ISSN: 1046-3410 NEWSLETTER ON SERIALS PRICING ISSUES NO 68 -- January 18, 1993 Editor: Marcia Tuttle CONTENTS 68.1 PROPOSED CHANGE TO NSF GRANT POLICY, Eleanor Uhlinger 68.2 COMMENTS ON NSF PAGE CHARGE POLICY, Ann Okerson 68.3 NSF PROPOSAL OF INTEREST, Albert Henderson 68.1 PROPOSED CHANGE TO NSF GRANT POLICY Submitted by Eleanor S. Uhlinger, University of California, Davis, esuhlinger@ucdavis.edu. [The following appeared in ABSnet 4:4 (December 29, 1992), publication of the Animal Behavior Society, and is reprinted with the permission of Editor James C. Ha. -ed.] The following notice will appear in the Federal Register on December 18, 1992.... NATIONAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION AGENCY: National Science Foundation. ACTION: Notice of proposed change to National Science Foundation grant policy; request for comments. SUMMARY: The National Science Foundation (NSF) is considering revisions to Section 517 of the NSF Grant Policy Manual, which sets forth NSF policy on payment of page charges for scientific journal publications under NSF grants. The proposed change to Section 517d of the NSF Grant Policy Manual would eliminate the present prohibition against payment of page charges to journals operated for profit. If adopted, NSF policy would no longer dis- tinguish between journals published by profitmaking organizations and those published by scientific societies or other non-profit organizations for purposes of allowing page charges. DATES: The NSF will welcome any comments on the proposed policy change. In order to be assured consideration, comments must be postmarked no later than January 18, 1992. ADDRESS: Comments may be addressed to Robert B. Hardy, Acting Head of Poli- cy, Division of Grants and Contracts, National Science Foundation, Washing- ton, DC 20550. For further information contact: Robert E. Hardy, 202-357-7880. 68.2 COMMENTS ON NSF PAGE CHARGE POLICY Ann Okerson, Association of Research Libraries, ann@CNI.ORG. [The following (selected) messages, responding to the above announcement, were submitted by Ann Okerson and are taken from the ARL Scholarly Communi- cations Committee Listserver. Used with permission of the senders. -ed.] Fred Friend, University College, London, ucylfjf@ucl.ac.uk: I quote from the advice given to UCL departments in making grant applica- tions to the UK Research Councils (our equivalent to NSF): Reprints and page charges may be claimed in those areas of research that necessitate publication in journals that levy page charges. Non-publica- tion in these journals would reduce international exposure and citations and if relevant should be included in the case for support. The Research Councils expect that the majority of researchers should be able to select quality journals that do not charge. That does not seem to me a bad policy, putting the emphasis in the right direction but not prohibitive. Perhaps NSF could do the same? ----- Ann Okerson, Association of Research Libraries, ann@cni.org: Reflecting a little on what is going on, the NSF proposal seems (to me) a gentle way of making a change that seems at this point to be almost inevit- able. It's gentle in the sense that NSF is only one agency among others that are helping to support page charges and probably various agencies have the not-for-profit rule currently. Over time, it is possible that others will follow suit. This will give authors wider choice for science article submissions; or in a number of instances where society page charges are optional, it may feel like a wider choice. The policy change would also make for-profit publishers feel they are on a somewhat more level playing field, although other not-for-profit status would remain and would feel un- level to for-profits. It is not clear that any or all for-profit publishers will institute manda- tory page charges, although I believe some publishers already have "submis- sion" fees that are not trivial. It may be that for-profit publishers could move towards page charges; even as a number of not-for-profits could be phasing them out. So the practices of the different groups may just become more similar (similarly uneven) in this regard. The effects or trends will not be immediately clear. My sense is that institutions are the ones who will in the end be paying yet more...but that may be undue gloominess on my part. It is a little more tantalizing (and anxious-making possibly) to wonder if the end of this particular "subsidy" presages the end of other not-for- profit advantages. And in what way this matters to the various participants in the scholarly information chain, particularly the end-users. ----- Ross Whetten, North Carolina State University, (rosswhet@unity.ncsu.edu): A brief comment on page charges and support of scientific journals, from a faculty (specifically a scientist's) perspective. Bernie Rous assumes that researchers who have received NSF grants will tend to publish their work in journals of not-for-profit publishers, because NSF will allow them to pay the page charges out of their grants. This does not reflect my perception of the economic pressures. At my institution, the budgeting of grant funds for particular purposes (such as payment of page charges) is flexible; as a consequence, I regard my grant funds as divided into only two pools: salary and supplies. If I pay page charges, they come from my supply budget, and reduce the amount of money I have which with to carry out experiments and maintain my laboratory. If journals