Comment and opinion 20. Baker v. St. Agnes Hosp., 70 A.D. 2d 40 421 N.Y.S. 2d 81 (1979). 21. Harbeson v. Parke Davis, Inc. 746 F.2d.517 (1984). 22. JOINT COMMISSION ON ACCREDITATION OF HEALTHCARE ORGANIZATIONS.
Accreditation manual for hospitals. Chicago: The Commission. 1991:iv.
23. IBID., 209. 24. STEvENs SR. AMA opposes decision to cut hospital library requirement. National Network 1990 Aug;15(1):1.
25. KING DN. The contribution of hospital library information services to clinical care: a study in eight hospitals. Bull Med Libr Assoc 1987 Oct;75(4): 291-301.
Scholarly publishing Lelde Gilman's spirited piece in the January 1991 issue of the Bulletin deserves additional comment [1]. She takes on the publisher (the CEO of a communication conglomerate with an eye on corporate mergers and large profit margins); the basic scientist scholar who wants "to know with certainty"; the clinician-the provider seeking "access to a description of a high standard of care"; and-last and most certainly least-the librarians, who love people, do not want to make quality or value judgements, and get mad when they can't buy everything anyone asks for [2]. "Now," the writer asserts, they also "want to get even with the publishers for putting them in this awful position" [3]. Gilman wrote her comments to counter the idea of the "commons" proposed by Gary Byrd [4]. One must agree that human nature, alas, is a formidable barrier to achieving such an ideal! I submit, however, that the academic community should not get off so lightly. Our current system of scientific publishing is a supplyside-oriented system-the supply of manuscripts dictates the volume of published articles. In addition, the rate of increase among scientists and engineers in institutions of higher learning in recent years has been three times that of the general population (Table 1). There will be no decrease in the supply of manuscripts; hence, we can hardly expect a downturn in the volume of published articles. However, there is little evidence thus far to support the relationship 408
between the existence of a journal or a paper and user demand for the information itself. Rather, what we witness here is an oversupply created by academic institutions and funding agencies that view the publication activities of researchers as a core component of a researcher's scientific or academic merit. Tenure, promotion, salary increases, and funding for research are still linked to the number of citations. This trend has given rise to the "salami effect" (the slicing of scientific writing into smallest publishable units) and much of the needless proliferation for which libraries pay so dearly. Libraries are also not helped by academic accreditation bodies' continued emphasis on quantity of library resources, rather than ease of access and quality of service. Some schools are beginning to think in terms of reforms, which might include qualitative assessments and a ceiling on the number of publications that may be considered for promotion; University of New Mexico (UNM) and Harvard are among them. Broader acceptance of these practices may limit the drive for increasing quantities of publications. Quality filtering, however, is not a new idea. Franz Ingelfinger, former editor of the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine, had a tongue-in-cheek proposal for librarians more than two decades ago that bears reexamination: Let us face it. There are good journals, poor journals, and in between journals. In addition, there are hopeless jour-
nals. Although there may be poor articles in good journals, and vice versa, it is, on the whole, not too hard to classify journals into A, B, C, or D categories. Take my own field, gastroenterology. I do not think this field has any class A journals, but there are two sound B journals-Gastroenterology and Gut.... In the field of internal medicine, the Journal of Clinical Investigation, the New England Journal of Medicine, and the American Journal of Medicine might be ranked as A; the American Journal of the Medical Sciences as C; with most of the remaining well-known journals of internal medicine as exhibiting varying degrees of B-ness.... I am proposing that it is the duty of medical libraries and their affiliated universities to classify and label journals as belonging in the A, B, C, or D categories. At first, each library, with the help of a committee from its medical school, would create its own list of good and bad, but I suspect that evaluation of many journals would prove quite consistent from library to library.... Journals, once so categorized, would be displayed according to their rank. With respect to current issues, the A journals would come first, would be most readily accessible .. . B journals would appear on the B rack and so on down. D journals could be relegated to an inconspicuous area, available but occupying space and prominence commensurate with their rank. ... Of course, there would be an outcry, but this is only a matter of custom. After all, we grade butter, we grade baseball teams, we grade hotels, and we certainly don't hesitate to grade people. If we can tell a medical student he is a C, it is high time we did the same to the journals from which he is supposed to learn.... The greatest benefit I envision is that with the passage of time many C and
Bull Med Libr Assoc 79(4) October 1991
Comment and opinion
Table I
Growth Comparison of U.S. Population and Scientists* (in thousands)
U.S. population Scientists and engineers in institutions of higher leaming
1975
1985
215,973 291.4
239,279 396
Rate of growth 11% 36%
Source: Statistical Abstracts of the United States, 1990, Table 2 and Table 1002.
