======================================================================== Date: Mon, 01 Oct 90 21:54 EST Subject: PRICING NEWSLETTER, NO. 27 ISSN: 1046-3410 NEWSLETTER ON SERIALS PRICING ISSUES NUMBER 27 -- October 2, 1990 Editor: Marcia Tuttle CONTENTS FROM THE EDITOR, Marcia Tuttle RESPONSES TO PRICE INCREASES, Various Subscribers ACM PUBLICATIONS PRICE INCREASES, Harry Llull INFORMATION INFRASTRUCTURE FOR THE 1990S, Brian Kahin ELECTRONIC JOURNAL BEING MARKETED IN HOSPITALITY RESEARCH, Lon Savage CAN ELECTRONIC PUBLISHING SOLVE THE SCIENCE LIBRARY CRISIS? H. H. Barschall HAMAKER'S HAYMAKERS, Chuck Hamaker FROM THE EDITOR Marcia Tuttle, TUTTLE@UNC.BITNET The "We're Not Perfect" Department. Steve Thompson from Brown Univer- sity sends this correction, for which I thank him: The citation to Gordon Graham's article "A Scholarly Confrontation" in #26 of the NEWSLETTER ON SERIALS PRICING ISSUES is incorrect. The article is contained in the August 24 issue of PW, but it is in the PUBLISHERS WEEKLY INTERNATIONAL SUPPLEMENT, which is not contained in the main PW contents. The page number is thus S4, not 54. RESPONSES TO PRICE INCREASES Various Subscribers We received invoices for 1991 prices for Elsevier and Springer Verlag last week from our continental subscription agent and compared 1991 prices with 1990 prices. Publisher # Titles 1990 1991 % Increase Elsevier 22 $33,463.96 $44,777.42 33% Springer Verlag 41 $30,466.82 $38,677.95 27% Overall these 63 titles increased 30 percent in price over last year, and their 1991 cost will be 14.3 percent of our entire state materials budget! How are we going to cope? On August 31, I finalized a list of 390 proposed journal cancellations (approximately 25 percent of our subscriptions) which is now being reviewed by faculty and the Library Committee (it only amounts to $65,000 at 1990 prices). We have also drastically revised our plans for book purchasing, eliminating most foreign publishers from our approval plan. (Danny Jones, University of Texas Health Sciences Center, San Antonio) We compared the SUNY Buffalo Elsevier list for 1990 and 1991, using the exchange rate set by Elsevier for 1991 prices. The 1990 prices were what we actually paid. A total of 134 titles were examined. Over- all, we will be paying $39,647.82 for those 134 titles, an average increase of 35.6 percent. For the 18 titles published in New York, the average increase was a mere 15.2 percent; UK titles, 31.7 percent; Swiss titles 37.4 percent, and the Amsterdam list increased an average of 36.8 percent. Our legislated materials budget increase was around 5.3 percent. Obviously, that amount will not take us very far in the journal billings. Ultimately, our ability to purchase monographs for FY 1990/91 will be reduced by the difference. Are any monograph pub- lishers concerned about the spiraling serials increases? Since one of the more common strategies is to cut down on book purchases to protect the serials investment, what reaction do they have? Or, are there any monograph publishers who don't have a serials publishing arm to make up the difference? Our university has experienced a 9.3 million dollar cut for FY 90/91; where are we realistically supposed to obtain the funds to continue paying for journals? And 91/92 looks to be worse. I anticipate another round of cancellations next year. We have attempted to seek some relief from the state capital because of the large number of foreign subscriptions we maintain, but we have no idea if the state can find the funds to help. 1991 is going to be a very difficult year, not just because of Elsevier, but with the continuing upward climb of journal prices in general. (Susan Davis, SUNY Buffalo) Excerpts from memo to librarians and faculty library liaisons: Over the past six weeks the FY 1990/91 library materials budget has gone through two phases. Phase one began in late August when the library was notified that it would receive the same allocation as in FY 1989/ 90, $3,316,769. Although at that time the base budget remained the same as last fiscal year, costs have risen dramatically. Serials sub- scription prices are expected to increase by an astonishing average of 12.5 percent (some foreign serials are expected to rise between 24 percent and 35 percent!!) and standing order prices by 7 percent. To cover increases in subscription costs, $86,322, book allocations for FY 1990/91 were initially reduced by an average of 8.7 percent. Other allocations such as binding were also reduced. Phase two began Septem- ber 12, when the library had to revert $200,209 from its FY 1990/91 base materials allocation. The September 12 reversion resulted in a further 21 percent decrease in book allocations for FY 1990/91, bring- ing the total reduction in this line to about 30 percent. Be aware of the fact that the library could experience additional reversions or freezes at any time during the next several months. Departments are STRONGLY encouraged to cancel serials and standing order subscrip- tions. A 50 percent CANCELLATION CREDIT HAS BEEN MADE AVAILABLE FOR SERIALS CANCELLATIONS UNDERTAKEN DURING THE CURRENT FISCAL YEAR. (John S. Shipman, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill) Also at UNC-CH, we are identifying particularly large dollar and per- cent subscription increases and calling them to the attention of de- partmental librarians and bibliographers, instead of just sending the usual written notice. Our acquisitions assistants have been asked to make sure that they get the notices written (despite our 40 percent vacancy rate) and that the department head is informed of the increas- es. At the same time, we are taking a look at journals we receive from international publishers and plan to work with departmental librarians to identify and cancel any titles that are marginal to the collection. We selected these publishers because it is a way of identifying a high proportion of very expensive titles. (Marcia Tuttle, UNC-CH) I don't know about other institutions but at ours the faculty do not seem to be totally supportive of our efforts. We are increasingly hearing faculty call for us to reduce staff in order to protect the collection budget. We have been doing this for several years now by eliminating services and not replacing staff, but perhaps we have not been clear about why we are doing this. I would be curious to know if others are having the same experience, as it can be distressing and depressing at times. How do they respond when the faculty says to fire staff, especially when they are already understaffed? (From a librar- ian who asked to remain anonymous) ACM PUBLICATIONS PACKAGE PRICE INCREASES Harry Llull, Centennial Science and Engineering Library, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque NM; HLLULL@UNMB.BITNET. We just received our bill for the Association for Computing Machinery publications package. Although these types of packages are still com- paratively good deals in terms of the amount you receive and the scholarly level and interest, these prices seem to be going up as high as for-profit publishers and foreign journals. Our 1991 price in- creased by 22.5 percent over 1990 and 45.2 percent over 1989. Our package includes the SIGpackage, Publications Package, and the Refer- ence Guide. Each part increased at different rates, with the Publica- tions Package showing a 38.4 percent increase over 1990. If other society publishers show this kind of increase, it appears that the predictions of 20 to 30 percent and over increases for journals will apply to more of our overall budget than just the foreign journals or those titles produced by the large for-profit publishers. INFORMATION INFRASTRUCTURE FOR THE 1990S Brian Kahin, Kennedy School of Government, KAHIN@HULAW1.BITNET. The John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University an- nounces a three-day workshop/symposium on issues and strategies in the development of information infrastructure at the local, state, and national level. This event, scheduled November 29 through December 1, is hosted by the Strategic Computing and Telecommunications Program and the Science, Technology and Public Policy Program. Sponsors in- clude Bellcore, Digital Equipment Corporation, Electronic Data Sys- tems, IBM, Northern Telecom, and Ohio Bell. Occasioned by the rapidly growing interest in the National Research and Education Network (NREN), the program is designed for a diverse audience of planners and policy-makers in government, industry, and education. It will combine in-depth analysis of technological, econom- ic, and legal issues with the insights of leaders in networking and infrastructure development. Commissioned papers will be presented and discussed, and case studies and other special materials will actively engage participants in developing analyses and plans appropriate to their own institutional interests and the formation of state and na- tional policy. BACKGROUND. The spectacular growth of the Internet, especially the NSFNET component, has helped generate broad-based enthusiasm for a National Research and Education Network. The Office of Science and Technology Policy's "Federal High Performance Computing Program" and S. 1067, "The National High-Performance Computing Act of 1990," pro- posed by Senator Albert Gore, Jr., call for a major federal investment in the NREN -- as well as in advanced computing resources, software, information services, basic research, and human resources. Despite the billing given to advanced computing, it is the NREN that gives these proposals coherence and support from an ever-widening constituency. While originally focused on scientific research, the case for an expanded research and education internetwork has been increasingly generalized to encompass use by private R & D facilities, secondary schools, public libraries, hospitals, and other organiza- tions -- as well as the government agencies that interact with these users. Accordingly, it is often touted as a prototype for a universal broadband infrastructure that will be commercially supported and oper- ated. To a large extent the NREN vision is modeled on existing state and regional networks, and the structural framework is whether the present landscape of interconnected autonomous networks would change with increased funding and coordination at the national level. How should the NREN and other "quasi-public internetworks" supported by states and university/industry consortia be financed and organized as they grow in scope, scale, and functionality? What purposes should they serve? What services should they provide? Where and when do they in- volve or defer to private vendors? How should they connect or interop- erate with different types of private networks, state and federal general purpose networks (such as FTS 2000), public packet-switched networks, commercial information services, and evolving forms of broadband public networks? PROGRAM OUTLINE. Public Policy Perspectives: What has been and what should be the motivating vision for the development of research and education networks as a matter of federal science and technology poli- cy? What are the strategic issues for similar initiatives at the state level? How does the tiered and decentralized U.S. approach compare with efforts underway in Europe and Japan? COMMISSIONED PAPERS: Lewis Branscomb, Harvard KSG; David Farber, Uni- versity of Pennsylvania; Jerry Mechling, Harvard KSG Current and Future Players: Who are the players, near-term and long- term, in quasi-public networking -- and how is their environment changing? What commercial forces are coming into play -- and where? How will regulatory policies and marketing issues affect the partici- pation of the RBOCs? Richard Mandelbaum, NYSERNET/University of Rochester; Terrence McGar- ty, NYNEX/MIT Technological Issues: What are the issues in designing the architec- ture of the NREN? How will it be influenced by two orthogonal forces: 1) high-bandwidth applications that press technological frontiers and put extraordinary demands on network resources; and 2) growing demand for access to basic services by an increasingly broad spectrum of users? Leonard Kleinrock, UCLA; Larry Smarr, National Center for Supercomput- er Applications; Ken Klingenstein, University of Colorado Economic Issues: What are the economic models for data networks as infrastructure and what do they reveal about the roles for public and private investment? How do the microeconomics of "connectionless" packet-switched networking as used in the Internet and NREN differ from public data network implementations -- and from the evolving voice network technologies? How do these differences inform pricing policies and strategies within different market and institutional environments? Gerald Faulhaber, Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania; William Hogan, Harvard KSG The Role of Information: How will information behave in the NREN en- vironment? How will this vary from sector to sector? What roles will public and proprietary information play and how will they interact? What can be done to facilitate flow and interaction? Henry Perritt, Villanova Law School; Brian Kahin, Harvard KSG Summary: How do these analyses inform the management and financing of the NREN? How do they inform state and local initiatives? -- and the relationship between state, national, and international infrastruc- tures? Steering Committee The steering committee for "Information Infrastructure for the 1990s" includes: Brian Kahin, Project Director, Science, Technology, and Public Policy Program; Jerry Mechling, Director, Strategic Computing and Telecommunications Program; Lewis Branscomb, Director, Science, Technology, and Public Policy Program. The members of the committee have been individually involved in policy development for the NREN on behalf of the U.S. Congress Office of Technology Assessment, the Fed- eral Research Internet Coordinating Committee, and EDUCOM's Networking and Telecommunications Task Force. The Project also hosted a workshop in March 1990 on commercialization of the Internet, sponsored by the National Science Foundation and the Office of Technology Assessment. Registration is $750 government/nonprofit, $1500 commercial. For reg- istration materials and other information contact: The Strategic Computing and Telecommunications Program John F. Kennedy School of Government Harvard University 79 John F. Kennedy Street Cambridge MA 02138 (617) 495-3036 ELECTRONIC JOURNAL BEING MARKETED IN HOSPITALITY RESEARCH Lon Savage, Scholarly Communications Project, Virginia Tech, SAVAGE@VTVM1.BITNET. The International Academy of Hospitality Research, which announced plans last spring to launch an electronic, refereed journal with copy- righted articles and paid subscriptions, has begun marketing the jour- nal and plans to send out the first issue in late October or early November. THE JOURNAL OF THE INTERNATIONAL ACADEMY OF HOSPITALITY RESEARCH will be sent to subscribers via BITNET and the Internet at annual subscrip- tion rates of $30 for libraries, $20 for individuals and $10 for stu- dents. Publisher is the Scholarly Communications Project (SCP) at Virginia Polytechnic Institute & State University. The SCP is a non- profit initiative established to explore electronic communication of scholarly information. Fellows of the International Academy will serve as authors, editors, and advisers for the journal. President of the Academy is Dr. Michael D. Olsen, Head of Virginia Tech's Department of Hotel, Restaurant and Institutional Management; Dr. Mahmood Khan and Dr. Eliza Tse of the department are Editor and Managing Editor of the journal, respectively, and Lon Savage of Virginia Tech is Director of the SCP. Letters and brochures were sent in early September to several hundred faculty at degree-granting hotel school programs and to libraries, soliciting paid subscriptions to the electronic journal. Limited re- sponses indicate that libraries and faculty members are interested in receiving the journal. Many of them are prepared to cope with elec- tronic journals, but many are not. Subscribers -- whether libraries or individuals -- will have to make their own arrangements for handling the journal once the issues are received, because of vast differences in local equipment, procedures, and practices. Indications are that some libraries may print the jour- nal issues and put them on shelves; some will convert the issues to floppy disks. At least one library is establishing a separate e-mail address to which the journal -- as well as possible future electronic journals -- will be sent. At Virginia Tech, home of the journal, the University Library plans to make it available on hard copy, on floppy disk within the Library, and online through the local area network. Charles A. Litchfield of the Library staff said they foresaw no problems. He said the Library would catalog it "like any other journal title and add it to both our local system (VTLS) and to the bibliographic utility we belong to (OCLC)." The Library, he said, "is of course willing to address these issues because we feel that this is the first of many electronic journals to which we will eventually subscribe." Some libraries indicate they have not yet worked out a procedure for handling electronic scholarly journals, despite interest in them. Some respondents indicate they do not have access to BITNET or the Inter- net. Others indicate their institutions have such access but they do not have individual e-mail addresses. The SCP hopes the journal will encourage solutions to such problems. Although the journal was established as a refereed journal in hospi- tality research, a secondary, and very important, purpose is to en- courage electronic communication of scholarly information. When schol- ars show willingness to pay for the information in an electronic jour- nal, libraries that have not done so are under some compulsion to work out a procedure for handling that journal; similarly, colleges, uni- versities, and other institutions in the field that do not have access to networks are placed under additional pressure to obtain such ac- cess; and faculty members and students who have not bothered to obtain e-mail addresses have added reason to obtain and use them. As the result of many such decisions, it is hoped that the journal will help establish and enlarge the necessary infrastructure for electronic journals to succeed. Problems in setting up such an infrastructure are anticipated, and subscribers will be allowed "to play a part in the pioneering nature of the journal by participating in exchanges of information about its effectiveness," according to the brochure mailed to potential sub- scribers. The SCP will try to arrange for subscribers to compare notes on how they are coping with the problems. Although a large subscription is not anticipated, nor even desired, the SCP hopes that potential subscribers -- and especially libraries -- will not avoid the journal because of fear of technological prob- lems. Libraries must play an active part in encouraging electronic journals, not only by endorsing the concept but also by fitting them into their day-to-day operations. Further information about JIAHR may be obtained from Lon Savage, Scholarly Communications Project, Virginia Tech, 1700 Pratt Drive, Blacksburg VA 24061-0506; tel. (703) 231-4922; e-mail SAVAGE@VTVM1.BITNET. Information about how Virginia Tech's library plans to handle the journal may be obtained from Charles (Buddy) Litchfield, tel. (703) 231-3067; e-mail BUDDYL@VTVM1.BITNET. CAN ELECTRONIC PUBLISHING SOLVE THE SCIENCE LIBRARY CRISIS? AAAS Symposium H. H. Barschall, Department of