Serials crisis

As serials crisis, the problem is in librarianship indicates that especially since the mid 1990s prices for journals in the fields of science, technology and medicine ( eng. Science, Technology, Medicine, shortly STM) rose sharply, while the budgets of libraries for the acquisition stagnated or declined. That's why they bought from many of these magazine subscriptions. This in turn led to further price increases, because the publishers were trying to compensate for the problems caused by declining subscriber numbers lost revenue. This created a vicious circle, in the course of access to current research information for scientists and other interested parties was increasingly restricted.

Digital Magazines

This crisis is compounded by the shift from printed to electronic journals even further. Digital content allow copyright holders more control over the use and enable them to further restrict the group of people that has access to the journals. If a purely digital form magazine is canceled, the corresponding university library is usually also denied access to those cohorts for which it has paid subscription fees (see House of Commons in 2004, 33f ).

Many license agreements allow access to the journals only university members. So far in many university libraries also had other, interested in science people access to all stocks. These individuals are now excluded (see House of Commons 2004, 26). In particular, for her science publishers have the model Pay -Per-View is provided in which the interested reader will have to pay separately for each item. The asking prices are currently at about 25 euros per item.

Causes

According to a report of the House of the reason for this development is the fact that many scattered buyers ( usually university libraries ) there are very few suppliers of STM journal face (Science - Technics Medicine journals). Because in the 1990s, it came into the market to a strong concentration process. In 2003, eight controlled magazine corporations 66.4 % of the world market for STM journals. The market leader Reed Elsevier alone had in 2003 a turnover of 7.1 billion euros and a share of 28.2 % in the STM market. Also large scientific societies such as the American Chemical Society drift in recent years, the prices for their products dramatically (in some cases several hundred percent) in the amount of:

The scientists on the other hand forced as many research results in scientific journals to publish (publish or perish ). The only way they can win within their field of reputation. When deciding in which magazine they publish, they depend on their reputation and influence of the magazine, but not according to market criteria. On the other hand, the access to some important journals prerequisite to be informed on the latest developments in a subject and so ever still be able to conduct scientific research (see House of Commons in 2004, 9ff ). These factors strengthen the positions of academic publishers, which therefore enforce annual price increases in the double -digit percentage range for magazine subscriptions and achieve capital returns of up to 33% could, which is far above the average of the media industry. Meanwhile, an annual subscription costs an STM magazine up to 6000 euro (see Dambeck 2004).

The science publishers justify their high prices, especially with the cost of peer review and its publishing activities. These arguments are but doubted, because the publishers usually pay neither the authors nor the scientists involved in the peer review a fee. Almost always, it is also required by the scientific publishers that authors submit their articles ready for printing after publishing guidelines (see Dambeck 2004). Even printing costs or other publication fees are charged in addition to the majority of STM journals.

Alternatives: Open Access

Main article: Open Access

As an alternative to this development by some stakeholders, such as the signatories of the Berlin Declaration of October 2003 and the British House of Commons in July 2004, set to the principle of open access. On the one hand are published in printed journals articles in institutional eprint archives, which are supported by universities or other entities, to be published again generally available ( as in 1991, initiated by Paul Ginsparg ArXiv ). It is called to set up as many free electronic journals.

One of the possible business models for such Open Access journals provides that the authors or their institutions for organizing the peer review and the publication is to pay on the internet. Overall, however, the cost of on-line publication are lower than those of a printed. There are already over 8000 Open Access journals, some with very high impact factor. As cited more frequently according to a study by Lawrence available online in Nature article as printed works, hope the proponents of open access that this convinced the authors from publishing their articles in Open Access journals. As before, however, articles will be given more weight in prestigious magazines printed for the assessment of scientific performance.

The Open Archives Initiative ( OAI) develops standards, interfaces and software for archiving and retrieval of online publications. Currently several systems to be developed in analogy to the Web of Science for the analysis of citations, including the SPIRES HEP Literature Database, CiteSeer and the Open Citation Project ( opcit ).