Yuko Nagai
(Secretary-General, The Zoological Society of Japan; Director, UniBio Press)

● Introduction

Publishing a journal — especially editing a scholarly journal — is an attractive job. When I was working for a library, I was in charge of the acquisition of serials. It was exciting for me to see the collection of journals that transforms itself like a living creature. Some years later, I took on the secretary role at a scientific scholarly society, where I was fascinated with its journal with a long history of more than 100 years. I impressed by the faith, pride and joy of many researchers in the journal. A scholarly journal represents the fruit of their efforts, and always stays appealing.

This report is about Japanese scholarly journal publishing in the 21st century and the achievement of the SPARC movement in Japan, which the National Institute of Infomatics started in 2003. All that I include in this article is based on the knowledge and friendships I acquired through this movement. I write on behalf of all those who have been working for the SPARC movement in Japan. Every social movement must involve various kinds of people. I have worked with wonderful people including those who hold high social status and have a deep understanding towards others, those who have brilliant intelligence and make a reasoned decision, and those who make contributions in a level-headed manner. I am just one of many supporters and my contribution is a humble one. This report is written for researchers, editors of scholarly journals, clerical staff and others who are engaged with the administration of scholarly societies, librarians and other persons working for libraries, and people serving scholarly communication, who are true supporters of the Japanese SPARC movement. Readers who are specialists with expertise related to scholarly communication might learn that what they take for granted is explained in this report. Whereas I have observed that researchers, scholarly societies, libraries and commercial publishers who are connected with one another in the present circumstance around scholarly communication do not really know what and how others are doing. Scholarly societies and researchers do not know about the activities of libraries and libraries do not know what researchers pursue. It is the researchers who play the main role in scholarly communication and it is not too much to say that the whole environment of scholarly communication exists to support research activities. Yet, the key players who actually dominate the scene are the commercial publishers. They have brought about the existing convenient digital environment for scholarly communication. Thanks to the Internet, researchers can read academic journals online at their offices. But what is more important is the fact that they can freely read journals like CELL and Nature because their universities pay fees to the publishers and their libraries subscribe to digital journals in the form of the “Site License”. It is urgently needed that researchers, scholarly societies and libraries share the same knowledge about the present situation and come to a consensus on a plan to improve and innovate the system of Japanese scholarly information communication. Now is the time to act. I hope that this report will be of some help for that purpose. Every one of the readers of this report has a role to promote Japanese scholarly communication. The more people who contribute the better. The exchange of opinions and mutual understanding between many people with different backgrounds and specialties will give a sound base on which to build a better communication system. A mature society should be able to benefit from active discussions and arguments.

The purpose of this report is to present the topics listed in the following table of contents;
　1. The characteristics of Japanese scholarly journals
　　　 -The observation of the condition in 2010
　2. The transformation of Japanese scholarly information communication
　　　- The observation of the condition in 2010
　3. The features of the SPARC movement in Japan
　　　- Twelve years since the establishment of the SPARC USA
　4. Scholarly Journal Publishing
　　　- The desirable way for scholarly journal publishing in Japan
　　 　　・Platform
　　 　　・Electronic peer review system
　　 　　・ Business model
　　 　　・Institutional repositor policy
　　　- The response to the Open Access movement

In this report I am intentionally using simple language and avoiding abstract expression. I will also introduce the documents and papers that have been publically released but rarely referenced. I will do this to show how our government has supported scholarly journals in our country and how the latter have responded to the former’s endeavor. Under a rapidly changing situation of scholarly information communication “new words” keep appearing. Thus, first of all, I will give brief definition of some words used in this report to avoid confusion. If there is anything readers do not clearly understand because of insufficient explanation, the responsibility is mine alone.

1) SPARC

2) The Current Situation of Japanese Scholarly Communication

It is the researchers who play the central role in scholarly communication because they examine the contents and keep the high quality of scholarly information through the process of peer review. It is also the researchers who utilize such information for the advancement of academic knowledge. If it is called the cycle of information at the “research scene”, there is another cycle working today in the 21st century. It used to be that scholars exchanged information and knowledge within their academic circles and scholarly societies. Everything was done within those circles. But now commercial publishers have become indispensable players for scholarly communication, even for the process of journal production. It is, therefore, difficult to consider and develop a policy or to implement a new system or measure without consulting the scholars.

3) Site License

A Site License is an agreement that allows only subscribing institutions to access the contents of electronic journals. A researcher who works for a well-financed university or institute whose library subscribes to many electronic journals might sometimes mistakenly assume that most journals offer their contents by free access. I have heard such comments made by researchers as, “All journals are accessible with my computer”, “Our university library is doing nothing” and “Nearly every journal is an open access online journal.” At present, however, the “subscription model” is the basic model offered by major scholarly journals.

