On July 23, at the Japanese Society for Artificial Intelligence, I was a panelist in a symposium with the provocative title “The Vanishing Scientific Associations.”1, 2 I would like to report here on some thoughts prompted by this topic, for when we look at the future of scientific journals in Japan, it makes no sense to discuss them in a vacuum, without considering the state and the purpose of the associations that created them.

• Scientific Associations

In preparing for the panel discussion, I asked myself: (1) Are scientific associations really vanishing? (2) Can we do without them? (3) What, if anything, could take their place?

I introduced myself by saying that, like the other panelists, I was a member of a dozen scientific associations in Japan and overseas (covering a wide range, in my case, from physics to engineering) and that I have been struck by the very different business models adopted in the United States and Japan. First, I pointed out that no other country is talking about its scientific associations vanishing. Scientific associations in the US aim to grow and renew themselves by turning into global associations, while in the fast-growing Asian nations and developing countries, scientific associations are part of the driving force transforming their societies, just as they were in postwar Japan. They may be discussing how to foster their growth, but they are certainly not fretting about their vanishing. The question has arisen in Japan because we have scientific associations that are more or less as old as their Western counterparts and that have contributed greatly to the advancement of learning, science, and technology in this country, and what we must ask ourselves now is how to maintain levels of scientific learning, activity, and publishing that will continue to rank beside those of the US and Europe.

To say that scientific associations are vanishing begs the question “What exactly is a scientific association?” Here, I would like to draw attention to a peculiarity of human perception: we are attuned to noticing small changes, or differences between, say, Japan and other countries, but we become habituated to things that are always there. Yet, like life-sustaining air and water, some of the most important things are always there. The public evaluates the work of scientific associations by looking at their “products” of doing science, but computers, robots, and new materials are just that, products. They do not represent the actual work. As any researcher knows, the actual work goes on quietly and cumulatively in the background. Researchers feel they are laying new stones as part of a great edifice built over the ages by those who came before. The true value of the work that scientific associations support will be recognized only if we researchers give it due recognition. Before we worry about how others see it, we need to stop and think about the value that we ourselves assign to the work of scientific associations.

To get to the essence of what a scientific association is, we need to analyze some good examples. I therefore took several undeniably successful cases, such as the American Physical Society (APS), the Optical Society of America (OSA), the Physical Society of Japan (JPS), and the Japan Society of Applied Physics (JSAP), and analyzed the essence and the business model of each one. All have a long history of supporting the advancement of learning in their fields. Each began as a spontaneous gathering of barely a hundred or so researchers. This essentially private character, this self-organization by researchers themselves, is common to scientific associations around the world. They played an important role in the twentieth century, the age of science and technology when the work of scientists rewrote human history, and as a result their value to society has risen, but so have society’s demands on them. In the panel discussion, I summarized these trends as follows:

“Scientific associations are essentially private organizations of experts in a given field who meet to exchange information in their research area and disseminate it to the public. But because this content—scientific learning or science—has a high social value, these private entities are recognized everywhere in the world as ‘public’ and are respected and protected by society. In Europe, especially, the state has historically sponsored scholarship as a fundamental part of national culture, and the lives and legacies of scientific giants have helped shape cultures and national identities. In Europe, scientific learning is culture, pure and simple; there is no haggling over its utility or practical value. Even in the United States, with its different history, scientific associations are recognized as highly public entities, because scholarship, science, and technology are seen as inherently contributing to society, and scientific associations are valued because they offer public access to these things rather than walling them off for private gain.”

“As independent private bodies, scientific associations receive almost no state subsidies but support themselves by their own earnings, while accepting donations from the public. Scientific associations in the United States, however, are very clear on the fundamental point that they exist for the sake of their members, and this basic principle has propelled American scientific societies to become global scientific societies.”

Japan’s scientific associations were organized on the same principles. In the twentieth century, operating as independent bodies, they were the only non-Western associations whose achievements ranked with those of their Western counterparts, and they played a major part in furthering the nation’s education and industry. Today, it may look as though international scientific competition has been suddenly unleashed by the growth of digital publishing technology and online delivery of information, but in many scientific fields there was already intense international competition before the Internet era. In fact, we should view these recent technical developments as a boon to scientists who want to inform the world of work done in Japan, considering how hard it was for our elders, before the Internet, who not only published excellent journals with no way to distribute them overseas, but who then, to maintain contact with their international colleagues, had to laboriously send them complimentary reprints through the mail. Of course, there is another side to competition, and researchers are well aware that, by intensifying its impact, these boons to communication have increased the risk that national scientific associations will be swallowed up by international scientific and science-publishing organizations.

