The future of scholarly
communication in economics
www.elsss.org
Manfredi La Manna
Reader in Economics
University of St Andrews
Paper prepared for
Economists, Journals, and Libraries
Seminar
19 August 2003
Royal Library, Stockholm
Punch-line:
www.elsss.org
Bad news: in order to succeed, “new” journals
have to be significantly superior in
every dimension compared with
established high-price competitors.
Good news: if new journals succeed, the
dominant position of established
high-price journals may be
weakened substantially and
relatively quickly.
2
Critical dimensions.
www.elsss.org
1. Pricing: the easy part.
2. Refereeing: trickier.
3. Publication delays: doable.
4. Peers’ perception: trickiest.
5. Innovation in scientific communication: longterm winner?
3
Pricing. The killer statistics …
www.elsss.org
Using 1999 data, a library subscribing to the top 40
economics journals would spend $21,146p.a.:
$ 3,634 on 25 non-profit journals (average: $140)
$17,512 on 15 XXX journals (average: $1,167).
This means that if all journals were priced
competitively the very same library with the very
same budget would be able to buy
151 titles, accounting for
89% of all recent citations (11,975 out of 13,463).
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Refereeing delays.
www.elsss.org
5
www.elsss.org
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Other problems with refereeing.
www.elsss.org
(Rejected) authors tend to complain about the quality
and impartiality of referees’ reports.
Glenn Ellison surmises that authors (as referees) tend
to apply to the work of others higher standards than
they apply to their own, especially in terms of
technical sophistication and breadth.
Editors’ main role is adjudicating on the basis of
referees’ reports, with very little early “screening”.
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Refereeing problems, ELSSS’ solutions.
www.elsss.org
Editors screen actively incoming submissions: only
papers with a realistic chance of being accepted
within two rounds of revisions are sent out to
referees.
 Referees who submit a full report within five weeks
are rewarded with a $150 honorarium.
 Referees view each other’s reports (ex post!).
 All referee-editor communications are online.
 Referees have their own individual secure web pages.
 Editors can “grade” referees and share comments.

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Refereeing problems: ELSSS’ solutions
www.elsss.org
Other features of the ELSSS Publishing Template:
Referee may contact author anonymously.
Referees are alerted when other reports are
received.
Recipients of referee reports can file a Referee
Report Evaluation Form to the editor (providing
author’s feedback).
 Readers can evaluate published articles online
providing feedback to editors.
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Publication delays
www.elsss.org
Two types of publication delays:
1. Acceptance-online publication lag: for JET it
averages 15.6 months
2. Online availability-print publication: for a
typical XXX economics journal can range
from 8 to 14 months.
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www.elsss.org
Publication delays. ELSSS
solutions
ELSSS authors are largely responsible for the final version of
their accepted paper, which they submit using a speciallydesigned template that allows the file to be converted into
XML and therefore be ready for online publication.
ELSSS journals are published at regular frequency (in order to
be included in index and citation databases). →
1. Acceptance-online publication lag: 1-2 weeks
2. For quarterly frequency, the average delay between
acceptance and print publication is 1.5 months
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www.elsss.org
Peers’ recognition. ELSSS’
solutions
Without peers’ recognition, no new journal can be a
credible alternative/replacement for high-price
established rivals.
1. Get best possible Advisory Board.
2. Get best possible Editors (and pay them!).
3. Set precise quality standards and stick to them.
4. Be inventive and find new “certification” tools.
5. Get maximum exposure.
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Davids and Goliaths?
www.elsss.org
The idea that a minutely small project like ELSSS can
provide any meaningful competition to a Leviathan
like XXX seems outlandish. But is it?
If all the solutions to pricing, refereeing and
publication delays, and peer recognition do work
out, then small-scale initiatives like ELSSS can, in
the longer run, become a credible threat to
corporations like XXX, by their intelligent and
academic-focused use of the Web and by their
superior “feel” for the needs of fellow researchers.
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Speed of diffusion?
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Number of published articles p.a.
71
Average submission-acceptance
delay
17.6
months
Average acceptance - availability
online delay
15.6
months
Average submission-availability
online delay
33.2
months
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Speed of diffusion.
www.elsss.org
Target number of published articles p.a.
71
Estimated average submissionacceptance delay (no revisions)
2
months
Acceptance - availability online
delay
1-2
weeks
Acceptance-print publication delay
1.5
months
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Pricing policies
www.elsss.org
Pricing policy
Guaranteed annual price
increases (7.5%)
Honorarium to referees
None
Copyright policy
“author(s) will be asked to
transfer copyright of the article
to the publisher.”
Institutional subscriptions: Japan
None
$2,373 (+6.5%)
$3,255 (+22.8%)
$2,501 (+9.3%)
Institutional subscriptions: Developing and transition
economies
$2,373(!!)
Online access to previous year’s issues
Institutional subscriptions: North America
Institutional subscriptions: Europe
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Pricing policies
www.elsss.org
Pricing policy
Honorarium to referees
Copyright policy
Online access to previous year’s issues
Peer-review cost
sharing
$150
Copyright remains
with author
All archived issues
permanently
available online
Institutional subscriptions: high-income countries
$200-350
Institutional subscriptions: Rest of the world
free
17
Innovation in economics journals:
JET vs RET online
www.elsss.org
JET online
contents
page.
Clicking
on PDF
link
yields …
18
Innovation in economics journals:
JET vs RET online
www.elsss.org
… no luck, mate. PDF link is a revenue-raising tool.
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Innovation in economics journals:
JET vs RET online
www.elsss.org
SummaryPlus page 1 …
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Innovation in economics journals:
JET vs RET online
www.elsss.org
SummaryPlus page 2 …
Non-expandable outline.
Useless diagrams.
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www.elsss.org
Innovation in economics journals:
JET vs RET online …
More useless diagrams.
22
Innovation in economics journals:
JET vs RET online
www.elsss.org
SummaryPlus …
No link to
JSTOR
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Innovation in economics journals:
online full text
JET vs RET online
www.elsss.org
1. No
navigation
tools.
2. Primitive
mark-up.
3. Poor
rendering/
alignment of
maths.
4. Sloppy
typesetting
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Innovation in economics journals:
JET vs RET online
www.elsss.org
Reference-linking
Unlike Elsevier (whose main aim seems to be to
extract as much revenue as possible from libraries and
individual readers), ELSSS’s only aim in designing
reference linking is to maximise research productivity,
by providing direct full-text links whenever available,
e.g. to JSTOR, ScienceDirect, etc.
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The future of scientific communication?
www.elsss.org
Post-publication interaction




