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Stanford Report, Feb. 11, 2004 |
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Faculty Senate minutes February 5 meeting TO THE MEMBERS OF SUMMARY OF ACTIONS, FEB. 5 1. At its meeting on Thursday, February 5, 2004, the Thirty-sixth Senate of the Academic Council heard reports and took the following actions: 2. By a divided hand vote tabled the C-Lib guidelines regarding "Stanford's Reaction to Serials Crisis". Upon recommendation of the Committee on Research, the
Thirty-sixth Senate by voice vote, unanimously passed the
following: EDWARD D. HARRIS, JR., M.D. Academic Secretary to the University MINUTES, FEB. 5
I. Call to Order Chairman Wasow gaveled the session to order, but noted that until a quorum was present (26 Senators), no vote could be taken. For that reason, the minutes of the January 22nd 2004 meeting were not addressed early on. II. Standing Reports Part I. A. Memorial Resolution David Glick (1909-2000) (SenD#5533). The Memorial Resolution for David Glick was deferred at the request of Professor Galli, Chairman of Pathology, and will be presented at a later time. Professor emeritus of History and President emeritus Richard Lyman was present to give the Memorial statement for H. Donald Winbigler (SenD#5520). Professor Lyman began, Thank you, Tom. H. Donald Winbigler, who served as Registrar, as Dean of Students, and as Academic Secretary during his 34-year career at Stanford, died of cancer on August 5th, 2000 in Washington State. He was 91 years old. Don Winbigler was one of the last survivors among the central figures of the presidency of J.E. Wallace Sterling, which lasted 19 years and saw the University's greatest progress toward fame and fortune. He was the quintessential faculty-member-turned-university-civil-servant, always ready to take on a new assignment and to work where he was most needed. As the first Academic Secretary, he established the practices and procedures that made his office the Senate's institutional memory and guarantor of continuity, given that the chair changes hands every year. Mr. Chairman, it's an honor on behalf of a committee consisting of Dr. Albert H. Hastorf, Dr. Bradley Efron, and myself, to lay before the Senate of the Academic Council a resolution in memory of the late H. Donald Winbigler, Professor emeritus of Speech and Drama, and longtime Dean of Students. Chairman Wasow thanked Professor Lyman and asked the Senate to rise for a moment of silence. B. Steering Committee. Chairman Wasow reminded the senators that "At our next meeting, February 19th, we'll have the report and Senate discussion on the new Oracle financial systems, presented by Chief Information officer Chris Handley. Also, we will hear the annual report from the Committee on Undergraduate Admissions and Financial Aid. We'll adjourn early, at approximately 4:30, to reconvene in informal executive session in the faculty lounge. Be sure to come to that. III. Approval of Minutes (SenD #5544) http://facultysenate.stanford.edu A quorum had been reached, and Chairman Wasow drew attention to SenD#5544, the minutes of the Senate meeting of January 22nd, which were sent by electronic mail to Senators, and also could be viewed on the Senate Web site. He turned to the Academic Secretary to "...read some changes for your approval that were sent to him in writing." Ted Harris began by saying, "This is really exciting, because it represents one of the first objective pieces of evidence that you all are reading the minutes. I appreciate that. We have the following change in a comment by Professor Palumbo-Liu. The published draft reads, 'I'd like to thank C-GS and H&S for this review. I think it's been fairly constructive. And I'd like especially to thank Judy Goldstein and staff of the IDP, who worked hard to put this together.' We are requested to replace that with: 'I'd just like to thank C-GS and H&S for this review. I think it's been fair and constructive. And I'd like to thank Judy Goldstein, Sharon Long, and Keith Baker. It's been a real pleasure working with them.' "A comment by Dr. Gardner has a sentence that reads, 'Her concern was that a failure of mentoring or supporting intellectual perspectives in this IDP might be more pervasive than realized.' We are asked to replace that sentence with her two sentences. 'Her concern was that a mixed signal was being given to the program, through admonitions to admit students of a wide intellectual diversity while at the same time making sure that a faculty advisor is available to assist the student in his or her chosen course of study. She urged that the program retain autonomy about admissions to ensure that appropriate faculty mentorship could be granted.' "And, finally, to be added after Professor Joanne Martin's comments on the MTL program is a sentence, 'Many departments and units have some ideological positions, but we don't strive for diversity of opinion in all of them, nor should we (e.g., we accept that we have a conservative-leaning economics department and don't try to insert more liberal views.) And in the same way, we should accept that we have a left-leaning Modern Thought and Literature program and not try to insert more conservative views.' "Parenthetically," continued Harris, "I'd like to remind the Senate that the draft notes that appear in the Stanford Report are not similar to a deposition from a plaintiff's lawyer. I encourage you to add changes. And, indeed, if you should suddenly think to yourself, 'I didn't really mean what I said', go ahead and change it. We know that you usually mean what you say, and I urge you also to say what you mean, which is crucial for the editing process." After a brief reference known to a few about Horton the Elephant, the minutes were approved as amended. IV. Committee Reports Part II. C. The Committee on Committees Professor Ball reported, "The CoC has held its second meeting. And from a list of five names recommended by the Emeritus Council to serve as the alternate emeritus representative for the thirty-seventh Senate, I am pleased to report that Professor David