Both faculty and students want 24/7 access to research, they want it online, on demand and, oh yes, make it free, too.

That is the message behind the breathtaking changes now taking place in the world of scholarly publishing. In a nod to the emerging reality, UC is taking a lead role, encouraging scholars to deposit working papers and monographs into a new free database — "Postprints" — launched in February at http://repositories.cdlib.org/postprints/about.html.

No doubt about it, the market is huge. According to Daniel Greenstein, associate vice provost for the UC system, UC spends $30 million a year on scholarly periodicals. And The Wall Street Journal estimates scholarly publishing is a $5 billion global market.

Beyond the dollars, these are transformative times. Librarians at UC Davis are challenged by the sheer magnitude of the changes — and they point out their mission of serving faculty and students.

"The Web is making it possible for people to access the information in an easier, more ubiquitous manner," said Gail Yokote, associate university librarian for Research Services and Collections. "Before you had to head to the library. Now you can sit at your desk and find it on the Web."

She added, "Our role is to help provide this information" to faculty, researchers and students.

All revolutions come with controversy. Critics say rising subscription fees for journals are blocking timely access to scientific progress. Others say the heightened costs are but a reflection of doing business in an increasingly complex society. Much has yet to unfold, to be sure.

Managing publications

Yokote said Postprints provides scholars with another option for regaining control of their scholarship and maximizing its availability and influence. "This allows faculty important new opportunities to manage their peer-reviewed research publications so they can be accessed worldwide by anyone with an Internet connection," said Yokote.

Still, a legal battle is brewing over the "free Internet" approach. In recent months, lawyers for the Association of American Publishers have sent letters to the university objecting to the use of electronic reserves on the UC San Diego campus. The publishers say that the use of electronic reserves is too extensive, violating the fair-use doctrine of copyright law and depriving them of sales.

UC officials counter that the electronic reserves at San Diego are well within the bounds of fair use. Even so, they worry that the letters portend a lawsuit.

U.S. copyright law offers greater leeway for noncommercial uses like education, but such "fair use" exemptions are not automatic. Rather, courts ultimately must apply a four-part test that balances, among other things, the amount copied and its effect on potential sales. A password can help but does not guarantee an exemption.

Protecting access

The issue illustrates the controversy over access. Yokote noted that practical advice on depositing material and copyright and a guide to self-archiving can be found at SHERPA, or Securing a Hybrid Environment for Research Preservation and Access, at http://www.sherpa.ac.uk/index.html.

"This site is tracking what different publishers are doing in regard to open access issues," Yokote said.

At UC Davis, she said, the library strives to inform faculty about their various options and choices in how they publish and share their papers. The past two years have been especially intriguing. "More issues have arisen and at a faster pace than I've seen in 25 years of service," said Yokote.

One new option is the Public Library of Science (http://www.plos.org), launched in 2001 and bolstered by a $9 million grant from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation. The San Francisco venture aims to open the doors to the world's library of scientific knowledge by giving any scientist, physician, patient or student — anywhere in the world — unlimited online access to the latest scientific research.

K. T. Paw U, a professor in the Department of Land, Air and Water Resources, said that the movement to Web-based systems is making a difference in opening up access. "The shortcomings are that many of the older journal copies are not yet online," he noted.

Another issue is cost. Who pays — the author or library — for publishing in these scholarly journals? Many of the new online journals require the author to pay, Paw U said.

This is a problem for faculty in the social sciences and humanities, where researchers typically do not receive as much grant funding as faculty from the physical sciences, he explained.

Indeed, UC has battled with publishers, like Reed Elsevier — the Anglo-Dutch firm that publishes 1,800 periodicals — to lower prices.

There also seems to be a "cultural lag" in academic departments accepting online publications in faculty merit reviews like they would for traditional paper journal publications. "It seems there's not quite as much weight put on online publishing," PAW U added. "It's the problem of being such a new medium."

Like many faculty, Paw U serves as an editor-in-chief for a journal, in his case the Journal of Agriculture and Forest Meteorology, which is a Reed Elsevier publication. More than 100 UC faculty members serve as senior editors of Elsevier journals and about 1,000 serve on editorial boards.

The relationship between UC and Reed Elsevier has been strained at times. A few years ago UC was paying Elsevier $10.3 million a year for print and online subscriptions to most of its 1,800 journals.

The university demanded a 25 percent reduction, and two UC San Francisco scientists organized a worldwide boycott against a unit of Reed Elsevier protesting its fees. Eventually, in late 2003, the university won a 25 percent price decrease to $7.7 million a year for its 1,200 periodicals.

Others have jumped into the fray. In late 2004, Google launched Google Scholar (http://scholar.google.com), a free service that can search for peer-reviewed articles as well as theses, abstracts and other scholarly material, much of it in scientific fields.

For Yokote, it is too early to rule on the Google venture, now in its "beta" test phase.

"We need to know, for example, what's the distinction between what Google and Google Scholar pulls up?" said Yokote, who would like to know more about Google's copyright agreement, for example.

While the economics of scholarly publishing are "difficult," Yokote said, one day a "sustainable model" will likely emerge to serve what faculty and students truly need.

The trend is clear, however. Electronic distribution is rapidly replacing paper. Two years ago, for example, University of Arizona libraries stopped paper reserves of articles and book chapters and have seen book reserves in decline.

Like Yokote, Paw U says the future of scholarly publishing is approaching blindingly fast. And so it's important to understand the facts and context behind the technological trends.

"We need to be careful and get the full picture about what it takes to run a journal," said Paw U, noting that declining funding for libraries over the past two decades has contributed to spiraling publication costs. "We live in an increasingly complex society defined by a growing amount of knowledge and a need to distribute it."