Principles for Emerging Systems
of Scholarly Publishing

The following set of principles was agreed to by a group of college, university, and library leaders as a result of a meeting held in Tempe, Arizona, on March 2–4, 2000. Sponsored by the Association of American Universities, the Association of Research Libraries, and the Merrill Advanced Studies Center of the University of Kansas, the meeting was held to facilitate discussion among the various academic stakeholders in the scholarly publishing process and to build consensus on a set of principles that could guide the transformation of the scholarly publishing system.…(full text of the Principles document and list of signatories is available at:
http://www.arl.org/scomm/tempe.html)

From the lab to the classroom to industry to the public, the advancement of knowledge through research and teaching is an invaluable contribution made by higher education to the public good. Scholarly publishing is the process through which newly discovered knowledge is refined, certified, distributed to, and preserved for researchers, professors, students, and the public.

The current system of scholarly publishing has become too costly for the academic community to sustain. The increasing volume and costs of scholarly publications, particularly in science, technology, and medicine (STM), are making it impossible for libraries and their institutions to support the collection needs of their current and future faculty and students.…

The participants in the Tempe conference came together with the hope of building consensus on a set of principles that would inform the design and evaluation of new systems of scholarly publishing. The goal was to provide guidance while leaving open to creativity and market forces the actual development of such systems.…

The participants encourage broad discussion and endorsement of these principles by institutions of higher education, scholars, scholarly societies, and scholarly publishers. Endorsement carries with it the commitment to implement local actions that will bring institutions of higher education closer to the goal of providing access to all relevant published research across all disciplines to all faculty by way of systems that ensure dependable management and affordable access to information over time.

1. The cost to the academy of published research should be contained so that access to relevant research publications for faculty and students can be maintained and even expanded. Members of the university community should collaborate to develop strategies that further this end. Faculty participation is essential to the success of this process.
…Containing costs might be accomplished over time within the current configuration of scholarly communication through the effective use of technology to streamline publishing functions, while increasing access and value.…

2. Electronic capabilities should be used, among other things, to provide wide access to scholarship, encourage interdisciplinary research, and enhance interoperability and searchability. Development of common standards will be particularly important in the electronic environment.
Searching, navigation, and linking across titles and across disciplines is essential since many disciplines have multiple titles that serve them and many problems have multidisciplinary aspects….

3. Scholarly publications must be archived in a secure manner so as to remain permanently available and, in the case of electronic works, a permanent identifier for citation and linking should be provided.
… Electronic publishing adds yet another set of complex issues to the archiving and preservation of scholarly works. With libraries no longer owning copies and with the fragility of the electronic media, questions of what should be archived by whom and how are critical issues.…

4. The system of scholarly publication must continue to include processes for evaluating the quality of scholarly work and every publication should provide the reader with information about evaluation the work has undergone.
… Any evolving system of scholarly publication should allow for an evaluation process to take place as appropriate and should provide a transparent mechanism that informs the reader—an expert, a student, the public—of the nature of the evaluation the work has undergone in its various versions.

5. The academic community embraces the concepts of copyright and fair use and seeks a balance in the interest of owners and users in the digital environment. Universities, colleges, and especially their faculties should manage copyright and its limitations and exceptions in a manner that assures the faculty access to and use of their own published works in their research and teaching. …
If the academic community is to achieve its mission of advancing knowledge, it is critical that faculty authors retain the rights to use their own works in their teaching and in subsequent publications.

6. In negotiating publishing agreements, faculty should assign the rights to their work in a manner that promotes the ready use of their work and choose journals that support the goal of making scholarly publications available at reasonable cost.
… All faculty members should know the cost of journals to libraries and should consider refraining from submitting their work and assigning copyright to expensive journals when high-quality inexpensive publication outlets are available.…

7. The time from submission to publication should be reduced in a manner consistent with the requirements for quality control.
…If published scholarship is to be a useful building block, it is imperative that the lag between submission and publication be shortened as much as possible for each field.…

8. To assure quality and reduce proliferation of publications, the evaluation of faculty should place a greater emphasis on quality of publications and a reduced emphasis on quantity.
…Faculty in research institutions should base their evaluation of colleagues on the quality of and contribution made by a small, fixed number of published works, allowing the review to emphasize quality.…

9. In electronic as well as print environments, scholars and stu-dents should be assured privacy with regard to their use of materials.
The digital environment, in particular, makes it very easy to obtain data on users and use patterns, information that can have great marketing appeal. It is incumbent on the academic community to assure the privacy of individual users….