Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
rest of the price increases cover losses of income due to reduction in subscrip-
tions
[52,4]
. This phenomenon is also known as the “serial crisis.”
2.
Conflicting stakeholder incentives
. The incentives for authors differ from the
incentives for libraries. Scholars determine the journals in which they want to
publish based on a journals ratings and prestige. Their choice of journal does
not depend on its cost. Furthermore, scholars mandate the journals the library
carry thereby creating demand. Libraries, however, are constrained by budgets
that are unrelated to scholarly grants or departmental budget.
3.
Lack of price competition
. Publishers take advantage of the conflicting incen-
tives of the stakeholders. Odlyzko
[40]
estimates the revenue, to the publisher,
from a 20-page article in Mathematics or Computer Science to average $4,000.
The cost to the library can range from $1,000 to $8,000.
7
These variances in
charges are unrelated to the quality or prestige of the journal.
4.
Publisher's costs are minimal
. The input material is almost invariably free to
the publisher. A large fraction of the work in academic publishing is done with
contributed labor. Authors and reviewers are rarely paid for their work
[44]
.At
best, editors-in-chief receive small honoraria.
8
Associate editors are not paid.
Only production workers ranging from copy editors to printers to distributors
are paid at going rates. Authors usually
9
do not receive royalties or payments
for articles published in journals and in some cases (e.g., in the sciences) they
or their institution are required to pay “page charges.
10
”
These unique characteristics introduce the challenges that academic publishing
currently faces. Some of the challenges are economic and relate to the increase in
cost and the reduced market share. Others are social in nature.
3 . 4
C u r r e n t C h a l l e n g e s
Paper-based academic publishing suffers major deficiencies with respect to the
criteria discussed in Section
3.1
. Changes in the academic publishing industry are
needed to alleviate some of these issues.
7
Odlyzko
[40]
compares the cost variation to the airline industry and states that an airline charging
$8000 for a ticket could not survive if its competitors charge $1000 for the same type of ticket.
8
Based on the time they put into the journal, they are often paid less than minimum wage/hour.
9
A few journals, such as Information Systems Management which is oriented to practitioners but
publishes academic work
(
http://www.ism-journal.com/AuthorGuide.html#scope
)
give small payments
to authors.
10
Page charges refer to fees paid by the authors' institutions on a per page basis. These fees are allowable
costs under government contracts and hence are usually paid for by funds from outside the University.