Physics, University of Wisconsin - Madison, Madison WI 53706; NUCLEAR@WISCNUC. The rapid increase in volume and cost of science serials has resulted in a crisis in most science libraries, which are no longer able to maintain the subscriptions researchers need. Many scientists think that this crisis can be resolved by replacing the printed material by electronic information systems. The symposium aims to examine how realistic this expectation is. The presentations include a summary of current research and development in electronic information systems. Presentations by a scientist, by the director of a research library, and by a publisher will discuss the scientific, economic, and practi- cal aspects of the transition from paper to electronic publishing and will include discussions of the experiences with journals on CD-ROM and of some future plans of publishers of scientific journals. The symposium, "Can Electronic Publishing Solve the Science Library Crisis?" will be held at the 1991 Washington annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science on Monday morning, February 18, 1991. H. H. Barschall will preside. The speakers and their topics are: Stuart Rothenstein, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc., "Electronic Publishing from a Publisher's Point of View;" Martin J. Dillon, OCLC, "Research and Development in Electronic Publishing;" Malcolm Getz, Director, Vanderbilt University Library, "Electronic Publishing: An Economic View;" and Stewart C. Loken, Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, University of California, "When Will Electronic Information Systems Replace Printed Journals?" HAMAKER'S HAYMAKERS Chuck Hamaker, Louisiana State University Library, NOTCAH@LSUVM. A quick discussion with Chris Schneider of Gordon & Breach indicates that due to the dollar's weakness worldwide, G & B is revising their 1991 price list for journals to American libraries. Instead of the ten percent increase projected from the last check I made with Chris, G & B titles will generally go up about 20 percent. Some exceptions are being made, and he felt that the 20 percent increase would be a maxi- mum with several titles below that. G & B will be issuing a second catalog for 1991 with a date of September 15 reflecting the increases. Another publisher has been added to their list: Craftsman House, from Australia, specializing in Australian artists and their works. The company was acquired in December of last year. Also, we note with some dismay that Swets and Zeitlinger, sole Europe- an distributor for Gordon & Breach is now offering a 15 percent dis- count to American libraries for ordering G & B titles from them. That is a 10 percent SIP (Subscriber Incentive Plan) enrollment, plus 5 percent for ordering "direct" from Swets. In addition, this offer includes a provision for an additional 5 percent discount from list for G & B titles in the second subscription year, for a total of 20 percent in the second year. The general offer most of us have seen is "no service charge" for American libraries ordering G & B titles through Swets, but the new offer was made to a West Coast library the first week of September. In past years, G & B prices to the rest of the world have been significantly higher than U.S. list prices. Has this changed for 1991? How many "list" prices are there for G & B titles worldwide??? In the meantime, some vendors, who don't want to damage their rela- tionship with G & B any more than it is already, have reported off the record that they are having problems getting the SIP discount for libraries that believed they had a right to it. Rumor has it that the SIP plan option will be offered again on open enrollment very soon. Oh, what tangled webs we weave .... Some of you will note that even the LJ HOTLINE picked up on MCB Uni- versity Press Inc's "freebie" for faculty who coerce libraries into subscribing (as reported in the last issue of the Newsletter). The September issue of the Canadian Library Association's newspaper FELICITER carries two articles that U.S. librarians should read with care. First, ALA should become involved, if it is not already, in a July 8 proposal by the Canadian Department of Communications. The proposal would amend the Canadian copyright act to protect exclusive distribution rights, "thus making it illegal for anyone other than the publisher/agent, who has exclusive market/distribution rights to im- port or distribute specific titles; it would close the border to books imported by others than those licensed to do so: wholesalers could import only those titles not licensed to publisher/agents." (see Pres- ident's Message, p. 2). I wonder if Canadians have looked at what exclusive distribution and sale rights have done to the cost of books in Australia, and what blocking "buying around" means for controlling journal subscription price gouging techniques. Put simply, by limiting access to worldwide markets for books and journals, prices go up (way up!) and access goes down. It is a sure recipe for an information impoverished economy. If anyone in Canada wants sources proving both these propositions, Pergamon published an excellent book describing the Australian situation, a situation the Aussies are now trying to correct (recent publications of the Australian Library Association detail that debate succinctly). And of course, Deana Astle and I have detailed differential pricing excesses publishers are capable of. The recent IFLA Acquisitions Committee workshop this past summer also documented what happens worldwide with differential pricing. Are Amer- ican libraries being outmaneuvered because publisher associations maintain high visibility lobbying associations? Why can't libraries lobby for economic "goods" packages as effectively as publishers?? Another "Canadian" issue is international in implications and is cov- ered in the same September issue of FELICITER. The president of the Canadian Recording Industry Association sounds a bit like Nicholas Veliotes of the AAP. In an April interview, Mr. Brian Robertson, Pres- ident of CRIA, argued that lending compact disks was depriving the recording industry of hundreds of millions of dollars. Since in many people's opinion, a CD constitutes a "master recording," patrons bor- rowing library CDs must be copying them -- right!! That is, there is a direct correlation between lending, copying, and "drop" in sales. In Canada, the sale of CDs went from 1.3 million units in 1985 to about 9 million in 1988. If library sales "hurt" the industry, resulting in a "drop" in sales, it ain't evident from those numbers. Mr. Robertson wanted "listening rooms" in libraries to be the only legal use of CDs. The correlate for print materials would be in-house only use (no circ- ulation) and, of course, making it illegal for there to be copying machines in libraries. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Readers of the NEWSLETTER ON SERIALS PRICING ISSUES are encouraged to share the information in the newsletter by electronic or paper meth- ods. We would appreciate credit if you quote from the newsletter. ====================================================================== The NEWSLETTER ON SERIALS PRICING ISSUES (ISSN: 1046-3410) is pub- lished as news is available by the American Library Association's Association for Library Collections and Technical Services, Publish- er/Vendor-Library Relations Committee's Subcommittee on Serials Pric- ing Issues. Editor: Marcia Tuttle, BITNET: TUTTLE@UNC.BITNET; Faxon's DataLinx: TUTTLE; ALANET: ALA0348; Paper mail: Serials Department, C.B. #3938 Davis Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill NC 27599-3938; telephone: (919) 962-1067; FAX: (919) 962-0484. Committee members are: Deana Astle (Clemson University), Mary Elizabeth Clack (Harvard University), Jerry Curtis (Springer- Verlag New York), Charles Hamaker (Louisiana State University), Robert Houbeck (University of Michigan), and Marcia Tuttle. EBSCONET custom- ers may receive the newsletter in paper format from EBSCO. Back issues of the newsletter are available electronically free of charge through BITNET from the editor. ====================================================================== ******ENDOFFILE***ENDOFFILE***ENDOFFILE***ENDOFFILE***ENDOFFILE******* ======================================================================== Date: Mon, 29 Oct 90 13:33 EST Subject: PRICING NEWSLETTER, NO. 28 ISSN: 1046-3410 NEWSLETTER ON SERIALS PRICING ISSUES NUMBER 28 -- OCTOBER 27, 1990 Editor: Marcia Tuttle CONTENTS MEA CULPA, Deana Astle FROM THE EDITOR, Marcia Tuttle SERIALS PRICE INCREASES: REACTION AND ACTION, Susan Zappen MORE SPECIFIC LARGE PRICE INCREASES, Deana Astle "LAW LIBRARIANS RECONSIDER RISING COSTS OF TREATISE SUPPLE- MENTS," Margie Axtmann ALCTS AWARDS, Award Jury Chairs AMERICAN GEOPHYSICAL UNION RENEWAL LETTER, Terry Sayler HAMAKER'S HAYMAKERS, Chuck Hamaker MEA CULPA Deana Astle, Clemson University; DLAST@CLEMSON.BITNET. Synapses in the brain can short circuit as one grows older, letting incorrect information pass unnoticed from the eye to the mind. I ex- perienced this recently when I reported in the NEWSLETTER ON SERIALS PRICING ISSUES on an egregious price increase for a Pergamon journal. While the title did have a price jump of 120 percent from $375 to $825, while doubling in frequency from 4 issues to 8, its name was NOT Combustion and Flame, which is published by Elsevier, but rather Com- puters and Fluids. Somewhere between seeing the words on the paper and transcribing them through the keyboard, the one title transmogrified into the other. Pergamon's Computers and Fluids, not Elsevier's Com- bustion and Flame, was the real culprit. This might just have been embarrassing to me had not some readers apparently cancelled Combustion and Flame with Elsevier, citing the information in the Newsletter as the reason. While Combustion and Flame did increase in price, it went up ONLY 23.5 percent (from $560 to $690), with a 25 percent increase in size. Some observations are in order. First, it is so easy to sit down at a terminal, compose an e-mail message, and send it off without the rig- orous review given a "printed" text being submitted for publication. I tend to spot errors more easily in a "typed" document than I do when proofreading a screen -- witness the fact that I checked and double- checked the figures, but the difference in titles did not register. I know I will be doubly careful in the future, but I suspect this is a tendency many if not most of us share, and we need to be aware of it. Second, though we try not to make mistakes at the Newsletter, we are human. Some people may have used the information found here indiscrim- inantly when they cancelled Combustion and Flame, ignoring the dis- crepancy between publishers, frequencies, and price. Information should be used responsibly, and questions should be raised if some- thing "looks funny." Third, the Newsletter does have clout. People did take action because of information found here, and publishers have taken notice. This behooves us all to be sure of our facts and to record them properly, while those who read need to do so intelligently. I do apologize to Elsevier and to the readers for my lapse; I will try to ride herd more closely over my synapses in the future. FROM THE EDITOR Marcia Tuttle, TUTTLE@UNC.BITNET. I want to thank Deana for correcting our error in issue no. 26, and I want to reinforce what she says. We were careless, and our careless- ness apparently led to a loss of business for one publisher. This is scary! But instead of finding some way to penalize us for our mistake, John Tagler from Elsevier called, told us what had happened, and asked that we correct the error. We are more than happy to do so. We have learned from this experience. As Deana says, it is easy to be more casual about what is disseminated by electronic means. This is not a refereed journal, it is a newsletter. And it is an electronic newslet- ter. As editor, I receive lots of friendly messages from subscribers and some of us engage in lighthearted, informal electronic corres- pondence. It's easy to let that casual atmosphere carry over into the Newsletter (which does get distributed in print by some electronic subscribers). No more! We've learned our lesson. We will make more mistakes, being human, but we, and especially I as editor, will do a lot more verifying of information before each issue goes out. At the same time, let me ask you not to trust us any more than I will trust our contributors. Please verify our information, especially pricing information, for yourselves before taking any action. For various reasons libraries DO pay different prices for the same title and li- braries have very different constituencies. Use our information as an alert to evaluate journals held by your library to see if they are worth the subscription price FOR YOUR READERS. Later in this issue is an article by Susan Zappen at Rensselaer about the dilemma she is facing involving the price increases for 1991. She hopes it will generate some dialogue and would like to know what other libraries are doing. (P.S. So would I!) Margaret Landesman at the University of Utah (MLANDESM@UTAHLIB.BITNET) sends this news: We are in the midst of a study here that might interest you. Brigham Young University, the University of Utah, and Utah State are compar- ing our Elsevier, Pergamon, Springer, and Karger holdings. We have found that 683 titles are held by at least one of us. Of these, 279 are held by only one school, 223 by two schools, and 181 by all three schools. But what is interesting is the prices. The average price for a journal held at only one school is $378. The average price for a journal held by two of the three schools is $571. The average price of a journal held by all three schools is $864. We aren't sure what we are going to do about this, but are getting real serious about doing something.... From Harry Llull at the University of New Mexico: The NEWSLETTER ON SERIALS PRICING ISSUES is now available through Technet, which is the state network in New Mexico. Besides including UNM, NMTech, and NM State University library catalogs, Technet also includes state government databases. I often get phone calls or e-mail messages asking what my deadline is. There's no real deadline; I compile and distribute an issue whenever I have about 20 - 30K, or about 9 or 10 typed pages. This has worked out to about every three weeks, depending on my own work and travel sched- ule. I'll always be happy to tell you when I intend to get the next issue out (usually it really goes out about a week later!), but go ahead and send news anytime. Let me close with a message I just received from Harry Llull: Those of us who have worked at a lot of different places can lose contact with people. Since my BITNET address was posted in the News- letter, I have heard from people I worked with on my first job over 20 years ago. So, it is like "Unsolved Mysteries," bringing people together who have disappeared! Of course, only the extrovert readers would appreciate this. The introvert readers might be horrified!! SERIALS PRICE INCREASES: REACTION AND ACTION Susan Zappan, Rensselaer Institute of Technology, Folsom Library; USERBSEC@RPITSMTS.BITNET. Rensselaer's Folsom Library received its major serials renewal invoice for 1991 subscriptions from its serials vendor at the end of August. A 21.2 percent increase over the previous year's invoice brought the realization that the library would overspend the budget by an estimat- ed $120,000 by the end of the fiscal year, unless titles were can- celled and/or additional funds were received. Since then, additional information projects price increases in the 25-39 percent range on titles from foreign STM publishers, with some titles doubling and tripling in price. In March 1988 we faced a similar crisis. At that time the library anticipated a deficit for the fiscal year 1987-88 of $60,000 and predicted a deficit of $112,000 in 1988-89. Of the total materials budget, 80 percent was allocated for serials while 20 per- cent was allocated for monographs. For two consecutive years the book funds were frozen and used to pay for the rising cost of serials re- newals. The library made the decision no longer to erode the book budget to pay for journals. The 80-20 budget split, common in scien- tific and technological libraries, was maintained. The library staff generated and distributed lists of serials to the faculty to review for cancellation. With a final list of cancellations in hand, the library received a stay of execution. The institute provided addition- al funding for the library to cover its expected shortfall. Some ti- tles were cancelled; others were cancelled and replaced by new titles; most subscriptions were maintained. This August the crisis was similar but the circumstance was different. The library had three weeks in which to identify titles for cancella- tion before the large renewal invoice for 1991 had to be paid. Addi- tional funding from the campus was not available. The Library Director asked for cancellations totalling $72,000. Any overages after budget cancellations would be taken from library funds other than the book budget or charged against next year's renewals budget. The Head of Collection Development, The Science and Engineering Bibliographer, and the Acquisitions Librarian produced a list of 159 titles using the following guidelines: 1) Cancel titles from the publishers with the greatest announced price increases; 2) Cancel first those which show the least Rensselaer use and those which have the highest prices; 3) Cancel titles identified in the 1988 review in which faculty partici- pated; 4) Cancel duplicate subscriptions; and 5) Of those remaining, try not to cancel the last subscription within the Capital District Library Council or New York State. The titles identified in the 1988 review were the starting point for those compiling the list. Previous use and citation studies performed by the Science and Engineering Bibliographer weighed heavily in the deliberations. Faculty had less than a week in which to suggest subscriptions. Every effort was made to spare titles which faculty described as essential in spite of cost. Titles which were used frequently were not cancelled, again, in spite of cost. In the end, a total of 139 titles were cancelled. Some of them won't be missed, but some titles are important publications for specific areas of research. What now? The renewals budget for fiscal year 1991-92 won't be able to absorb the overages from 1990-91 and the predicted double digit infla- tion of serials prices. During the next several months the library and the faculty-comprised Library Liaison Committee will work with faculty to determine how to cope with the serials pricing crisis. There are several possible approaches to the problem. Rensselaer has five schools: Architecture, Engineering, Humanities & Social Sciences, Management, and Science. Currently all serials renewals are charged against one fund. Should the renewals budget be divided up among the schools? Should the number of faculty and students determine how the budget is divided? Should a distinction be made between the number of undergraduate and graduate students? What about the average cost of a serial title in the various disciplines? Anything with "chemistry" in the title will cost much more than a title with "poetry" in it. Who pays for a title used by more than one discipline or school? Should titles which fall within or over a certain price range be cancelled? Should titles which experience the greatest percent of increase be cancelled? Should core journal