials acquired from large commercial publishers and the impact of these price increases on the scholarly process. For over a decade, the academic library community has been monitoring the steadily increasing costs and has employed a number of strategies to address them, including title cancellations and the diversion of monograph funds for journals; resource sharing; cooperative collection development for lower-use items; and consortial licensing of electronic resources. In addition to encouraging new ventures in scholarly publishing, SPARC supports and complements a range of other initiatives that employ new technologies to advance the scholarly communication process.

SPARC initiatives ensure fair use of electronic resources, while strengthening the proprietary rights and privileges of authorship, and apply technology to improve the process of scholarly communication and reduce the costs of production and distribution. The SPARC Alternative Program establishes "partnerships" with publishers who are interested in developing high-quality, less expensive alternatives to high-priced publications in important fields.

The following is a list of some SPARC-endorsed publishing ventures:

The American Chemical Society, in partnership with SPARC, publishes Organic Letters, a new journal with peer-reviewed research in organic chemistry that aims to distribute research results faster and at a significantly lower cost than existing journals. The print version (with free web access in 1999) costs $2,300, compared to $8,000 for the most expensive competing title. The research is available as soon as it has been peer-reviewed, edited, and approved for release by the authors. The first issue of Organic Letters includes research by Nobel Laureate E.J. Corey, the Sheldon Emery Professor of Organic Chemistry.

Evolutionary Ecology Research (EER), was founded by the editors of the competing title Evolutionary Ecology, and is offered for $290, about one-third the price of its competitor. Subscribers to EER can read forthcoming papers as soon as the peer review process has been completed. These articles, available as "in press pre-print," are available six to eight months before they appear in the print journal, helping to alleviate the long lead times that are usually associated with scientific publishing.

PhysChemComm, an electronic-only, peer-reviewed journal published by the Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) is devoted to rapid communication of research covering all aspects of chemical physics and physical chemistry. Every stage of the publication process is conducted via e-mail; the average time for publication of articles this year has been 33 days. At $353, PhysChemComm is a fraction of the subscription price of Chemical Physics Letters, a commercial publication that costs institutional subscribers $8,368. In 1999, RSC is offering free access to any subscriber to its flagship journal Chemical Communications.