Expensive, commercially published journals are wreaking havoc with the library materials budget for the science and engineering libraries on campus. Annual average price increases have been about 10 percent while the library materials budget has increased 2-3 percent. Surcharges for electronic versions have exacerbated the problem. To cope with this "serials crisis," the Science and Engineering Libraries have cancelled nearly 20 percent of their journals in the past two years. While some feel that publishing articles in "open access" journals will resolve most economic problems, for this solution to work someone (author, library, institution) has to pay publication costs.
There are a myriad of other issues that impact scholarly publications and scholarly communication. Copyright ownership is an important issue as it determines what an author may or may not do with his/her articles. Another key issue is ensuring long-term archival access to digital resources. Finally, questions about what infrastructure and standards are needed to ensure that scholars are able to read materials 50 years from now need to be addressed.
Stanford has several initiatives underway to help address scholarly communication issues. Launched in 1995 by the Stanford University Libraries and Academic Information Resources (SULAIR), HighWire Press helps society publishers make their journals available digitally. (See also HighWire Press: New Journals in this issue.) Many HighWire titles are available for free to readers within a year of publication. LOCKSS, or Lots of Copies Keeps Stuff Safe, is another SULAIR effort to address long-term archiving issues.
To provide the Stanford community and others with more information about these critical issues in scholarly communication and to provide ideas on developing strategies for addressing these issues, SULAIR will be launching a Scholarly Communications web site. This site will include details about journal titles and packages that cost $1000 or more; advice for authors, publishers, readers, and administrators; and much more. The Scholarly Communications web site will be available soon at http://library.stanford.edu/scholarly_com/.