Abernethy, of Political Science, emeritus, has agreed to serve as the alternate to Professor Jim Mark. Professor Abernethy will ascend to emeritus representative in 2005/06. "I'd also like to report that we have begun our work of identifying faculty members who will be asked to fill vacancies on various committees. And Dr. David Barrett, Professor of Materials Sciences and Engineering and of Mechanical Engineering, has agreed to serve a three and a half-year term on C-RUM. He will begin to serve that term now." D. Report from the President and the Provost Chairman Wasow noted that "President Hennessy is unavoidably absent from today's Senate meeting, so I'll turn to Provost Etchemendy." Provost Etchemendy had "...two brief but happy announcements. The first is that the President and I have asked Bob Joss to continue for another term as Dean of the GSB, and Bob has agreed to do so. I'd like to ask the Senate to thank Bob for all of his hard work this past five years and to thank him particularly for agreeing to continue." Professor Joss, recently back from Davos and the World Economic Conference, was buoyantly appreciative of the applause directed to him. Continuing with the good news, the Provost said, " My second brief, but happy, announcement is that President Hennessy and I have asked Jim Plummer whether he would continue as Dean of the School of Engineering, and he has agreed to continue for a second term. At this moment, Jim is hard at work chairing the School of Engineering's Advisory Council. But let's get it in the minutes that the Senate officially thanked him for his last five years and for agreeing to continue!" The ensuing applause for the missing Plummer was equally enthusiastic. There were no questions for the Provost. E. Open Forum Grace Chang, the ASSU representative at large, had an announcement. "As some of you may remember, last year the Senate graciously allowed me to give a presentation and we had a very engaging discussion. From that, the Faculty Senate asked the Committee of Graduate Studies to help the Graduate Student Council put together a survey about these academic issues. We've been working on it since then, last April. The survey is coming out next week. The release date is Tuesday. I want to ask the deans to help me promote it. I'll send an e-mail to the deans. I also talked to the Graduate Student Council about it. I ask you to promote this in all of your departments. It's going out to all graduate students in all seven schools. We had support from the Provost Etchemendy and Dean Gene Awakuni. We'd like the departments to support it also as much as each could. I'll also be asking the deans to send out E-mails to their schools." V. Other Reports A. Revision of two By-laws of Student Judicial Charter (SenD#5543) Chairman Wasow called attention to a report from the Board on Judicial Affairs: Judicial Charter by-laws changes (SenD#5543). He pointed out "The by-laws approval process is that the charter operates under a veto system rather than one requiring active approval. Therefore, no explicit action by the Senate is necessary unless members object to the proposed changes. If the Senate has objections, it should express its concerns to the Board on Judicial Affairs by notifying the Judicial Affairs staff. "We assume you've read the materials distributed in the packets in the materials for today's meeting. I now invite Professor Eric Roberts, the faculty co-chair for the Board of Judicial Affairs. He came all the way from England to present these proposed changes. Two guests are in attendance: Laurette Beeson, who is the director of the Judicial Affairs Board, and George Wilson, the program coordinator." Professor Roberts emphasized the importance of having clear and precise wording in the Judicial Charter, and described two proposed changes. "The first is about calling witnesses. We want to emphasize that witnesses cannot just be called ad infinitum, but must be germane to the case and we must give the hearing panel the authority to determine whether a witness has information that's relevant to the case. This proposal has been accepted in our negotiation with two bodies of the ASSU: the Graduate Student Council and the Undergraduate Senate. "The other is that cooperation with the judicial process is a part of the Fundamental Standard. You cannot opt out, as a Stanford student, from taking part in this because you do not like some piece of the charter. It is the governing mandate of all students here. We wanted to make that explicit." Roberts added "One of the things that's been most interesting on the Board on Judicial Affairs this last year has been the extent to which the undergraduate student body and the graduate student body have gotten involved in the process. We put out a number of things that we thought were more or less 'boilerplate' and received long, well-thought-out objections and comments from the Graduate Student Council. Those comments forced the Board on Judicial Affairs to go back appropriately to look at some of those questions and make sure that there weren't objections before we went forward. The Honor Code is a joint undertaking of the students and faculty together. "We believe that both the Board and the University benefited from this process, because the important part of making an Honor Code work is that there must be a sense that the students have ownership over the process. In contrast, there has been some sentiment among faculty with whom I have spoken over the years is that 'if you give it to the students, they're not going to be hard enough.' Well, that turns out not to be true. All surveys have shown that student-run honor codes are not only much harsher in terms of penalizing transgressors, but that they significantly reduce cheating. There have been three studies during the 1990s involving 12,000 students on more than 50 campuses showing that schools with honor codes have anywhere between 30 to 50 percent fewer incidents of cheating. That is very important!" Professor Roberts has been appointed to the Harvard College Visiting Committee. He has found that "Harvard, like