titles be identified for each school and maintained at any cost? There are also far-reaching questions. Should cancellations be coordi- nated with other libraries in the area to preserve access? How high does a price have to rise before the library with the last remaining subscription in the area can cancel? What about the last remaining subscription in the state, in the Northeast, in the country? What about the numbers needed for accreditation? Should libraries make a coordinated effort to control prices? What should those efforts be? How do libraries involve faculty? What role should faculty play? What about the publishers and vendors and their roles? What may have start- ed as one library's financial problem is no longer that simple. The crisis in serials pricing is not merely a dollars and cents issue. MORE SPECIFIC LARGE PRICE INCREASES Deana Astle, Clemson University; DLAST@CLEMSON.BITNET PHILOSOPHICAL MAGAZINE A, B, and C (Taylor & Francis). Price increased 45 percent, from $775 to $1125 for the same number of issues. Informa- tion was received from the publisher earlier that the journal would "increase in size and price," though there was no indication of the former in the Faxon memo, unless the number of pages grows. JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN SOCIETY FOR INFORMATION SCIENCE (Wiley US): price increased 51 percent, from $195 to $295 for two more issues a year. In 1990 the eight issues of this journal cost $24.38 each; the two extra issues in 1991 are thus adding $50 each to the price (10 issues for $29.50 each). JOURNAL OF APPLIED POLYMER SCIENCE (Wiley US): this title increased 73 percent, from $1295 to $2243; issues grew from two volumes, 24 issues, to three volumes, 36 issues. Each new issue added $79 to the cost. Attributing all of the extra cost to the extra issues may be consid- ered simplistic and does not account for "expected inflation," but it does make the situation stand out. "LAW LIBRARIANS RECONSIDER RISING COSTS OF TREATISE SUPPLEMENTS" Margie Axtmann, Cornell University Law Library; MA4@CORNELLC.BITNET. The October 12, 1990 PUBLISHERS WEEKLY contains an article discussing an issue not addressed in this newsletter before. ("Law Librarians Reconsider Rising Costs of Treatise Supplements," by Marguerite E. Mulvihill, p. 34-35). General librarians as well as law librarians will be interested in this account of how some law librarians have responded to the rising costs and proliferation of looseleaf treatise supplements. Looseleaf treatises in one or more volumes are supplemented with fre- quencies ranging from quarterly to annually. Supplements consist of loose pages that are either interfiled into the text or filed as a self-contained supplement within the binder. Thus, in addition to the actual cost of the original publication there are costs for the sup- plements as well as the associated costs of processing and filing the material. Because it is the nature of legal materials that they must be continually updated, the practices of major legal publishers in this area have not always fallen under great scrutiny. In recent years, however, law librarians have complained that the increasing frequency of these supplements is unjustified and that many supple- ments do not contain significant changes in the law. One law librar- ian's response to that, as discussed in the article, is not to main- tain subscriptions to the supplementation, but rather to purchase new sets every two or three years. Supplementation costs over that time period often exceed the cost of a new set. The question of providing up-to-date legal information is constantly balanced against the need to maintain some control over these runaway costs. The idea of purchasing whole new sets of material periodically has taken hold in the law library world and many large and small libraries are exercising this option. I have always maintained that the record- keeping involved in this practice is too complex and time-consuming for a large library to be able to manage. Furthermore, I believe that the direct savings are eaten up in indirect costs. Since this has received so much publicity in the last few years, however, it has served to make publishers more aware that they are being watched and that our budgets have real limits. Further evidence of the ongoing concern with this issue is a program that is being planned for next year's American Association of Law Libraries annual meeting. Entitled "Looseleaf Treatises: To Buy or Not to Buy and the Question of Upkeep," this program will focus on the decision-making process concerning the selection, purchase, and upkeep of looseleaf treatises. ALCTS AWARDS Submitted by Award Jury Chairs BLACKWELL/NORTH AMERICA SCHOLARSHIP AWARD. This ALCTS - Resources Section award was first given in 1976. Since that time, more than twenty-seven authors have been honored. Last year the recipient of this award was Joe A. Hewitt of the University of North Carolina for his article "On the Nature of Acquisitions" (LIBRARY RESOURCES & TECH- NICAL SERVICES 33: 105-122, April 1989). The scholarship will go to a student at the Graduate School of Library and Information Science at Simmons College. PURPOSE: To honor the author or authors of the out- standing 1990 monograph, article, or original paper in the field of acquisitions, collection development, and related areas of resources development in libraries. SCHOLARSHIP: Blackwell/North America will donate a $1,000 scholarship to the U.S. or Canadian Library School of the winning author's choice. The Scholarship will be given to a stu- dent concentrating in the acquisition or collection development areas. PROCEDURE: Please send nominations to: Frank D'Andraia; Chair, Black- well/North America Scholarship Award Committee; Chester Fritz Library; University of North Dakota; P.O. Box 9000; Grand Forks ND 58202; FAX: (701) 777-3319. Deadline is December 1, 1990. Please include a state- ment giving the full bibliographic citation of the article, book, or paper you are nominating, plus your reasons for the nomination. Com- mittee members are: Frank A. D'Andraia, Eugene L. Wiemers, Jr. (North- western University), and Margaret C. Wong (Los Angeles County Public Library). ALCTS SERIALS SECTION BOWKER/ULRICH'S SERIALS LIBRARIANSHIP AWARD. 1990 Winner: Jean G. Cook, Iowa State University. An annual award consisting of a citation and a $1500 cash award for distinguished contributions to serials librarianship within the previous three years, demonstrated by such activities as leadership in serials-relat- ed activities through participation in professional associations and/ or library education programs, contributions to the body of serials literature, conduct of research in the area of serials, development of tools or methods to enhance access to or management of serials, other advances leading to a better understanding of the field of serials. PROCEDURE: Please send nominations to: Sue Anne Harrington; 1403 Syca- more; Norman OK 73072, by December 1, 1990. Please include all sup- porting documentation. AMERICAN GEOPHYSICAL UNION RENEWAL LETTER Submitted by Terry Sayler, University of Maryland, McKeldin Library, College Park MD 20742. AGU has heard the message and is using it as publicity! September 6, 1990 Dear Subscriber: It is time to renew your subscriptions to AGU journals. Studies on the impact and value of scientific publications consis- tently place AGU journals at the top among similar journals. The 1991 rates for the JOURNAL OF GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH are just 8 cents per thousand words of science. This is a bargain compared to 70 cents or 80 cents for some scientific journals. This high return per cost is characteristic of AGU's efforts to cut production costs, absorbing the phenomenal growth of the geophysical sciences, and maintaining the highest quality for its journals. At the same time deliberate attempts are being made by AGU to at- tract the highest caliber scientists away from publishing in more expensive alternatives. These attempts are noticeably working. More and more European authors are publishing in AGU journals. .... Ghassan Rassam Group Director HAMAKER'S HAYMAKERS Chuck Hamaker, Louisiana State University; NOTCAH@LSUVM.BITNET. Under the title of Here Today, Gone Tomorrow, the recent FAXON REPORT, 1, 3 (summer 1990):4, notes that the purchase of Kunst & Wissen in Germany did include worldwide distribution of journals published by Akademie-Verlag. The announcement that "Through K & W ... we will place and fulfill orders for every subscriber on a worldwide basis" was true then, but is true no more. At the Frankfurt Book Fair, the publishing industry learned that Akademie Verlag, publisher of about 60 journals and 400 books annually, was purchased by VCH. Null and void on the distribution agreement. Also of note in the FAXON REPORT was the return of Frank Clasquin, rejoining Faxon as Principal Advisor to the President. "Frank's first assignment will send him abroad" to the new office in Moscow, "to develop a major serials control and reship operation for both imported and exported serials. He will also serve as 'official advisor' to ICSTI (International Center for Scien- tific and Technical Information)." Dr. H.J. Dorpinghaus and the German Library Association filed a com- plaint last year with the European Economic Commission in Brussels concerning differential pricing within the EEC of Pergamon journals. German libraries, as he reported in various issues of BIBLIOTHEKS- DIENST, had been paying a premium of 47 percent to 60 percent because of purchasing Pergamon titles in Germany from German sources at an inflated Deutschmark price. British libraries had a different price list, in pounds sterling, and American libraries were paying an even lower price based on a US dollar price list. The Commission has ruled that Pergamon cannot restrict pricing within the EEC. This ruling should have a major effect on equitable pricing throughout the conti- nent. Other publishers including Gordon and Breach and many French publishers have established differential pricing throughout the conti- nent using local currency based lists. Where the local currency lists effectively restrict one set of prices to a specific country, this ruling apparently will provide a precedent for European libraries to challenge the practice. Differential pricing, which Dr. Dorpinghaus has called in private correspondence, a scourge, is increasingly under attack. In addition to this very recent ruling, Dr. Knut Dorn, appearing at the IFLA pro- gram in Stockholm, addressed the issue from one vendor's perspective in "Will the Chain Break? Differential Pricing as a Part of a New Pricing Structure for Research Literature and its Consequences for the Future of Scholarly Communication." In the program, sponsored by the IFLA Section on Acquisitions and Exchange, Dr. Dorn explained the multiple problems multiple prices for the same item present to vendors when pricing is based on "geographi- cal considerations": We have seen practically every combination of subsidizing and penal- izing subscribers or purchasers of scholarly materials in one or the other continent or country, and often the situation has changed and been reversed in only a couple of years. North American publishers have been very consistent in charging European subscribers and in- stitutions an inflated and marked-up price, whereas European pub- lishers have been rather flexible in this respect: in the late 70s and early 80s the idea was to charge higher prices for American libraries, but in the last couple of years the tendency has been to subsidize the US market and let European subscribers pay the higher bill. But no matter which side the publisher favors, there is always the other side that is confronted with the higher price. My own perspective is that much as water seeks its level, higher prices for one part of the world always act as a benchmark and all prices trend towards the highest price. Differential pricing in the long run endangers the whole system. Congratulations, Dr. Dorpinghaus and our German colleagues. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Readers of the NEWSLETTER ON SERIALS PRICING ISSUES are encouraged to share the information in the newsletter by electronic or paper meth- ods. We would appreciate credit if you quote from the newsletter. ====================================================================== The NEWSLETTER ON SERIALS PRICING ISSUES (ISSN: 1046-3410) is pub- lished as news is available by the American Library Association's Association for Library Collections and Technical Services, Publish- er/Vendor-Library Relations Committee's Subcommittee on Serials Pric- ing Issues. Editor: Marcia Tuttle, e-mail: TUTTLE@UNC.BITNET; Faxon's DataLinx: TUTTLE; ALANET: ALA0348; Paper mail: Serials Department, C.B. #3938 Davis Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill NC 27599-3938; telephone: (919) 962-1067; FAX: (919) 962-0484. Committee members are: Deana Astle (Clemson University), Mary Elizabeth Clack (Harvard University), Jerry Curtis (Springer- Verlag New York), Charles Hamaker (Louisiana State University), Robert Houbeck (University of Michigan), and Marcia Tuttle. EBSCONET custom- ers may receive the newsletter in paper format from EBSCO. Back issues of the newsletter are available electronically free of charge through BITNET from the editor. ====================================================================== ******ENDOFFILE***ENDOFFILE***ENDOFFILE***ENDOFFILE***ENDOFFILE******* ======================================================================== Date: Sun, 11 Nov 90 17:47 EST Subject: PRICING NEWSLETTER, NO. 29 ISSN: 1046-3410 NEWSLETTER ON SERIALS PRICING ISSUES NUMBER 29 -- NOVEMBER 12, 1990 Editor: Marcia Tuttle CONTENTS FROM THE EDITOR, Marcia Tuttle GERMAN COURT CALLS METHODOLOGY USED IN COMPARATIVE PRICE SURVEY "FALSE AND MISLEADING," Vicki Banner APS AND AIP HOPE FOR FURTHER GORDON & BREACH "VICTORIES," Kenneth Ford SERIALS USERS DISCUSSION GROUP, Birdie MacLennan PRICE INCREASES REDUX, Deana Astle A ROLE FOR THE NATIONAL ACADEMIES, Daniel H. Jones TRENDS IN PRICING?..., Susan Anderes FROM THE EDITOR Marcia Tuttle; TUTTLE@UNC.BITNET Of all the subscription price increases for 1991, the action of the American Chemical Society regarding ANALYTICAL CHEMISTRY has caused the most negative response to the Newsletter. Here are the most recent messages I have received: (From Barbara Lee, Library Director, The Worcester Foundation for Experimental Biology, 222 Maple Avenue, Shrewsbury MA 01545; LEE@WFEB2.BITNET) I would like to bring to your attention a rate increase that I have recently become aware of. ANALYTICAL CHEMISTRY is raising its institutional rate from $59.00 to $289.00 with no increase in issues. Numerous phone calls (it is published by the American Chemical Society), have produced the answer that they had not received the number of ads that they had hoped! This journal is of course still cheap by international standards but it is a very minimal production with lots of ads sprinkled in. It seems to me that ACS should subsidize the printing cost rather than trying to make a profit.... (From Anne McKee, George Mason University; DataLinx: AMCKEE) We were notified by Faxon that ANALYTICAL CHEMISTRY published by the Ameri- can Chemical Society has increased from $59.00 to $289.00, an in- crease of ***450 PERCENT***. Needless to say, with the budget crisis here in the state of Virginia, we cannot maintain such an increase and I have already informed our chemistry department (which has had to cancel $3,600 already) that they will have to cancel either this title or another one. I have written a letter to the editor of this publication expressing our extreme dismay and will let you know if I receive a reply. In the last issue Chuck Hamaker made some observations in HAMAKER'S HAYMAKERS about the distribution agreement Faxon had with Akademie- Verlag. Joel Baron, Director, Faxon's Publisher and Publication Serv- ices, sent this message: I wanted you to know that although the German government had agreed to sell Akademie-Verlag to VCH, that that had nothing to do with the two-year marketing and distribution agreement we have through Kunst und Wissen. The agreement remains in effect. You might also be in- terested in knowing that we understand the VCH deal has now been questioned, and that the bidding process may begin all over again. From Bill Benson (Wright-Patterson Air Force Base; DataLinx: FL2802): Don't know if your readers are interested but I am looking at LC's new catalog and it says that "the 5-year, 1986-1990 cumulation of NEW SERIAL TITLES will not be published. For a complete cumulation in paper, subscribers should retain the 1990 annual cumulation to use with the 4-year, 1986-89 cumulation. Beginning in 1991, NST will be cumulated annually in a new microfiche edition." I don't know about other serials librarians, but I am not ready to shoot off any fireworks about this news. I use NST a lot and certainly do not need to search it year by year on microfiche! Is this the big decision that LC made after sending out their lengthy survey? Did all of us say that is what we wanted? Will we still pay the same fee? Wouldn't most of us prefer hard copy or other alternatives like CD-ROM? Don't most of us prefer a cumulative set to annual cumulations? Perhaps LC has more in mind, but they don't say so in the catalog. And perhaps, if we raise our voices, we can make a difference (before it's too late) even if it costs a bit more. Marie Maroscia of Brooklyn College Library (DataLinx: BROOK) asked me a question the other day, and we thought we would like to hear from you about the issue. Here's her message: We have recently had to cancel many of our subscriptions because of budget constraints. Several faculty members have offered to pay for some titles they feel are vital to their students. We have some reservations about accepting their offer, since we feel it might be short-lived. Do you have any thoughts on the subject? And here's another one. Did you see the "Fairy Tales" brochure sent out by Bowker recently? If not, this is what it says: Starting today, you could be collecting BOWKER BONUS 1 CREDIT CER- TIFICATES worth $5.00 each, and applying them to up to 50 percent of the cost of your next first-time purchase of an R.R. Bowker title! It's all part of Bowker's exciting BONUS 1 PROGRAM -- our way of helping you make the most of your acquisition dollars. Why are we doing it? To thank our customers for more than 100 years of continued support. And they love it! Launched July 1, 1989, Bowker's BONUS 1 PROGRAM already has more than 5,600 institutions as members to date and counting. Moreover, because of the response and increasing redemp- tion of BONUS 1 CERTIFICATES, we've decided to extend the program through June 30, 1991 and open registration to include new members like yourself. Becoming a BONUS 1 member is easy. Simply complete and mail the attached reply card and we'll send you your FREE BONUS 1 STARTER KIT. It includes your personal BOWKER BONUS 1 Identification Number and all the information you need to begin saving money on Bowker purchases immediately, plus a handy BONUS 1 File Folder to neatly store your certificates and BONUS 1 Bulletins. From time to time, you'll also receive special DOUBLE BONUS and EXTRA CREDIT Offers, available only to BONUS 1 PROGRAM members. Save your CREDIT CERTIFICATES and use them to pay for up to 50 per- cent of the cost of any new Bowker product or any Bowker product you have not purchased since January 1, 1987. That's all there is to it. There's no minimum order, no