Email author (straightforward)
Send public comment to author (creates trail of responses)
Send private comment to editor (=traditional Comment &
Rejoinder – only faster)
Create your own discussion forum:
Author(s) can invite fellow researchers to join a closed
discussion group
 Interested researcher can invite author(s) and others to join
closed discussion group


Create/join open discussion forum:

Open access to debate on articles and related issues
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The future of scientific communication?
www.elsss.org
Post-publication evaluation

Online statistics:
Hits of article
 Downloads
 Citations


Readers evaluations:

Articles assessed by number of criteria:
 Originality
 Interest
 Scholarship
 Technical merit
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Conclusions
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1. In the online era, publishers play a minor and ancillary role
in the chain of scientific communication and their reward
should be commensurate to their contribution, not to their
market power.
2. In spite of years of plundering of libraries’ budgets with
outrageous profits (what Mr Denk Haank, former CEO of
XXX Science, euphemistically called “a disconnection
between the profits of some commercial publishers and the
service we delivered to the community”), commercial
publishers are providing the scientific community with a
very poor service and use the Web mainly as a revenueraising tool, not as a means to improve the speed and quality
of scientific communication.
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More conclusions
www.elsss.org
3. Academic-led publishing initiatives, such as ELSSS, have two huge
advantages compared to the more rapacious commercial
publishers, namely (i) their only motivation is to reform the system
of scientific communication and (ii) their wish to widen access as
much as possible in turn drives costs down, thereby combining
cost-efficiency with excellent service.
4. The ELSSS business model is both sustainable and fair. The
provision of first-class scientific research has a real and nonnegligible cost: the cost of peer-review and diffusion. This cost
ought to be shared fairly across the scientific community. In the
ELSSS model, all users who cannot afford their share in this cost
(those located in non-OECD countries) enjoy open access. All the
other users are expected to cover this relatively small cost, which,
if shared across all users, would result in individual subscriptions
of infinitesimal amounts (compare this with XXX’s policy of
continuously increasing subscription charges).
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Some more conclusions.
www.elsss.org
5. The long-term vision of the ELSSS project is an
academic publishing system where oligopolistic
publishers are gradually replaced by groups of
academics leading and managing their own journals
for the benefit of the academic community.
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Contact ELSSS
www.elsss.org
Visit the ELSSS website: http://www.elsss.org
Send your comments/suggestions to:
mlm@elsss.org
31
Innovation in economics journals:
JET vs RET online
www.elsss.org
Efficient browsing. Dynamic RHS
margin. On mouse-over article title …
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Innovation in economics journals:
JET vs RET online
www.elsss.org
…its abstract becomes available. Clicking
on title takes reader …
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Innovation in economics journals:
JET vs RET online
www.elsss.org
…to the Intelligent Synopsis of the article.
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Innovation in economics journals:
JET vs RET online
www.elsss.org
Intelligent Synopsis is fully customisable:
flexible browsing.
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