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Economy squeezes Harvard spending
Even elite universities like Harvard, with a $32 billion endowment, are reducing expenses. Among the cuts? Faculty subscriptions to academic journals that can cost $40,000 a year.
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Kai Ryssdal: We saw a story the other day about Harvard University and how even with a $32 billion endowment, it's looking to cut back on expenses. Which is fine. Even the wealthy do have to be prudent.
What made us sit up and take notice was one particular cost the university wants to trim -- academic journals. Subscriptions, specifically, to things like "Nature" or "The Journal of Comparative Neurology," which can apparently run as much as $40,000 a year.
From the Education Desk at WYPR, Marketplace's Amy Scott is on it.
Amy Scott: When my family tries to save money we look at dropping subscriptions, too. But we're talking maybe $29.95.
Robert Darnton: "The Journal of Comparative Neurology" now costs $29,113 for a year's subscription, "Biochimica" about $20,000. I could go on and on.
Robert Darnton is university librarian at Harvard. He says bundled subscriptions of several journals costs as much as $40,000. Earlier this year, a council Darnton leads warned faculty those prices aren't sustainable.
Darnton: We the scholars do the research, write the articles, referee the articles, serve on the editorial boards -- all of this for free -- then we have to buy back the product of our own labor at a ruinous price.
Publishers say universities often pay far less than list price. Kent Anderson is CEO and publisher of the "Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery." He says his most expensive bundled subscription costs just over $1,000. But he says publishing for a small audience is expensive.
Kent Anderson: Unlike consumer publishing, where you can spread the costs over a couple of million readers or a few hundred thousand readers, you're spreading the costs over a few hundred readers. And that drives up the price.
And when you factor in the number of researchers and students who access a library subscription, Anderson says the per-use price is much lower.
Rick Anderson is the acting dean of the Marriott Library at the University of Utah.
Rick Anderson: What we're getting in return is access to a lot of really great content at a very good price, but just because it's a good value doesn't mean you can afford it.
Anderson says on average science journals are going up 8-10 percent a year. Library budgets are often flat or shrinking. Harvard wants more faculty to publish in free online journals, but few of them have the prestige of traditional publication -- and prestige can make or break a young academic's career.
I'm Amy Scott for Marketplace.
Both bneely and ElCook make good points. The point I wish to make is that print is dead and so is the discrete journal issue. In my company, we have substituted free electronic tables of contents w/abstracts for all journal subscriptions, and we purchase articles (in PDF) as required. In addition, the Open Access movement and US government requirements are freeing up much distribution of STEM research.
Costs associated with STEM publications will not disappear however. Selection, editing, peer review, and the financial considerations surrounding storage, display, and electronic distribution will continue to require the labor of paid experts. This will probably come to be handled by professional associations, either in place now or to come. Commercial publishers will be joining the dodo and the passenger pigeon, and I think a few of them know it.
Marketplace, you missed a real opportunity here. There were two easy points of discussion, economical and philosophical.
On the first point, I expected actual details about the publishing industry's revenues and profits: this is Marketplace and anecdotal numbers shouldn't be presented. I have heard rumors of 30 to 40% profit margins, and yes it is expensive to publish, but most of the work is done for free or cheap (as the interview notes). Also, this would have been a great time to talk about how open-access models work and what models are in place.
Secondly, the bigger issue is why do we have scientists publishing their work, which is supposedly bettering society, behind paywalls such that the public only gets summaries from third-parties that may be wholly inaccurate or biased. In this age of free knowledge, primary sources are increasingly hard to get due to a lucrative business model (which was poorly presented in this story).