most institutions, is concerned about the increase in cheating. They do not have an Honor Code, but now are considering instituting one because of the sense of responsibility it places on the students." He went on to express his pleasure "...that the Graduate Student Council in particular has become so involved in this process; that signals that the investment in the process, the ownership of the process, is real. The effect is one of reducing the total number of incidents." He promised to bring back more by-laws changes later. Professor Simoni had a question about the second recommendation. "It's my understanding, Eric, and maybe this just makes it explicit, but anybody involved in an Honor Code violation has the responsibility to participate in that process. Why must there be such explicit wording for something that is implicit in the Honor Code?" Professor Roberts answered that it was in order to discourage students looking for loopholes to try to escape the duty to cooperate." Simoni also focused on the sentence reading " Non-student witnesses who fail to cooperate may be referred to authorities with appropriate jurisdiction.' Can you give me an example of what that might be?" Roberts wished that he could, but acknowledged that he could not, because of considerations of confidentiality. Chairman Wasow then reiterated that "We do not have to vote on this since we operate by veto and there are no objections raised. I think that constitutes approval by the Senate. B. Annual Report of the Committee on Libraries (SenD#5491) Wasow welcomed Professor Doug Brutlag, current chair of the Committee on Libraries, to briefly summarize last year's annual report in the absence of last year's chair, Professor David Pollard, who was unable to attend today's meeting. Wasow said that all members of the Committee on Libraries had been invited to attend this meeting. Professor Brutlag noted that "David Pollard sends his apology for not being able to be here. His department is interviewing a faculty candidate today, and he asked me if I could present the annual report to you. "One of the issues that we discussed to quite a great extent last year was reviewing the opening and the proposed move of books to the new Stanford Auxiliary Library III, SAL III, which is an off-campus facility in Livermore, California, having a very high-density storage for books which are of very low usage, and it will take only 12 to 24 hours to recover a book if you want one from SAL III. We reviewed the policies of deciding which books would be moved off campus, and we were particularly concerned that faculty, staff, and students were involved in helping to select which books would move and which ones we would keep here on campus. There was quite a bit of discussion. "We reviewed the proposed SUL/AIR budget in a couple of meetings. We wrote two recommendations to the Provost and to the Budget Committee. First, we wrote supporting a faculty salary freeze in order to help minimize the library and other staff layoffs. The library has suffered more than a 34-staff FTE reduction in the past two years; this has resulted in a permanent loss of services, a slow-down in acquisition, and diminished responsiveness. Also, the libraries have reduced the academic technology specialists, as well as the support for the software program CourseWork that is used in many classes. Nevertheless, we felt that it was very important to support the recommended salary freeze in order to minimize further reductions, not just in library staff, but all staff. "The second issue of concern to C-Lib was the reductions in the acquisitions budget for buying both books and new acquisitions. Failure to purchase books and monographs during the year that they're published leaves holes in the collection. And those holes are very difficult, if not impossible, to try to fill at a later year after the books are out of print, and this can become prohibitively expensive. The Provost and the Budget Committee supported the faculty salary freeze, but I think our final budget suffered about a 2.7 percent cut in the materials budget for last year. "C-Lib also reviewed the plans for the new Lane Medical Library and the new Stanford Medical Information and Learning Environment or SMILE. This was presented to us by Henry Lowe, the Senior Associate Dean for Information Resources and Technology. Dean Lowe and the new director of the Lane Library, Debra Ketchell (she also is the Associate Dean of Knowledge Management in the SoM) reviewed for us the plans for SMILE . This is a new high-technology facility envisioned as the center for education at the medical school, with the library at its core. Dean Pizzo has made funds available to improve the Lane Library in the interim while the SMILE facility is being built. I think the committee was very pleased with both the vision and also the proposed improvements to the library in the interim. "In response to the increasing cost of serials, the journals and periodicals, which I am going to come back to in the second item for the agenda, C-Lib and SUL/AIR have encouraged the elimination of duplicate subscriptions to journals and tried to increase online subscriptions, so that they can be accessed over the Internet, especially online subscriptions that permit universal access for all members of the Stanford community. "The C-Lib approved a 'master copy policy', which is described in your packet, in which one library would own a subscription to a specific journal and it would be responsible for that journal, both the hard copy and the online subscriptions, allowing the entire community to access them. "By having the master copy policy and then by comparing journal subscriptions across multiple technical libraries, for instance, Swain (Chemistry and Chemical Engineering), Lane, and Falconer (Biology) had a number of journals that were duplicates. By eliminating the duplication, these three libraries were able to cancel many subscriptions, subscribing only to one copy of the journal at each library, and deciding which library would hold the master copy. And this saved ~$160,000. But