IUCr Chester, 14 November 2011
Present: Sven Lidin (Chair), Peter Strickland, Manfred Weiss, Ashwini Nangia, Philip Coppens, Gernot Kostorz, Walter Steurer, Brian McMahon
0. Introduction to the journals - history and finances
Peter Strickland began with an historical account of the evolution of IUCr journals, the growth of the professional staff editing and producing them from the late 1960s onwards, and their diversification into distinct sections of Acta Cryst. and additional titles (Journal of Applied Crystallography, Journal of Synchrotron Radiation). The historical development is well described in Andre Authier's review "60 years of IUCr journals", Acta Cryst. (2009), A65, 167-182 [doi:10.1107/S0108767309007235]
Notable events during this period included the split of Acta B during the 1980s into Sections B and C; this was largely driven by financial pressures on the publishing activities of the Union but allowed a significant increase in the overall subscription costs (by ~50%) to restore financial stability, an option not available in current cash-poor times. By 2005, the need to acquire more income to support the rapidly-growing Section E could not be addressed by raising the journal subscription price, which was a significant driver in converting Section E to an open-access funding model. A specific benefit of open-access funding is that income scales as the number of accepted articles increases, which allows for growth. [A corollary to this, not mentioned explicitly in the meeting, is that any decrease in the number of open-access articles leads to decreased income, and one needs to weigh this against inelasticity in basic costs of running the publishing operation - office space, staff complement and IT provision do not scale linearly with output.]
An overview of the current state of business shows that the journals today are financially successful, showing healthy profit margins at a level of ~6000 submissions per year. There is, however, some decline in the number of submissions for the older, more established sections of Acta Cryst., including Acta D, but most noticeable in the case of Sections A, B and C.
The Managing Editor considers the most significant challenges to be: providing a route for rapid publication of timely and important articles; keeping up-to-date with modern digital technologies (in providing mobile applications and suitable social networking services); in providing maximum exposure for the articles we do publish; and in undertaking more effective business development.
1. The respective roles of the Editor-in-Chief, the Section Editors, the Co-editors and the Executive Committee - division of labour and routes of communication.
There was general agreement that the business of producing the journals was a professional one that required dedicated effort, both from the professional staff and the scientific editors, and that it was inappropriate for the Executive or Finance Committee to become involved in micromanagerial supervision of this work.
There was extensive discussion on how the responsibility for effective management of the journals should be devolved to the Editor-in-Chief (EiC). This included the question of whether the EiC should be appointed (as current practice) or should be an elected member of the Executive Committee. Gernot Kostorz was strongly of the opinion that the EiC should be an appointment, because that provided the mechanism to report to the Executive Committee, which had a continuing mandate to manage the affairs of the Union on a day-to-day basis. By contrast, an elected member of the Executive Committee was only formally answerable to the General Assembly (usually on a three-yearly timescale).
The meeting was generally in agreement with this perspective, though there were some counter-arguments for the EiC to be an elected EC member, in part because this conferred a greater mandate for action on behalf of those who had actively voted for the incumbent. Gernot Kostorz pointed out that the EiC had a well-defined job, for which specific talents, interest and expertise were necessary; and that a formal appointment from someone who had worked within the Journals Commission would better target those characteristics than an open election.
There was some discussion on the mechanics of approving Co-editors, and a general feeling that this was in practice an unduly protracted process when the full consent of the Executive Committee was required. It was generally felt that such appointments should be left to the discretion of the EiC and Section Editors. Since these were, again, formal appointments of the Union, they should be ratified by the President (who of course retained the ability to consult within the Executive Committee in cases of concern). The appointments should actually be made through a formal letter of invitation co-signed by the Executive Secretary, representing the IUCr, and the EiC.
There was discussion over the mechanisms for dealing with poorly performing Co-editors, and Peter Strickland and Gernot Kostorz explained how there were effective procedures for transferring responsibility for individual articles to other Co-editors, so that authors would not be embroiled in any difficulties arising from poor performance. This provided more time for poorly performing Co-editors to be handled in whatever way was most appropriate to the individual circumstances. In response to an inquiry about instituting a formal dismissal procedure, it was pointed out that Co-editors did not act under contract, do that such a procedure was unnecessary and inappropriate.
Sven Lidin advanced the suggestion that the Executive Committee formally table an agenda point to meet with the EiC at every EC Meeting, and with the wider "Editorial Board" of EiC and Section Editors in association with each General Assembly session.
The spirit of this proposal was agreed unanimously, but Gernot Kostorz preferred not to impose the additional formal structure of an "Editorial Board", unless there were demonstrable benefits in doing so. He did agree that there were real benefits in having more frequent and more directed interactions between the EiC and the full set of Section Editors (including the Editors of JAC and JSR) to help develop the stable of journals effectively and cohesively, but undertook to address this informally in the first instance through the IUCr's communication tools of mailing list and discussion forum.
