The economics of scholarly journals

Daniel Greenstein (University Librarian at University of California and other impressive titles) has a fascinating yet simple take on scholarly publishing in an article in Nature. He writes:

I believe that the business model of commercial publishing, which once served the academy's information needs, now threatens fundamentally to undermine and pervert the course of research and teaching. Put bluntly, the model is economically unsustainable for us. If business as usual continues, it will deny scholars both access to the information they need and the ability to distribute their work to the worldwide audience it deserves.

Without greater openness of access, scholarship is withering on the vine!

He supports this claim with data from the "Bear Stearns European Equity Research report on Reed Elsevier" (a major scholarly publisher).

He warns that:

Scholars, librarians and others more interested in the future of the academy than in publisher's share prices, should take a hard look at the fairly flat line showing that despite the explosion in the number of new journals, libraries did not buy many more titles in 2002 than they did in 1986. The academy is paying more each year to access a steadily declining portion of the scholarship and knowledge that it creates.

His section "Open minded on Open Access" is especially worth reading in the light of our rescent posts. With headings like:

Will author charges sustain high-quality peer reviewed publications?
Will Open Access publishers guarantee the integrity and persistence of the scholarly record they help to create and disseminate?

NB. what he refers to as author charges and others call the author pays model is not as severe as it sounds. ¶ 9:56 AM [to Del.icio.us]

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