American Journal of Botany 91(12): 1945–1948. 2004.
AMERICAN JOURNAL OF BOTANY AT 90:
A LIBRARIAN PERSPECTIVE
LORRAINE J. PELLACK2
Head, Science & Technology Department, Parks Library, Iowa State University, Ames, Iowa 50011-2140 USA
The American Journal of Botany (AJB) is available on the shelves of most college and university libraries in the U.S., as well as
in many faculty offices, and in research libraries affiliated with botanical gardens. This article presents information on how librarians
view AJB, the role that scientific associations play in the perceived quality of the journals they publish, the unique nature of botany
literature (compared to other sciences), AJB as a core journal, and a general discussion of the factors that influence librarians decisions
when deciding to cancel a subscription or keep a journal in their collection.
The American Journal of Botany (AJB) began in 1914 with
the support of the Botanical Society of America (BSA) and
the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. It was founded at the urging of
F.C. Newcombe (Pollack and Bartlett, 1928) who felt that bot-
any journal editorial offices were ‘‘over-stocked with manu-
scripts’’ and there were insufficient publication outlets for
American botanical research (Newcombe, 1914). Over time,
there have been a number of changes to the journal, both in
physical size and in content but the journal continues to fill a
niche in the scientific literature. AJB is currently available on
the shelves of most college and university libraries in the U.S.,
as well as in many faculty offices, and in research libraries
affiliated with botanical gardens. Librarians tend to notice a
particular journal:
● when the subscription cost increases dramatically
● when it changes title
● when an unusual issue arrives (e.g., has CD, supplement,
or accompanying material)
● when journal issues have difficulty arriving on a timely ba-
sis
● when patrons are having difficulty locating a particular ar-
ticle based on a citation irregularity such as a supplement
with separate pagination
● when patrons come to the reference desk with a cryptic
journal name abbreviation that they need help to decipher
● when patrons have difficulty locating volumes of the journal
because they are constantly in use
● with high cost per usage ratios.
All of these events form an overall opinion in librarians’
minds concerning the worth of a particular journal but, by far,
the most critical event is a significant price increase.
JOURNAL PRICING CRISIS IN LIBRARIES
Starting about 20 years ago, librarians began quietly com-
plaining (to each other and their administrators) about the
growing imbalance between scholarly output and the library
budget resources necessary to collect this output. However, it
wasn’t until the 1990s that the crisis became much more pro-
nounced and librarians were able to bring it to the notice of
university administrators and faculty as a serious issue in need
of attention. Much of the attention resulted from the need for
multiple and, in some cases, annual journal cancellation pro-
1
Manuscript received 24 February 2004; revision accepted 9 September
2004.
2
E-mail: pellack@iastate.edu.
1945
jects in almost every library in the country. The scientific com-
munity, in particular, has been hit the hardest by this crisis.
For an excellent overview of the journal pricing issues and
the scholarly publication process see Branin and Case (1998).
As a result, librarians have become compelled to retain only
the most necessary journals and cancel subscriptions to pe-
ripheral journals. Journals that fall in between these two ex-
tremes have been retained depending on the state of an indi-
vidual library’s budget. Botany journal subscriptions have
been a struggle for all libraries to retain in tight budget eras,
but especially so in universities without an agriculture pro-
gram.
FACTORS THAT INFLUENCE LIBRARY DECISIONS
Methods of journal evaluation will vary from campus to
campus, depending on several different factors. Journal usage
statistics are considered by most librarians to be the quintes-
sential piece of information (e.g., see Enssle and Wilde, 2002);
however, no one method will guarantee that absolutely all uses
will be captured. At best one can determine the relative extent
of a given kind of use as compared to other journals (e.g, see
Edelman, 1994; Blecic, 2002). Unfortunately, in larger librar-
ies this sort of data is almost impossible to collect universally
due to the enormous amount of time it would take to collect
it for all active subscriptions. Some libraries have created spe-
cial short-term projects to collect data on a select group of
journals—typically considered for this are high price journals
or journals dealing with peripheral subjects. Other libraries
rely on cost and impact factor analysis (e.g., see Cornell Uni-
versity, 1998). Online usage data is also helpful but not always
available from publishers. Some libraries also conduct exten-
sive cost per usage studies. Some, such as Iowa State Univer-
sity, request faculty input into the process (Madison, 1999)
while others do not. In general, every librarians goal is to keep
the journals which support the undergraduate, teaching and
research needs of the institution while still maintaining an ad-
equate budget for other needs such as database purchases,
books, staffing, computer equipment, etc.
