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The Serials Review: A Future Classic?
Peter Allison
Bibliographer for the Social Sciences
Two legendary classical monarchs, Pyrrhus and Sisyphus, best capture the essence of the serials review process. Like Pyrrhus, we won a victory of sorts, but the victory was costly. We cancelled $260,000 in journal subscriptions, eliminating many that we would have preferred to continue. And though perhaps not as arduous and unpleasant as Sisyphus rolling a boulder up a hill, the process took great effort on both the faculty's and our part and offers no ultimate solution to the economic dilemma facing scholarly publication. If our subscription vendors are correct, these current savings will be wiped out within the year. A 15% increase in journal costs is projected for the approximately $1,750,000 in commitments that remain.
Albert Camus said "we must imagine Sisyphus as happy;" we only know that the work will go on until the system changes. The library has a strategy, but it can only postpone, rather than avert, future cancellation projects. We have established fixed base budgets for all collecting subject areas. We are increasing our investment in document delivery and licensing indexes and table of contents services that can be provided direct to workstations. As we know from colleagues in other institutions, other libraries are facing the same economic facts and making similar choices. The effect of these actions within the current system of scholarly publishing accelerates the process of price escalation and hastens an imminent crisis.
Scholars and librarians are collectively saddled with a system of scholarly communication that is no longer sustainable. The future is not in the hands of librarians, but rather, in those of scholars, administrators, and participants in both the creation and authentication of new contributions to knowledge. Publishing expectations for promotion and tenure; the decision where, what, and when to publish--these are the levers of control. Technology will not rescue us from a system we have created. Electronic journals will undoubtedly play a larger role in the future, but they are neither appropriate in all instances, nor necessarily cheaper to produce than their print counterparts--particularly when the full potential of the technology is exploited.
We thank you for working with us to achieve our painful victory; we look forward to your help as we continue to roll the rock uphill.
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