altogether, the science and technology libraries canceled 489 titles, for a grand total of $504,000 in savings last year alone! During the past three years, a total of 840 journal titles have been canceled, for a net saving of $854,000. Access to most of these journals is now primarily by going online. However, access to additional rarely used journals is provided by a document delivery service. "One would think that with all of those reductions we'd be swimming in money to buy new periodicals. But that is not the case. There has been a skyrocketing increase in the cost of journals, for several reasons: Increased costs due to publishing and publishers, and increased costs created by the weakness of the dollar against foreign currencies. Many of our journals and periodicals come from European publishers. The Institute for Scientific Information has estimated from survey results that just the cost increase for publications from 2003 to 2004 is going to be about 12 percent." He paused here to take questions. Professor Gardner asked, "Has there been progress made on digital archiving of journals and other serials?" Brutlag forwarded this one to Michael Keller the University Librarian, who mentioned, "There are several projects in formative stages. One is a prototype sponsored by the Mellon Foundation called the Electronic Archiving Store. Harvard and Stanford are proposing to build a digital repository, although I'm having to find the funding for it out of my existing budget. Additionally, The National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program Project for the Library of Congress, with support from the Congress, is underway. And we're a player in that endeavor, which will yield to us resources to do testing and modeling, but not to run the operations of a very large store. If we could, it would give all the students and faculty at Stanford astounding new possibilities for research on information that we've already paid for, but which is encompassed in books which are wonderful and marvelous devices, but quite difficult to penetrate by paging through and using one's eyes and brains for searching. So we're on the course, but there is no good example of one operating now. We think it's important for us to be a major repository, and we see an opportunity for that repository to become an enterprise. I'm sure the HighWire publishers will want to deposit their material into it, as will others. We're just struggling to get it started and to provide the assurance that it will be a very active function." Professor Gardner had a follow-up question. "Do you see inevitable changes in the pattern of the way people are using digital libraries and search engines such that materials that are not digitized the past can be brought into these repositories?" Keller answered, "Yes. Most of the publishers, HighWire for one, are converting the back issues. Most of the 'for-profit publishers' have plenty of money and have been at it already. I believe that we will see the vast majority of the most important journals across all the disciplines, in time, digitized and accessible using various search engines." Professor Brutlag agreed. "We think digital repositories are really going to be the infrastructure of the future. With on-line digital access I can access journals wherever I am, whether at Stanford, on an overseas campus, or when I'm traveling elsewhere. It also provides ways of searching and sorting information that were unheard of just a few years ago. So I think it's very important that our University invests in collaborations like these to build digital repositories for sharing subscriptions and our knowledge as much as possible. Vice Provost Jones asked, "Is part of the reason that we haven't realized that full $800,000 or so that we've recovered by canceling paper subscriptions that there's also a cost for the electronic subscription? And what are the trends there? I know that they've been quite expensive. Is that tending now to taper down?" Professor Brutlag responded. "Institutional subscriptions, especially those that are available to everyone, are particularly expensive. The not-for-profit publishers and the academic publishers have generally used electronic publishing as a way to hold down the cost. For most journals, the cost it takes to actually bring out the very first copy production costs, peer review, etc., is about half the cost of the journal. The printing and postage is another half of the cost of journals. So, actually, the cost of society journals can, in fact, come down. In addition, many journals will provide you with the electronic version if you subscribe to the hard copy." Brutlag responded, "The for-profit companies tend to add on an increase and have even a higher cost for online access, because they know that its availability eliminates a lot of the personal subscriptions, and they don't want to lose these revenues. As a result, they price the online subscription very, very high. Reed-Elsevier is one of the ones that's known for that.... We'll talk about that in the next agenda item." Professor Ball moved discussion from cost to access. She knew about complaints from closing libraries during the inter-term break, and wanted to know if there were plans to continue such closings? Professor Brutlag was reassuring. "We were very sensitive to those complaints. As a matter of fact, we created a survey and asked students, faculty, and staff about the impact on them. Most of the students didn't mind very much [because they weren't on campus]. But the faculty did mind a great deal, because many faculty must prepare lectures for January during that period, and need to have access to the libraries. This year, we kept the libraries open longer. We closed them in the evenings, but they were available during the inter-session break." Michael Keller acknowledged that there were complaints, fewer of them and most focused on the weekend before the new quarter started. "We were open almost twice as many days and hours this holiday period compared with 2002-2003, the previous holiday period." Professor Goldsmith had been "very, very uncomfortable" in her cold office and noted that "...even if the libraries are opened, it's not clear that they are fully functional." The Provost inserted here the comment that "If we kept the library open, we would heat the building, which would mean that the savings would be less for that building. But I don't know that there were any libraries open in buildings that had no heat." Goldsmith sagely noted that, "...if we put a library in our building, then we get to keep the heat on?" C. C-Lib recommendation re: "Stanford's Reaction to Serials