limited eligibility and no baffling forms to decipher. Enrollment in the BONUS 1 PROGRAM is FREE, but you must register to be able to redeem the CREDIT CERTIFICATES contained in upcoming Bowker shipments. So sign up today! Credit Certificates will be included in shipments of all our Bowker products only until March 31, 1991 and redeemable until June 30, 1991. My question to you is this: Do programs such as this and Gordon and Breach's SIP really save us money? Or, does the time and hassle in- volved in participating in them cancel out any savings? I have not participated in any of these programs so far, believing them more trouble than they are worth. What do you think? GERMAN COURT CALLS METHODOLOGY USED IN COMPARATIVE PRICE SURVEY "FALSE AND MISLEADING" Vicki Banner, Michael Klepper Associates, Inc., 805 Third Avenue, New York NY 10022 MONTREUX, Oct. 31 -- The methodology used by the American Institute of Physics (AIP) and American Physical Society (APS) to prepare a 1988 comparative price survey of science journals was false and misleading and in addition was done for competitive purposes, a German civil court declared today. A detailed written opinion is expected shortly. The court, which specializes in matter /sic/ of unfair competition, delivered this opinion orally during the hearing. Gordon and Breach Science Publishers brought an action against these publishers for printing comparative price surveys, which in the opinion of Gordon and Breach, constituted inaccurate and unfair competitive advertising. The court confirmed in the hearing that this was true under German unfair competition law. Although the court agreed that the survey methodology was false and misleading, and that the defendants acted with competitive intention, it dismissed the appeal primarily because the defendant had directed the surveys to the U.S. market and that the distribution in Germany was too limited. "We're heartened that the court agreed with our contention that the survey methodology was flawed, but naturally we're disappointed about the dismissal," said Gordon and Breach Chairman, Martin Gordon. "From the beginning, our main purpose was to obtain a decision from a neu- tral party as to whether the surveys were fair or biased. We expect the written decision to discuss these matters in detail and hope that this conclusion will receive wide distribution." Headquartered in Switzerland, Gordon and Breach is a worldwide group of companies publishing more than 300 hardcover books and nearly 200 journals, reviews and magazines annually. APS AND AIP HOPE FOR FURTHER GORDON & BREACH "VICTORIES" Submitted by Kenneth Ford, American Institute of Physics; KWF@AIP.BITNET. The American Physical Society (APS), the American Institute of Physics (AIP), and Professor Henry Barschall replied to a "news release" is- sued on behalf of Gordon & Breach Science Publishers (G & B) by a New York public relations firm. The release asserts that a German court has vindicated G & B's claim that a survey of the costs of science journals published in 1988 by APS and AIP was false and misleading and was prepared for competitive purposes. In fact, the German court af- firmed the complete dismissal of G & B's suit. Dr. Harry Lustig, the APS Treasurer, said, "I hope that G & B has more successes of exactly the same kind." The survey concerned the costs of science journals to American academ- ic libraries and was prepared by Henry Barschall, a professor at the University of Wisconsin (Madison). It revealed that G & B's journals were significantly more expensive on average, in terms of cost per thousand characters, than the physics journals of 23 other publishers. Rather than accepting an offer by APS and AIP that G & B submit a letter outlining its disagreements with the survey for publication by APS and AIP (without cost to G & B), G & B initiated suits in Germany, Switzerland and France. Professor Barschall, who attended the proceeding in Frankfurt on Octo- ber 25, said that the statements attributed in the "news release" to Martin Gordon, the G & B Chairman, suggested that perhaps Mr. Gordon had some difficulty in following the German in which the proceedings were conducted. Barschall stated, "The Court did not determine that the price survey was illegal advertising and it certainly did not find that my work was false and misleading. What it did do, in an announce- ment issued two hours after the hearing ended, was to dismiss Gordon & Breach's case." All the parties are awaiting a written opinion from the Frankfurt court. Dr. Lustig, who also attended the hearing, observed, "If Gordon & Breach considers the actions in Germany to be a victory, we can only wish them the same success in Switzerland and France." For further information, contact Dr. Harry Lustig, APS Treasurer, at (212) 682-7341. SERIALS USERS DISCUSSION GROUP Birdie MacLennan, University of Vermont Library, Burlington BMACLENN@UVMVM.BITNET. A Serials Users Discussion Group has recently been established on BITNET via Computer Operations support at the University of Vermont. Those who are interested may subscribe to the group by issuing the command: tell listserv@uvmvm subscribe SERIALST . SERIALST is intended to serve as an electronic forum for most aspects of serials processing in libraries. Topics may include such things as: cataloging, acquisitions, collection management, binding, preservation, microfilm, union listing, etc. The SERIALST discussion group should not deal with serials pricing issues as this topic is already covered in the Newsletter on Serials Pricing Issues. PRICE INCREASES REDUX Deana Astle, Clemson University Library; DLAST@CLEMSON.BITNET. Just got some more price increase notices from Faxon. Some are pretty scary. INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF FRACTURE (Kluwer Academic Publishers), is doubling its issues from 12 to 24 with 1991, while the price is going from $437.49 to $1,112.37, a 154 percent increase! BIOPOLYMERS (John Wiley, US) is going from one volume of 14 issues to 2 volumes of 28 issues, while the price is rising from $775 to $1,575, a 103 per- cent increase. ENERGY SOURCES (Taylor and Francis, UK) is staying a quarterly, but increasing in price from $120 to $190, a 58 percent increase! CONCURRENCY (Wiley UK) is becoming a bimonthly rather than a quarterly, and increasing from $155 to $270, a 74 percent increase. Even though most of these publishers could "justify" their price in- creases on the basis of increased value received with more issues, the bottom line in these times of static or declining budgets is that we cannot afford to pay these prices. Why, when the exchange rate is placing such a burden on us, do these publishers make the situation worse by increasing the size of their journals? Authors may like the more rapid publication of their work, but soon there will be no one to buy it. A ROLE FOR THE NATIONAL ACADEMIES Daniel H. Jones, University of Texas Health Sciences Center, San Antonio; JONES@UTHSCSA.BITNET. The most recent wave of cost increases and subscription cancellations seems to be taking a great toll. This year's loss in the value of the dollar certainly makes American products more attractive abroad, but for scientific, technical and medical libraries which rely heavily on journals published abroad the effect will be devastating. The pros- pects of maintaining even core STM collections (not to mention compre- hensive or research level collections) at this point seems questiona- ble in many American universities. Yet it is ironic that much of the published research originates in these same American universities that are increasingly unable to afford to purchase it. What seems even more ironic is the general lack of concern expressed by scientists and researchers. Since 1986 librarians, both individually and collectively, have been vocal advocates in the interests of their users. But in my opinion the users have been too silent too long. Certainly, we librarians must continue our efforts. But we do not control the flow of manuscripts or the publishing industry, nor would I advocate that we should try. The group with the greatest amount of control is the scientific community and I think it is time for them to address the issues. To this end I have written the presidents of our national academies (names and addresses below) urging them to set as a priority to exam- ine the erosion of American university library collections over the past decade. Perhaps their distinguished members can propose alterna- tives to control further erosion. I also urged them to expand their publishing program. The PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES is clearly one of the leading scientific journals in the world. But I would like to see the Academy publish more discipline-oriented journals such as a brain and neuro- science journal or a journal of biochemistry and biophysics, to name only two. Perhaps the prestige of Academy sponsorship will attract authors to more reasonably priced journals that are equally respecta- ble. If you want to express your concerns, write to the following: Frank Press, President National Academy of Sciences Robert M. White, President National Academy of Engineering Samuel O. Thier, President Institute of Medicine 2101 Constitution Avenue NW Washington DC 20418 TRENDS IN PRICING?... Susan Anderes, Lane Medical Library, Stanford University Medical Center; susan@krypton.stanford.edu. Elsevier has recently changed their distribution policy for the ti- tles: IMMUNOLOGY TODAY PARASITOLOGY TODAY TRENDS IN BIOCHEMICAL SCIENCES TRENDS IN BIOTECHNOLOGY TRENDS IN ECOLOGY AND EVOLUTION TRENDS IN GENETICS TRENDS IN NEUROSCIENCES TRENDS IN PHARMACOLOGICAL SCIENCES Elsevier was willing in the past to accept orders from libraries for the "personal edition." This edition includes only the twelve monthly issues. Beginning in 1991 Elsevier will only accept "institutional/li- brary edition" subscriptions from libraries. This edition includes the twelve monthly issues, an annual compendium volume (that has some pages removed), and an index. Our institution wanted only the monthly issues, and we have subscribed to the personal edition until now. We did not want the bound compendi- um volume (with advertising removed) and preferred to bind the monthly issues ourselves. It looks as if we no longer have that option. Now all orders for the personal edition must be placed directly with the publisher and the edition "is only available to individuals who order directly from the publisher and prepay with personal funds." The 1990 price for the personal edition of TRENDS IN GENETICS was $79.00. For the institutional/library edition it was $ ... 337. The other titles have similar price differences between the personal and library editions although some were listed in British pounds rather than US dollars. The 1991 price for each of these titles is $403 for the institutional edition. I asked John Tagler of Elsevier New York to send me information on Elsevier's official policy. He says the strategy was to keep the in- stitutional/library price "comparable with the current price levels for other quality monthly scientific publications." Personal editions are discounted to keep the numbers of subscribers high enough to at- tract advertisers and are subsidized by that advertising. "Without institutional subscribers, there would not be a TRENDS series." Elsevier will now accept additional subscriptions at the personal edition price as long as there is an institutional subscription at the same ship-to address, and it must be ordered directly from the pub- lisher in England. I would like to see Elsevier make available a library edition com- prised of only the monthly issues. It also seems that advertising revenues should be subsidizing all editions, since they appear in all editions and readers of library copies see the advertising. I have written the following letter to the editor of the Elsevier TRENDS Division. Dr. David Bousfield Elsevier Trends Journals 68 Hills Road Cambridge CB2 1IA England Dear Dr. Bousfield: I am concerned about the changes you have made in your pricing policy for Trends journals and concerned about the 16.3 percent increase in the 1991 institutional price over 1990 for most of the titles. For those of us who have subscribed to the personal edition until now, the change in price from $79 to $403 is a shock. I would like to suggest that in future you offer libraries and insti- tutions an alternative. Lane Medical Library, and probably many other libraries, would like a reduced institutional price and to receive only the monthly issues. We have no use for the compendium volume and prefer not to pay for it. While I am aware of the reasons why publishers have different rates for personal and institutional subscriptions, I find it wasteful to send incomplete bound volumes to libraries, when those libraries want the issues as originally published and prefer to bind the issues them- selves. As long as these journals include advertising, the prices for all subscriptions should be subsidized. Do advertisers or Elsevier believe that readers of library copies do not see the advertising? Advertisers probably get more exposure from library copies than from personal copies. I look forward to seeing changes in the pricing structure for these journals in 1991. Sincerely, Susan M. Anderes Head of Periodicals ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Readers of the NEWSLETTER ON SERIALS PRICING ISSUES are encouraged to share the information in the newsletter by electronic or paper meth- ods. We would appreciate credit if you quote from the newsletter. ====================================================================== The NEWSLETTER ON SERIALS PRICING ISSUES (ISSN: 1046-3410) is pub- lished as news is available by the American Library Association's Association for Library Collections and Technical Services, Publish- er/Vendor-Library Relations Committee's Subcommittee on Serials Pric- ing Issues. Editor: Marcia Tuttle, e-mail: TUTTLE@UNC.BITNET; Faxon's DataLinx: TUTTLE; ALANET: ALA0348; Paper mail: Serials Department, C.B. #3938 Davis Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill NC 27599-3938; telephone: (919) 962-1067; FAX: (919) 962-0484. Committee members are: Deana Astle (Clemson University), Mary Elizabeth Clack (Harvard University), Jerry Curtis (Springer- Verlag New York), Charles Hamaker (Louisiana State University), Robert Houbeck (University of Michigan), and Marcia Tuttle. EBSCONET custom- ers may receive the newsletter in paper format from EBSCO. Back issues of the newsletter are available electronically free of charge through BITNET from the editor. ====================================================================== ******ENDOFFILE***ENDOFFILE***ENDOFFILE***ENDOFFILE***ENDOFFILE******* ======================================================================== Date: Sun, 02 Dec 90 15:49 EST Subject: PRICING NEWSLETTER, NO. 30 ISSN: 1046-3410 NEWSLETTER ON SERIALS PRICING ISSUES NUMBER 30 -- DECEMBER 2, 1990 Editor: Marcia Tuttle CONTENTS FROM THE EDITOR, Marcia Tuttle GIFT SUBSCRIPTIONS FROM PROFESSORS, Anne McKee MORE FROM VIRGINIA TECH'S SCHOLARLY COMMUNICATIONS PROJECT, Lon Savage REPLY TO "PRICE INCREASES REDUX," Kluwer Academic Publishers BRITISH LIBRARY PROBLEMS, Lloyd Davidson HAVEN'T WE ALREADY PAID FOR THIS??? Danny Jones SAN ANTONIO ADDRESS BY FRANK PRESS, Danny Jones USELESS RESEARCH REPORTS, Bradley D. Carrington RESPONSE TO DEANA ASTLE, Siegfried Ruschin HAMAKER'S HAYMAKERS, Chuck Hamaker FROM THE EDITOR Marcia Tuttle, TUTTLE@UNC.BITNET I'm afraid this issue's "Mea Culpa" comes "From the Editor" for not being as careful as she promised. Here's a message from Sarah Stev- ens-Rayburn (LIBRARY@STSCI.BITNET): In the discussion of the price increase for ANALYTICAL CHEMISTRY, Anne McKee made the statement that an increase from $59 to $289 was a 450 percent increase. According to my calculator, that's a 389.8 percent increase, bad enough, I'll admit. I fear if we aren't care- ful to be accurate in our complaints, we'll lose credibility. Sarah is correct on all counts. This is from the CHAPEL HILL NEWSPAPER of November 29, 1990: Bill Hildebolt, student body president at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, has accepted a challenge from his N.C. State University counterpart to see which school can raise the most money for its libraries. The deadline for the contest is 5 p.m. Feb. 1, 1991. In a bet agreed on by the two presidents, the losing school's student leader will be forced to sit in a prominent location during the Feb. 6 State-Caro- lina game in NCSU's Reynolds Coliseum, wearing clothes of the win- ner's choosing and rooting for the rival team. Hildebolt said in The Daily Tar Heel today that he hopes to raise more than $5,000 from UNC students, parents and alumni. The money will be held in endowment funds until a total of $25,000 is reached. Fund-raising will continue after the Feb. 1 reckoning. Hildebolt is planning an all-Carolina blue outfit for NCSU Student Body President Ed Stack to sport at the game, he said. For you non-Tar Heels, the "Feb. 6 State-Carolina game" is basketball, of course. We hear so much dire news today on serials pricing that I am taking the liberty of passing along something from Heather Steele's recent letter to customers of the Blackwell Periodicals Division. She has been given temporary custody of John Merriman's "file of rather unusu- al letters and requests from publishers and customers." From an Asian shell society: It is with much regret that I bring you the sad news that we have decided to suspend publication of our journal due to a very diffi- cult economic situation in our country today. You therefore have a credit of $21.45 representing unserved subscriptions. Since it is difficult for us to obtain foreign currency, we would like to offer the following alternative in refunding your credit: We could send you shells of an equivalent amount, postage to be billed. From a science fiction journal: You don't understand: the only way a subscriber can cancel a sub. is to DIE, literally. From a literary journal: We don't publish this, get stuffed. Thanks to Heather and John for this diversion. GIFT SUBSCRIPTIONS FROM PROFESSORS: A RESPONSE TO MARIE MAROSCIA Anne E. McKee, George Mason University; DataLinx: AMCKEE. I've had some experience with what Marie was questioning in the last issue of the Newsletter, and I thought I would share my thoughts with you. 1. The first thing to consider is whether the professor(s) is willing to pay the individual rate or the institutional rate. Many times fac- ulty don't know there is a tiered structure and are horribly surprised when they discover the contrary. Also, there is the ethical and legal question involved in using individual rates for library use. Some publishers have gotten quite stringent in the last few years of in- vestigating any library where they believe the individual rate is being misused. Some of the publishers (as I'm sure you are aware) even print in bold letters across the front of the journal, "FOR PERSONAL USE ONLY!" 2. Once the pricing question is resolved: how does one go about paying for the journal? Should the professor pay directly for it or should the library handle all ordering procedures and then inform the profes- sor when the invoice arrives? This, too, is fraught with problems: a) suppose there have been budget cuts since the order was placed and the faculty member no longer has the dollars? b) what if the professor is on sabbatical or has left outright since the order was placed? Etc. 3. Then, once the order has been placed, how will it be received? By the professor, who will then forward to the library, or mailed direct- ly to the library? The claiming question must be resolved: does the professor do it or the library? What about renewal notices? I'll give you a quick run down on things I've had to consider when faced with professors who wanted to donate journal subscriptions: I. I personally find it unethical to accept a professor's offer of a journal subscription only to find out s/he means to order the "indi- vidual rate" and then give it to the library. I will refuse it every time. II. I have had numerous problems with obtaining the subscription if the offer for the institutional rate to be paid by the professor has been accepted. If the professor has it mailed directly to him/her and then forwards it to the library, there always seems to be an incomplete run. Many times the professor will retain the issues until s/he has about four or five of them and then send them over to the library, which means we never have the current issues on the shelf. If the donation is mailed directly to the library, I still seem to have more trouble than usual obtaining all the issues. 