D journals would be eliminated.... What author will want his article to appear in them?. . . Inferior journals, I maintain, would either go out of business, or, necessarily, would strive to improve themselves.... I think that such papers as this should be brief.... Even the short paper should, however, have a message; I hope mine is clear [5].
While librarians may not, even with the strongest esprit de corps, be able to establish an official grading system for biomedical journals, technology is beginning to come to the rescue. I am referring here to use studies. As early as 1960, we were made aware that ... a single article in a highly specialized periodical is of interest to only 10 percent of the workers in the subject area covered by the journal, that an article in a general periodical may be of interest to only 2% of its readers, and that an article in a local publication may interest one-quarter of 1% of the scientists in its field. Other writers have said that intense specialization has made it impossible for scientists to read more than a fraction of the articles in journals in their own field.... A scientist subscribing to a journal is forced to pay for twenty or thirty papers which do not concern him in order to get the one paper he wants [6].
Here at UNM, we are now gathering evidence that this also holds true for a library's journal collection. Like other libraries, we are spending thousands of dollars to put thousands of articles on the shelves-and truly cannot know what portion our users really need Bull Med Libr Assoc 79(4) October 1991
or want. While we can only know this in retrospect, such knowledge can be harnessed to determine what approach will best serve our users. In all but the largest research institutions, pride of ownership must give way to other alternatives, such as efficient and timely access service arrangements. At UNM, we monitor use of our journal collection with our automated library system in three ways: what circulates, what is used in the stacks and reading areas, and what is photocopied. These "use" figures for each title are matched with subscription price to determine unit cost per use. While this approach is by no means infallible or a guaranteed scientific method, it provides useful data toward the total decisionmaking process that governs a journal collection. Trends begin to emerge, carrying out Phelps' observations [7]. Should we maintain subscriptions of even first-rate journals if their admittedly excellent-and highly specialized-articles meet only sporadic needs easily satisfied with a few purchased articles at a fraction of the full subscription and collection management cost? The level of staff effort to obtain a dozen articles is far less than that required to check in, claim, bind, shelve, and house a growing subscription. Providing articles "on demand" through a variety of sources can be viewed as a forerunner to electronic publishing on demand. Automation has provided us with the ability to assess, with a
much greater degree of reliability, the actual use of information. Hence, automation has given additional means of cost containment without creating barriers to scientific communication. I maintain that the initiation of a long-range solution to the journal crisis is ultimately in the hands of the academic community. Until universities, colleges, and their funding agencies undergo fundamental reforms in those quantitative measures of excellence that constitute their value system, publishers will continue to dominate the marketplace of scholarly and scientific publishing. Publishers are keenly aware that scientists are not generally as price-conscious as other professionals, mainly because scientists are not spending their own money. The fact remains, the publishing practices of the scientific and academic communities have contributed to the problem. It seems appropriate to ask that they now become part of the solution.
Erika Love Professor and Director Medical Center Library University of New Mexico Albuquerque, New Mexico 871315686
References 1. GILMAN LB. The scholarly publishing imbroglio: a personal view. Bull Med Libr Assoc 1991 Jan;79(1):88-92. 2. IBID., 89-90. 3. IBID., 90. 4. BYRD GD. An economic "commons" tragedy for research libraries: scholarly journal publishing and pricing trends. Coll Res Lib 1990 May;51(3): 184-95. 5. INGELFINGER F. Austere librariansvolte face! Bull Med Libr Assoc 1967
Jan;55(1):2-4. 6. PHELPS RH, HERLIN JP. Alternatives to the scientific periodical. Unesco Bull Libr 1960 Mar-Apr;14:62. 7. IBID.
