The Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishing (ALPSP), the international trade association for scholarly and professional publishers, has released the third in a series of ALPSP surveys undertaken to establish current scholarly publishing practices and designed to track changes in policy and practice since 2000. The survey, carried out by Laura Cox of Frontline Global Marketing Services and John Cox of John Cox Associates, was conducted of 400 journal publishers, both commercial and not-for-profit, consisting of ALPSP and other major association members. A response rate of over 65 percent was achieved including the majority of major journal publishers.
According to the survey, publishers, especially large and commercial publishers, are launching new journals at a higher rate than in 2005. The growth trajectory of online availability has been steady since 2003. There is still some difference between the disciplines, with 96.1 percent of STM and 86.5 percent of arts, humanities and social science titles accessible online. The survey noted that pricing models are just as complex and varied as they were in 2005. Most publishers use a variety of means to establish prices. It is notable that fewer publishers are providing online access free with print and instead are offering online-only subscriptions.
Open access advocacy has clearly had an effect on publishers' thinking, the survey revealed. The proportion of publishers offering optional open access to authors has grown from 9 percent in 2005 to 30 percent in 2008. However, the take-up of the author pays open access option is exceedingly low. Publishers' practice on authors' rights is changing. Fewer publishers now require authors to transfer copyright to the publisher and will instead accept a licence to publish. The growth of institutional and subject based repositories has prompted a rethink on authors' rights to post their articles on the web. Large publishers have relaxed prohibitions on posting pre-prints, but have imposed embargoes on the final accepted version.
The survey further reports that publishers are at different stages of development in their implementation of Web 2.0 technologies, with 20 percent enabling collaborative tagging and between 10 percent and 15 percent implementing forums, blogs and podcasts for a journal.
The report provides an array of evidence about the current policies and practices of scholarly journal publishers. It also shows how these practices have changed over time with comparisons with the survey results from 2003 and 2005. In addition, the report shows how publishers' policies have changed in response to advocacy groups and funding mandates. Scholarly Publishing Practice, Third Survey 2008: Academic journal publishers' policies and practices in online publishing is available to ALPSP members as a free to download PDF.