3. Renewals. I've had an inordinate amount of trouble in renewing these subscriptions. Professors leave campus and then we're forced to cancel again. Or, they can't afford to pick up the subscription so we're forced to cancel. It is especially bad when they offer to pay for a brand new subscription one year and then are not able to keep up the arrangement the next year. You have one year on the shelf; do you bind it or discard it? Etc. As you can see, there are many, many things to consider about gift donations. I think Marie should count herself very fortunate that the faculty on her campus care enough for the library and the students to want to retain the journals by assuming the payment. I personally believe that these gift subscriptions take up more staff time in or- dering and claiming than regular subscriptions and after being "burned" a number of times, will not usually accept the gift. Only Marie, however, can decide if these possible problems are outweighed by the fact that they can still make the title available to the stu- dents. Good luck!! MORE FROM VIRGINIA TECH'S SCHOLARLY COMMUNICATIONS PROJECT Lon Savage, Virginia Tech, SAVAGE@VTVM1.BITNET. The Scholarly Communications Project of Virginia Tech, started two years ago as one university's response to the serials pricing problem, has begun marketing a technical journal. The project is intended to develop alternative models for retaining ownership of scholarly infor- mation within the university environment. The journal is THE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF ANALYTICAL AND EXPERIMENT- AL MODAL ANALYSIS (IJAEMA), a publication of the Society for Experi- mental Mechanics of Bethel CT. The university project began editing, printing and distributing the journal last January. It began marketing the journal this fall. Letters have gone out to faculty and to librarians at universities where modal analysis activity is evident (mostly in engineering schools), soliciting institutional subscriptions. The letter to li- brarians states that a commercial publisher, one of several known for escalating serials prices, had made a bid to publish the journal at the time the university's bid was submitted. The Society has indicated it approved Virginia Tech's bid to publish the journal partly because of the university's commitment to hold down the price for libraries. The university project is marketing the journal, a quarterly with many mathematical equations, at a price of $75 per year for institutional subscriptions, the same price charged by the society last year. The project also plans to develop electronic communication of the jour- nal's contents and already has begun placing its tables of contents and abstracts on the Internet. REPLY TO "PRICE INCREASES REDUX" Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht, The Netherlands; SCITECH@KAP.NL. We would like to reply to the article written by Deana Astle concern- ing the INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF FRACTURE. We believe the information presented is misleading. The facts are: The increased frequency of publication from 3 volumes (12 issues) in 1989 to 5 volumes (20 issues) of 1990 was announced at the time of renewing subscriptions in late 1989. Thus, 1991 will carry an increase of 1 volume (4 issues) compared with 1990. The price increase per volume is: 1990: Dfl 315 US$ 148 1991: Dfl 330 US$ 187.50 _______ __________ 5 percent increase 26.7 percent increase The US$ increase is composed of 22.7 percent increase because of the US$ exchange rate and 4 percent from inflation. The exchange rates: 1990 was $1 = Dfl 2.16 1991 is $1 = Dfl 1.76 We hope this clarifies the situation. BRITISH LIBRARY PROBLEMS Lloyd Davidson, Northwestern University, L_DAVIDSON@NUACC.BITNET. The NEW SCIENTIST of 3 November 1990 has a short article on page 16 that describes the economic difficulties, both long and short term, that are being faced by the British Library. The library is going to be forced to sell land that was "earmarked for expansion of the li- brary in the next century" and it has been forced to stop buying about 3,000 translations of foreign scientific monographs, some reference works and abstract journals and 201 periodicals, 163 of which are translations of pure science periodicals from Eastern Europe. Like other libraries around the world, the problem is caused in part by funding increases which have not taken "into account the huge increas- es in the cost of scientific journals." Since so many of us depend on the British Library as a resource of last resort, any diminishment of its collection scope is cause for general concern. SERIALS ISSUES FROM THE CHARLESTON CONFERENCE Janet L. Flowers, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; JFLOWER@UNC.BITNET. As usual, the Charleston Conference on Issues and Trends in Acquisi- tions and Serials (November 8-10, 1990) covered a wide range of top- ics, from education for acquisitions librarians to preservation to selection criteria. The issue of serials pricing was muted compared to previous conferences, but two panels did concern serials-related mat- ters, so I will report them here. The first panel dealt with emerging technological trends. Bill Potter, Director of Libraries at the University of Georgia, spoke to the de- mand side, noting four trends that are building toward a greater use of technology. The four trends are as follows: 1) Libraries are ex- panding online catalogs to include indexes and other databases; 2) The use of indexes on CD ROM is leading to an increased use of the lower end of collections, i.e., a core of popular titles; 3) The exponential increases in the costs of scientific journals are leading to consider- ation of ways to replace the scholarly communication system for this area; 4) The evolution of national networks, such as NREN, is offering the distribution channel for these services. Ward Shaw, President of CARL, spoke to the supply trends. He traced major technological developments in the past fifteen years from OCLC, to PACs, to networks, to full text delivery. He noted that his compa- ny, and others, are discovering end users willing to pay to avoid the bureaucracy of the library. Members of the audience raised the predictable questions of the cost of technology, the role of editors in an electronic environment, pre- servation concerns, and copyright issues. In the second panel, Joe Barker, of the University of California at Berkeley, explored the unbundling of the service charges from sub- scription agents. He defined unbundling as the breaking up of charges into components that are sold separately or in smaller bundles. Joe proposed four levels for the new services: no frills, the precision, self-helper (e.g., library does its own claiming), and the golden passport. The parallel with banking services may help you see the range of support these levels would provide. Libraries would pay only for those services used. The vendor could levy supplemental charges based on units of time or volume (e.g., number of claims), surcharges, or a sliding scale. Joe noted four risks associated with a change to unbundled services. 1) Would it be fair? (Do the librarians and the vendors know the costs of their services?) 2) Who would support the research and development efforts of the vendor? 3) What should the contractual obligations be? (How long should the contract be? What stipulations could be made to cover a change in mix because of serials cancellations?) 4) Would it be just too confusing for everyone? On the other hand, he postulated several advantages for both libraries and vendors. It would enable libraries to pay for only what they used. Libraries could manage their money better by weighing the cost of using the vendor versus doing the work locally. He thought that vend- ors could use unbundling as a new form of competitive selling. They could use it to lead prices away from unprofitable services. Joe's parting questions to the audience were: Are we ready for this? Is it worth it? Do we dare? (See his article, "Unbundling Serials Vendors' Service Charges: Are we Ready?" in the Summer 1990 issue of SERIALS REVIEW.) Dan Tonkery of Readmore responded by observing that most serials man- agers are unaware of the service rate they are currently being charged. He also stated that service charges are not related to the range of serials being purchased and that the more aggressive librar- ies are thriving at the expense of others in the current approach. To refresh the audience's memory, he reviewed the factors affecting service charges including the title mix (noting that the STM titles clearly pay for the humanities and social sciences). He described the growing pressure to increase service charges as stemming from declines in the discounts from publishers, increased operating costs, changes in the title mix, and an increase in service demands from libraries. (Note: In the Hyde Park Corner segment of the program, Jerry Curtis, of Springer Verlag New York, responded to a request for information regarding the range of service charges. He described the range as being from 0 - 18 percent, depending upon the mix and noted that the serials vendor only has two sources of revenue: discount and service charges.) Tonkery pointed to examples of existing unbundled services such as consolidation of orders for off-site check-in, online check-in, union lists, database building, and credit arrangements. Craig Flansburg from Faxon warned that unbundling could lead to micro- managing. He also noted that vendors have always amortized costs over their user base and provided some fairness through this distribution. He cited Marcia Tuttle's comments in an earlier article, calling for a full and effective partnership between librarians and serials vendors. HAVEN'T WE ALREADY PAID FOR THIS??? Danny Jones, University of Texas Health Sciences Center, San Anton- io; JONES@UTHSCSA.BITNET. Last week I received a mailing from ISI about the special introductory price offer on the JOURNAL CITATION REPORTS. When I called they told me this offer covers the 1989 JCR's. Until now the JCR was included in the annual subscription I paid in advance for SCIENCE CITATION INDEX and SOCIAL SCIENCE CITATION INDEX, and I paid for the 1989 subscrip- tion in the fall of 1989. As I see it, I've paid in advance for two years of JCR's and their separate subscription should begin with 1991. Furthermore, as a state institution, I do not think the attorney gen- eral would allow me to pay twice for the same product. I'd be inter- ested in how others view this. SAN ANTONIO ADDRESS BY FRANK PRESS Danny Jones, University of Texas Health Sciences Center, San Anton- io; JONES@UTHSCSA.BITNET. Frank Press, President of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States, gave a public address on science and technology policy in the U.S. at Trinity University in San Antonio, November 19, 1990. In the question period following his address Steve Euhaus, Ph.D., who retired several years ago as editor of APPLIED MECHANICS REVIEWS after more than 25 years in that position, commented on the effect of jour- nal price increases on university libraries in recent years and asked Dr. Press what could be done by the university libraries. In his brief response, Dr. Press acknowledged the problem and suggested that the universities should get together and stop buying the expensive jour- nals or, alternatively, they could agree to buy limited copies of the journals and share them. USELESS RESEARCH REPORTS Bradley D. Carrington, University of Kentucky Library; BCARRING@UKCC.UKY.EDU. From a letter of Aaron W. Hughey to the Editor of the CHRONICLE OF HIGHER EDUCATION, November 14, 1990, page 14: It has long been my contention that and most other student-services journals are comprised primarily of irrelevant commentaries and useless research reports. Comprehensive studies that could provide many of the in- sights so desperately needed are practically non-existant. ... As a practitioner, I want something I can easily translate into concrete administrative practice. ... Unfortunately, providing this kind of information does not seem to be a primary motivation for most of those currently contributing to our various publications. Might also apply to the journal literature of librarianship. RESPONSE TO DEANA ASTLE Siegfried Ruschin, Librarian for Collection Development, Linda Hall Library, 5109 Cherry Street, Kansas City MO 64110-2498. I agree with Deana Astle's statement in no. 29 of the Newsletter that libraries cannot and, I add, should not continue to sustain inordinate increases in subscription prices, whatever reasons the publishers may allege to "justify" them. Though this in no way diminishes the strength of Deana's argument, it should be noted that the prices of two of the journals that she men- tions already drastically increased for THIS year. The subscription price for volumes 42-46 (20 issues) of the INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF FRACTURE in 1990 was $675.00 plus postage, not $437.49. (We paid $725.69.) The increase for next year is therefore "only" a little over 53 percent. The story of BIOPOLYMERS is complicated. Volume 29 for 1990, of this "monthly" consisted of 14 numbers, but five of them, 4/5 (March/- April), 6/7 (May/June), 8/9 (July/August 5), 10/11 (August 15/Sept), 12/13 (Oct/Nov) were combined numbers. These double issues do not contain a perceptibly greater number of pages than the single ones. Last August, Wiley began to publish an additional volume, vol. 30 also dated 1990. The subscription cost for the year was thereby doubled, even though volume 30 was to consist of only seven issues compared to the "fourteen" of volume 29. So far, we have received nos. 1/2, 3/4 and 5/6 of volume 30 (1990). Contrary to the usual practice, Wiley did not bill for volume 30 ahead of publication, but decided to include it with the 1991 subscription. The invoice now states that the charge of $1575.00 covers 24 issues in 2 volumes from August 1990 to December 1991. Since volume 30 was to be published in seven issues, volume 31 would have to consist of 17 issues. HAMAKER'S HAYMAKERS Chuck Hamaker, Louisiana State University; NOTCAH@LSUVM.BITNET. Stanford and challenges to and reviews of its overhead understandings with the federal government continue to make the news. The NEW YORK TIMES Education section (Wednesday, November 7, 1990) discusses the problem with a good overview of the possible changes that three ongo- ing revIews could bring not only to Stanford, but to higher education overhead charges in general. Many of the articles mention a concern about overhead charges connected with Stanford's libraries. This is because the initial letter detailing concerns about the Memoranda of Understanding (MOU) that Stanford had reached with the Office of Naval Research specifies dollar amounts concerning library cost reimburse- ment charges. The letter, apparently written March 6, 1990 by Paul Biddle, ONR representative at Stanford, states: The special study that supports an MOU may not be acceptable. ... DCAA (Defense Contracting Audit Agency) identifies excessive library cost reimbursement through the overheads amount to $30 - $40 million during the period 1983-86. The Controller's Office (at Stanford) indicates this is a "done deal" due to the existence of an MOU that ONR fully understood. What this all means, I think, is that Stanford negotiated a charging algorithm for library overheads that resulted in at least the dollar amounts mentioned above. Of course, Stanford in its annual reports to ARL identified library expenditures in the range of about $70 million for the years mentioned. This suggests the algorithm may have created reimbursement levels of close to 65 percent or more for Stanford's library expenditures. Overall, overhead charges from all sources con- tribute about a third of Stanford's annual operating expenses, and after tuition were its second largest source of operating or unre- stricted funds. What is clear, even if the library reimbursement algo- rithm included much more than the libraries included in the ARL num- bers, is that Stanford had figured out how to maximize overhead re- turns from the federal government. After having agreed to those over- head calculation formulas, the government is now crying foul. And the resulting uproar may affect how all higher education is treated in overhead calculations with the federal government. Jack Timberlake, University of New Orleans, passed on to me a copy of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign School of Chemical Sciences Alumni News (Fall 1990) detailing problems at the Chemistry library there. Ninety-five percent of the current materials budget goes for serials. "There is virtually no money for monographs, or to build the collection for the future ... Chemistry librarian Tina Chrzastowski points out. ... In the last year I have found for the first time that the Chemistry library's budget has been unable to meet all the research needs of the faculty and students." The column is basically to introduce an appeal for funds to alumni, but as Jack pointed out in a note to me, "Years ago ... smaller libraries com- plained that the big schools were unsympathetic and thus their lack of concern contributed to the problem." From where I sit, it looks to me like we are all in the same boat today, bIg and small, and ignoring the cost of the materials we buy, or perpetuating the "go get more money" syndrome, is not an answer for either large or small libraries. If anything, it has exacerbated the situation. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Readers of the NEWSLETTER ON SERIALS PRICING ISSUES are encouraged to share the information in the newsletter by electronic or paper meth- ods. We would appreciate credit if you quote from the newsletter. ====================================================================== The NEWSLETTER ON SERIALS PRICING ISSUES (ISSN: 1046-3410) is pub- lished as news is available by the American Library Association's Association for Library Collections and Technical Services, Publish- er/Vendor-Library Relations Committee's Subcommittee on Serials Pric- ing Issues. Editor: Marcia Tuttle, e-mail: TUTTLE@UNC.BITNET; Faxon's DataLinx: TUTTLE; ALANET: ALA0348; Paper mail: Serials Department, C.B. #3938 Davis Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill NC 27599-3938; telephone: (919) 962-1067; FAX: (919) 962-0484. Committee members are: Deana Astle (Clemson University), Mary Elizabeth Clack (Harvard University), Jerry Curtis (Springer- Verlag New York), Charles Hamaker (Louisiana State University), Robert Houbeck (University of Michigan), and Marcia Tuttle. EBSCONET custom- ers may receive the newsletter in paper format from EBSCO. Back issues of the newsletter are available electronically free of charge through BITNET from the editor. ====================================================================== ******ENDOFFILE***ENDOFFILE***ENDOFFILE***ENDOFFILE***ENDOFFILE******* ======================================================================== Date: Thu, 10 Jan 91 10:51 EST Subject: PRICING NEWSLETTER, NO. 31 ISSN: 1046-3410 NEWSLETTER ON SERIALS PRICING ISSUES NUMBER 31 - JANUARY 10, 1991 Editor: Marcia Tuttle CONTENTS FROM THE EDITOR, Marcia Tuttle SUPPLEMENTS TO , Eleanor Cook ELSEVIER'S RESPONSE TO SUSAN ANDERES, David Bousfield "DIFFERENTIAL TREATMENT" FOR INSTITUTIONAL SUBSCRIBERS, Christie Degener OR ? Marcia Tuttle HAMAKER'S HAYMAKERS, Chuck Hamaker FROM THE EDITOR Marcia Tuttle, TUTTLE@UNC.BITNET One of the real joys of being a serials librarian is taking part in the fury of processing the holiday mail. In late December, with all our Acquisitions Assistants on vacation except our two new people, I got to help with serials check-in on our manual system. For three days I checked in mail for six hours and SSS'd (our local Stamping, Strip- ing, and Shelving procedure) for two hours. On Friday night, December 29 I was in bed before 10:00, exhausted. As I struggled with the need to attach new check-in cards for new volumes, construct call numbers that the vacationing supervisor would accept, and separate single- sheet serials from ads, I gained a new respect for the very publishers we love to bash. I never had to search for the enumeration on their journals. Checking in one of these international journals often low- ered the height of my stack of mail significantly. Issues had the date on the cover along with the enumeration, so I knew when to begin a new line on the check-in card. They even had the message "Last issue of this volume." Let's face it, these guys know how to publish journals! Sensitivity to the needs of librarians comes at a high cost. And it is a cost we pay twice. When we order these expensive international jour- nals through a subscription agent, we are paying again, because these publishers give the agent something on the order of a ten percent discount. Figure that out in dollars! Even when the publisher puts a cap on the amount of the discount, it's a lot of money. The agent tells us two things: 1) the discount on these expensive titles lowers the library's service charge on the other journals; and 2) the agent earns the discount by the service he provides the publisher. How does the publisher feel about subsidizing the cost of our acquiring other journals? I acknowledge that transmitting a batch of orders electron- ically is a service to the publisher, but the agent's other "services" include screening library claims and passing on information about delayed publication and title changes. I submit that libraries rarely have to claim the journals in question and these publishers notify us very clearly of title changes and the very few delays in publication. I am not advocating that libraries begin to subscribe to international journals directly from the publisher, but I do wonder if we are paying even more "too much" than we realize. As they say on television, "Your response is welcome." A message from Lelde Gilman (ECZ5LBG@UCLAMVS.BITNET) at UCLA Biomedi- cal Library sees vindication "in the BIG PRESS!" for a controversial talk she made at the last conference of the Medical Library Associa- tion: My talk on the publisher/librarian embroglio is being published in the January issue of the MLA BULLETIN ... but see the article on pages 1331-32, vol. 250 of SCIENCE, December 7, 1990, "Pub- lishing by -- and for? -- the Numbers," by David P. Hamilton. MIT professor Richard Young says if the bottom 80 percent of the literature "just vanished, I doubt the scientific enterprise would suffer." The article is based on an ISI (Institute for Scientific Information) study regarding the citation of only a small percentage of science literature. My talk in May: "If all of us do cut back everything but the best, or the highly cited (and I do believe there is a correlation), there may eventually be an audience of U.S., Japanese and West European medical li- braries subscribing to the same expensive, and fewer, journals. We all have a pretty good idea as to which ones these might be. If and when this happens, as it well may, scientific communica- tion will still continue unabated. Does anyone really doubt that scientists will continue to publish and communicate?" Since we are about to engage on a massive cancellation project for jour- nals (by necessity) and having to explain this to the faculty, it is wonderful to have at hand the article from SCIENCE! My library's copy of the January MLA BULLETIN hasn't come yet. I urge you to watch for this issue and read Lelde's article. I am getting messages and more messages about a new electronic journal sponsored by North Carolina State University, POSTMODERN CULTURE. For those of you who don't know about it, "it is a peer-reviewed electron- ic journal which provides an international, interdisciplinary forum for discussions of contemporary literature, theory, and culture. It emphasizes open debate and intellectual engagement." POSTMODERN CUL- TURE is available free of charge on BITNET or the Internet (or $15.00- /individuals, $30.00/institutions a year for microfiche or disk, plus postage: $3.00/Canada and $7.00/elsewhere outside the U.S). Vol. 1, no. 1 was September 1990. To subscribe, send a message to PMC@NCSUVM.- BITNET, or PMC@NCSUVM.NCSU.EDU, and ask to be added to the subscriber list. For disk or fiche write: POSTMODERN CULTURE, Box 5657, Raleigh NC 27650. Which reminds me to ask you what your libraries are doing about these new electronic mail journals. Are you receiving them at all? Online? On disk or other format? How do you receive them (e.g., a personal mailbox or a special mailbox)? How do you retain them? Online? Disk? Paper? Server? How do patrons access these journals? What works and what doesn't? Jim Thompson, University of California, Riverside, (THOMPSON@UCRVMS.- BITNET) keeps us current with the financial security of the Maxwell empire: In case any of your readers are worried about Pergamon's ability to survive the rising costs of paper and postage, and all the other dire developments which we're always told have today's commercial publishers at death's door, THE SCOTSMAN (Edinburgh) of November 29 indicates that Maxwell Communication is likely, after all, to make it through long enough to send out the next renewal notices. "Operating profits from publishing and profes- sional database information services leapt by 50.4 per cent, from L71.8 million (i.e., pounds) in 1989 to L108 million... Mr. Max- well said the advances had been achieved despite the more diffi- cult economic conditions both in the US and the UK, and interna- tionally. 'Our publishing and professional information services have demonstrated their recession-proof qualities by these re- sults,' he added...'We look forward to a satisfactory outcome for the year.'" From Randy Reichart at the University of Alberta (RREICHAR@UALTAVM.- BITNET) comes the text of a letter sent by Alberta's collections co- ordinator, David Jones, to Christopher Schneider, International Sales Director of Gordon and Breach: Dear Mr. Schneider: Attached are the labels from the SIX copies of your catalog that we received in the mail. This is truly a gross waste of postage and material. While your mailing system may not be sophisticated enough to avoid all duplication (i.e., between those addressed to Mungall and those to the Science and Technology Library), surely you should be able to note four copies all going to the same individual and two to the same library. Please save us some money (and use it to lower the price of your publications) and in fu- ture send only 1 copy of your material.... SUPPLEMENTS TO Eleanor Cook, Serials Librarian, Appalachian State University, Boone NC; COOKEI@APPSTATE.BITNET. This is an excerpt from a letter I recently sent to the German pub- lisher E. Schweizerbart'sche: I am writing to express my concern over a recent action your company has taken. We have been subscribing to EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF MINERALOGY for a number of years. In 1990 we paid $197.26 plus $24.59 for a supplement. Then in November 1990 we were sent two more supplements and charged an additional $73.80. It bothers me to have to pay extra charges for unannounced sup- plements. The last two that arrived are of particular concern. This is because these supposed supplements to Vol. 2, 1990 of EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF MINERALOGY are actually No. 1 and 2 of a completely separate serial title, BERICHTE DER DEUTSCHEN MINERAL- OGISCHEN GESELLSCHAFT. With a different title, numbering and ISSN, this in my opinion is clearly a marketing ploy to get us hooked on subscribing to yet another journal. In response to my inquiry about this, our serials vendor discov- ered that next year (1991) the EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF MINERALOGY will be available for subscription either with or without supple- ments. While this is a step in the right direction, I am still stuck with these two supplements that I do not want. I'd like to return them and get our money back, but I was told I could not do this. American university libraries are suffering under the weight of journal prices and we can no longer afford to absorb the cost of supplements whenever you feel like putting them out. We want to know exactly what we're going to have to pay on a yearly basis, with no surprises. Our shrinking budgets can no longer handle such practices. I'll let you know if I get a response. In the meantime I am stuck with two issues of something that I cannot shelve or bind because the men- tion of the title we have the subscription for is in small letters on the cover and elsewhere, and they will be a constant source of confu- sion. ELSEVIER'S RESPONSE TO SUSAN ANDERES David Bousfield, Ph.D., Publisher, Elsevier Trends Journals, 68 Hills Rd, Cambridge CB2 1LA, England; JDB13.PHOENIX.CAMBRIDGE.AC.UK. (EDITOR'S NOTE: Letter reprinted with author's permission. For Ander- es's letter, see Newsletter no. 30.) Dear Ms. Anderes, Thank you for your letter of November 8th. Please be assured that we do take comments from our customers seriously as we are always looking at ways of improving the service we provide. Responding to your points in order: 1. The price of the institutional subscription has increased by 10% (1% less than the UK inflation rate) - not by 16.3% as you describe. Also, our pricing policy (printed on the contents page) has always made it clear that the Personal edition is available to individual users only. 2. We are always prepared to consider alternative subscription packages, but as yet we are unconvinced that it would be in the financial interest of an institution to not receive a compendium. The local binding costs are invariably inflated by the need to replace missing and damaged copies. All of our studies show that we can provide a cheaper service overall. 3. Basically, we have two prices: the full (Library) price and a heavily discounted (Personal) price. The full price is based upon the high overhead costs involved in running the Trends journals (we currently have 50 staff working on 10 titles). The discount price is subsidised by advertising income, which in turn is only possible due to the high Personal subscriber levels enjoyed by the Trends titles. To decrease the institu- tional rate would require a disproportionate increase in the Personal rate. This in turn would lead to a fall in subscriber numbers, and ultimately in advertising income, creating the need for a further disproportionate increase in all prices. To summarise, the institutional price reflects the very high costs associated with the editorial production of the Trends magazines. The low Personal price reflects a strategy for providing some subsidy for all versions of our product via advertising income. I hope these comments clarify some of the reasons behind our pricing policy. We will of course reconsider your suggestions early next year when pricing for 1992. Meanwhile, I hope you will accept that, as the enclosed extract from a recent issue of THE SCIENTIST shows, we do deliver a high quality product. "DIFFERENTIAL TREATMENT" FOR INSTITUTIONAL SUBSCRIBERS Christie Degener, Health Sciences Library, University of North Caro- lina at Chapel Hill; cdegener@med.unc.edu. Two instances of institutional subscriber discrimination recently crossed my desk. 1) Claim requests for issues of journals published by Medical Econom- ics Pub. Co. are being returned from our vendor with the stamped mes- sage: "Copies are not replaced to libraries or institutions." Contact- ing Medical Economics clarified this policy statement somewhat: if the issues were mailed to the correct institutional address, libraries and institutions must pay for missing issues they claim rather than get- ting them free. (However, personal subscribers submitting claims do normally receive the missing issues for free.) According to the Medi- cal Economics spokesperson, this policy has been in effect for at least 5 years because the publisher has had too many libraries submit- ting claims for "missing" issues that were actually received and then lost/stolen/whatever. Recent issues of 3 Medical Economics titles (BUSINESS & HEALTH, DRUG TOPICS, and MEDICAL ECONOMICS) do not mention this policy or give any claiming instructions. 2) The latest issue of JOURNAL OF NUTRITIONAL SCIENCE AND VITAMINOLOGY (Vol. 36, no. 4, Aug. 1990) contained a special "Announcement to In- stitutional Subscribers" as follows: Journal of Nutritional Science and Vitaminology, Vol. 36, Supple- ment II "Dietary Protein as a Regulator of Lipid Metabolism" Edited by Michihiro Sugano 182 x 257 mm, about 170 pages, Jap Yen 3,000 (excluding postage) will be published around October, 1990. The subscription price of this supplement issue is not included in the regular institution- al subscription rate. (Only for personal subscribers is it in- cluded.) Please use the attached post card when ordering this issue. Center for Academic Publications Japan This title's only other supplement is published as part of the Vol. 36, No. 4 issue itself (and therefore automatically included for both personal and institutional subscribers). In both cases described above, the titles do not have separate person- al versus institutional subscription rates. EDITOR'S COMMENTS: Christie sent documentation for both instances, for which I thank her. Her covering note said: "When I called Medical Economics, the rep. volunteered to send our missing issues free, "be- cause it's Christmas." She has since obtained a catalog from Medical Economics which does state the no-claims-from-libraries policy on page 5. I checked the title MEDICAL ECONOMICS on DataLinx and found a statement that said the claim limit for this publisher is three months. Christie then called the publisher, Doug Florenzie, to ask for clari- fication. He told her that both policies were "basically true." In the past they have been reluctant to supply second copies to institutions because of libraries' abuse of the privilege. Further, the company has a limited inventory of back issues. Recently there has been a subtle change in the policy and Medical Economics Company has become a little more accommodating. Some issues are available for claims, if the li- brary does not have "a reputation" for claiming abuse and if the three-month time limit is met. OR ? Marcia Tuttle, TUTTLE@UNC.BITNET. As I was checking in the holiday mail, I came across a journal issue carrying a post-it note that said, "double check-in." In the state of mind provoked by using a manual check-in file on December 28, I re- jected the idea of this duplication of effort and put the issue aside to study later. Here's what I found. The issue in question, dated December 10, 1990, was labelled: CHEMICAL GEOLOGY, vol. 86, no. 1 ISOTOPE GEOSCIENCE, vol. 12, no. 1 The head of the contents page says "CHEMICAL GEOLOGY - ISOTOPE GEO- SCIENCE SECTION - AN INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL." The publisher is Elsevier Science Publishers in Amsterdam. On the check-in cards I found a se- ries of letters dated from 1982 to 1987 from Elsevier, some stuck on one card and some on the other. Excerpts follow. 1982 With effect from 1983, your subscription to CHEMICAL GEOLOGY will now include a new section entitled ISOTOPE GEOSCIENCE. ISOTOPE GEOSCIENCE is a 'daughter' section which is being launched because of the increasing amount of work now being done in the field of isotope geology and radiochemistry. For the subscribers to CHEMICAL GEOLOGY, this new destinction (sic) offers a more comprehensive, yet simpler, information source in the remarkably active area of geochemistry. A subscription to ISOTOPE GEOSCIENCE only is possible. If you intend to subscribe to this new section only, please do inform us. 1984 In response to suggestions put by a number of our subscribers to ISOTOPE GEOSCIENCE, we have decided to re-number the journal issues with effect from 1985. As you know, ISOTOPE GEOSCIENCE was launched last year as a daughter journal of CHEMICAL GEOLOGY. The new journal was given its own numbering sequence (ie, starting with Vol. 1/1) as well as being numbered as part of CHEMICAL GEOLOGY. From the beginning of 1985 this policy will be abandoned and we will only be numbering the issues in accordance with the existing numbering of CHEMICAL GEOLOGY.... I hope this change will alleviate some of your cataloguing problems. 