Core journals exist in each discipline and are usually con-
sidered to be essential to keep, regardless of other factors,
unless librarians are faced with an overwhelming price in-
crease or a major budget reduction at their institution. Agree-
ing on a core list can sometimes be as difficult as getting
agreement on a university program-ranking list. ‘‘The problem
is, no study is ever definitive. Other researchers take issue with
the methodology to claim that the results are not accurate,
1946 AMERICAN JOURNAL
authoritative, or timely . . . clearly judgement is a crucial el-
ement in core lists’’ (Corby, 2003). On occasion, such lists are
published and librarians do use them in making journal reten-
tion decisions or as a basis from which to begin, adding other
factors to form a ‘‘local’’ core list (Hughes, 1995).
As alluded to above, although high impact factors are not
necessarily the only factor used in creating lists of core jour-
nals in botany, in recent years they have become increasingly
important to librarians as the beginning point for identifying
possible journals for cancellation. One of the reasons for this
is that most librarians do not have educational degrees in the
sciences. College and university librarians usually have a Mas-
ter’s degree in Library and Information Science, but only 20%
have undergraduate degrees in biology, 8.9% have earned an
additional master’s degree in a science or engineering-related
discipline, and an additional 8.9% have earned doctorates in
science-related disciplines (Winston, 2001). There is no figure
for those specifically trained in botany, but it is very likely be
around 5% or less. Librarians are trained to know the basics
of evaluating journals and using information on local academic
specializations to form the basis of purchasing decisions re-
lated to library collections. They rely on outside experts (fac-
ulty at their university, published articles and books, etc.) to
aid them in identifying core journals in a given discipline.
HOW DO SOCIETY PRESS PUBLICATIONS RATE?
Historically, librarians have preferred non-profit society and
academic press journals over those from commercial publish-
ers. ‘‘Professional, scientific, and technical societies, for ex-
ample, tend to emphasize basic research and the more tech-
nical aspects to a subject, while industrial and trade associa-
tions lean toward the practical, personal, and popular side. So-
cieties, too, almost uniformly make use of highly qualified
subject experts, called referees, to evaluate critically all orig-
inal contributions before they are published, thus imparting
reliability, authoritativeness, and prestige to their publications’’
(Bonn and Smith, 2002, p. 101). Journal pricing comparisons
also tend to favor society publications heavily as being con-
siderably cheaper than most commercially-produced journals
despite a lack of widely-published journal pricing compari-
sons. The reason for this lack is that Henry Barschall pub-
lished an article in 1986 analyzing the cost of physics journals.
Gordon & Breach (a commercial publisher) sued Barschall,
the American Institute of Physics, and the American Physical
Society over the published study. One U.S. court and two of
three European courts supported Barschall’s findings; however,
few recent authors have been willing to undergo publisher
scrutiny and publish similar pricing studies. (A summary of
the litigation, reprints of the original published study, and
press releases from the parties involved are available on the
Internet from both Stanford University and Yale University
Libraries websites, 1997.)
Not all societies are golden. On rare occasion, librarians
take exception with particularly vexing society presses. For
example, Jasper Schad gives a rather scathing view of scien-
tific society publishers and takes issue with journal pricing
from the American Chemical Society and American Physical
Society (Schad, 1997).
Society journals are often crucial for libraries to retain in
order to maintain accreditation. For example, the American
Chemical Society (ACS) publishes Library Guidelines for ACS
Approved Schools that provides a recommended journal sub-
OF BOTANY [Vol. 91
scription list for undergraduate programs. While it seems bi-
ased to have ACS journals appear on the list, not all ACS
journals are on the list (e.g., Nano Letters) and some are more
highly recommended than others. It is an established list of
journals that accrediting bodies use in examining programs
and that librarians are made aware of if they consider cancel-
ling certain chemistry journals. There is no corresponding list
for botany, so librarians are left to construct their own core
lists in this field.
AJB AS A ‘‘CORE’’ JOURNAL
Time and again, AJB has been reaffirmed as an essential
journal in botany. AJB was listed as the most highly cited
botany journal in both 1944 and 1954 (Brown, 1956, p. 124
and p. 182). In the 1970’s, AJB slipped down in the journal
rankings with the sudden popularity of plant physiology jour-
nals. AJB was #15 on the botany journal impact factor list
(Garfield, 1975a) but continued to appear on lists of significant
botany journals (Garfield, 1977, 1980a). By 1992, ‘‘Two [gen-
eral botany] journals dominate the impact factors: The Amer-
ican Journal of Botany from the Botanical Society of America,
and the New Phytologist from the British branch of Academic
Press . . . The American is the most ecological and evolution-
ary, while the New Phytologist is the most physiological . . .