409
Accreditation manual for hospitals. Chicago: The Commission. 1991:iv.
23. IBID., 209. 24. STEvENs SR. AMA opposes decision to cut hospital library requirement. National Network 1990 Aug;15(1):1.
25. KING DN. The contribution of hospital library information services to clinical care: a study in eight hospitals. Bull Med Libr Assoc 1987 Oct;75(4): 291-301.
Scholarly publishing Lelde Gilman's spirited piece in the January 1991 issue of the Bulletin deserves additional comment [1]. She takes on the publisher (the CEO of a communication conglomerate with an eye on corporate mergers and large profit margins); the basic scientist scholar who wants "to know with certainty"; the clinician-the provider seeking "access to a description of a high standard of care"; and-last and most certainly least-the librarians, who love people, do not want to make quality or value judgements, and get mad when they can't buy everything anyone asks for [2]. "Now," the writer asserts, they also "want to get even with the publishers for putting them in this awful position" [3]. Gilman wrote her comments to counter the idea of the "commons" proposed by Gary Byrd [4]. One must agree that human nature, alas, is a formidable barrier to achieving such an ideal! I submit, however, that the academic community should not get off so lightly. Our current system of scientific publishing is a supplyside-oriented system-the supply of manuscripts dictates the volume of published articles. In addition, the rate of increase among scientists and engineers in institutions of higher learning in recent years has been three times that of the general population (Table 1). There will be no decrease in the supply of manuscripts; hence, we can hardly expect a downturn in the volume of published articles. However, there is little evidence thus far to support the relationship 408
between the existence of a journal or a paper and user demand for the information itself. Rather, what we witness here is an oversupply created by academic institutions and funding agencies that view the publication activities of researchers as a core component of a researcher's scientific or academic merit. Tenure, promotion, salary increases, and funding for research are still linked to the number of citations. This trend has given rise to the "salami effect" (the slicing of scientific writing into smallest publishable units) and much of the needless proliferation for which libraries pay so dearly. Libraries are also not helped by academic accreditation bodies' continued emphasis on quantity of library resources, rather than ease of access and quality of service. Some schools are beginning to think in terms of reforms, which might include qualitative assessments and a ceiling on the number of publications that may be considered for promotion; University of New Mexico (UNM) and Harvard are among them. Broader acceptance of these practices may limit the drive for increasing quantities of publications. Quality filtering, however, is not a new idea. Franz Ingelfinger, former editor of the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine, had a tongue-in-cheek proposal for librarians more than two decades ago that bears reexamination: Let us face it. There are good journals, poor journals, and in between journals. In addition, there are hopeless jour-
nals. Although there may be poor articles in good journals, and vice versa, it is, on the whole, not too hard to classify journals into A, B, C, or D categories. Take my own field, gastroenterology. I do not think this field has any class A journals, but there are two sound B journals-Gastroenterology and Gut.... In the field of internal medicine, the Journal of Clinical Investigation, the New England Journal of Medicine, and the American Journal of Medicine might be ranked as A; the American Journal of the Medical Sciences as C; with most of the remaining well-known journals of internal medicine as exhibiting varying degrees of B-ness.... I am proposing that it is the duty of medical libraries and their affiliated universities to classify and label journals as belonging in the A, B, C, or D categories. At first, each library, with the help of a committee from its medical school, would create its own list of good and bad, but I suspect that evaluation of many journals would prove quite consistent from library to library.... Journals, once so categorized, would be displayed according to their rank. With respect to current issues, the A journals would come first, would be most readily accessible .. . B journals would appear on the B rack and so on down. D journals could be relegated to an inconspicuous area, available but occupying space and prominence commensurate with their rank. ... Of course, there would be an outcry, but this is only a matter of custom. After all, we grade butter, we grade baseball teams, we grade hotels, and we certainly don't hesitate to grade people. If we can tell a medical student he is a C, it is high time we did the same to the journals from which he is supposed to learn.... The greatest benefit I envision is that with the passage of time many C and
Bull Med Libr Assoc 79(4) October 1991
Comment and opinion
Table I
Growth Comparison of U.S. Population and Scientists* (in thousands)
U.S. population Scientists and engineers in institutions of higher leaming
1975
1985
215,973 291.4
239,279 396
Rate of growth 11% 36%
Source: Statistical Abstracts of the United States, 1990, Table 2 and Table 1002.
