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The future of scholarly communication in economics

Manfredi La Manna Reader in Economics University of St Andrews Paper prepared for Economists, Journals, and Libraries Seminar 19 August 2003 Royal Library, Stockholm. The future of scholarly communication in economics. www.elsss.org. Punch-line:.

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The future of scholarly communication in economics

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  1. Manfredi La Manna Reader in Economics University of St Andrews Paper prepared for Economists, Journals, and LibrariesSeminar 19 August 2003 Royal Library, Stockholm The future of scholarly communication in economics www.elsss.org

  2. Punch-line: Bad news: in order to succeed, “new” journals have to be significantly superior in every dimension compared with established high-price competitors. Good news: if new journals succeed, the dominant position of established high-price journals may be weakened substantially and relatively quickly.

  3. Critical dimensions. 1. Pricing: the easy part. 2. Refereeing: trickier. 3. Publication delays: doable. 4. Peers’ perception: trickiest. 5. Innovation in scientific communication: long-term winner?

  4. Pricing. The killer statistics … Using 1999 data, a library subscribing to the top 40 economics journals would spend $21,146p.a.: $ 3,634 on 25 non-profit journals (average: $140) $17,512 on 15XXX journals (average: $1,167). This means that if all journals were priced competitively the very same library with the very same budget would be able to buy 151 titles, accounting for 89% of all recent citations (11,975 out of 13,463).

  5. Refereeing delays.

  6. Other problems with refereeing. (Rejected) authors tend to complain about the quality and impartiality of referees’ reports. Glenn Ellison surmises that authors (as referees) tend to apply to the work of others higher standards than they apply to their own, especially in terms of technical sophistication and breadth. Editors’ main role is adjudicating on the basis of referees’ reports, with very little early “screening”.

  7. Refereeing problems, ELSSS’ solutions. • Editors screen actively incoming submissions: only papers with a realistic chance of being accepted within two rounds of revisions are sent out to referees. • Referees who submit a full report within five weeks are rewarded with a $150 honorarium. • Referees view each other’s reports (ex post!). • All referee-editor communications are online. • Referees have their own individual secure web pages. • Editors can “grade” referees and share comments.

  8. Refereeing problems: ELSSS’ solutions Other features of the ELSSS Publishing Template: • Referee may contact author anonymously. • Referees are alerted when other reports are received. • Recipients of referee reports can file a Referee Report Evaluation Form to the editor (providing author’s feedback). • Readers can evaluate published articles online providing feedback to editors.

  9. Publication delays Two types of publication delays: 1. Acceptance-online publication lag: for JET it averages 15.6 months 2. Online availability-print publication: for a typical XXX economics journal can range from 8 to 14 months.

  10. Publication delays. ELSSS solutions ELSSS authors are largely responsible for the final version of their accepted paper, which they submit using a specially-designed template that allows the file to be converted into XML and therefore be ready for online publication. ELSSS journals are published at regular frequency (in order to be included in index and citation databases). → 1. Acceptance-online publication lag: 1-2 weeks 2. For quarterly frequency, the average delay between acceptance and print publication is 1.5 months

  11. Peers’ recognition. ELSSS’ solutions Without peers’ recognition, no new journal can be a credible alternative/replacement for high-price established rivals. • Get best possible Advisory Board. • Get best possible Editors (and pay them!). • Set precise quality standards and stick to them. • Be inventive and find new “certification” tools. • Get maximum exposure.

  12. Davids and Goliaths? The idea that a minutely small project like ELSSS can provide any meaningful competition to a Leviathan like XXX seems outlandish. But is it? If all the solutions to pricing, refereeing and publication delays, and peer recognition do work out, then small-scale initiatives like ELSSS can, in the longer run, become a credible threat to corporations like XXX, by their intelligent and academic-focused use of the Web and by their superior “feel” for the needs of fellow researchers.