4) Institutional Repository

An Institutional repository is a system designed to store digitally and to make public the scholarly achievements of researchers and graduate students in research institutions, including articles, bulletins, and lecture notes. It is also recommended as one of two ways to promote open access. For example, see the site of Joint information Systems Committee (JISC).
http://www.jisc.ac.uk/publications/briefingpapers/ 2005/pub_openaccess.aspx（accessed 2010-04-08）

Also see the following presentation made by Koichi Ojiro, Manager of the information division at Tokyo University Library (as of 2010.04.13). He addresses the duty and significance of a library, and is committed to building the first Japanese IR at Chiba University.
http://home.q00.itscom.net/ojiro/DL_IR_071215.pdf （accessed 2010-04-01）

5) Open Access

Open Access refers to unrestricted online access to academic content. It is ideal for researchers to be able to access to all content for nothing. Open access is based on a business model that is different from free access, which treats costs with disregard. According to “The STM Report: An overview of scientific and scholarly journal publishing” published in September 2009, journals continuing open access publishing of various kinds constitute less than 8% of the total number of journals.
http://www.stm-assoc.org/news.php?id=255 （accessed 2010-04-28）

Online free access journals have existed on the web since 2000, but these had no relationship with the open access movement. They came to be called open access journals in 2004, although it was a strained interpretation. In Japan we have very little concrete information about those journals. Do those journals adopt the open access business model now? If they have kept the content accessible for the purpose of raising the rank of the journal, what was the result? Did they adopt free access publishing because they believed that their action would promote the open access movement? The following list of articles is useful for the readers interested in open access publishing in Japan.

• Kazuhiro Hayashi
　“Nihon no Open Access syuppan katusdo no dokobunseki” (in Japanese)
　http://www.jstage.jst.go.jp/article/johokanri/52/4/52_198/_article/-char/ja/（accessed 2010-04-14）
• Mikiko Tanifuji
　“Open Access Journal syuppann no jissen to kosatsu: rikoukeibunya niokeru gakujutushi” (in Japanese)
　http://www.jstage.jst.go.jp/article/johokanri/52/6/52_323/_article/-char/ja/（accessed 2010-04-14）
　”Open Access Saikou: Naze Open Access journal no michi wo erandanoka” (in Japanese)
　 http://www.nii.ac.jp/sparc/publications/newsletter/html/2/fa1.html（accessed 2010-04-14）

1. The spread of computers and improvements to the IT infrastructure
2. Search by automated bots
3. The increase of content by annual accumulation, which brings about natural increase of access. Graphically illustrated, the number of accesses usually makes an upward-sloping curve or heightened bars.

● Presenting Problems

Following are some important statistics to illustrate our current problem. These will be discussed in greater detail in my report in the next issue. The two pie graphs, Figures 1 and 2, provided by Masamitsu Negishi, show the number of journals published in the world and the quantity of scholarly information produced by Japanese researchers in 20001. What is important is how to evaluate the 3% of journals published in Japan in Figure 2. The number of Japanese scholarly journals is not important, for it is certain that the American scholarly community has a greater effect on scholarly communication worldwide than does the Japanese community. It is more important, however, to recognize that the scholarly information generated by Japanese scholars is a very valuable resource for Japan, which is otherwise poor in natural resources. The point is how we can utilize such a valuable resource, and at the same time reinforce the position of Japanese scholarly journals. The task to improve the position of Japanese journals requires the committment of authors and the journal editorial staff. There are certain measures to be taken, but they cannot be carried out without the strong will and affection for the journals by staff who are motivated by a sense of responsibility to Japanese academics.

Figure 1: Journals in which Japanese authors publish their articles, by country (total 71,300 articles in 2000)			Figure 2: Articles published in the world’s top 3,820 journals (total 596,100 articles in 2000)
Source: Masmitsu Negishi (2004) Kenkyuuhyoka niokeru bunken no keiryoutekihyouka no mondaiten to kenkyuusya no taio. Yakugaku Toshokan, vol.49, no.4, p. 181 (graph modified by author). Based on ISI NCRJ 1981-2002, CR 2000, Science Edition, and Social Science Edition

Figure 3 is a pie graph presented at a conference by Mikiko Tanifuji, General Manager of Scientific Information Office at National Institute for Materials Science. It documents the proportion of major platforms on which Japanese electronic journals publish. Another graph illustrates the copyright policies2 of scholarly societies using J-STAGE, which is the largest platform in Japan (Figure 4). The question about what open access is will often appear in this report because it is an unavoidable issue for those who work in journal publishing. Open access is an important theme for the future of scholarly journal publishing. The question cannot be solved by simply stating that a free journal is desirable. This raises the question as to why the journals marked as “free” on J-STAGE provide contradictory copyright policies.

Figure 3: Publishing in Japan: Academic journals published by non-Japanese publishers Source: Mikiko Tanifuji, National Institute for Materials Science, 2007

		Figure 4: Copyright policies of journals on J-STAGE (total 595 journals as of March 10, 2011)

References

1.	Masamitsu Negishi. “Kenkyuhyoka niokeru bunken no keiryoutekihyouka no mondaitenn to kenkyusya no taio”. Yakugakutoshokan, 2004, vol. 49, no. 3, p. 176-182.
2.	About copyright policy see the site below. Also see the following article. http://scpj.tulips.tsukuba.ac.jp/ (accessed 2010-05-02) “SCPJ Project no torikumi: Gakkyokai no OA houshin no sakutei wo mezashite” (in Japanese), http://ci.nii.ac.jp/naid/110007473329/en/