I. Introduction: B. Why Now?
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It is worth explaining why we believed it was important to undertake this study at this point. The publishing landscape, and scholarly communication in general, is rapidly changing. We believe this is a pivotal moment for university-based publishing, and for university presses in particular. Following are some of the specific changes we observed that motivated this research:
1. Scholars’ use of information is moving online
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Changes in the research and teaching habits and working styles of the higher education community have increased expectations about the availability of content in electronic form[4]. Scholars want to search the scholarly literature; they want 24/7 access, and they want to access content remotely – from their office desks and from home. Behavioral changes (especially among younger faculty) have taken place quite rapidly, much more so than universities have adapted the ways they produce and qualify scholarship. Scholars rely primarily on print for cover-to-cover reading of monographs, but such thorough reading represents only one part of research activity.
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This does not imply, and we are not predicting, the so-called “death of the bookâ€[5]. Print may well remain the preferred format for certain types of usage, such as cover-to-cover reading and display. What it does mean, though, is that scholarly publishers must get their previously published, as well as current content, online and that in the future they will need to operate print and electronic programs simultaneously.
2. Emergence of new publishing models in the electronic environment
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Most presses already have harnessed digital technologies for back-end production[6], enabling shorter print runs, better inventory control, and print-on-demand. These new print production processes support changes in publishing – from cost reduction to better availability – but do not alter the nature of the products themselves. Digital technology, however, has also fostered changes in the way scholarship is created, disseminated, and consumed, and these advances are beginning to have a transformational impact on publishing models.
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The first stage of this transformation – the translation of traditional print products into electronic formats – is well underway, led by journal publishers who have developed hybrid print/electronic publishing models. Most readers now prefer to access journal literature online, and as comfort levels grow with scholarship distributed electronically, demand is increasing for other content types to follow the same curve[7].
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The second stage of the transformation – the creation of new product types enabled by digital technologies – has just begun. New publishing models are emerging in response to demand for real-time dissemination, dynamic material, more collaborative research and authoring environments, and usage of rich media. For example, MIT’s Open Courseware (OCW) represents such an innovation where digital technologies enabled MIT to publish course materials for global distribution in a way that never would have been contemplated in the print era. Scholarly publishing of the future will need to support content created in new and complex ways, including everything from regularly updated reference material, multimedia projects, and large interlinked centers that add new works regularly, to resources with user-generated content (the so-called Web 2.0).
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Alongside these profound changes in content creation and publication, alternative distribution models have also arisen to broaden access, reduce costs, and enable open sharing of content. These alternatives – from pre-print and working paper services to library institutional repositories, open access journals, and author self-publishing and self-archiving tools – often compete with traditional publishing functions and have the potential to disrupt the selecting, credentialing, and economic models on which scholarly publishers rely.
3. Flight to scale threatens all but the largest publishers
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The scholarly communications sector has long supported a vibrant mix of large and small for-profit and not-for-profit publishers, but in the last decade this ecosystem has shown signs of strain. Commercial publishers have found the market saturated and turned to price increases and consolidation as the two main avenues to grow revenues (as have some large not-for-profit publishers). Through their scale, fiscal health, and access to capital markets, the largest publishers (most of which are commercial) are able to offer more generous terms and better services (better distribution and marketing, more formats, etc.) to scholarly societies and authors for the rights to publish their work. Consequently, high-quality scholarly content is gravitating towards a handful of large publishing platforms[8], and some of these publishers are using their market power to raise prices. Raym Crow, a publishing consultant, notes that “commercial publishers play a role in publishing over 60 percent of all peer–reviewed journals, owning 45 percent outright and publishing another 17 percent on behalf of non–profit organizations[9].†Moreover, “In the STM (scientific, technical, and medical) market, seven major commercial publishers, responsible for approximately 30 percent of all peer–reviewed titles, account for over 60 percent of the market’s total revenue[10].†To provide a longitudinal perspective, Theodore C. Bergstrom writes that in economics, there were 30 English-language journals in 1960, almost all of which were published by not-for-profit publishers. In 1980, the 120 English-language economics journals were evenly divided between not-for-profits and commercial publishers. By 2000, there were 300 journals, more than two-thirds of which were published by commercial firms[11]. Small not-for-profits in turn have found the market squeezed by the growing share of academic library budgets claimed by large publishers. Demand for the products of small not-for-profits, especially monographs, has eroded, leaving them with even less financial headroom to develop new products[12].
