Responding to change in scholarly communications: fight, face-off, fix and faff

Hugh Looks tells a long and amusing story about a minor train crash he was in as a child to indicate that despite the serious global threats that circulate in the world, it's often smaller more mundane problems that really derail us. Publishers are under pressure at the moment to sustain their margins and other divisions within their parent companies are also suffering, and unable to provide any support at this crucial time. We don't fully know the shape of tomorrow's pressures, though continuing economic uncertainty will be a shared problem and changes in research and education will have a growing impact, particularly as students become more demanding. Current developments will continue to change the shape of scholarly communications (OA etc).

Responding to threats

• Fight - lobby - consult - become indignant.
• Flight - sell (who to?) - close.
• Face-off - pretend it's not happening; ignore the problems.
• Fix - big deal, better terms, enhanced products
• Follow - accept that alternatives are needed
• Faff - make small changes without a real strategy.

So far we have witnessed a combination of fight, face-off, fix... and faff. The only real solutions are follow and fix. Fixing requires us to make it more attractive for people to stick with the existing model - super-consortia, increased big deal flexibility - creating efficiencies that allow reduced costs without lower margins. Follow (stay in the business, accept alternatives are needed) requires further changes to pricing models, with redistributed functions and costs (e.g. author pays).

There are 3 places where value is created and costs are managed in a networked business.

• At the periphery (libraries operate here) - close to the user with specialist expertise.
• At the core - where the shared infrastructure and expertise is (where the researchers are).
  
• In the middle - the distribution part - which is always most vulnerable to commoditisation, and is a hard position to defend. Libraries are partly here, as are publishers.

Alternative models that could be considered at the periphery include advertising and sponsorship - not a good market for this just now. We could take a leaf out of the mobile phone pricing market where pricing is comparatively low but with caps on usage.

There are no simple answers
The issues are all about transition - many of these models could work, and the problem is the disruption involved in getting there. None of us really understand how that's going to work, and it can only be managed on a system-wide basis (it can't be managed by individual entities). It may not even be a solvable problem. Potentially we're part way through a long cycle and we don't yet understand the beginning and end of it. We have to live with high levels of uncertainty which will lead to a lot more short-term Face-off (a great shame - waste of time and energy) and more Fix (because we haven't yet worked out what the Follow strategy is). "Mit der Dummheit kaempfen Goetter selbst vergebens" (Schiller - against stupidity, the Gods themselves struggle in vain) - deeply and painfully true, and at the root of most of our problems. We are only going to work this out with a lot of communication and some serious applied intelligence - there are no simple answers.

During questions, John Cox points out that it's very difficult for us to communicate well and to act as a system because of anti-trust laws. The only way out is for libraries to decide what they will demand of publishers and see what the response is. John also raised the idea of a telecoms style subscription model for scholarly publishing. I think it was Peter Burnhill who then noted the gap between funding for research and funding for libraries which have not risen commensurately.

Where's My Jetpack

The UK federation was launched in November 2006 and has reached 690 members and membership is still growing. It is a deliberately inclusive federation - it includes all of the education sector and anyone providing services to that sector. Federations are essentially enablers of communication between this vast membership.

Ian demonstrates that current implementations by institution shows an even division between use of in-house identity management and outsourced identity management. Service Provider implementations came much later in the day for the UK federation but are now outstripping institutional implementations.

The Jetpack refers to Ian's assertion that the future is already here, it is just not widely distributed yet.

The UK is the first adopter of concepts such as outsourced identity managers and adoption in the schools sector. A similar type of uptake is expected in other countries. Scale is important for adoption. The UK federation is now seen as a 'must have', this position has not been reached in the US.

Software diversity based on standards is important in the UK federation. This provides choice, business models and sustainability. It is also noted that people get support for their software choices from a variety of other places than the UK federation itself.

There is a problem with helping users find the right place to log-in - it is known as the 'discovery problem'. Although the UK federation provides a WAYF (Where are You From) process to help guide users, it is better if this is integrated in to the Service Provider interface - Service Providers know how to best present information about their customers.

Authentication processes are in the process of changing - usernames and passwords will not be the process used in the future. People are starting to use cards, tokens or USB devices for access, and this will get more common. This will quickly be followed by interfederation - federations talking to federations, thus making the experience more seamless for Service Providers and Identity Providers.

The best way to predict the future is to invent it - Alan Kay.

From Timbuktu to Here

How many electronic journals will have the shelf-life of the famous texts of Timbuktu, which are still readable and preserved today? This question set the theme for the session on Access and Preservation for Electronic Journals, led by Terry Morrow.

Continued access to journals is a shared problem, Morrow argues - everyone who gains a benefit from the availability of e-journals should take a part in solving the problem. The specific problems for e-journals are:

• Continued access after a subscription has been cancelled, but does subscription = ownership?
• What do you save? Articles are often built on the fly from various components, including complex metadata files.
  
• Technology: don't assume that PDF will be around for ever.

Preservation is never a free option, but can be viewed as insurance cover for the future. These costs will be ongoing, not one off so a full risk analysis against costs should be done before preservation decisions are made.

The current economic climate is making the loss of journals very real with concerns about loss of vulnerable publishers and the ability to maintain subscriptions: the impact of the euro exchange rate on UK subscriptions is causing problems now for institutions.

Chris Rusbridge via the power of twitter and blogging poses the fact that this is a very real problem. There are a variety of different scenarios outlined by Chris with regard to the loss of journals, but the crux of the question is - who is responsible for taking the action to preserve journals. This ties in with questions from the room about how do we assess the value of the journals. A serious question for attendees at UKSG.

A range of preservation systems were described: LOCKSS, CLOCKSS, Portico, e-Depot, OCLC ECO, and British Library developments. Managing the trigger events for all of these systems and the roles and the responsibilities for all the stakeholders are different in each system.

There is a challenge for all of the attendees at UKSG to answer the question, am I responsible?