2. Content of the IUCr journals. What are we doing right? Where are we missing out?
Sven Lidin presented a brief overview in which he offered the opinion - not generally contested - that Acta E, F, JAC and JSR were performing broadly as hoped. Acta D was reasonably healthy; it had a well-defined remit, high status in the field; but perhaps still had the capacity to publish a larger proportion of the available literature in the field. Acta A had become rather slender. Sections B and C were also smaller than one might wish, but there was a feeling that the relationship in terms of subject division between B and C, and to some extent between these and the other journals, was still somewhat poorly defined.
Philip Coppens made the general point that established journals tended to have a particular flavour that was difficult or impossible to change quickly; and that ineffective efforts to change a journal's flavour might not only fail to attract a desired new audience, but drive away many of its existing supporters.
Acta Crystallographica Section A
Walter Steurer saw Section A as being different from the other sections of Acta in that it did not focus on structures, and was in competition with many areas of physics and the solid-state sciences that were not structural in nature. It did provide the natural home for fundamental research; but as crystallography had become a mature and established science, the volume of such articles was inexorably declining. A good case could be made for including more methods papers in the biological field, but such a strategy would conflict with the high-quality methods papers already published by Acta D.
There was some general discussion that took on the idea that Acta A had always been perceived as the "flagship" journal, and should in some way remain so. There was some discussion of how that might be achieved. One suggestion was that it might be the natural home for particularly novel and outstanding research across the entire field of crystallography, taking on something of the flavour of a "Nature"-style journal. The problem with this approach is the risk of devaluing the other sections, and potentially destroying what status they had managed to accumulate gradually over their lifespan so far.
It was considered that Acta A had perhaps the best opportunity to act as a focus for "emerging areas of crystallography" - relatively new fields or developments. There was, however, also the suggestion that introducing sections with such a title into Sections A, B and C could help to encourage new contributions in the fields most closely aligned with the existing content of each of those journals.
The idea of changing the subtitle of Section A to "Advances in Crystallography" was thought to be a reasonable one, as it retained the flavour associated with fundamental developments, while permitting the incorporation of such new "emerging" areas. It was also pointed out that, unlike several other sections, Acta A did not list topic areas in the black side bar of the journal cover page. Populating this area with appropriate keywords or topic headings (and giving similar visibility to such topic headings in the online platform) might also help to attract new authors from emerging fields.
Among areas that Section A might wish to build up were:
- * superconductivity
* thermal properties
* diffuse scattering
There was also a proposal to include a "Rapid Communications" section within Acta A, that guaranteed very fast review and publication. It was felt that this could profitably be an open-access section (see also comments on agenda point 4 below).
Acta Crystallographica Section B
Following a brief discussion on the subtitle of Section B ("Structural Science"), it was considered best to retain this to allow for the proper spread of acceptable subjects.
It was noted that crystal engineering was a reasonably "natural" field for Section B that was very poorly represented; though it was also pointed out that Acta B had had a strong record of publication in crystal engineering in the early days. Nanotechnology was another hot topic area where Acta B seemed to have missed the train. But there was a feeling that we should still work hard to pull back authors from suitable topic areas who had gone elsewhere.
One approach worth visiting was the revision of the topic areas listed in the black side bar on the front cover.
The consensus was that any further development of Section B should build up its existing strengths as a chemical crystallography journal, and that attractive areas for development included
- * pharmaceuticals
* crystal engineering
* metal-organic chemistry
* possibly republication of existing structures with a focus on
structural results ("perspectives" on past structures)
* real-time studies of solid-state reactions
Acta Crystallographica Section C
For Section C, it was generally agreed that there was still a need for the discursive account of structures that this journal provided and which was absent from Acta E. Nevertheless, the perception, voiced by many authors, that the journal's publication standards set too high a bar was one that was genuinely felt - Ashwini Nangia had been discouraged and sometimes put off altogether by the need for to many rounds of revisions that seemed to encroach on the author's own freedom of discussion. Work was still necessary to persuade the community that "poor" quality structures would be welcomed if the underlying science was interesting and there were appropriate reasons for being unable to acquire a better-quality structure.
It was suggested that one approach might be to encourage the publication in Section C of more structures established by more difficult techniques - incommensurate structures, electron crystallography etc. (where the primary interest is in the structure and not the technique). The general consensus was that the Executive Committee might consider broadening the scope of papers accepted, and perhaps changing the title to reflect this. No alternative title emerged with strong support, although there was a sense that something like "Comprehensive Structure Reports" might be in the right direction.
Journal of Synchrotron Radiation
The number of non-crystallographic papers in JSR was considered a mark of the success of the journal in appealing to a broader community, and there was optimism that free-electron lasers would contribute significantly to its growth. Philip Coppens wished to see the title of the journal changed to "Journal of Synchrotron Radiation and Free-Electron Lasers", and the Managing Editor was mandated to investigate any possible adverse effects on subscriptions and ISI coverage that might flow from such a change.
3. Structure of the IUCr journals: Sections and categories
In many ways the discussion overlapped with agenda item 2, as is clear from the discussion above. Some more specific points are recorded here.
Manfred Weiss thought that the number of different categories was very large, although the Managing Editor pointed out that many were little used or of historical relevance only. Sven Lidin wondered if some way could be found to clearly distinguish between "scientific" and "non-scientific" categories, especially if this had a bearing on citation metrics and impact factor.
