A good future for society journals?

["\"FrederickFriend\"" <ucylfjf@ucl.ac.uk>]

The SSP Conference in Arlington last week left me both optimistic and
pessimistic about the future for society journals. The Conference
presentations and discussions demonstrated the strength of society
journals in respect of the service they provide to their communities.
The value of that service is pure academic gold and in my optimistic
moments I feel that the journals will not be allowed to disappear.
However, I worry that the strategies adopted by the publishing community
are increasing the risk to the society journals rather than reducing the
risk. The fear seems to be of declining library subscriptions caused by
readers' use of Google to access repository content, and the response to
that risk seems to be either to attract more readers to the publisher's
site, or to ally a society's journals with those of one of the major
publishers. My view is that neither of these strategies provides
long-term security for a society's journals and does not use the
strength of the societies' value to their communities.

Libraries may or may not cancel subscriptions because of repository
content, but readers will go to whichever site provides them with the
information they need with the least expenditure of time or money. Most
readers are unlikely to be influenced by the promise of the "official"
version with added features. I am sorry to be brutal but publishers' use
of this strategy to avoid cancellations does not have a high chance of
success. Likewise a society's decision to place their journal within the
stable of a larger publisher may provide a few years' security, but as
the major publishers increase their institutional prices to reflect the
growing number of journals in their bundle, the greater the risk that
those bundles themselves will be cancelled, leaving a society's journals
exposed. There is no safety in numbers.

The reason that all of this is so important to society publishers is
that their current business model depends upon library subscriptions.
The advantage to societies of the open access business model is that it
can re-focus their priorities away from selling content towards
providing services to the community to which they belong and where their
strength lies. The author community and the funding agency 
community are
the best guarantee for the future of society journals, which would
provide good value under a publication-charge OA business model. I would
regain confidence in the future of society journals if I saw more
evidence of strategies which use society journals' strength in their own
community rather than their weakness in the community of Google 
users.

Fred Friend
JISC Scholarly Communication Consultant
Honorary Director Scholarly Communication UCL
E-mail ucylfjf@ucl.ac.uk