Physics Roundtable
Jennifer Edelman and Pat Van Zandt Sponsor: INSPEC Pat Van Zandt opened the Physics Roundtable by thanking INSPEC for their sponsorship and invited all present to briefly introduce themselves.
Vendor Panel Tom McIlrath (Treasurer and Publisher, APS) reported that APS will begin considering not only total site usage but usage by contributing authors in particular at institutions in the top two pricing tiers, given the context of diminishing page charges. He alluded to the recent RoweCom fiasco in a call for libraries to exercise greater caution in dealing with vendors, suggesting they consider establishing escrow-type accounts to safeguard their payments. On the topic of backfiles, McIlrath defended APS's recurring charge for archive access given the expense of maintaining the archive and ensuring its security, and drew an analogy to the cost shouldered by libraries in maintaining physical collections.
Marty Blume (Editor-in-Chief, APS) addressed the censorship topic by stating that APS will not screen potentially-sensitive papers. He referred to the situation in 1940-41, when a voluntary embargo on nuclear fission papers was implemented by the American physics community; responsibility for screening was subsequently established on an institutional basis when an external agency (National Research Council) took charge. Today, biohazards are a chief concern and some bioscience journals have decided to screen such publications, but this is not seen as an issue for physics journals. And given the public access to free e-print archives (e.g., ArXiv.org), and the fact that two-thirds of the papers in the Physical Review now originate from outside the US (unlike in the 1940s, when virtually all were American), attempting to withhold papers from APS journals would be pointless.
Tom VonFoerster (Publisher of Journals and Technical Publications, AIP) cited business principles in AIP's decision to institute tiered pricing in 2004, charging heavier users of their journals more than lighter users. Under the new scheme, pricing will take into account not only an institution's Carnegie classification but also the number of articles it downloads, its subscription history, and the number of papers authored by its faculty and staff members in the relevant journals. Details on AIP's specific formulas are available at http://librarians.aip.org.
Jerry Cowhig (Managing Director, IOP Publishing) reported that IOP retains a traditional policy on online pricing, offering online access with print subscriptions, though he did not rule out the possibility of moving to a tiered system at some point. Subscribers receive online access to the current volume plus a 10-year rolling backfile. Access to the Historical Archives (back to 1874) is sold at an annual fee. On the censorship issue, Cowhig urged the academic community to be vigilant in safeguarding intellectual freedom in spite of anti-terrorist pressures. IOP is still debating whether or not its referees may be asked to report "suspicious" materials.
A question-and-answer period followed Pat Van Zandt asked if there were any cases in which a publisher would remove an e-article. Blume replied that APS will never take down an article willingly; in the Schoen case (scientific misconduct), APS inserted a "scarlet letter" retracting the article, similar to an erratum, but left the published material in place. Instances of plagiarism are handled similarly. A "publisher's note" was added to an article which omitted the name of a postdoc who should have been credited with co-authorship. The International Union of Pure and Applied Physics is planning a session at its London meeting this October on dealing with scientific misconduct.
Pam Yorks asked how libraries in large institutions might leverage additional funding to cover increased subscription costs in light of reduced page charges. VonFoerster stated that in the '50s and '60s, grant proposals regularly included money to cover page charges, but this was sometimes used for other purposes. He urged that universities be persuaded to turn over more funds to libraries as part of the expense of doing research. McIlrath indicated that it costs APS roughly $700 to process an author-prepared article and $1600 if APS handles the composition. Printing, binding, and mailing account for only about 15% of publication costs. Blume disagreed about the "micromanaging" of grant funds, and opined that researchers need to be able to move funds around in managing projects. He added that if APS didn't lower or drop page charges they would lose prospective authors. McIlrath suggested a novel way to raise library funding: to tax faculty members for every page they publish, based on the cost the library pays for that journal subscription. Blume added that institutions should have to pay for papers that are rejected.
Treatment of Errata
Emily Poworoznek presented results of her research on "Treatment of Errata in Online Physical Science Journals." She began by defining errata (also known as corrigenda or corrections) and explaining why they are important enough to index, despite the labor involved. Ideally, online publishing should offer ways "to correct mistakes without altering the scientific record." To investigate how this is accomplished in practice, Poworoznek studied 43 journals from 14 society and commercial publishers. She showed examples of various treatments of errata, including backward and/or forward links between articles and their corrections. (Out of the 43 journals she looked at, 26 had at least one link backwards or forwards, 18 had both backward and forward linking, and 16 had no links at all.) While most HTML abstracts and some HTML full-text articles indicated the existence of errata, virtually no PDF articles were found to do so. A thorough literature search requires retrieval of errata, but not all databases allow direct searching. ISI's Web of Science was found to be best overall; SciFinder Scholar also allows direct retrieval; INSPEC's treatment was found to be inconsistent, as were publishers' Web sites. In ArXiv.org, all versions of a paper submitted by the registered author can co-exist.
On the related topic of online journal retractions (for reasons such as scientific misconduct, legal actions, or editorial misconduct), some publishers policies remain controversial. Poworoznek concluded that while excellent models exist, consistency in the treatment of errata needs to be improved. Errata and retraction marking should preclude alteration and removal of content. She urged that standards be developed through discussion among publishers, editors, and librarians.
Information Literacy
jedelman@mit.edu and prvanz@wm.edu
Notes: Shaun Hardy and Pam Yorks
Jennifer Edelman introduced representatives from the American Physical Society, American Institute of Physics, and the Institute of Physics, and presented the themes which the panel was asked to address: pricing schemes; online subscriptions with rolling backfiles and/or separate archives; and "self-censorship" of articles due to national security concerns.
Several members shared suggestions and observations on information literature/literacy courses for physics students.