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In response to the increased capital-intensity of electronic scholarly publishing and the value to users of aggregating large amounts of content for web searching (among other trends), the industry is consolidating. To take just one prominent example, in February 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. completed an acquisition of Blackwell Publishing (Holdings) Ltd. The merged companies publish approximately 1,250 scholarly journals and hundreds of scholarly books every year, making them the third largest scholarly journals publisher in the world (after Elsevier and Springer)[13]. As they grow, these publishers become more formidable competitors to university-based publishers, who do not have access to investment capital, to the same level of technological sophistication or extensive marketing capabilities, or to as broad a set of mergers and acquisition options as their commercial counterparts.
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The segmented nature of the scholarly communications marketplace exacerbates the power of the largest publishing entities to exploit highly resilient niche “monopoliesâ€. When a journal is firmly established, there are no substitutes for it. For example, the owner of a prestigious journal title is in a position to attract the best papers and then to charge monopoly rents for access to that research. Due to faculty influence, libraries feel tremendous pressure to continue subscribing to top tier journals regardless of prices. One might argue that authors should stop submitting papers to these journals, but their incentives (i.e. the criteria on which their tenure and promotion are based) dictate otherwise. As more scholarship migrates to the largest publishers, these niche monopolies are likely to be consolidated, reinforcing their power relative to libraries.
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What is at risk is a diverse marketplace that offers publishing opportunities for a wide range of content at reasonable cost. Highly specialized scholars produce research that may be of interest to only a small number of peers, and its commercial value is therefore quite low. The value in terms of scholarly impact, however, may be much higher – and in some cases the impact is not evident for years or even decades after the research is first published. University-based and other not-for-profit presses are accustomed to grappling with the often conflicting claims of scholarship and cost recovery. If these publishers disappear, authors will be left with fewer and perhaps less desirable options, and many universities will not have a place at the table.
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The academic community seems to be looking to open access models as a solution to these challenges. But while open access may well be a sustainable solution in STM disciplines, where federal and private research grants can conceivably be extended to support publication fees, one model will not serve as a panacea. A more desirable future, in our view, features a diverse set of publishing models ranging from fee-based to open depending on the nature of the content and the interests of stakeholders. Universities should have a stake in developing these models.
4. Role of university presses is in question
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University presses, the traditional publishing arms of universities, have struggled to keep up with these emerging trends. The need for university presses is being questioned at some institutions. Recently, influential university decision-makers have recommended a consolidation of university presses as a response to the need for scale[14]. Administrators are looking to other parts of campus (most commonly libraries) to assume publishing related responsibilities for digital content. Some are re-evaluating the governance of their presses, and moving or considering moving their presses into different reporting lines or parts of the university administration.
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The financial stability of presses is increasingly uncertain, as demand for their traditional products declines and administrators’ appetites for subsidizing them diminish. (A concurrent trend is that getting a monograph published has become ever more challenging for young scholars and those in less mainstream fields.) The open access movement is raising questions about the traditional financial model of publishing, with some arguing that the proper price for university scholarship is zero. While many presses have been remarkably nimble in making do on a diet of modest subsidies, shoe-string budgets, and programs that painstakingly try to balance cost-recovery goals and scholarly value, those days may be numbered. Ten years from now, how many university presses will be able to compete for authors, or meet the expectations of consumers of scholarly information online, if they only continue doing what they are doing today? Very few, we expect.
Posted by kimballs on August 9, 2007
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