1986 CHEMICAL GEOLOGY 1987 With reference to your subscription to the above mentioned jour- nal, please be advised that you will have received, or will shortly be receiving, the first issue for the 1987 period. This title consists of several sections, which can sometimes lead to confusion in administration. On the back of this letter, for your convenience, you will find a publication schedule for the 1987 subscription period. This publication schedule lists exactly which volumes cover the separate sections of this title. If a coexistent volume numbering for the separate sections is used, same is also listed. We hope this publications schedule will be of use to you in the administration and registration of this title in your records.... (on verso) CHEMICAL GEOLOGY is published according to a volume- numbering scheme that embraces both sections of the journal. Each of these sections has its own volume numbering, according to the following system: CHEMICAL GEOLOGY Vols. 60-66 7 volumes - 28 issues Vols. 60-64 Vols. 65-66 CHEMICAL GEOLOGY ISOTOPE GEOSCIENCE (5 volumes - 20 issues) Vols. 6-7 (2 volumes - 8 issues) For cataloguing, it is recommended that subscribers to CHEMICAL GEOLOGY follow the CHEMICAL GEOLOGY numbering sequence. Subscrib- ers to ISOTOPE GEOSCIENCE should adhere to the section volume numbers. The 1987 letter is identical to the 1986 letter and gives the 1988 publication schedule and the same cataloging advice. This discussion is not just about bibliographic treatment of journals. It has strong, albeit subtler, implications for pricing, too. The most common reason for such things as "daughter" publications is to avoid starting a new journal and to cash in on the more or less captive audience of the original serial. Some publishers would not make avail- able a separate subscription to the new section alone, as Elsevier did. Nor would they go to the trouble to send out a letter each year to aid librarians, as Elsevier does. This publisher tries very hard to accommodate the wishes and needs of librarians (at a price), as well as those of their editors. The editor has taken this round. HAMAKER'S HAYMAKERS Chuck Hamaker, Louisiana State University, NOTCAH@LSUVM.BITNET. One of the battles in medicine that has direct bearing on many of the issues tracked by Newsletter readers is getting public debate through a controversial discussion of control of medical information. The NEW YORK TIMES, November 14, 1990 (page 1) broke nationally a story that had been pieced together by AIDS activists. The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, a division of NIH, did not notify doctors of a report prepared by a panel of 16 AIDS specialists which reached a conclusion May 15, 1990 that steroids can halve the death rate from AIDS-related pneumonia. The report was delayed five months until one of the papers on which the conclusion was based was accepted for publication at the NEW ENGLAND JOURNAL OF MEDICINE. The author's fear that NEJM would not accept his paper if the panel report, based in part on his paper, came out before a journal accepted it, apparent- ly was one cause of delay. In the NEW YORK TIMES December 2, 1990 (page E4), under an article by Gina Kolata, "Patients and Scientists Fight for Control of Medical Information," a second research arena, cases of Women and AIDS, are at issue, with the issue being who owns government generated research. Using the Freedom of Information Act, advocates are trying to get unpublished data from Federal studies. The NIH is determined not to release information in the papers before they appear in medical jour- nals. Joanne Belk, acting Freedom of Information Officer at the NIH said, "It's a very, very sensitive matter. We really are trying to protect researchers' draft manuscripts before they are published. We don't want to jeopardize their chances of publication." William Rubenstein, a lawyer for the ACLU trying to get the AIDS data from the Government said, "They (the studies) were paid for by a pub- lic agency and the law says the public has access to the data. I don't see how the Government has a right to withhold them." Although it is almost a commonplace among academic and research li- braries that journal publishers hold our budgets hostage with ridicu- lously large increases in prices, now it is becoming clear to a much larger public that the journal system can hold much more than library dollars hostage. It can hold lives hostage to a system as well. I recommend librarians watch this one; it has the potential of finally defining who controls access to information, and how. Although the peer review system is one of the basic shibboleths of science, with- holding lifesaving information while the system works its will is likely to bring that wall of Jericho crumbling, especially in the case of government grant funded research. AIDS activists have accused the NIH panel that withheld its results for five months with murder. The system is likely to be under increasing pressure to correct this type of abuse. Reading the NEW YORK TIMES articles is probably enough to outrage anyone. Think about medical areas where there are no "activists" dogging re- searchers and wonder how long it takes lifesaving research to save your own family. In the case of federally funded medical research, normally the integrity and methods of the researcher have been peer approved before the research is funded. Formal publication may in fact be a mere artifact for tenure and additional funding. When delay for formal publication means more people dead, where does the line get drawn? I hope it is not a career that draws the line; but at this stage, clearly it is. The last two issues of the ARL NEWSLETTER contain several important items Newsletter readers should know about. Ann Okerson in the January 4, 1991 issue updates us on changes in NSF Grant Proposal Require- ments. "In lieu of providing a complete list of publications for the past 5 years, senior personnel need only include a list of up to five publications most relevant to the research proposed and up to five other significant research publications. Items in press may be includ- ed." Okerson notes only "12 citations are requested in nominations for both the Nobel Prize and membership in the U.S. National Academy of Sciences." Way to go NSF! The real question is, is this sufficient to tell faculty that publish or perish is no longer the name of the game? Maybe grant committees should continue to request all publications of the last five years and deduct points for any over 10!!! This same issue of the ARL NEWSLETTER contains the basic text (subject to wording changes) of a resolution passed by NSF's executive commit- tee at the organization's annual meeting on November 13, 1990. The resolution not only supports ARL serials initiatives, it offers NASULGC support in developing strategies to deal with pricing and production (or overproduction) in scholarly publishing. It recommends among other points that NASULGC (that's the National Association of State Universities and Land-Grant Colleges) campuses inform their faculties regularly about journal price increases; that faculty of NASULGC campuses "be sensitive to the assignment of ownership of their written products; that faculty of NASULGC institutions acknowledge cost as a factor in the selection of serials...." (Did all librarians who still believe we only have to judge quality note that one?); "that NASULGC encourage member institutions to examine the extent to which academic reward system and grant/contract practices contribute to the excessive production of publications..." Dr. Peter Wagner, Provost, SUNY Binghamton, chairs the NASULGC Library Committee and sought input from Ann Okerson and ARL in formulating this resolution. I hope the full text becomes widely available soon so everyone can take a look at it. Jennifer Wingard, Assistant Director Federal Relations -- Higher Education at NASULGC describes the passed resolution as "highly proactive, exciting and enabling." NASULGC rep- resents the nation's 72 land-grant colleges and universities. It's old news for many by now, but the November 7, 1990 issue of the ARL NEWSLETTER included a lead article by yours truly, "Journal Prices in Perspective," which documents an eleven-year growth in prices from the big three sci-tech publishers of 170 to 309 percent, while univer- sity and library budgets grew about 110 percent. Overall CPI was about 50 percent for roughly the same period. Growth in volumes and issues ranges from 4 percent to 73 percent, varying enormously by publisher in the same time frame. If you need overview numbers this could help. In a December 7, 1990 release, Faxon estimated U.S. domestic journals increased in price 12 percent, which is, if memory serves, at least 30 percent higher than any time in the last decade. Looks like American publishers got a bit greedy, or else foreign acquisition pressure forced them to do it, or, heaven forbid, does this mean they really are noticing cancellations??? None of them has admitted that yet, but we are waiting to see which publisher admits first that subscription levels are down. American and foreign publishers are afraid such "in- formation" would help a competitor. They seem to be willing to go down with the ship rather than admit there is a serious problem that they don't want to admit. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Readers of the NEWSLETTER ON SERIALS PRICING ISSUES are encouraged to share the information in the newsletter by electronic or paper methods. We would appreciate credit if you quote from the newsletter. ====================================================================== The NEWSLETTER ON SERIALS PRICING ISSUES (ISSN: 1046-3410) is pub- lished as news is available by the American Library Association's Association for Library Collections and Technical Services, Publisher/ Vendor-Library Relations Committee's Subcommittee on Serials Pricing Issues. Editor: Marcia Tuttle, BITNET: TUTTLE@UNC.BITNET; Faxon's DataLinx: TUTTLE; ALANET: ALA0348; Paper mail: Serials Department, C.B. #3938 Davis Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill NC 27599-3938. Committee members are: Deana Astle (Clem- son University), Mary Elizabeth Clack (Harvard University), Jerry Curtis (Springer-Verlag New York), Charles Hamaker (Louisiana State University), Robert Houbeck (University of Michigan), and Marcia Tut- tle. EBSCONET customers may receive the newsletter in paper format from EBSCO. Back issues of the newsletter are available electronically free of charge through BITNET from the editor. ====================================================================== ******ENDOFFILE***ENDOFFILE***ENDOFFILE***ENDOFFILE***ENDOFFILE******* ======================================================================== Date: Mon, 04 Feb 91 19:59 EST Subject: PRICING NEWSLETTER, NO. 32 ISSN: 1046-3410 NEWSLETTER ON SERIALS PRICING ISSUES An ALCTS publication NUMBER 32 -- February 4, 1991 Editor: Marcia Tuttle CONTENTS FROM THE EDITOR, Marcia Tuttle ACRL JOURNAL COSTS DISCUSSION GROUP, Mary Elizabeth Clack UPDATE ON SUPPLEMENTS, Eleanor Cook THE RIGHT WAY TO DO IT! Eleanor Cook SEARCHING BY ISSN, Margaret McKinley NASIG 6TH ANNUAL CONFERENCE PROGRAM, Ann Okerson POSTAL INSPECTOR LOOKING INTO COMPLAINTS REGARDING EDITIONS BRIEL, Richard Jasper RECOMMENDED READING, Pat Berger RESPONSE TO ANNE MCKEE FROM AMERICAN CHEMICAL SOCIETY, Anne McKee DIFFERENT EDITIONS OF , Susan Libby HAMAKER'S HAYMAKERS, Chuck Hamaker FROM THE EDITOR Marcia Tuttle, TUTTLE@UNC.BITNET With so many people telling me the Newsletter is "on the cutting edge of electronic publishing," I began to believe it -- until I saw two of the items in this issue on electronic discussion groups several days ago. But even though we seem to have fallen off the cutting edge, I still believe that for this publication, the newsletter format is appropriate. Overall, my favorite format is the one Christian Boisson- nas uses for ACQNET. He has editing and speed both. To subscribe send a message to Christian at CRI@CORNELLC.BITNET. At ALA Midwinter last month the ALCTS Publisher/Vendor-Library Rela- tions Committee disbanded (with my full concurrence) its Subcommittee on Serials Pricing Issues. The members were acting not as a committee, but as an editorial board for the NEWSLETTER ON SERIALS PRICING IS- SUES. The following day the ALCTS Task Force on Editorial Policy for Electronic Publications formulated recommendations for the ALCTS Board of Directors, including appointment of a Newsletter editor for three years with one renewal permitted and the creation of an editorial advisory board consisting of three ALCTS members knowledgeable in the area of serials pricing and two persons from the serials industry. The recommendations were approved by the ALCTS board. The editorial advis- ory board has not yet been appointed, but this should happen shortly. A message from Barbara Parker at the U.S. Naval Academy Library (q21030@n1.USNA.NAVY.MIL), who used the Newsletter in her periodicals cancellation project: People here are starting to look forward to (the Newsletter), including the chair of the Faculty Library Committee. We've just done a $90,000 periodicals cut based on 1) high cost/low use and 2) is it availible via document delivery? The Faculty Library Committee seems to have bought the concept; now all they have to do is sell it to their colleagues (with a little help from the subject specialists and me). There's less resistance so far to document delivery on the part of faculty than I thought there would be, but it's still early in the game. From Deana Astle (DLAST@CLEMSON.BITNET): Here's another price increase announced through Faxon. The JOUR- NAL OF APPLIED BACTERIOLOGY, published by Blackwell Scientific for the Society of Applied Bacteriology, is increasing its price 53.5 percent, from $285 to $437.50 for 1991. The notification from Faxon does not indicate a change in frequency. Danny Jones, University of Texas Health Sciences Center Library (JONES@UTHSCSA.BITNET), alerted me to a change in ISI's plans to charge for the 1989 Journal Citation Reports. A letter will go to subscribers to SCIENCE CITATION INDEX and SOCIAL SCIENCES CITATION INDEX explaining ISI's corporate decision to distribute a free micro- fiche version of the 1989 JCR. At ALA Midwinter ISI personnel veri- fied the above information and told me that no decision has been made as to whether the 1990 version (which will not be free) will also be fiche or on CD as once planned. The following announcement was submitted by Doug Duchin at CUNY (DDUBB@CUNYVM.BITNET): The Library Association of the City University of New York an- nounces the LACUNY Institute, a 1-day conference for Friday, April 12, 1991, entitled "Collection Development: Survival Tac- tics in an Age of Less." The Institute will present a forward look at how we will be able to cope in the coming age of elec- tronic publishing and electronic document delivery. Because the climate is changing, and the resources we have will hardly sup- port traditional print collections, the Institute will address alternate and, perhaps, unconventional means of accessing infor- mation. Speakers in the morning, and a panel discussion in the afternoon, will address the problems of access vs. acquisition, collaborative collection development, and other possible survival tactics. The Institute will be held in New York City on Friday, April 12, 1991, and further details will be forthcoming. From Paul Gherman at VPI (GHERMAN@VTVM1): I just noticed a comment in the last issue ... about what librar- ies are doing about introducing e-journals into libraries. Paul Metz of our staff has been chairing a task force for the last couple of months which is trying to answer those questions you have asked. I hope the report of the task force will be out soon. Also, Lon Savage of our Scholarly Publishing Project tells me that he has had a number of questions from libraries who are subscribing to our e-journal. He thinks libraries will be the organizations who will ultimately make the e-journal a success. ACRL JOURNAL COSTS DISCUSSION GROUP Mary Elizabeth Clack, Harvard College Library, DataLinx: CLACKMB. The ALA ACRL Journal Cost Discussion Group was held on Sunday, January 13, 1991 from 9:30 to 11:00 am at the Swiss Grand Hotel, Chicago IL. Four speakers addressed the topic of serial cancellations and budget- ing strategies, effects on collections, currency fluctuation, and strategies for the future. The session was coordinated and moderated by Robert Houbeck (University of Michigan). Joe Barker of the University of California, Berkeley, spoke on pro- jecting annual budgets for 1990/91. For serials, Berkeley's projec- tions in June 1990 took into account the 1989/90 expenditure, infla- tion and currency decline. Projected monograph funds were calculated by taking the remainder of the budget and subtracting inflation (here 5.5 percent). The ratio of serials to monographs in 1990/91 was 73:27. Policies protecting serial and monograph orders were removed. The collection development budget request in June cited a need for approx- imately $1 million to implement collection development policy at a restrained level. Barker then described the strategies and actions taken by the library to address the realities of August 1990: a flat materials budget (no increase), the dollar sliding to a new low, a potential 13 to 15 per- cent rate of inflation for serials (according to subscription agents' predictions), and university officials mandating cuts to every pro- gram. During the allocation process period (August to November) cuts were allocated to both monographs and serials. Twelve percent of serials ($420,000) would be cancelled by October 15, 1990. The following sup- port actions were taken: 1) intense communication with selectors to garner their support and ensure fairness; 2) support lent by Systems and Technical Services (management reports; processing of 3,000 cancellations in 6 weeks); 3) policy leadership by the AUL for Collection Development (with goals of reducing duplication, strengthening cooperative agreements, supporting primary programs, updating collections policy -- reviewing all approaches to acquisitions, etc.); 4) communication with faculty and the larger university communi- ty. The 12 percent target was, in fact, met by October 15, with sugges- tions that if future serial cancellations were required, more lead time would be desirable. Among library staff, there was enthusiasm for reviewing collection policy and increased recognition that collections policies must be aligned with Berkeley's new Primary Clientele policy for public service. The Library Administration was required by the Vice Chancellor to transfer $300,000 to Collections from other library programs. This and the 12 percent serials cut brought the budget to a 65:35 serials:mono- graphs ratio, about the same as in 1989/90. Barker then outlined projections for the 1991/92 budget, factoring in moderate inflation (9 percent for serials and 5.5 percent for mono- graphs), retention of $300,000, no reinstatement of serials, and aver- age U.S. dollar decline of 7.5 percent for foreign titles. "Possible denouements" include: 1) reductions in the budget reaching new highs (20 percent fewer monograph purchases than ever remembered at Berkeley); 2) cutting another 12 percent (or more) of serial subscriptions; 3) intervention from the university in terms of additional funds; 4) discovering Berkeley's predictions are too severe (which would still require significant increases). In closing, Barker stated that the impact was much more dramatic at Berkeley and got more positive results, because librarians had managed to cope with minimal cuts for several years before hitting the wall this year. He said that Berkeley would "not go softly into the fu- ture." Karen Schmidt of the University of Illinois looked at the effect of serial cancellations on the collections themselves. She fears that the "flagship libraries'" collections will not recover, citing irreversi- ble damage to scholarship and our intellectual future. At Illinois, for example, 70 percent of the cancellations for 1990/91 are unique to the collection, and the sciences are deeply affected. Schmidt shared figures for fiscal years 1987 through 1990 for: 1) the total amount cancelled by discipline (social sciences, sciences, humanities and general categories); 2) the total serials budget by discipline; 3) the total percent change in the serials budget; and 4) the percent cancelled by each discipline as part of the total budget. Schmidt concluded her presentation by describing efforts to compile a "Big 10" serial cancellation union list to determine which unique titles are being cancelled. Gayle Garlock of the University of Toronto presented the Canadian perspective on currency fluctuations. He pointed out that Canadian serials budgets are more vulnerable than U.S. libraries' budgets be- cause foreign titles purchased by Canadian libraries include U.S. titles and thus 90 to 95 percent of the collection at Toronto is af- fected by foreign exchange rates. Garlock then described the currency protection model at the University of Toronto developed in 1986. The goal of the model is to enable the library to maintain the buying power of fiscal year 1979/80. This is accomplished by factoring in price increase adjustments and