published by for-profit publishers do not require payment of page charges, a financial incentive exists to submit papers to those journals and keep my supply budget intact. It is true that I would rather pay page charges out of my grant than out of my own pocket, but as long as alternatives are available, the temptation exists to publish in journals that do not require (or even ask) for payment of page charges. Janet Fisher, in an earlier posting, was urging consideration of alterna- tives that would encourage the end users of journals to bear more of the burden of supporting those journals, on the premise that individual scien- tists benefit most from publication of their papers. It is not clear to me if she thinks I should pay these expenses out of my own pocket or out of my grants. I reject the notion that I should pay out of personal funds, be- cause publishing is a part of my job as a scientist. A telemarketing opera- tor doesn't pay out of personal funds the phone bills associated with his/ her work. Payment of page charges out of grant funds is a necessary evil that reduces the amount of money available to do other work, and seems an inefficient way for the federal government or other granting agencies to support scholarly publishing. Perhaps it is time to consider direct support of publishers by granting agencies, either private or federal. Granting agencies are involved anyway, through direct support received by universi- ties as well as overhead from grants to individual scholars. Wouldn't it be better to just have a line item in the NIH budget to support MIT Press (for example) to publish journals of interest to the biomedical research commun- ity? In the final analysis, the only reason research is done at all is that someone is interested enough to pay the bills, and usually it is the feder- al government in one form or another. Given that research is not complete until it is published, it seems reasonable that research support include direct support of publishers whose journals are perceived as valuable. This seems likely to receive a warmer welcome if the publisher in question is a not-for-profit rather than a commercial house. There are clearly many ob- stacles to establishing such a system, but none seem insurmountable, and it would seem to offer several advantages over the current state of affairs. ----- Janet Fisher, Journals Manager, MIT Press (fisher@ mitvma.mit.edu): I agree with Ross Whetten that the current system of page charges in US journals but not in European journals probably does encourage scientists to publish in the European journals. I would like to see the NSF change their rules to even the playing field. US scientific journals have charged less for subscriptions at least partially due to the fact that they have page charge income and also because many are published by scientific societies that have other sources of income besides publications (as well as a very clear mission of advancing scholarship in their disciplines). Regarding who pays, I want to remind scientists that they are in a privi- leged position (though they may not feel so, particularly right now!) re- garding grant funding of research. Researchers in the humanities and social sciences also must publish as part of their job but usually do not have the option of using grant funds to subsidize the cost of publication, the cost of subscriptions, or the cost of typing up their articles for submission. Ross Whetten may be right when he says it is time to subsidize publishers -- certainly sounds good to me! -- but it needs to be done not just to sub- sidize scientific publication, as is mostly the case now. ----- Barbara Von Wahlde, Associate VP for University Libraries, SUNY-Buffalo (unlbvw@ubvms.cc.buffalo.edu): It is my understanding that page charges subsidize publication in the sci- ences. Certainly, I've heard our faculty in the natural sciences mention it. If a commercial publisher is able to receive page charges or subsidies for publication than I would expect that support to be reflected in the subscription prices for those journals. That is, I would expect that page charges would allow the commercial publisher to keep costs down. Would this mean then a smaller inflationary increase for subscriptions? If not, I would be opposed to seeing commercial publishers receive page charges un- less we know that the outcome would be of such a subsidy. Would the journal be published more frequently? Have more pages? Be of higher quality in content or reproduction? What would be the value added for the reader or subscriber of the page charges? Would more scholars then turn to publication in commercial journals rather than in society or asso- ciation publications? What would be the impact on the scholarly publication chain and the balance between non-profit publishers and commerical publish- ers? These are just a few of the questions that come to mind. I'm sure there are others and it would be valuable to have the input of faculty, journal editors, etc. on this issue. ----- Bernie Rous, Associate Director of Electronic Publishing, Association of Computing Machinery (ACM): The following can be used as long as it is clear that I speak for myself, not as a representative of ACM. Here is one reaction from someone who works for a not-for-profit publisher. If I understand the issue, the current policy presumably tends to direct research papers produced under NSF grants (and other government grants which follow the same policy) toward not-for-profit publishers, since the scientist or institution won't have to pay these charges as the grant will cover them. With the change, the researcher has somewhat more latitude in choosing what publisher to submit to, since there is no longer an economic incentive to go with the not-for-profits. (Some say that page charges are not a factor in choosing between for-profit and not-for-profit publishers since for-profits may not have page charges and not-for-profits may make the page charges optional (such as my own institution). But if they are not a factor, what is the point of changing the policy?) Some questions. 