Crisis" (SenD#5540) Professor Brutlag began with the harsh statistics. "...over the last five years in particular some journals have actually increased their subscription rate 50 percent or more. Some of the for-profit companies have had 20 to 30 percent yearly increase in profits on academic journals. Some publishers, e.g., Elsevier (a.k.a. "El Severe"), have combined both huge increases in prices with 'bundling' policies in which they will select a few critically important journals in a particular area and bundle them with a very large number of rarely used titles, and then sell the bundles in multi-year non-refundable contracts to universities. To market these bundles they say, '... this contract will give you many, many articles at a very, very low cost per article.' But the reality is that if 90 percent of the articles aren't ever read, of what use is that? "This has really crippled library budgets across the nation. And I'll just give you one example that's pretty well documented, the U.C. system. This is from the California Digital Library, which we collaborate with. The graph [on PowerPoint] portrays the use of all electronic journals versus Elsevier's portion in 2002 - 2003. For 10 million downloads in that time period, 75 percent of the downloads were from non-Elsevier journals, and 25 percent were from Elsevier journals. Now, look at the total number of titles: 32 percent of the titles that they subscribed to were Elsevier's, while 68 percent were from non-Elsevier publishers. But the payment to Elsevier, $8 million, was half of their serials budget! "Clearly, the relative cost of these titles based on usage, is a factor of two. And this is caused by the great increase in the cost of this contract. U.C. knew they had to renegotiate this contract, because the proposal that Elsevier made to U.C. last year in May was in excess of the entire U.C. proposed serials budget! This created outrage at U.C. You may have seen it in the press. Peter Walker and Keith Yamamoto, Dean of Research for U.C., suggested a boycott of all Elsevier journals. They encouraged all faculty not to publish in, nor subscribe to, nor edit, nor provide any editorial service to any Elsevier journal. "In fact, the U.C. system had no access to Elsevier journals for about six months, while the negotiations went on. A sealed contract was signed in January, 2004. This is not uncommon. Harvard has suffered the same problems and has refused to go along with the bundling contracts. Cornell has complained vigorously as has North Carolina State University. I just heard from Bob Simoni that Duke University has recently canceled $400,000 worth of Elsevier publications. "I hope you can understand that there is a general and growing groundswell against the Elsevier press and their bundling and their marketing policies. "As a result, during three meetings, C-Lib created and reviewed four proposals, four guidelines. Two of these suggest how Stanford should deal with this problem. Two of these guidelines are directed to all of our libraries, and two of them are directed at [Stanford] faculty, to help us deal with the huge increased cost. You also should note that because we subscribe on a title-by-title basis and sign no bundling contracts, Elsevier journals represent 26 percent of our serials budget, although Lane and the Law School library are not included in these figures. On the screen are the four recommendations: 1. Libraries are encouraged to refuse "big deal" or bundled subscription plans that limit the traditional librarian's responsibility to make collection development decisions on a title-by-title basis in the best interest of the community. 2. Libraries are encouraged to systematically drop journals that are unconscionably or disproportionately expensive or inflationary. Special attention should be paid to Elsevier. 3. Faculty, especially senior faculty, are strongly encouraged to withhold articles and editorial or review efforts from publishers and journals that are known to engage in exploitive or exorbitant pricing and instead to work with academically-responsible journals or other means of disseminating their research results. 4. The list of high-cost journals affected by this guideline includes certain journals of high prestige. Appointment and Promotions committees should not penalize candidates who choose not to publish in these journals. First of all, the libraries are encouraged to refuse big-deal or bundled subscription plans that limit the traditional librarian's responsibility to make collection development decisions on a title-by-title basis, which is in the best interest of the community. "Guideline 1 Some bundles that Elsevier makes available to Stanford are reasonable. The access for the Law School of the Lexis/Nexus database is one of these...but Elsevier knows that when these law students graduate and join wealthy firms, they will want to pay the full commercial price for the same access. But what about the less well compensated graduates in the sciences and medicine? Elsevier knows that these graduates won't be able to afford the Elsevier costs, so the University is charged full price. "What we ask is for the libraries to say, '...is this bundle appropriate to my community? Does this group of titles help me support my community of users and reduce my budget? Or does it handcuff me and prevent me from buying other journals that might be more important for collective research?' "Guideline 2 Secondly, the libraries are encouraged to systematically drop journals that are disproportionately expensive