Academic publishing
Did you know that the average global sales of an academic monograph is 300? On the other hand, a single paper I uploaded to my research website at Berkeley Electronic Press has attracted 400 downloads over 3 months. The issues of academic publishing and the move from hard copy to electronic publishing was discussed in the Australian recently. The bi-line compares academic monographs to the Hapsburg monarchy .
I wrote about the topic of e-publishing of academic research and how it might change the face of our research outputs in an earlier post. The only purely electronic journal in statistics that I know of is InterStat. The Journal of Statistical Computation and Simulation actually recommend that you send your paper there when they reject it! It is hardly a prestigious journal. For instance HERE is the issue for February last year. Spot the problem?
Anyway, journals have two roles. One is quality control which is achieved through the refereeing system and has nothing to do with the publication of the journal per se. The second is for disseminators of research, which journals do badly; the papers are condensed to fit a page limit, often to the point of being incomprehensible, and papers are typically a couple of years out of date. While not replacing hard copy publishing, some Universities, like ANU E Press, have moved into electronic publishing in a major way. Their aim is to distribute their best and most recent research as widely as possible, and let’s face it – publishing in a journal is not the way to do it. They currently only publish e-books but the move to an e-journal does not seem like a great leap.
During one year they had more than 1 million downloads. Several papers had more than 50,000 downloads, which puts my 400 into a bit of perspective!
For me, the key statement in the Australian article linked above is
The 21st century may be one in which university press publishing goes “back to the future”, in that institutions again assume responsibility for access to and distribution of institutional scholarship, scholarship that combines authority with public accessibility within digital frameworks.
It is about time we got commercial publishers and paper millers out of the process of distributing knowledge. But it is not going to be easy to come up with a system that combines academic integrity with free and wide dissemination.
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July 15th, 2008 at 12:39 pm
The ‘Electronic Journal of Statistics’ is a relatively new electronic journal - sponsored by the Institute of MathematicalStatistics - and with a strong editorial board (editor=Larry
Wasserman, Carnegie Mellon University) - http://www.imstat.org/ejs/
Some other Statistics web journals that I’m aware of are “Bayesian Analysis” and “Journal of Statistical Software”.
Matt Wand,
University of Wollongong
July 15th, 2008 at 1:19 pm
I think even with the quality control, the journals need to re-think and move beyond peer review process. I’d have thought if the articles were tagged with appropriate and moderated comments by relevant authorities in the field and viewers who’d visit the journal site, that would have served a much better, and continuous control of quality than one time review by peers.
/Arin,
University of Canterbury, Christchurch, NZ
July 15th, 2008 at 2:44 pm
Thanks Matt, Indeed the associate editorial board of the EJS boast some other big names like David Ruppert, Peter McCullagh and, of course, Matt Wand
I just had a look at the papers and found two that I was interested in by people I know (of). Which is a really good sign.
The journal ranking produced by William with input from our learned profession did not include EJS - but it did include the Electronic Journal of Probability and Electronic Communications in Probability. Can I encourage you all to add EJS to the long list of modifications we will recommend to the ARC?
July 15th, 2008 at 3:46 pm
I might have more to write on this later, but I thought that I might comment from IBC in Dublin: the Chapman&Hall/Taylor&Francis stand has a solitary attendant staring at the laptop. The Springer stand, by contrast, is hard to even get near! This does not look like a publication mode on its way out!
BTW, Kaye Basford is the incoming Vice-President of IBS, on track to be President at the next IBC. Congratulations Kaye!
July 15th, 2008 at 3:57 pm
I agree with the sentiment expressed. However, I am not sure the comparison is meaningful. A click is just a click … it’s easy and free. Many may be search engine clicks, others just people doing nothing more than browsing … like me picking up a printed journal in the library and flipping through the pages to see if something is of interest. I would suggest most downloads end up in the trash can.
By contrast, the 300 people who seek out and purchase a monograph really want it.
By the way, the Journal of Statistical Software has been entirely electronic from day one - I’ve been involved as an assoc ed for the last few years. It is now a core part of the American Stat Assocs staple of journals (but still free to all) and has an impressive impact rating, if such things matter.
July 17th, 2008 at 6:26 pm
Two comments on Colin’s comments:
1) The 300 sold copies of the average monograph is most likely not to individuals but most likely due to standing orders by libraries.
2) As statisticians we understand, of course, how numeric measures such as impact factors are calculated and how they can be improved (manipulated?). IIRC, the editor of JSS clearly stated during a podium discussion at UseR! 2006 that his aim was to improve the impact factor of the journal and that it was easy to see how this can be done. Good to see for that journal that the strategy worked.
July 18th, 2008 at 3:07 pm
I just met Berwin 2 days ago (chairing my paper in Singapore), so it’s a pleasure to meet again here
I think Berwin is absolutely right that the ‘300′ copies may predominantly be to libraries … However, whereas once upon a time, libraries would soak up virtually all new academic books that were published, today they mostly only order items that individual department members specifically request that they purchase. In this sense, they are individual-prompted sales; library funded; library owned.
…
In any event, Berwin’s point that the book sales are ultimately library copies must tilt the argument more in favour of the traditional book publishing model than otherwise, because each library copy may be viewed/browsed/used/copied by dozens of browsers (effectively ‘clicks’ that are not being counted or measured).
July 19th, 2008 at 11:57 am
I think that for books and monographs, the hard copy market is not so problematic. First, books are not really counted (much) for promotion. Second, they are less limited in space. Third, there is no great urgency for publicaiton. Fourth, few people really want to browse an entire book electronically. Bootom line: I still buy books on statistical theroy - probably around 5 per year.
My main point applies more to research papers. I cannot see much point in paper copies of journals. And the limitations of the medium (time delay and limited space) partly vandalise the raison d’etre - which is clear and timely communicaiton of research results.
Measuring impact is another issue again. While one download does not count perhaps as much as someone actually reading my paper, I have no idea how many people actually read my papers. I know that I often read zero articles from the only hardcopy journal I still receive.