U-M academics say rising costs of journal subscriptions are hurting scholarly research – The Michigan Daily

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Over the past few decades, academic journals have increased subscription and publication prices across a diverse range of disciplines. According to data collected by the Association of Research Libraries, scholarly journal prices increased by 8.5% per year between 1986 and 2001. This price increase has the potential to hinder the success of future research, as many researchers rely on published articles to guide their studies and prevent researchers from plagiarizing their findings in academic journals. The Michigan Daily looked into the implications of these rising costs and what it could mean for the future of research at the University of Michigan.
In an email to The Daily, Cindy Lustig, psychology professor and senior editor of Imaging Neuroscience, wrote high subscription prices stem from publishers’ prioritization of high profits. 
“Right now the (reason for high subscription prices) appears to be ‘because they can,’” Lustig wrote. “It is where a very large part of their revenue comes from. It does cost money to run a journal – somebody has to pay to keep the servers running, do the copyediting, etc. – but when profit takes precedence over truth, that’s just asking for problems.”
LSA sophomore Chloe Brookes is a research assistant for three social psychology labs and was a research fellow in the Women and Gender Studies Fellowship Program last summer. In an email to The Daily, Brookes wrote rising costs in journal costs have the potential to encourage homogeneous ideas in academia.
“Academic journals offer context for your area of interest and help focus research questions—not to mention peer-reviewed reliable information,” Brookes wrote. “Academic journals, rightfully so, are criticized for their shortcomings involving representation and in their lack of accessibility. Rising costs of these journals will only exacerbate this issue.”
In an interview with The Daily, Public Health psychiatry professor Kara Zivin expressed concern about how publishing fees affect young researchers. 
“I am concerned that students or early career graduates or postgraduates don’t have available resources to cover these fees, so it may lead them to not try to publish in open access journals,” Zivin said. 
Lustig also wrote that nonprofit open-access journals, such as Imaging Neuroscience,  can help scholars publish their work at lower costs.
“For authors, publishing open-access makes their work more accessible to everyone, and doing it at a non-profit journal means that the costs of doing it are much lower,” Lustig wrote. “This also makes it much more possible for investigators who have less funding or are from  lower-income countries that aren’t able to provide a lot of grant support to publish their papers.”
The University has taken steps to maintain access to academic journals. The University participates in the Big Ten Academic Alliance, which leverages the aggregate buying power of Big Ten schools to obtain discounts from publications. Additionally, interlibrary loan services enable the U-M community to access a plethora of material by borrowing from other institutions even if the University does not have a subscription.
Lustig wrote the library’s services allow students to access research in cost-effective ways and emphasized the difficulties of producing academic work without financial support.
“We’re very lucky that here at UM our library has a lot of resources and is able to subscribe to most of the important journals or get papers we need through ILL,” Lustig wrote. “However, at other schools – even very good ones – that don’t have the same financial resources, it’s much harder for them to get access. So that makes it hard for those students to get the information to do high-quality work themselves.” 
In an email to The Daily, Alan Pinon, director of communications and marketing for the University Library, explained the library’s plans to adapt to these rising costs including potentially cutting access to materials. 
“If costs continue to rise at the current rate, the library will likely have to make some difficult decisions that might lead to reduced access to some materials,” Pinon wrote. “In that case, while we’ll certainly continue every effort to borrow from other institutions to meet local needs via ILL and other means, access to some materials will be at least slowed.”
Pinon also wrote that the library has a duty to preserve information for future generations. 
“A sometimes overlooked consideration in conversations about subscription and other library costs is long-term preservation,” Pinon wrote. “The University community needs access to current findings and it’s the library’s responsibility to provide it. We also have to find ways of ensuring that we can preserve the content for students and researchers to come. In other words, the library is always providing for the present, preserving the past, and preparing for the future.” 
Daily News Contributors Violet Boyd and Sachi Gosal can be reached at viboyd@umich.edu and sgosal@umich.edu.

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