There was some discussion of book reviews, and a feeling that Book Review Editors had traditionally been less active than they might have been in requesting books for review. A newly appointed biological book review editor was being encouraged to adopt a more active role, in the hope that this would increase the number and impact of book reviews. There was some discussion as to whether all book reviews might be transferred to Section A, since it wasn't clear what criteria were applied to place a book review in the other sections. But this ran counter to the appointment of the new biological specialist, and did not meet with universal agreement.
Throughout the discussions on agenda points 2 and 3 came the sense that, while some improvements to the structure of the journals might be beneficial, we are still failing to attract authors; and the reasons were not very clear. There is little doubt that Editors can stamp their own personality to some extent on a journal; yet having particular individuals on the editorial board, however eminent or well known they are in their field, does not guarantee an increase in submissions from that field.
Many areas of science where there are active IUCr Commissions do not publish comprehensively in IUCr journals, and there was some discussion focusing on the desirability of involving the Commissions more closely. No clear mechanisms to achieve this emerged, although the role of Commissions in guiding Congress Program Committees was raised, and with it the possibility of being more active in inviting presenting authors at major crystallographic meetings to contribute to the journals. Walter Steurer did proffer the caveat, however, based on such active encouragement from Zeitschrift fur Kristallographie to session speakers, that this might attract a series of articles following such a meeting, but did not usually result in the authors switching their allegiance to the journal in the longer term.
One problem was that many scientists using crystallography - and using it effectively - do not consider themselves "crystallographers" and look elsewhere on cultural grounds. Brian McMahon suggested that there might be grounds for establishing some professional qualifications (along the lines of "Chartered Crystallographer") that allowed such scientists to identify more closely with crystallography as a professional field in which they had formal recognition. Although this specific idea is not in the gift of the IUCr as a non-individual member organisation, it need meet with some approval and suggests that initiatives by the Union to encourage professional recognition might be useful.
Gernot Kostorz suggested that we should ask more of Co-editors - even before they are formally appointed - to generate ideas for raising the visibility of their own fields of expertise. One promising mechanism could be the publication of virtual issues that provided a collection of articles within a single field or related to a single topic (Acta Cryst. C is currently experimenting with a virtual issue on polymorphism).
4. Open access: when, for which journals, and how?
It was felt that open-access funding had worked well for Acta Cryst. E, and that, as scientists, we were broadly in favour of open access as a general mechanism for disseminating the results of research most widely. Nevertheless, it was very important not to break income generation systems that were functioning effectively and appropriately, and further movement towards open access was under continuing review within the Finance Committee. There was some sense that Acta F would be the next logical target for conversion to a full open-access publication model provided it continued to grow in size and impact.
Peter Strickland pointed out that we were anxious that the open-access fee levied on authors should be fair, and that it would be necessary to consider on a case-by-case basis what efficiencies could be made to keep the fee as low as possible without necessarily enforcing a rigid format straitjacket. On the other hand, we were continuing to develop online tools (currently tailored towards Acta F) that could make the authoring of an article easier and at the same time enforce any length or formatting restrictions that were decided upon.
Walter Steurer was keen to experiment with the idea of separate open-access sections of some of the journals; specifically, a "Rapid Communications" part of Section A could be attractive, especially in terms of encouraging submissions in new, emergent areas of crystallography. Peter Strickland pointed out that this idea could only work well if the review procedures were able to guarantee a sufficiently rapid turnaround, and such a project might require a dedicated review panel and/or Co-editors. The analogous "Fast Communications" section that appeared in Acta A in 1989 and 1990 had not succeeded in achieving the necessary rapidity of publication.
5. On-line only
There was also consensus that movement towards online-only publication was desirable and appropriate in the current climate, but that the decision when to make the transition had to be undertaken with thorough study of business implications and advice from Wiley. Among the considerations would be an assessment of whether the levy of value-added tax on electronic-only publications would have a significant impact (early indications were that it was not likely to be very significant, since many journals already charged a print premium on the headline subscription fee). One also needed to analyse whether current print subscriptions were going as additional convenience copies, for example to departments of universities that already had site-wide online subscriptions. If there were many of these, they were unlikely to be replaced by online subscriptions.
However, subject to a sufficiently encouraging business-case analysis, this Committee saw no direct effect of this matter on its remit, and would simply indicate to the Executive Committee that it favoured such a move at the earliest appropriate juncture.
6. Any other business
The timescale for reporting was established: preliminary notes on this meeting would be posted by Brian McMahon on the Committee forum for approval and discussion. The Chair would draft specific proposals for the attention of the Executive Committee by early December, with a final draft submitted in early January, and in any event no later than the end of that month.
Gernot Kostorz emphasised that in order to flourish, the journals would benefit from dedicated promotional activity from a suitably experienced and qualified individual, able to attend many and varied scientific meetings in order to attract individual authors to submit. While this was, in part, the role of the journal editors, he would like to see a full-time staff member able also to carry out this role.