D journals would be eliminated.... What author will want his article to appear in them?. . . Inferior journals, I maintain, would either go out of business, or, necessarily, would strive to improve themselves.... I think that such papers as this should be brief.... Even the short paper should, however, have a message; I hope mine is clear [5].
While librarians may not, even with the strongest esprit de corps, be able to establish an official grading system for biomedical journals, technology is beginning to come to the rescue. I am referring here to use studies. As early as 1960, we were made aware that ... a single article in a highly specialized periodical is of interest to only 10 percent of the workers in the subject area covered by the journal, that an article in a general periodical may be of interest to only 2% of its readers, and that an article in a local publication may interest one-quarter of 1% of the scientists in its field. Other writers have said that intense specialization has made it impossible for scientists to read more than a fraction of the articles in journals in their own field.... A scientist subscribing to a journal is forced to pay for twenty or thirty papers which do not concern him in order to get the one paper he wants [6].
Here at UNM, we are now gathering evidence that this also holds true for a library's journal collection. Like other libraries, we are spending thousands of dollars to put thousands of articles on the shelves-and truly cannot know what portion our users really need Bull Med Libr Assoc 79(4) October 1991
or want. While we can only know this in retrospect, such knowledge can be harnessed to determine what approach will best serve our users. In all but the largest research institutions, pride of ownership must give way to other alternatives, such as efficient and timely access service arrangements. At UNM, we monitor use of our journal collection with our automated library system in three ways: what circulates, what is used in the stacks and reading areas, and what is photocopied. These "use" figures for each title are matched with subscription price to determine unit cost per use. While this approach is by no means infallible or a guaranteed scientific method, it provides useful data toward the total decisionmaking process that governs a journal collection. Trends begin to emerge, carrying out Phelps' observations [7]. Should we maintain subscriptions of even first-rate journals if their admittedly excellent-and highly specialized-articles meet only sporadic needs easily satisfied with a few purchased articles at a fraction of the full subscription and collection management cost? The level of staff effort to obtain a dozen articles is far less than that required to check in, claim, bind, shelve, and house a growing subscription. Providing articles "on demand" through a variety of sources can be viewed as a forerunner to electronic publishing on demand. Automation has provided us with the ability to assess, with a
much greater degree of reliability, the actual use of information. Hence, automation has given additional means of cost containment without creating barriers to scientific communication. I maintain that the initiation of a long-range solution to the journal crisis is ultimately in the hands of the academic community. Until universities, colleges, and their funding agencies undergo fundamental reforms in those quantitative measures of excellence that constitute their value system, publishers will continue to dominate the marketplace of scholarly and scientific publishing. Publishers are keenly aware that scientists are not generally as price-conscious as other professionals, mainly because scientists are not spending their own money. The fact remains, the publishing practices of the scientific and academic communities have contributed to the problem. It seems appropriate to ask that they now become part of the solution.
Erika Love Professor and Director Medical Center Library University of New Mexico Albuquerque, New Mexico 871315686
References 1. GILMAN LB. The scholarly publishing imbroglio: a personal view. Bull Med Libr Assoc 1991 Jan;79(1):88-92. 2. IBID., 89-90. 3. IBID., 90. 4. BYRD GD. An economic "commons" tragedy for research libraries: scholarly journal publishing and pricing trends. Coll Res Lib 1990 May;51(3): 184-95. 5. INGELFINGER F. Austere librariansvolte face! Bull Med Libr Assoc 1967
Jan;55(1):2-4. 6. PHELPS RH, HERLIN JP. Alternatives to the scientific periodical. Unesco Bull Libr 1960 Mar-Apr;14:62. 7. IBID.
409