or inflationary. Special attention should be paid to Elsevier. "Guidelines 3 and 4 Finally the last two recommendations for faculty. We are recommending that faculty, especially senior faculty, are strongly encouraged to withhold articles and editorials or reviews from publishers and journals that are known to engage in exploitive or exorbitant pricing and plan to work with academically responsible journals or find other means of disseminating their research results. Because the list of high-cost journals has some very prestigious journals on it, we are asking the appointment and promotion committees not to penalize candidates who choose not to publish in these journals." Questions and discussion. All of the Senate was alert and many hands were shooting up to be heard. Guideline 4 received much discussion and the relevant comments are 'bundled' here for coherence. Professor Goldsmith said that "...the last sentence in item 4 is very vague. I'm not sure what that means. I understand the flavor of what you're trying to do, but I think it's very hard to influence something like that. [It will be appropriate for junior faculty to publish in alternative journals] only if there is an equivalently prestigious journal to substitute. Junior faculty won't always have that option." Professor Polhemus agreed strongly with her. Professor Brutlag responded with, "I am an idealist, and I would hope that people are promoted and appointed based on how well their work is known by the people in the field, by the letters that are written, which say, 'This woman or man is excellent, regardless of where he may have happened to have presented or published her or his data.' In fact, if we had a list of comparable impact journals that were available to them, they could then make a wise decision and say, 'I chose to publish in this high-impact journal rather than this one because of these particular guidelines.' " Dean Stipek had "... no objection and I think it would be a good idea to inform faculty in some legally appropriate way of the cost of journals, and to find some way of disseminating the information. I think it's important the faculty know that to form their own judgments about where they want to invest their time and effort. "However, I am extremely uncomfortable with having anything that refers to promotion and appointments. The issue of what is an equivalent journal in terms of prestige is a complicated judgment call for which you will not get complete agreement among different faculty. And I don't think it's appropriate to get into those kinds of issues when we're talking about promotion. There's enough confusion and anxiety among junior faculty about promotion. If we add to the list something like this, it's going to raise all kinds of questions and anxiety that I just don't think are appropriate or necessary. My position is to delete Guideline 4 altogether." Provost Etchemendy was also concerned about the wording of Guideline 4. "My concern is that I think it's misleading and unrealistic if you know what the appointment and promotion process is. I worry that it sends a message that is not only misleading and could be harmful to the candidate, but, in addition, in the context of Stanford's A&P process, there is little substance to it. "Let me explain why I say that. I think that Stanford's process really does look at, for better or worse, the reputation that the individual has achieved in his or her field. And that reputation obviously must be based on the field knowing that individual's work. In some fields, it's going to be impractical to have your work well known without publishing in some of these very expensive journals. Therefore, even if the appointments and promotions committee says, 'We are not even going to look at what journals this person has published in, we're just going to look at the letters from outside,' it can still have a huge indirect effect, because the reputation that the person would have achieved had she or he published in more prestigious journals would not be a reality." Professor Simoni introduced an amendment that Guideline 4 be deleted, for all of the reasons mentioned. He added, "I couldn't agree more. I think this just feeds into the notion that unless you do publish in those journals, you'll be considered unfavorably at promotion." The motion was seconded, and after more discussion, much of which wandered off in the direction of Guideline 3, Professor Simoni's amendment (for which Goldsmith deserves credit, too) was passed unanimously. ___________________________________ Discussion then reverted to the challenge of deciding which journals should be shelved, metaphorically. Professor Granovetter produced a metaphor himself. "There is a precedent here in the form of formularies that managed care providers put out. They list drugs that are both covered and not covered in their formularies, and offer alternatives for those not available in that prescription plan." He suggested that C-Lib and the libraries could compile a similar 'formulary' for journals. Professor Brutlag was interested in this. "I think that's an excellent idea. I will take that back not only to C-Lib, but to the individual librarians who can help work with the faculty making such decisions. And that kind of information could be posted on the SUL/AIR web site." He did acknowledge, however, in response to a question from Professor Mark, "It's getting very difficult to avoid Elsevier publications in biological sciences. It's so bad that some of our faculty in my department have actually been involved in developing new journals, which are more of the 'open source' variety, like the PLOS, the Public Library of Science. Pat Brown in our department is one of the co-founders of that and is developing new publishing paradigms, new ways of dealing with the cost of publishing. PLOS is an 'author-pays' model rather than a 'subscriber-pays' one and may be less conducive to the profit motive." Librarian Keller brought up Henry H. Barschall, American Institute of Physics "...who created a formula and methodology for comparing the cost per thousand characters