Because of its sponsorship and high quality, most librarians
will have to select the American Journal first. The remaining
picks can follow either a more general or a more physiological
emphasis according to institutional needs’’ (Stankus, 1992, p.
248–9). In 1996, AJB was included in a list of 54 core plant
science journals (Davis and Schmidt, 1996, p. 45) and was
described as ‘‘One of the leading botanical journals.’’ In the
introductory section, the authors state that they included the
‘‘most significant contemporary journals of botany that are key
to a wide range of botanical interests.’’
In the last 5 years, AJB has consistently ranked around #17
in the plant sciences according to ISI Journal Citation Reports.
Journals above AJB on the impact factor list are clearly spe-
cialized cellular and molecular plant science journals. Yet, AJB
continues to appear on core lists. In 1998, AJB was listed in
both core agriculture journals and core biological journal sec-
tions of the Cornell University Journal Price Study. In 2000,
Stankus again credited AJB in his list of ‘‘Journals of the Cen-
tury.’’ He tried to include no more than 3 of the ‘‘best’’ jour-
nals in each discipline. For Botany, he stated: ‘‘Academic plant
studies began with identification and classification, based on
anatomy, growing habits, means of reproduction and natural
range. All of these approaches have since subdivided into their
own specialties, but general botanical journals remain of en-
during importance. In the U.S., the American Journal of Bot-
any . . . and the International Journal of Plant Sciences . . .
have been deeply rooted’’ (Stankus, 2000, p. 134–135).
UNIQUENESS OF BOTANY LITERATURE
In 1956, Charles Harvey Brown (a former University Li-
brarian at Iowa State College) discussed the nature of botanical
literature and made the following points: 1) botany is histor-
ically one of the two most important and comparatively in-
dependent biological sciences; 2) botany is dependent on jour-
nals in general science, agriculture, chemistry, and medicine;
3) the botanical literature is stable and uses a larger percentage
of books to journals than do other scientific disciplines; 4)
biochemistry, physiology and genetics are assuming more im-
December 2004] PELLACK—AJB AT 90:
portance in the study of botany. This work has formed the
basis for several other later studies and guides on botanical
literature but, unfortunately, is rarely used to justify the need
to maintain a core collection for botanists.
Eugene Garfield, founder of the Institute for Scientific In-
formation (ISI, which publishes the Science Citation Index and
Web of Science) has been following trends in botanical liter-
ature for many years and conducting research based on citation
rates and impact factors (Garfield, 1975a, b, 1977, 1980a, b,
1987). He went a step further than Brown and stated that ‘‘it
is a fact of scientific life that botanists, as a group, use research
from literally thousands of different journals; in botany, as
many ‘classic’ papers are published in multidisciplinary jour-
nals as are published in the designated botany journals’’ (Gar-
field, 1977). In a couple of follow-up articles, he postulated
reasons for the unusual citation trend in botany: 1) botanists
cite basic physics and chemistry heavily but the reverse is not
true, and 2) the ‘‘second-class citizen’’ status of botanical re-
search doesn’t encourage animal cell researchers to refer to
plant cell work (Garfield, 1980a, b). Clearly a core list of
botany journals will include many journals from related dis-
ciplines, but needs to also include general botany journals re-
gardless of their impact factor.
BOTANY AS A CHANGING DISCIPLINE
As in many other large universities, Botany no longer exists
as a separate department at Iowa State University. It has been
interspersed through several related departments due to its
growing interdisciplinary nature. This is not a new issue (e.g.,
Trow, 1983) but critics worry that this will cause botany to be
eclipsed by specialized fields or lose clout (Roush, 1997). Li-
brarians utilize information about academic department chang-
es in their decisions concerning book and journal purchases
and, as departments are eliminated, less money is spent on
collecting journals in those subject areas. With department
mergers it becomes difficult to track the fate of some areas,
such as botany, and the tendency may be to assume there is
no longer any interest (or that interest is only peripheral). Fac-
ulty in many colleges and universities list their research inter-
ests on department web pages. This can be exceedingly helpful
to librarians but due to current focuses on organismal versus
molecular biology it may be difficulty to ascertain whether
research involves plants, animals, or both. Librarians try to
keep abreast of discipline changes, both locally and in general,
and BSA is in a unique position to aid in this endeavor. Pub-
lication of Botany for the Next Millennium was a good first
step. It provided botanists with the opportunity to describe the
state of botany and put forth goals for the profession. Not
surprisingly, it reported that ‘‘there is a need for strengthening
education and communication about plants and botanical sci-
ences at all levels of society.’’ It was disseminated to many
botanists and libraries similarly to any other BSA publication;
however, very little attention was drawn to it by anyone other
than those involved in creating it. As botany struggles to retain
and enliven its identity, so do librarians struggle to recognize
the worth of botanical journals in their collections.
