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Volume 55 (10): 981-982, 2007
Copyright ©The Histochemical Society, Inc.
EDITORIAL |
Publish and Perish: The Future Fate of Not-for-Profit Society–sponsored Journals?
Correspondence to: Dr. Kevin A. Roth, University of Alabama Birmingham, Division of Neuropathology, Department of Pathology, 1530 Third Ave. South, SC 961E, Birmingham, AL 35294-0017. E-mail: karoth{at}uab.edu
The Journal of Histochemistry and Cytochemistry (JHC) is the official journal of The Histochemical Society (HCS), a not-for-profit organization devoted to the study of cell and tissue biology with molecular and morphological techniques (http://www.histochemicalsociety.org). The JHC publishes both in print and online. Our print publication began in 1953, and we began publishing online in 1997 through Stanford University's HighWire Press. As a not-for-profit–sponsored scientific journal, we price our institutional subscriptions at a level compatible with our goal of making the JHC accessible to the general scientific community at a reasonable cost to their respective institutions.
Over the last 10 years, the JHC has been able to keep subscription costs relatively low while providing a high-quality, professionally produced printed journal. Indeed, the independent sources http://www.journalprices.com and http://www.eigenfactor.org collaboratively recognize the JHC as a "good" financial value. Further, in the category of science journals, the JHC ranks in the top 15% in both the Eigenfactor and Cost Effectiveness. The Eigenfactor measures the overall value provided by all of the articles published in a given journal in a year, and Cost Effectiveness ranks journals in order of increasing Eigenfactor per dollar. However, the relative equilibrium that characterized the scientific publication industry over the last decade has ended, and scholarly publishing has entered an increasingly disruptive period. Challenges to the JHC's financial stability are increasing.
Recently, we have observed a marked increase in the cost of publishing the JHC simultaneous with a small but persistent annual decline in institutional subscribers. The loss of subscribers has been fueled by a combination of flat or decreasing library budgets, increasing subscription costs for commercially published journals, and pressures for immediate open access publication (which limits institutional incentives for subscribing to not-for-profit society–sponsored journals that may have 6- or 12-month delayed access). In response to declining subscription revenue and rising publication costs, the JHC and HCS must make difficult decisions. Options include raising our subscription rate significantly to the levels charged by commercial publishers (and hope that the resultant cancellation of subscriptions does not offset the increased per institution revenue), switching to a complete author pay model (and hope that authors will continue to submit manuscripts in spite of the significantly increased cost of publishing in the JHC), and/or implement measures to reduce the cost of operating the journal (and hope that we can maintain the high scientific standards and professionalism that authors have come to expect from the JHC).
Given the above considerations, the JHC is undergoing an extensive self-evaluation process to devise strategies to assure our long-term viability as a scientific journal. The single largest expense incurred in publishing the JHC is printing the journal. Although eliminating the JHC print version and moving to online-only publication would produce an immediate and dramatic cost savings, we feel there are legitimate and significant reasons not to completely abandon the print version of the journal at this time. Fortunately, there is a third option. Beginning in January 2009, the JHC will implement "print on demand."
By becoming a print on demand journal, the JHC will continue to be available in hard copy for those institutions or individuals who prefer to have the gorgeous print issue available or simply have limited access to the online version of the JHC. There will be no diminution in the quality of the print journal. We will offer subscribers the choice of receiving only the online version or both the online and digital print versions of the JHC. Digital printing on demand will reduce JHC printing costs and production time and will enable us to minimize future subscription fee increases. Subscribers will also be able to tailor their subscriptions to their specific needs and choose to order full print subscriptions, specific issues, or multiple quantities of individual issues at any time. Authors may benefit from reduced costs, because digital printing will eliminate traditional color printing costs, which can be considerable.
The move to digital printing and print on demand will provide a significant cost savings to the JHC and enable us to continue to publish both online and in print at least in the near future. However, the financial issues that we and other not-for-profit society–sponsored journals face in the current turbulent scientific publishing climate are substantial and will not be solved simply by moving to digital print on demand. Regrettably, the challenges faced by small "niche" not-for-profit scientific societies are even more significant than those faced by the journals that they sponsor. The JHC has been a source of pride and the HCS's identity for over 50 years and has helped serve the HCS's goal of promoting education and scholarly activity in our scientific discipline. A small society like the HCS simply does not have the financial resources available to subsidize the publishing of a journal, particularly if it is not revenue-neutral. Although we are confident that both the HCS and the JHC will continue to survive, the close interrelationship between journal and societal activities is severely threatened. Reforms in the scientific publication process are clearly required, particularly as they relate to the commercial scientific publishing industry; the unfortunate by-product, however, may be the financial and intellectual bankruptcy of some small scientific societies.
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