and the impact factors of journals of physics. He was sued in five countries, including the United States. I was a witness for the defense. In every country, the suits were thrown out, and the publishers suffered. The fact is that this methodology could be applied to any discipline. He showed using that methodology that the vast range of costs, prices, and the value of the impact factors were part of that equation." Keller went on to conjecture that, "If we had time and money - and we probably can get the time and money from a friendly foundation to run those numbers and create the spreadsheets - I think we could show some empirically interesting results... ." Brutlag, Gardner and others liked this plan. Professor Simoni said "I think this problem is really quite acute. It's easy to focus on Elsevier. But the problem is actually quite pervasive among the for-profit publishers. And it's not just the Elsevier bundling, but it's bundlings of a whole bunch of other sorts. The irony of this is just enormous, as Eric Roberts has suggested. Digital publication of research, STM research reports, started at Stanford. Simoni noted that what it did was to provide another kind of opportunity for the 'for-profits' to put stuff together and make still greater profits. Rather than reduce costs, which is what digital publishing will allow, it allowed them and others to put them together and compound the cost. "It's really been, as Doug Brutlag suggested, a real grass roots effort. It's really becoming a revolution. And I think to add our voice to it will be a very important voice. I hope that we'll effect some change." In response to a comment by Professor Fortmann, Keller assured him that the faculty had the opportunity to voice (in advance) discontent with proposals to cancel subscriptions to particular journals. Professor Dutton had a peripheral question relating to archiving within the University the theses that are produced each year. Keller had the answer. "The University has an arrangement with a firm named University Microfilms. The dissertations are ordinarily sent there. We save several copies and catalogue them in the libraries. There's an archival copy and circulating copies, and if you want a hard copy it can be provided. We would like to enter into an electronic publishing scheme for all Stanford theses. But we haven't yet had the registrar join us in that initiative. And we need to have him there. [Alas, the registrar was not at the Senate today to respond]. When Dutton pointed out that if the University could put theses on a PDF file it would be "...infinitely faster, cheaper, and more practical for the University." Keller pointed out that "...we have proposed such a thing several budget rounds in a row, and we're still trying to figure out how to afford doing that, which would not only take care of that issue, but would address the need that we see for all faculty to deposit all published articles and journals wherever they publish them and retain their rights to do so, thus providing savings for the students who buy back from some publishers at great cost in your course packs the articles that you have assigned." Although Dutton would have preferred to have the University send faculty a copyright form that could be used instead of the ones sent by publishers, Keller said that using one's pen to cross out what one doesn't like is the available course of action right now. The discussion then drifted to the escalating prices that for-profit publishers were charging for allowing professors to put their own articles in course packs, and after Keller explained the marketing/pricing logic that these companies used, Chairman Wasow, realizing that time was flying by and there was an additional presentation that needed to be made, warned that discussion time on the remaining guidelines was very limited. Professor Falkow spoke to guideline 3, "...because I actually have taken the action of withholding my services from Elsevier journals for reasons that I won't bore you with. Their response has been to imply that I am senile! But the fact is, however, they did point out to me that there are plenty of young assistant professors who would die for the opportunity to review for them. But I do think that even though I don't like their pricing, I think to imply that they're not 'academically responsible' is in itself, academically irresponsible. And so I think we should say '...and instead, to use other means of disseminating their research results,' deleting '...to work with academically responsible journals.' I think it gives the wrong message." This was proposed as an amendment, and after being seconded, was passed by unanimous voice vote. Nadiya Figueroa, the ASSU President, had "a brief point on the previous discussion about the cost of course packages. From the student's perspective, this is a huge cost of living issue. But it's an educational issue also, because faculty aren't aware of what prices will be for students on these course packets. She noted that students aren't able to afford the course readers at $100 each for five classes for one quarter, for their own professor's work! And I know that's not the fault of the professors." Wasow said there was no time for discussion of this very good point, and urged all faculty to take her remarks seriously and think of options where feasible. The approval by vote of the remaining guidelines was then brought to the Senators. They read: The senate endorses the following guidelines as recommended by the Committee on Libraries, to all libraries at Stanford, to the faculty, and to the departments. 1. Libraries are encouraged to refuse "big-deal" or bundled subscription plans that limit the traditional librarian's responsibility to make collection development decisions on a title-by-title basis in the best interest of the community. 2. Libraries are encouraged to systematically drop journals that are unconscionably or disproportionately expensive or inflationary. Special attention should be paid to Elsevier. 