Brave New World or plus ca change?: Electronic journals and the academic library.

In 1992, the Andrew W Mellon Foundation sponsored an exhaustive study of university libraries and scholarly communication. This study investigated the effects of the explosion in the quantity of published scholarly material and the rapid escalation of science journal prices. It also discussed the revolutionary nature of emerging electronic information technologies, and their potential to mitigate this financial crisis. Though the report was generally cautious in its predictions, its authors did speculate that 'to a considerable extent these new technologies may eventually obviate the need to rely so much on the commercial publishers for their expertise' and that it might be possible for universities to reassert their direct role in scholarly communication. (1)

This qualified optimism was not untypical of the mood among commentators at the time. There was a widespread feeling that networked electronic publishing offered an opportunity to redress the perceived imbalance in the scholarly communication system, so that it was less weighted in the commercial publishers' favour. Realising such a goal, however, would depend on vigorous action by the academic and library communities. Charles Bailey listed twelve areas where action would be required. 'If we do these things', he concluded, 'network-based electronic serials may become a significant alternative source of low-cost scholarly information by the end of this decade. If not, network-based electronic serials are likely to evolve more slowly, and the serials pricing crisis is likely to continue unabated.' (2)

Fourteen years ago, electronic journals were still experimental--the subject of futuristic dreams. Printed journals were--as they had been since the 1950s--the focus of academic libraries' expenditure and collection development. Nevertheless, there were expectations that the electronic journal might offer a way out of the Babylonian exile in which academic libraries found themselves--as captives in the commercial marketplace--and a return to the promised land of free (or at least cheaper) access to the results of academic research and scholarship.

Today, most of the current journals available to our academics and students are electronic, integration between indexing databases and the articles they index has become a reality, backsets are gradually being digitised, and printed journals are increasingly obsolete. But how much has really changed?

Journals are still firmly embedded in the academic promotion and tenure system. In Australia, refereed journal articles are one of only four types of publication which directly attract DEST (Department of Education, Science and Training) funding as part of the research component of the Commonwealth Operating Grant to universities (formerly the 'research quantum'). Bibliometric measures of research output--defined in practice as the journal impact factors and citation rates calculated by ISI's (the Institute for Scientific Information's) proprietary analyses--are one of the approaches recommended for use in the Australian Research Quality Framework (RQF). (3) ISI's journal citation data have been widely used in research assessment and evaluation in Europe, despite their well-documented limitations and skewing effects. (4) A similar approach underpinned a recent investigation by the Australian Research Council into the impact of research projects which it had funded. (5)

Journal prices continue to rise. The latest Periodicals Price Survey published in the Library Journal shows that many subject areas have experienced average annual rises of 10% or more for the last four years. (6) This amounts to a cumulative rise of more than 45% since 2002. Zoology performed best, with a 29% rise during this period, while library and information science was one of the worst areas, with a 53% rise. The average cost of journals…