Re: Tenure and journals (RE: Elsevier profit)

["Fytton Rowland" <J.F.Rowland@lboro.ac.uk>]

This is about the authorship end of the process, not the library purchase
end - one of the key problems that reformers of the scientific
communication process have always faced is the lack of linkage between the
two that exists within institutions.

It is the academic leadership of the university (specifically, in our
case, the Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Research) who insists on publication in
the leading journals.  If open access journals had the impact factor I
don't suppose he'd mind us using them, but they don't, do they?  It is a
chicken-and-egg problem.

Meanwhile, it is the University Librarian, guided by advice from academic
departments, who decides what journals (or big deals) to buy.  I don't
think she "happily" pays the high prices involved!  Within the Information
Science department I tried to argue, some years ago, that the dept should
ask the Librarian to cut some exorbitantly priced journals in our field.  
I was in a minority of one - the other academics argued that we must buy
those journals, because they are the top journals of our field.  Some of
my colleagues were on the editorial boards of those very journals.  I
imagine most universities are still like this.

Fytton.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Jan Velterop" <jan@biomedcentral.com>
To: <liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu>
Sent: Tuesday, April 01, 2003 11:26 PM
Subject: RE: Tenure and journals (RE: Elsevier profit)


> Very interesting. Does this mean that Loughborough happily pays for
> whatever the leading journals cost? Does Loughborough have no
> subscriptions or licences to any journals other than leading ones?
>
> The question that intrigues me is this: In most BigDeal packages there is
> only a minority of 'leading' journals. Who submit/publish their papers
> to/in the vast numbers of solid, but not 'leading' journals? What if
> researchers start publishing their good, solid papers that just don't
> quite make it into leading journals in open access journals instead?
> Currently they are more or less being 'buried' in expensive journals with
> (very) limited circulation. Besides, some open access journals are rapidly
> moving up the leadership scales. And more will follow if leading papers
> are being published in them. After all, leading journals may lend prestige
> to those who publish in them, but those who publish in them also lend
> prestige to the leading journals.
>
> Jan Velterop