on Tue, 10 Dec 2002 Arthur P. Smith <apsmith_at_APS.ORG> wrote:
> Going back to my original question - does anybody have any numbers that
> might corroborate or refute the assertion that the cause of the "serials
> crisis" is the increase in world-wide research funding, and particularly
> (at least for physics) the increase outside the US? Is there some clear
> measure of total publication expense relative to research dollars that
> could be looked at? I'd be interested in seeing numbers, both for
> physics and other fields.
Derek de Solla Price overcame the challenge of
dealing with dozens of world currencies by
relating input/output factors, the number of
authors to the numbers of articles published.
The continued rise of numbers of articles tells
us that authorship has risen, indicating a
growth of sponsorship. Price used Physics
Abstracts as an example of exponential growth in
scientific output from 1918 to 1950, reflecting
world-wide activity.
I used such numbers in my articles, "Growth of
the printed literature in the 20th century" and
"Diversity and the growth of serious / scholarly /
scientific journals" which appear in SCHOLARLY
PUBLISHING [Wiley 2002]. I added:
"The growth of learned journals actually
demonstrated by Price's measures contradicts
his sensational predictions of growth leveling
off during the late twentieth century. Spectacular
growth can be found in biology, mathematics,
and physics, which, respectively, doubled on
average in periods of 12.5, 11, and 9 years. The
annual production of Chemical Abstracts service
continued to double, three times between 1940
and 1990, at the same fifteen-year rate that it
maintained for decades before. EI (founded as
Engineering Index with ten journals in 1884)
took seventy years to reach its first million
records, thirty years to reach its second
million, and passed the third million ahead of
schedule." [p. 10] And so on.
Further evidence of the serials crisis may be
found in skyrocketing interlibrary borrowing and
document delivery statistics. The ratio of
borrowing to collection size has doubled in major
universities over the last 20 years. Moreover, US
libraries now rely on foreign libraries as major
sources for photocopies, a circumstance that
would have been easily called against our national
security and interest not too long ago. Today it
seems to be politically tolerable.
On the other hand, one of the tacitly tolerated
effects of the serials crisis has been the capping
of production growth of many bibliographic services
in math, biology, medicine, and other learned
disciplines (I am not sure about physics). For
example, the publishers of Mathematical Reviews
decided in 1989 to keep the level of future reviews
at 1989 levels. The reason given was that market
resistance to rate increases made it necessary to
contain costs. For other publishers, such as the
National Library of Medicine, the restrictions
started much earlier as a result of bureaucratic
management rather than market forces.
Such restrictions are rarely publicized, although
SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN described the complaints of
Latin American publishers at some length. If a
bibliography becomes a mere sample rather than the
comprehensive coverage of the Physics Abstracts
consulted by Price, then it can not serve as a
reliable indicator of world R&D activity. It also
becomes a poorer source of information for
authors, referees, students, and other researchers.
(Again, I am not sure about recent activity of
Physics Abstracts.) I haven't tracked these sources
after the early 1990s. Many of them can be found,
with their details of historical growth data, in
ELECTRONIC DATABASES AND PUBLISHING [Transaction
1997]
In contrast, the financial inputs of R&D have
continued to rise apace in the US with Washington
predicting a robust future for most disciplines.
Unless the libraries that support publishing are
recognized as a part of R&D spending, the serials
crisis must continue to undermine the quality of
research and education.
Best wishes,
Albert Henderson
Former Editor, PUBLISHING RESEARCH QUARTERLY 1994-2000
<70244.1532_at_compuserve.com>
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Received on Thu Dec 12 2002 - 15:01:52 GMT