Library News for the Faculty

From University Librarian Gary E. Strong

The crisis in scholarly communications is an issue so large and complicated that it can feel as though there's nothing one institution or individual can do to help solve it. But that's not true. There are actions the UCLA and UC libraries are taking, and there are things that each faculty member can do. Some are simple and concrete; others, more complex and far-reaching. But all are worth considering, because libraries' limited acquisition funds cannot keep pace with hyper-inflationary increases in scholarly journal prices, and libraries alone cannot resolve all the issues that have created the crisis.

The UCLA Library's efforts have begun with informing the faculty and administration about the scope and repercussions of the problem and engaging them in discussions of possible solutions.

Large informational sessions like last fall's presentation by Clifford Lynch, executive director of the Coalition for Networked Information, have stimulated discussions about how information, education, and libraries are changing with the advent of the digital world and how higher education will be affected in the next five years. We've also been meeting with vice chancellors, deans, department chairs, and individual faculty members and have been encouraged that they recognize the seriousness of the crisis and support efforts to address it.

What Faculty Can Do

Just as the UCLA Library is working with the other UC libraries on this issue, so too are faculty. The UC-wide Academic Senate's administrative arm, the Academic Council, has established a special committee on scholarly communication, which is examining the issues and alternatives. UC's provost and senior vice president for academic affairs charged the Systemwide Library and Scholarly Information Advisory Committee with advising the university on strategies regarding the transmission of scholarly and scientific communications digitally. And the UC Office of the President created an Office of Scholarly Communication to facilitate new publishing initiatives and partnerships and support innovation and experimentation in this area.

What you can do begins with managing your own intellectual property. You, not the university, own the copyright to your own research, and you should not assign it to a publisher without careful consideration. Read contracts carefully, and negotiate; many publishers will allow authors to retain rights to preprint or postprint versions of articles. Consider high-quality publishing alternatives that allow you to retain copyright; we have staff at the Library who can help you explore the possibilities.

Consider the subscription price of a journal before you submit an article to it; if you don't know the cost, your library subject liaison can tell you. Given a choice between a high-priced scholarly journal and a more moderately priced one of equal quality, support the more reasonably priced one.

Also consider open-access journals. The UC system has become an institutional member of several open-access publishers, which provides the publishers with much-needed financial support and sends a signal to other academic institutions and potential readers that we consider this to be an important resource. Our institutional memberships subsidize the cost to UC authors to publish in these journals, many of which operate on an author-pays basis in which a minimal charge to authors supports the larger goal of open access to all users.

"Self archive" in institutional repositories like the eScholarship Repository or Physics arXiv. These repositories accept research article manuscripts, preprint drafts, postprint versions, and working papers, which are then accessible to researchers worldwide without restriction.

If you are the editor or on the board of a scholarly journal or of a society that publishes a journal, discuss the issue with your board. If your journal is published by a commercial publisher, look into alternatives that would lower the subscription price. If your society has been subsidizing other activities from subscription sales, encourage its managers to explore other business models that provide income while allowing subscription prices to be lowered.

Work on and support efforts by promotion and tenure committees to recognize the credibility, prestige, value, and impact of alternatives to traditional scholarly journals. Open-access journals are peer reviewed and thus involve the same level of critical assessment by your peers that traditional journals provide.

Support aggressive negotiations between the Library and publishers to lower subscription prices. This may result in the cancelation of some titles, but you will be able to obtain articles from canceled journals through the Library's interlibrary loan services.

The Library is ready to explore options available in specific disciplines and to work with you to utilize the options I've outlined above. Contact me by phone at extension 51201 or by email or Cindy Shelton, associate university librarian for collection management and scholarly communication, by phone at extension 51201 or by email. There's no one solution to this challenge, and there's no way we can address it without you, so we look forward to your active involvement.