 Freedom of Information Conference 2000
Elizabeth Marincola
American Society
for Cell Biology
How to survive as a society publisher in the e-environment
Continual
innovation and diversification are the best ways to avoid a Darwinian
fate
Most scientific
societies have plodded along for decades, some for centuries, confident
of certain unshakable truths: that our members will remain loyal to the
society that most closely represents their field; that certain journals
are valued more highly than others; that publication takes many months
by its nature, and that journal income will forever be the cash cow of
the organization. The current predicament is somewhat reminiscent of the
old fee for service health care providers and insurers: societies had
been setting their own prices and taking for granted that others would
pay them for so long that the innovation and efficiency that are driven
by competition were somehow pushed to the background.
Now everything
has changed. A proliferation of increasingly specialized societies and
journals has shattered traditional loyalties. Journals must compete for
submissions not just on their reputations but also on their formats, their
fees, and the speed they offer authors; libraries are consolidating their
purchasing power and demanding pricing concessions; and the necessity
of peer review as we know it, once an inviolable principle of science,
is up for discussion.
Today, society journals, and, inextricably, societies themselves, are
vulnerable. Like it or not, scientific societies are businesses and subject
to competitive pressure to innovate and modernize. The fact that societies
may be doing "God's work," and that their success may not be
judged principally by their financial performance, does not exempt them
from the possibility of failing. Inevitably, the era of electronic publication
will result in a shake out among scientific societies.
Embracing
and managing change
It is easy to lose perspective in this environment, but it is essential
for society leaders to recognize that open access to scientific research
enabled by electronic journals is a great boon to science and a tremendous
opportunity to researchers and the societies that represent them. Scientific
societies should do everything they can to encourage, rather than to thwart,
open access in service to their members.
As with any
industry-wide transformation, the fate of organizations will depend on
how well each manages change. Four factors might be considered crucial
to success. First, are societies weaning themselves from financial dependence
on publications, especially financial dependence on institutional subscription
income from publications. Second, are they innovating technologically
and editorially in order to deliver scientific content to readers faster
with more flexibility, while protecting their integrity and that of their
members. Third, are they using technology to save costs and add value.
And finally, are they building loyalty to their organizations through
programmatic diversification.
Reduce
reliance on institutional subscriptions
Taking these key success factors in turn, how does a society publisher
break its dependence on institutional subscriptions? When Harold Varmus
and David Lipman first suggested that a greater proportion of the costs
of publishing in the new era of free electronic access to science might
have to be borne by the author's funding agency, it was received as if
the American gun lobby had announced that it was planning to stop contributing
funds to the Republican party. But the American Society for Cell Biology
has found it possible to move away from overwhelming dependence on journal
subscriptions. We reduced the proportion of journal-related income derived
from institutional subscriptions by 50% over five years. Simultaneously,
total journal revenues rose by 237%, the number of institutional subscribers
increased by 32%, and society revenues grew by 57%. These results were
achieved by a combination of new programs, production cost savings, attracting
new institutional subscribers, instituting color and page charges, raising
reprint charges, and maintaining institutional subscription fees.
Technological
and editorial innovation
The second key success factor for society publishers is innovation. Technological
innovation is critical to retaining and attracting readers and authors,
and to reducing costs. Molecular Biology of the Cell was the first science
journal to publish large data sets and video content. This expanded the
journal's readership, differentiated the online journal from the print
journal (making the electronic publication the journal of record), and
attracted submissions by offering authors a more complete and satisfying
presentation of their work than could ever be achieved on paper.
Editorial
innovation may be the most important aspect of e-publishing. PubMed Central
has forced the issue of peer review. Societies and coalitions are tentatively
experimenting with various modifications to traditional peer review. Some
have worked out schemes to publish pre-prints and/or to publish electronically
before or instead of paper publication. Each combination of options carries
its own trade offs and risks; the very credibility of a society publisher
is at stake. Important variables include speed, cost, and quality control.
Many in the society publishing community are concerned that any modification
of traditional peer review will drive the integrity of a publication down.
The experiment is ongoing, but no matter what becomes the future standard
of practice, scientific societies must lead in editorial innovation, since
their mission is to promote science. Societies are ethically obliged to
take the risks required to find formulas that ensure speed, quality, and
flexibility. Scholarly societies are well positioned to call upon the
expertise of their members (who are experimentalists by profession) to
develop models that work. If society publishers don't step up to the challenge
of finding the right formulas for editorial innovation, commercial publications
will. This would be a shame, because it is up to scientists themselves,
through their representative societies, to serve as the shepherds of their
own science.
Cut costs
and diversify
The third key success factor is reducing costs. The myth persists that
technological innovation drives up costs by introducing new services that
must be supported. This may be true in the short run, but it is almost
universally true that investments in innovation, when amortized across
their productive lifetimes, drive costs down in the long run. For example,
electronic submission reduces staffing and shipping costs. There is of
course also the attraction of technological innovation to readers and
authors.
The fourth
and last key success factor is diversification. Without a variety of products
or services, any business is doomed, and research societies are no exception.
In the era of scientific publishing, all the cards are reshuffled. It
is possible that revenues will continue to be squeezed out of the scientific
publishing industry and will not fully rebound. When the dust settles,
perhaps fewer commercial and society publishers will have survived. The
best way for a scientific society to survive its Darwinian fate is to
provide a broad range of activities that are valued by its members. If
a society is in effect a publisher and only a publisher, it is poorly
positioned for the future. The American Society for Cell Biology invests
vigorously in scientific meetings, congressional advocacy, career activities,
education programs, membership services, and its other publications, limiting
journal activity to about an eighth of its total effort. In fact, recent
focus groups showed that members ranked the annual scientific meeting
and the support of public policy work to be just as important as the society's
journal. This complex of benefits, combined with continual technological
innovation in scientific publishing, is the best assurance that a modern
scientific society will survive and thrive in an industry transformed
by open access to scientific journals.
Elizabeth Marincola
Executive director
American Society for Cell Biology
Bethesda
Maryland
USA
Competing
interests: None declared.
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