Scholarly communication in the digital environment: what do authors want?

Executive summary This report summarises the key findings of a large-scale survey of journal authors' opinions, possibly the largest such survey ever carried out. We report here the views and attitudes of nearly 4,000 senior researchers from 97 countries in relation to what they want from the journals system at a time of change and uncertainty. There is no longer any doubt that the journals crisis is real. Institutional purchasing power is failing to keep up with the proliferation of new titles, itself a phenomenon being driven by the differentiation of knowledge into more specialised and coherent specialties at the frontiers of research. The fundamentals of supply and demand that operate in other markets do not seem to be transferable to journal publishing. Demand is highly inelastic: if you are a scholar in bibliometrics you simply have to have access to Scientometrics. You cannot substitute Information Processing & Management or the New Zealand Library Review. What authors tell us they want from the journals systems reflects a view that has probably not changed much over the past four centuries. They want the ability to target a very specific group of key readers, narrowcasting to those working on similar problems, and they want the imprimatur of quality and integrity that a good peer-reviewed, high impact title can offer, together with reasonable levels of publisher service. The role that journals play in helping to structure specialist academic communities is underlined by the huge amounts of unpaid effort that researchers put into refereeing and editing work. Around 80% of our authors had engaged in peer-review activity in the previous twelve months. Even under the most conservative assumptions, commercial and society publishers are receiving a massive subvention from the research community in this respect. Levels of awareness of the kinds of issues that are the focus of publishing seminars and library conferences are really surprisingly low among the research community. Knowledge of even the most hotly contested alternative business model, open access, is the preserve of only a minority – 82% of corresponding authors claim to know`nothing' or justà little' about this development. There is clearly a need for the publishing community to raise awareness of these issues and to sensitise a largely complacent author population. Interest and understanding of copyright issues is also alarmingly low. Many of the comments that authors made were very hostile towards commercial publishers. Authors are resentful of what …