Some people see nothing wrong with this. If science consists of increasing the sum of human knowledge, together with recording, storing, and circulating it, then working within national borders can seem meaningless. And it is probably true that, these days, to become part of the intellectual property of humanity, a thing must first be recognized internationally. On the other hand, let us not forget that the scientific world runs on a rather different principle than society in general. In the sciences, a field in which most researchers agree and are pulling in the same direction could be called mature, but it could also be called moribund. Quantum leaps and revolutionary breakthroughs have always been made by the few. If it is minority opinions that revolutionize science, it is not necessarily an encouraging sign when the organizations that support scientific work begin to merge and lose their distinctive character.

The term “ethnocentric” has negative connotations, linked as it is with narrow-minded nationalism and the oppression of other groups. Yet there is a positive aspect to what might be termed “self-affirmation,” since an ethnic minority can gain the strength to survive in a tough environment by affirming its love for its own society, culture, and way of life. The frozen tundra is as dear to the Eskimos as our landscape and climate are to us; that is how humanity manages to survive in all its diversity. When it comes to cultural differences, common standards are irrelevant. Then, does it really aid scholarly work or scientific progress to assess a scientific association—an organization that supports culture—with a seemingly objective yardstick? I am faced with this fundamental doubt whenever I think about the essence of scientific associations. There is no point in making invidious comparisons. Though everyone else might think a certain association is a smug little club of mediocrities, it might, in fact, be fulfilling the true purpose of a scientific association if its members believe in themselves and pursue their own calling—even if, to an outsider, the place looks as uninviting as the frozen tundra. What matters is not the size of the membership, but the capacity to innovate. This means that even an association with a small membership may be moribund if it clings to old ways and never tries anything new.

Self-affirmation is necessary in the scientific world, too. Overemphasizing the objectivity of science does nothing to further science. Certainly, competition in scientific research should be fair, but that does not mean bowing to the view of the greatest number in the name of fairness and objectivity. Society in general reaches a consensus by taking the majority view to be the nearest approximation to the truth, but majority decisions are not always a shortcut to scientific truths. In fact, it is in the nature of scientists to suspect some fundamental flaw in what everyone takes for granted and to set out to discover the real truth. Thus, when we judge scientific associations and their journals, our criterion must always come down to how much they contribute to scientific work and to science.

• Scientific Associations and Their Business Models

I belong to nine scientific associations in Japan and three overseas, and I know that the Japanese associations, large and small, are doing their best under the circumstances. Dedicated people, including the office staff and publishing organizations, are working to stimulate scientific activity. And yet it is difficult to be sanguine about the future, given the way that Japan’s scientific associations operate at present, because behind the success of the US associations that are thriving and increasingly dominating the world is the fact that they operate as businesses, with their own business models. It is very clear from Figure 1, which shows the income and expenditure of APS, that journal publishing supports this model, i.e., that journal publishing earns the revenue to support APS’s activities. Only by using journals as its major source of income can APS develop its activities on a global scale. In the same way, journal publishing is the only large, steady source of revenue that any of the global associations have.

Figure 1: The income and expenditure structure of the American Physical Society, whose business model consists of funding its activities by journal publishing

Surprisingly, perhaps, Japan’s researchers and engineers have the world’s highest rate of membership of scientific associations. To take the field of physics as an example, APS has a large membership, slightly more than 40,000, but because it is now a completely global association, only one-third of those members are in the United States; one-third are in Europe, one-third in Asia and other regions, and the Asian membership is increasing. By comparison, the PSJ alone has over 17,000 members; proportional to population, this translates to a rate of association membership over three times that of American physicists. And that is not even counting the JSAP. Clearly, Japan’s physics societies have a remarkable track record that should be a model for the rest of the world. Yet even associations with high membership rates and excellent, well-attended programs of conferences and lectures cannot compete globally and win on that basis alone. For the fact is that researchers are now competing in an international market where the boundaries between national associations and even between nations have practically no meaning.

If I may digress a little: In discussions of the journal issue, because it is so important, official positions tend to be stated and it becomes difficult to speak one’s mind. I am told that SPARC Japan was created as a forum for publishers and libraries to speak freely, and I believe that society publishers and libraries in Japan share the same goals with regard to scientific publishing: they want to see Japanese researchers thrive, announce their results proudly to the world, and expand their influence. The two sides are, I am fairly sure, agreed on this. So let me ask librarians: surely you do not want a future in which Japanese researchers, in twenty years’ time, will be dependent on overseas journals to publish their findings? SPARC Japan has endeavored to break the monopoly of overseas publishers and create an environment where we can read journals at a fair price. But surely their ultimate aim was not just to deal with soaring journal prices, but to revitalize Japanese researchers’ own work?