  13. Speed of diffusion?

  14. Speed of diffusion.

  15. Pricing policies

  16. Pricing policies

  17. Innovation in economics journals: JET vs RET online JET onlinecontents page. Clicking on PDF link yields …

  18. Innovation in economics journals: JET vs RET online … no luck, mate. PDF link is a revenue-raising tool.

  19. Innovation in economics journals: JET vs RET online SummaryPlus page 1 …

  20. Innovation in economics journals: JET vs RET online SummaryPlus page 2 … Non-expandable outline. Useless diagrams.

  21. Innovation in economics journals: JET vs RET online … More useless diagrams.

  22. Innovation in economics journals: JET vs RET online SummaryPlus … No link to JSTOR

  23. Innovation in economics journals: JET vs RET online online full text • No navigation tools. • Primitive mark-up. • 3. Poor rendering/ alignment of maths. • 4. Sloppy typesetting

  24. Innovation in economics journals: JET vs RET online Reference-linking Unlike Elsevier (whose main aim seems to be to extract as much revenue as possible from libraries and individual readers), ELSSS’s only aim in designing reference linking is to maximise research productivity, by providing direct full-text links whenever available, e.g. to JSTOR, ScienceDirect, etc.

  25. The future of scientific communication? Post-publication interaction • Email author (straightforward) • Send public comment to author (creates trail of responses) • Send private comment to editor (=traditional Comment & Rejoinder – only faster) • Create your own discussion forum: • Author(s) can invite fellow researchers to join a closed discussion group • Interested researcher can invite author(s) and others to join closed discussion group • Create/join open discussion forum: • Open access to debate on articles and related issues

  26. The future of scientific communication? Post-publication evaluation • Online statistics: • Hits of article • Downloads • Citations • Readers evaluations: • Articles assessed by number of criteria: • Originality • Interest • Scholarship • Technical merit

  27. Conclusions 1. In the online era, publishers play a minor and ancillary role in the chain of scientific communication and their reward should be commensurate to their contribution, not to their market power. 2. In spite of years of plundering of libraries’ budgets with outrageous profits (what Mr Denk Haank, former CEO of XXX Science, euphemistically called “a disconnection between the profits of some commercial publishers and the service we delivered to the community”), commercial publishers are providing the scientific community with a very poor service and use the Web mainly as a revenue-raising tool, not as a means to improve the speed and quality of scientific communication.

  28. More conclusions 3. Academic-led publishing initiatives, such as ELSSS, have two huge advantages compared to the more rapacious commercial publishers, namely (i) their only motivation is to reform the system of scientific communication and (ii) their wish to widen access as much as possible in turn drives costs down, thereby combining cost-efficiency with excellent service. 4. The ELSSS business model is both sustainable and fair. The provision of first-class scientific research has a real and non-negligible cost: the cost of peer-review and diffusion. This cost ought to be shared fairly across the scientific community. In the ELSSS model, all users who cannot afford their share in this cost (those located in non-OECD countries) enjoy open access. All the other users are expected to cover this relatively small cost, which, if shared across all users, would result in individual subscriptions of infinitesimal amounts (compare this with XXX’s policy of continuously increasing subscription charges).

  29. Some more conclusions. 5. The long-term vision of the ELSSS project is an academic publishing system where oligopolistic publishers are gradually replaced by groups of academics leading and managing their own journals for the benefit of the academic community.

  30. Contact ELSSS Visit the ELSSS website: http://www.elsss.org Send your comments/suggestions to: mlm@elsss.org

  31. Innovation in economics journals: JET vs RET online Efficient browsing. Dynamic RHS margin. On mouse-over article title …

  32. Innovation in economics journals: JET vs RET online …its abstract becomes available. Clicking on title takes reader …

  33. Innovation in economics journals: JET vs RET online …to the Intelligent Synopsis of the article.

  34. Innovation in economics journals: JET vs RET online Intelligent Synopsis is fully customisable: flexible browsing.

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