Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
Institutional repositories
Institutional repositories (IRs) pose another threat to traditional journal
publishing. Unlike the arXiv, an IR is intended to showcase, preserve
and distribute access to the final products of locally supported research.
These aims intrude directly on the goal of a traditional journal. It is
certainly possible to manage the conflict so that both sides continue to
benefit - access to an article in the IR might be embargoed temporarily,
for example, in order to allow a journal to publish first and be a sole
resource for some period of time. But growing numbers of research
institutions are requiring their faculty members to deposit all of their
work in the local IR in final, published versions, and to do so at the
point of publication rather than following an embargo period. To the
degree that such mandates grow in number and influence, and that
research institutions' repositories grow and become highly used, it
seems likely that the environment for traditional publishers will at least
become much more complex and will very likely become substantially
more difficult as well. The result for the larger scholarly information
environment will be, it seems safe to say, mixed.
The pricing crisis
Journal pricing strategies and library budgets have been on a collision
course for decades. For as long as journal price increases have
outstripped library budget increases, it has been clear that the situation
was unsustainable; however, innovative selling strategies such as the
Big Deal have allowed individual publishers to keep the wolf of budget
constraints temporarily at bay while also locking customers into
contractual commitments that preclude the natural winnowing that
comes from the cancellation of unpopular titles.
There are several possible solutions to the pricing crisis:
Publishers decide to accept a rate of price increase that matches
their customers' rate of budget increase.
1
Scholarly publishing is removed entirely from the market sector
and effectively nationalized.
2
The traditional subscription model of publishing, which forces sub-
scribers to purchase articles they do not want in order to get articles
they do want, is replaced by affordable single article purchasing.
3
