A Role for SPARC in Freeing the Refereed Literature -- Ken Frazier Stephen D. Clark 19 Jun 2000 19:18 UTC
-------- Original Message -------- Subject: A Role for SPARC in Freeing the Refereed Literature Date: Mon, 19 Jun 2000 20:12:54 +0100 From: Stevan Harnad <harnad@coglit.ecs.soton.ac.uk> Reply-To: September 1998 American Scientist Forum <SEPTEMBER98-FORUM@listserver.sigmaxi.org> To: SEREDIT@list.uvm.edu I am taking this opportunity to offer a personal response to Stevan Harnad's recommendations regarding the future direction of SPARC. My comments don't necessarily represent the views of the SPARC membership, but I feel that I have some knowledge about the origin and history of SPARC. For example, it is relevant, I think, that Stevan Harnad has never agreed with the fundamental mission and strategy of SPARC. From the beginning, SPARC has sought to create partnerships with publishers to help create a more financially sustainable system of scholarly communication. Then as now, we consider non-profit and many for-profit publishers to be potential allies. We support, among other things, new technological models for disseminating knowledge that offer cost savings, alternative economic schemes to pay for editing and quality control of journal articles, and publishing systems that give authors and the academic community great control over their intellectual property. Stevan Harnad, on the other hand, favors the complete transformation of scholarly communication, one in which publishing, as we know it, would be "eliminated." He has often referred to such a system as "optimal and inevitable." With equal frequency, he has described the current publishing system as a "house of cards" that is on the brink of collapse. He may be right about the outcome. He has certainly been wrong about the timing. I think that any real solution to the crisis in scholarly communication will require the cooperation of publishers. In my opinion, there are more good guys than bad guys in publishing. Much of publishing is not broken and does not need to be fixed. Indeed, it is an established fact that many learned societies and professional associations continue to provide academe with excellent information resources at bargain prices. Such publishers add substantial value to scholarly work and receive modest compensation in return for their contribution to the diffusion of knowledge. Some of them are even using their resources to create more efficient and timely distribution systems for research and scholarship. While it may turn out that all scholarly publishing will someday be displaced by radically different systems of scholarly communication, there isn't much evidence that it is happening yet. On the contrary, the market value of authenticated knowledge is increasing. Information consumers seem to be ready and willing to pay for quality and convenience. SPARC's strategy is to use market forces to improve scholarly communication. Any workable system will require the work of skilled professionals and feature costs that must be rationally distributed. SPARC isn't opposed to the competitive action of the marketplace (ultimately that will work to our benefit), but to the consolidation and monopolization of the commercial publishing industry to the detriment of the academic community. Finally, I would argue that SPARC is making progress. Commercial publishers have moderated their price increases (for the time being), producing great savings for libraries and universities. Working in partnership with others, SPARC has succeeded in raising the profile of scholarly communication in the academic community. At my university and others, the academic culture is slowly but perceptibly changing. And, I dare to hope, authors and editors are prepared to take greater responsibility for management of the intellectual property that they create. SPARC is fair game for criticism. Time may prove that our efforts were too slow, too little, or too late. We have always recognized that we may fail. But from the outset, SPARC was committed to creating a serious, credible, collective effort to improve scholarly communication in the sciences. We've delivered on that promise to our members. Ken Frazier, chair SPARC Steering Committee