A neutral observer would probably say that low-quality journals should be weeded out and that librarians must feel frustration at the failure of Japanese associations to publish world-class journals. But I would like to point out that there is more going on in the scientific community than meets the eye if we look only at the journals to which libraries subscribe. Those journals, in which professional researchers publish their work, are the most visible end product, but along the way there are many less visible publications—domestic journals, seminar materials, collected abstracts from scientific conferences, and so on—which provide a training ground for students, supply information to engineers, and strengthen the nation’s industries. These would score low on an index like the Impact Factor, and much of their content has already been published in some other form. But the research results that appear in international journals would not exist without them. The work of fostering research in its infancy and tending the seed beds falls to the scientific associations. And this can never be a profitable business. Many of the activities that, in Japan, go under the name of research seminars, lecture meetings, and so on correspond to “social programs” or “educational programs” of the international scientific associations. Perhaps the time has come for SPARC and the libraries to aim to do the same.

• Symmetry between Academic Publishing and Subscriber Access

Turning now to the circulation of scientific papers: in Japan, scientific associations handle the publishing and university libraries the subscriptions. There is a symmetry here between two aspects of scholarly communication, both indispensable to scientific work, yet society publishing is viewed as a private activity of groups of researchers, while the libraries’ work is seen as public in nature. Thus, journal subscriptions are paid for by the libraries with public funds, while publishing costs are covered partly by the authors and partly by the subscriber libraries. As the authors’ share is, in effect, public money too, because it comes out of research grants, we can say that journal publishing is supported by public funds in the form of research grants and subscriptions. From the taxpayer’s point of view, the total cost of supporting scientific work is the same, regardless of the route. However, the way we subscribe to articles has been affected more than the way we publish them by the advances in Internet technology and electronic data storage. I suggest that, to help revitalize scientific activity in Japan, the two types of organization that symmetrically underpin scientific publishing—society publishers and libraries—should collaborate symmetrically toward a common goal.

Figure 2: How a scientific association and a library support the same researchers

Figure 2 shows the symmetrical relationship between scientific associations and university libraries as they support researchers in all their roles, including those of author and reader. The associations and the libraries complement each other, and each observes a different side of the researcher. If they are to have a fruitful discussion, they need to recognize clearly how those views differ. A society publisher sees researchers as essentially being in search of new knowledge. Meanwhile, researchers are struggling to have their work recognized as original by their peers. This may not always be easy. Their fate is in the hands of overseas journals, and they may not always feel they have been treated justly, but it is difficult to say anything because of the prevailing view that truly outstanding work will be recognized overseas. Rather than complain and risk sounding like a sore loser, they redouble their efforts. If that is what brought scientific activities in Japan to where they are today, it is not an entirely bad thing. At the same time, from the viewpoint of the American and European researchers who have created first-rate scientific journals and volunteered their time as peer reviewers, it is only natural to expect to be treated well, and if we don’t like it, there’s nothing for it but to create our own first-rate journals.

University libraries, on the other hand, see researchers as readers looking for trends in the stream of information emerging from their field. Viewed in this light—as gleaners of meaningful information for their own use—they are not unlike the general reader, and being expert in a particular field does not necessarily make them better at analyzing the information objectively and grasping trends. Of course, it takes specialized knowledge to interpret a scientific paper, and this is the researchers’ strong suit, but by the same token they are liable to fall into a kind of tunnel vision, failing to notice an error that even an amateur could spot, or pursuing research that goes against basic principles. Few researchers are actively interested in and involved with the infrastructure of scientific research, including scientific publication. Most accept that infrastructure as a given and concentrate on maximizing their own results within it. Even so, as readers of scientific journals, professionals who make their living doing research are alert to trends and sensitive to worldwide tendencies. Librarians and information analysts can maintain somewhat more distance and objectivity because they are not in the thick of the action. It is not a question of one being right and the other wrong: they complement each other. The two sides need to exchange information unreservedly in order to grasp the constantly changing big picture of scientific information, from production to distribution, and they need to think together about how to raise the level of Japanese research. They will know they are getting it right when they see research work become more active. Even the most detached judgments will be wrong if their effect on Japanese research activity is negative. An accurate analysis that leads to national ruin is useless. Something must be done to revitalize science, because if resource-poor Japan is to continue its course as a nation founded on culture, we have no choice but to build up our fundamental soundness through scientific activity. To that end, it is vital that scientific associations and libraries should work together to find solutions.

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