THE ELECTRONIC FUTURE
In the late 1990s, there was an explosion of growth in elec-
tronically accessible journals. Librarians began providing ac-
cess to both print and electronic versions of a given journal
wherever possible. As pricing models changed, librarians were
A LIBRARIAN PERSPECTIVE 1947
encouraged by commercial publishers to cancel their print or
print/electronic subscriptions in favor of cheaper electronic-
only subscriptions. Electronic versions have many benefits for
researchers, including quicker access to the most recent issue
and the ability to access articles remotely. Researchers are no
longer bound by the constraints of library hours or geographic
location.
HighWire Press and JSTOR host the electronic version of
AJB. JSTOR provides access to articles up to the current 5
years and HighWire provides access to articles from 1997 to
the present. HighWire has several noteworthy features includ-
ing: inter-journal linking of cited references, cross journal
searching, table of contents alerts, and the ability to track top-
ics, authors or specific articles. Both JSTOR and HighWire
provide detailed usage statistics for librarians and easy-to-use
interfaces for researchers.
Similar to past concerns about the future of the printed
book, editors and librarians both wonder about the future of
the printed journal. Many seem reluctant to go electronic-only
while others embrace it wholeheartedly. Electronic books have
not supplanted print ones but they have clearly found a niche.
Detractors point out that it is not as easy or pleasurable to curl
up with an electronic book; however, electronic journals are
used differently than books. As publishers make strides in im-
proving the quality of both the images and interfaces the elec-
tronic journal may well overshadow use of print journals in
the near future.
THE FUTURE OF AJB
Overall, the American Journal of Botany is in an enviable
position with regard to its status in librarians’ opinions. It is
published by a major society with a sterling reputation and
subscription costs/increases have been kept to levels that most
undergraduate libraries can afford. It is included in both gen-
eral and specialized indexes (ensuring articles are located by
both beginning and advanced researchers) and electronic ac-
cess is available via HighWire and JSTOR. AJB is continually
referred to as a core journal. Unlike many other journals that
change names as often as they change editors, AJB has never
changed title. In addition, the individual issues arrive in a
timely fashion and users do not have any difficulty deciphering
the name of the journal from the standard abbreviation format
many other journals use in their ‘‘literature cited’’ sections.
AJB goes one step further in winning applause from librarians
in that the ‘‘literature cited’’ section is very complete and de-
signed to make it easy for researchers to track down the orig-
inal source material. Many libraries that have gone through
multiple cancellation projects in recent years have chosen to
retain their subscriptions to AJB, further supporting the as-
sessment that it is seen as a worthwhile and relevant journal.
The continued success of AJB is up to botanists. Library
subscriptions to AJB need to be used by researchers, whether
paper or electronic. Many botanists tend to use their own copy
of AJB and do not refer students to the library collection. Li-
braries that rely on usage data to make journal retention de-
cisions might not see the need to keep subscriptions to AJB
unless they are shown other good reasons to retain it. Librar-
ians need educated to botany’s unique citation quandary and
lack of visibility as a separate academic department. As botany
departments merge with other campus departments, the Botan-
ical Society of America will have to work harder at educating
the world to the importance of botany within the life sciences.
1948 AMERICAN JOURNAL
BSA members should try to use and cite articles from AJB
within articles they publish in other journals, where appropri-
ate. This will help bring AJB to the notice of researchers who
might not ordinarily peruse it. BSA should also consider sup-
porting the creation of a ‘‘core botany’’ journal list for under-
graduates, similar to that of the American Chemical Society.
As a reaction to the scholarly publishing/pricing crisis,
many faculty members in the U.S. are being actively encour-
aged to boycott high-priced journals—both as possible pub-
lishing venues and in bibliographies or citation lists. AJB
needs to be positioned to take advantage of these events. Ed-
itors should actively educate BSA members to the advantages
of publishing in AJB versus competing journals from com-
mercial publishers. Efforts also need to extend beyond BSA
members to alerting other disciplines to the importance of bot-
any. For example, perhaps botanists could publish articles
about their discipline in the Chronicle of Higher Education,
the Journal of Molecular Biology, a general science journal
such as Nature or in a prominent library science journal such
as College & Research Libraries. In addition, including AJB
articles in recommended reading lists on class web pages or
listing them on authors’ web pages can increase visibility. As
many librarians can grudgingly attest, researchers often dis-
cover relevant articles by searching for their topic on the In-
ternet. BSA members need to become conscious of the impact
they have on the success of their journal, and botanists need
to take actions to ensure AJB not only continues to be a core
botany journal but becomes a core journal in the life sciences
as well.
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