1. Does this more even playing field (in choice of publish- er to submit papers to) benefit the researcher? 2. Does it benefit the scholarly community of subscribers? 3. Does this proposed change signal more of same to come, under the instigation of for-profit publishers who claim that not-for-profits are given too many competitive advantages and that they are essentially running the same kind of business with unfairly lower costs and hence greater margins? My own feeling is that the distinction between for-profit and not-for-prof- it publishers is a very real one that should be preserved. Yes, not-for- profits do run as a business. Nothing can really run at all that doesn't. And they do receive various competitive advantages. And their publications may achieve very healthy margins that might even exceed those of the for- profits. But, not-for-profit scholarly publishers do serve the scholarly community in many ways that for-profits do not. The surplus margins gener- ated do in fact go directly to support the scientific and educational ac- tivities of the associations' communities. For-profit publishers do also invest profits in new services for the scholarly community, but they do so only when competition demands it. Some of that competition is coming from the not-for-profits. Remove the not-for-profit advantages, and the commer- cial publishers will be able to focus more exclusively on maximizing prof- its. I think that the difference between subscription prices for commercial and non-profit scholarly journals alone justifies the advantages the not-for- profits enjoy. 68.3 NSF PROPOSAL OF INTEREST Albert Henderson, 70244.1532@CompuServe.COM. Readers have a unique opportunity to comment on National Science Founda- tion's proposal to change its rule that prohibits use of its research grant funds for page charges paid to commercial publishers. Page charges subsi- dize production expenses and are considered to reduce subscription rates. The basic argument in favor of the rule change is that it discriminates unfairly and perhaps illegally. If the rule change is adopted, it might mean some reductions in the prices of many journals published by profitmak- ing firms. The NSF staffer that I spoke to indicated the inability of libraries to pay the prices of many science journals had prompted the proposal, together with other factors. So it would be entirely appropriate for members of the library community to comment pro or con. A different comment might argue canceling page charge subsidies, to supply the money directly to libraries by increasing the indirect funding of fed- eral research grants and earmarking the money for library purchases. The basis of this argument would be that a subscriber to a research journal will make a decision to cancel only when the money runs out; otherwise a lower or higher price is of little consequence compared to the importance given to content. Either way, it seems to me that the journals published by associations that get the subsidies don't need government welfare any more than the commer- cial publishers do. The lower prices of association journals are enjoyed by for-profit subscribers that neither open their collections to the public nor maintain archives of backfiles for reference. Many university librar- ies, which do provide access to their archival collections to the general public, are deteriorating due to lack of attention and recognition by the science policy community. YOUR COMMENTS MUST BE POSTMARKED NO LATER THAN 19 JANUARY 1993 Send your comment to Robert B. Hardy, Acting Head of Policy, Division of Grants and Contracts, National Science Foundation, Washington DC 20550. Refer to Section 517d of the Grant Policy Manual. I recommend certified or Express Mail. For reference, the notice of the rule was dated December 18, 1992, and is marked FR Doc. 92-30628 Filed 12-17-92 8:45 am. You are also free to ask your elected representatives in Washington DC and your industry associations, such as ALA, ARL, etc. to take action in sup- port of your position. Also consider the present head of the Office of Technology Assessment, John Gibbon, who will become science advisor to President Clinton. NIH, HHS, NASA, DoE, and DoD are all heavily involved in research grants and you can ask their chiefs to take an interest in the excellence of the information facilities that are available to their re- searchers. I would very much appreciate receiving a copy of your comment. Albert Henderson - INTERNET: 70244.1532@compuserve.com FAX: 203-380-1703 Messages: 203-367-1555 Direct: 203-380-0021 Landmail: P O Box 2423, Bridgeport CT 06608-0423. +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Readers of the NEWSLETTER ON SERIALS PRICING ISSUES are encouraged to share the information in the newsletter by electronic or paper methods. 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