3. Faculty, especially senior faculty, are strongly encouraged to withhold articles and editorial or review efforts from publishers and journals that are known to engage in exploitive or exorbitant pricing and instead to use other means of disseminating research results. There then followed discussion about whether further consultation and consideration within the University was advisable before bringing the resolution to a vote. Vice Provost Jones moved "...to table the vote on the motion." No debate on this was possible, and by show of hands 15 senators voted to table, 13 voted not to table. There was one abstention. The motion carried by majority vote. The resolution will therefore return to the Senate for further debate on this important matter at an upcoming session later in this academic year. D. Committee on Research: Revision/clarification of PI eligibility policy (SenD#5545) Chairman Wasow introduced the Chair of C-Res, Elisabeth Paté-Cornell, and acknowledged the presence of C-Res committee members as guests, along with Ann George (Assistant Dean of Research and staff to C-Res), and Dean of Research, Arthur Bienenstock, a member ex officio of the Senate. Professor Paté-Cornell began. "The document in front of you, put forward by the Committee on Research, concerns proposed clarifications of PI and non-PI eligibility. The intent of this proposal is to clarify the document entitled 'Principal Investigatorship (PI) Eligibility and Criteria for Exception(s).' Our objectives have been, first, to improve internal consistency within the document, and second, to conform the language to the practice. It does not, in the opinion of the committee, represent a change either in policy or in practice. "First, with regard to non-PI roles, that is, associate investigator or co-investigator, the current policy is confusing. In the current document, the discussion of non-PI rules is incorporated into the section called "statement of principal investigator eligibility policy," and, as currently written, the Research Policy Handbook refers only to the academic staff eligible for such roles. "In practice, the use of non-PI titles is at the discretion of the PI and should be subject to the guidelines established by the sponsor and by the norms of particular disciplines. Therefore, in the revised document, we propose to discuss non-PI roles separately from PI eligibility. At the recommendation of the postdoctoral scholar on the Committee on Research, our proposal also explicitly names postdocs in the category of researchers for whom the title 'associate investigator' may be appropriate. "Now, with regard to eligibility for PI exceptions, the current policy is not entirely consistent. For example, in describing who may be put forward for PI exceptions, the current policy initially establishes that such requests may be made on behalf of '...a member of the academic staff or other individual who is not a member of the Academic Council or MCL faculty.' "In practice, PI exceptions are approved in special cases for researchers other than academic staff, including, for example, University staff in special roles, such as the museum director, and postdocs for appropriate career development awards or awards to fund short conferences, workshops, or exhibits. "In any case, eligibility for both the principal investigator and co-principal investigator roles is limited to the Academic Council and MCL faculty. We are proposing no change to this basic policy, but to clarify that the Senate policy applies to both roles of PI and co-PI." Questions and Discussion There was a prolonged and interactive discussion around a concern by Michael Keller. "It turns out that I'm the only member of the Academic Council in the University libraries, so therefore I'm a PI on a lot of projects. It is also true that there are academic staff in the libraries who are not on this list of potential co-investigators and so forth. I'd like to see that designation added to the list." There was certainly no intent, the Senate was assured, to exclude "Academic Staff Libraries" from being associate or co-investigators, Professor Paté-Cornell emphasized, and Dean Bienenstock said, "...indeed, the intent was to include all academic staff." After a number of comments, some dissociated from others, the wording that would specifically include academic staff in the libraries, was settled upon as a friendly amendment to the C-RES report. Section III.A was changed to read: Associate Investigators In circumstances where this designation would be consistent with sponsor guidelines, the PI may designate members of the Academic Staff-Teaching (AS-T, Lecturers and Sr. Lecturers), Academic Staff-Research (AS-R, Research Associates and Sr. Research Scientists, Sr. Research Engineers and Sr. Research Scholars), Academic Staff-Libraries (Assistant Librarians, Associate Librarians, Librarians, Senior Librarians), Postdoctoral Scholars, Instructors or other researchers as "Associate Investigators" on sponsored projects. Section III.B. was changed to read: Co-Investigators Senior members of the Academic Staff-Research (Sr. Research Scientists, Sr. Research Engineers, and Sr. Research Scholars) and senior members of the Academic Staff Libraries may also be designated by their Academic Council or MCL faculty supervisors as "Co-Investigators" on those externally-funded projects in which such senior Academic Staff members (Research and Libraries) carry substantial project leadership roles. It is not expected that this designation will normally be used for Postdoctoral Scholars, instructors or other researchers, although such designation may be used in cases where the researcher is performing in such a role and the designation is allowed by the sponsor. All seemed content with this clarification of the Clarification, and the motion to approve the changes as well as the remainder of the document was approved unanimously. VI. Unfinished Business None VII. New Business - None VIII. Adjournment This happened by unanimous acclaim at 5:04 p.m. Respectfully submitted, George DeForest Barnett Professor, emeritus Academic Secretary to the University
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