protection from currency fluctuation. Garlock used an example to illustrate the model which incorporates a benchmark exchange rate for six currencies (U.S., U.K., Germany, Holland, Japan, and France) and calculation of the monthly debit or credit to the library. The advantage in the short term is that the major variable of currency fluctuation is eliminated, creating a more stable budgetary environment. In the long term, howev- er, Garlock admitted that the fundamental problem is not solved by finding more money. He cited the need to continue to explore all via- ble alternatives to the problem of serials price increases. (Garlock's model has been published in ARL SPEC KIT no. 147, "Serials Control.") Michael Keller of Yale University began by outlining coping strategies used to date: serial cancellations, currency fluctuation protection, and taking money from endowments and/or from personnel budgets. The RLG Collection Development Committee has been compiling long term serials lists of titles needed to support in-depth research (not sole- ly "core" titles). Lists for Chemistry, Mathematics and Business have been completed; lists for Geology, Physics and German literature are being compiled. These lists can be used to protect important subscrip- tions. Keller described some seemingly radical projects for libraries willing to provide access at the article level. One idea would be for a li- brary to "buy into" another library's collection, by purchasing "ac- cess" to articles from another institution's collection. Factors such as delivery time and quality of reproductions would have to be consid- ered. Another strategy would be for a university to take a fiduciary interest in the results of research at that university. Also, experi- mentation with alternative means of distribution of the results of research, as suggested in the ARL report, should be done through a university's distributed networks. Electronic abstracting and indexing services can also be used. Keller concluded by noting some trends and countertrends. Further consolidation of large for-profit publishers will occur. Fewer pub- lishers will be publishing more or less the same number of journals, using more marketing ploys such as "cloned titles," issuing supplemen- tal invoices and increasing prices. Keller does see countertrends such as the existence of more small publishers in narrow niches, with no layers of management. Electronic journals will have to address prob- lems with document transmission machinery and the refereeing process. An encouraging trend is the NSF's requiring only five articles for its proposals. In the question and answer period, Ann Okerson of the Association of Research Libraries gave an update on some ongoing activities in the Office of Scientific and Academic Publishing, particularly with re- spect to changes in the traditional ways by which research libraries have delivered scientific journal information: 1) In a joint venture, three of the SUNY (State University of New York) libraries have received a grant to study and improve document delivery to patrons. (For a report on this project, see NEWSLETTER ON SERIALS PRICING ISSUES, no. 25. -Ed.) In this particular experiment, a group of some 200 current subscriptions have been sequestered and patrons seeking material from these journals must request them via interlibrary loan. The pilot project examines accelerated delivery between the participants via high-quality FAX. If successful, the project will lead to greater resource sharing between SUNY campuses and may lead to some re-definition of the idea of a "subscription." Generally subscriptions are for a single institution with occasional sharing via interlibrary loan. However, in this specific setting, some future subscriptions will be purposefully multi-institutional and may lead publishers to establish a different tier of charging. 2) Several organizations are examining the possible need for national scientific information delivery, in addition to the two national sci- ence libraries (NAL and NLM) systems already in existence. The Nation- al Academy of Sciences has issued a study award to King Associates. The Library of Congress has established an internal task force to explore its role in science information delivery, and ARL is also establishing an ad hoc group to determine needs and opportunities. 3) We are beginning to see the development of electronic publishing. There are many bulletin boards and lists which are an outlet for in- formal communications. In addition, about a dozen networked electronic journals are emerging in various disciplines. 4) ARL is compiling a database of some 10,000 key scientific journal editors, derived from editorial pages of major journals. This listing of the "gatekeepers" of the literature will serve a variety of purpos- es; it will be available to ARL directors in late 1991. 5) The National Association of State Universities and Land Grant Col- leges (NASULGC), in its November 1990 resolution supporting ARL and urging action on the serials "crisis," has proposed a national task force from key scholarly organizations to address the questions of journal prices, access, and ownership. UPDATE ON SUPPLEMENTS Eleanor Cook, Appalachian State University; COOKEI@APPSTATE.BITNET. Here is an update for the Newsletter on the unwanted supplements to EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF MINERALOGY. I received a prompt reply from a rep- resentative of E. Schweizerbart'sche Verlag. They believe such supple- ments are "indispensable" to all subscribers. However, since they do not want to have "annoyed customers," I have been instructed to return the supplements and a credit will be sent to our vendor. The following is an excerpt of the reply I sent along with the materi- al: We plan to reinstate our subscription ... in 1991 with the under- standing that we will NOT receive supplements that must be paid for separately. If supplements are issued WITHIN the volume num- bering, we should receive them as part of our subscription and not have to pay extra. Please understand that Appalachian State University is not a large research library and we have a tight budget. Further, re- search presented in your supplements is of little use to our faculty if it is not in the English language (the supplements are in German, while the main title is primarily English). THE RIGHT WAY TO DO IT! Eleanor Cook, Appalachian State University, COOKEI@APPSTATE.BITNET. We just today received correspondence from Scanning Microscopy International. In my opinion, THIS is the way they all should do it! Give us a clear choice! Scanning Microscopy International Post Office Box 66507 Chicago (A.M.F. O'Hare) IL 60666-0507 USA Dear Librarian, We have received your renewal for the subscription for SCANNING MICROSCOPY volume 5, 1991 through the Faxon Company. Our publicity material (sent to your subscription agent) also stated: *IMPORTANT: A new quarterly journal CELLS AND MATERIALS (ISSN: 1051-6794, covering morphology and microanalysis of tissues, cells, materials and their interfaces) will start publication with vol. 1, no. 1 in March 1991. The subscrib- ers to SCANNING MICROSCOPY can get the four issues of volume 1 of CELLS AND MATERIALS at no additional charge PROVIDED THEY SPECIFICALLY ASK FOR THEM WHEN PAYING FOR THEIR 1991 SUBSCRIPTION. We must have your written instructions if you wish to receive the four free issues of CELLS & MATERIALS for 1991. Please advise. With best regards, Om Johari, Managing Editor, Scanning Microscopy Publications P.S. For your information, SCANNING MICROSCOPY vol. 4, no. 3 1990 issue was shipped on November 9; issue 4 will follow in late December. SEARCHING BY ISSN Margaret McKinley, UCLA, ECZ5MCK@UCLAMVS.BITNET. I read with great interest in Issue 31 your account of checking in and processing incoming material during late December. I, too, checked in and processed incoming material during the same time period. While I was able to check in using our locally-developed system, ORION, I remember very well the days when we used a Kardex file. The difference can only be appreciated if one has had to locate complex corporate entries in a very large Kardex. What I appreciate most especially, however, is our capability to find online records by using ISSN as search terms. Not only does this save time in check-in, but it is also less expensive in terms of machine costs. Because searching for records via ISSN is so embarrassingly easy, I am particularly grateful to the publishers of those interna- tional journals that you mentioned for displaying ISSN prominently on their covers. I might suggest to other publishers, who have not yet realized the importance of ISSN, that they consider featuring their own ISSN regu- larly on the covers of their journals. We will certainly remember those who do so in our prayers and will speak well of them wherever bibliographers and other selectors gather. NASIG 6TH ANNUAL CONFERENCE PROGRAM, JUNE 14-17, 1991, TRINITY UNIVERSITY, SAN ANTONIO TX. Ann Okerson, Association of Research Libraries, OKERSON@UMDC.BITNET. Overall theme: A CHANGING WORLD Plenary sessions: Saturday, June 15: CHANGING TECHNOLOGIES Timothy B. King, Vice President, Marketing & Sales, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., New York: "Impact of Electronic and Networking Technologies on Delivering Scholarly Information." Charles W. Bailey, Jr., Assistant Director for Systems, University of Houston Libraries; "Network-Based Electronic Serials." Anne B. Pitternick, Professor, School of Library and Archival Studies, University of British Columbia: "Electronic Serials; Realistic or Unrealistic Solution to the Journals 'Crisis'?" Sunday, June 16: CHANGING INFORMATION WORLDWIDE Francis Narin, President, CHI Research, Inc., Haddon Heights NJ: "Globalization of Research, Scholarly Information, and Patents; 10- Year Trends." John F. Riddick, Head of Acquisitions Services, Central Michigan Uni- versity Library: "Europe 1992; Implications for Scholarly Publishing and Distribution." Edward Kasinec, Head, Slavonic Department, New York Public Library: ~Emerging Eastern Europe; Radical Information Changes." Margarita Almada de Asencia, Director, Centro de Informacion Cientifi- ca y Humanistica, Mexico City: "Scholarly Information and Serials in Latin America; Shifting Political Sands." Monday, June 17: STRATEGIES AND RESPONSES Carol Pitts Hawks, Head, Acquisition Department, Ohio State University Libraries: "Automated Library Systems; What Next?" Charles B. Lowry, Director of Libraries, University of Texas at Ar- lington: "Professional Responsibilities in a Changing World; Issues and Dilemmas." Wrapup: Dan Tonkery, President and CEO, Readmore, Inc., New York. WORKSHOPS: NASIG Conference participants may attend two workshops each on Saturday and Sunday afternoon. SET I 1. "Case Study: Starting a New Medical Journal." Gabriela Radulescu, Executive Editor Journals, Springer Verlag, New York. 2. "Marketing a New Social Science/Humanities Journal to Libraries, Then and Now." Patricia Scarry, Associate Journals Manager and Market- ing Manager, Journals Division, University of Chicago Press. 3. "SUPER-OPAC: Records for Articles and Chapters in Your Catalog." Bradley D. Carrington, Head of Cataloging, University of Kentucky Libraries. 4. "Periodicals Receiving Unit and Public Service Areas: A Productive Combination." Roseann Bazirjian, Head, Acquisitions, Syracuse Univer- sity Library. 5. "The Continuations Saga: Converting Non-Periodical Serials." Joan Luke, Serials/Microforms Librarian and Assistant Head, Acquisitions Department, Georgia State University Library AND Steve Murden, Assist- ant Head, Acquisitions Services, Virginia Commonwealth University Library. 6. "Interfacing Automated Environments: Linking the Integrated Library System." Lynne Branche Brown, Acquisitions/Serials Librarian, Raytheon AND Katherine Hughes, Serials Librarian, Loyola University Medical Center Library. 7. "Conversion to Automated Serials Control Systems: From the Drawing Board to the Front Lines." Tricia L. Davis, Head, Continuation Acqui- sitions Division, Ohio State University AND James L. Huesmann, Serials Librarian, University of Wisconsin-La Crosse Library. 8. "Replacement Issues: Where Do You Find Them and at What Cost?" Beth Holley, Head, Acquisitions Department, University of Alabama Library AND Susan Malawski, Director, Subscription Fulfillment and Distribu- tion, John Wiley & Sons, Inc. AND John T. Zubal, President, USBE. 9. "How Vendors Assess Service Charges and a Publisher's View of Dis- counts to Vendors." N. Bernard (Buzzy) Basch, Consultant AND John Breithaupt, Director-General, Marketing, Association Management and Distribution Services, Allen Press AND Tina Feick, U.S. Serials Spe- cialist, Blackwell's Periodicals Division. SET II 1. "Case Study: Managing the Established Sci/Tech Journal." John Tag- ler, Director of Corporate Communications, Elsevier Science Publish- ers. 2. "Case Study: Society Journal Published by Commercial Publisher." Jolanda von Hagen, Managing Director, Springer Verlag, Heidelberg. 3. "Multiple Versions Cataloging and Preservation Microfilming for Brittle Issues of Serials." Steve Savage, Head, Periodicals, Newspa- pers and Microforms Department, University of Kentucky Libraries AND Mitch Turitz, Serials Librarian, San Francisco State University. 4. "The Impact of Electronic Journals on Traditional Library Servic- es." Mary Beth Fecko, Special Formats Catalog Librarian, Rutgers Uni- versity Libraries AND Linda Langschied, Coordinator, Nonbibliographic Database and PC Services, Rutgers University Libraries. 5. "Journal Contents Online: Patron Use and Implications for Reference Service." Melissa B. Bradley, Acquisitions Librarian, Denver Public Library AND Patricia M. Wallace, Head, Serials Department, University of Colorado Libraries. 6. "An Introduction to the Structure of ANSI X12 and a Tutorial on X12 Mapping for Serials Related Transactions." Christopher Beckett, Prod- uct Manager, Blackwell's Periodicals Division AND Sharon Cline McKay, Director of Library Services, EBSCO AND Fritz Schwartz, Manager, EDI Group, The Faxon Company. 7. "Job Descriptions vis a vis Job Applications: A Match Often Not Made in Heaven." Carole McIver, Administrative Services Librarian, University of North Carolina at Charlotte Library AND Lois N. Upham, Adjunct Assistant Professor, University of South Carolina College of Library and Information Science. 8. "Serial Claims: Three Perspectives, Library/Publisher/Vendor." Gary Brown, Midwestern Regional Representative, The Faxon Company AND Julia Gammon, Head, Acquisitions Department, University of Akron Library AND Peter McKay, Sales and Marketing Director, Harcourt, Brace and Jovano- vich, Ltd. 9. "Acquiring and Cataloging the Elusive Latin American Serial." Nelly S. Gonzalez, Director, Latin American Services, University of Illinois Library AND Rosa Q. Mesa, Librarian, Latin American Collection, Uni- versity of Florida Libraries AND Scott Van Jacob, Serials Librarian, Dickinson College. FOR ANNUAL CONFERENCE INFORMATION, REGISTRATION, AND PROGRAM, CONTACT: Daniel H. Jones, Local Arrangements Assistant Library Director for Collection Development University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio 7703 Floyd Curl Drive San Antonio TX 78284-7940 Telephone: 512 567-2400 Telefax: 512 567-2490 E-mail: JONES@UTHSCSA.BITNET FOR INFORMATION ABOUT NASIG MEMBERSHIP, CONTACT: Ann B. Vidor, NASIG Treasurer Head, Catalog Department Emory University Woodruff Library Atlanta GA 30322 Telephone: 404 727-6833 Telefax: 404 727-0053 E-mail: LIBABV@EMUVM1.BITNET POSTAL INSPECTOR LOOKING INTO COMPLAINTS REGARDING EDITIONS BRIEL Richard Jasper, Emory University, and Chair, ALCTS Publisher/Vend- or-Library Relations Committee, LIBRPJ@EMUVM1.BITNET. The Publisher/Vendor-Library Relations Committee of the Association for Library Collections & Technical Services, a division of the Ameri- can Library Association, has been informed by the U.S. Postal Service that it is looking into complaints about Editions Briel, a Cambridge MA-based publisher, regarding non-fulfillment of prepaid orders. According to Stephen Rothemich, a U.S. Postal Inspector in Boston, the Postal Service as a result of these complaints has issued a stop order against Editions Briel's postal address, which is 1430 Massachusetts Avenue, Suite #306-126, Cambridge MA 02138-3810. Rothemich indicated that all mail sent to the Editions Briel address, which is a mail drop in Cambridge's Harvard Square, would be held until such time as the stop order is lifted or the box is closed. The Postal Service, according to Rothemich, had scheduled an adminis- trative/civil hearing of the matter in Washington DC, then postponed the hearing at the request of Editions Briel's attorney. He expected the hearing to be rescheduled. If, as a result of the hearing, a deci- sion is made to close the Editions Briel address, the mail currently being held will be returned to sender, Rothemich said. Rothemich asked that anyone having an interest in this matter, partic- ularly those who prepaid orders to Editions Briel, to contact him at the following address/telephone number: Stephen Rothemich, Postal Inspector P.O. Box 2217 Boston MA 02205-2217 Phone: 617 439-3605 Likewise, librarians experiencing similar problems with non-fulfill- ment of prepaid orders may report their complaints to PVLR by complet- ing and returning the PVLR complaint form, available from the ALCTS Office, 50 East Huron Street, Chicago IL 60611. PVLR will forward such complaints to the U.S. Postal Service as appropriate. As has been often repeated, PVLR suggests that librarians exercise the utmost caution in prepaying orders so that they may avoid possible non-fulfillment problems. RECOMMENDED READING Pat Berger, NIST, BOND@NBSENH.BITNET. There's an interesting report in the 7 December 1990 issue of SCIENCE (pp. 1331-32) entitled "Publishing by -- and for? -- the Numbers." The reporter, David P. Hamilton, cites ISI's figures that of the scientif- ic papers published between 1981 and 1985 in journals indexed by ISI, 55 percent of them received zero citations the first five years after publication. Timothy Springer of Harvard is quoted as saying that if the ISI percentage is on target, then "It indicates too much is pub- lished." The University of Michigan's President Duderstadt opined that "It is pretty strong evidence of ... the kinds of pressures which drive people to stress number of publications rather than quality of publications." He could have added that the two surest ways to earn citations, early and often, are: 1. Infuriate -- even just annoy -- Linus Pauling. 2. Publish rotten data or bone-headed conclusions, or both. Hamilton also informs his readers that "the publishing industry is at least partly responsible" for this unfortunate state of affairs be- cause "the number of scholarly journals has risen" from 70K to 108.6K over the last 20 years. This plus steep subscription price increases have forced ARL libraries to reduce their journal holdings to approxi- mately 26 percent of the total available. If you haven't done so already, be sure to read Colleen Cordes' arti- cle in the January 23, 1991 issue of the CHRONICLE OF HIGHER EDUCA- TION. It begins on page A1 and describes passably well the paranoia in Congress over ties between U.S. universities and foreign companies and institutions. Some day before I die I hope to figure out why Congress yawns as Federal libraries are contracted out to foreign firms but has a cow if an academic type so much as passes the time of day with her/- his foreign counterpart! In the January, 18, 1991 issue of SCIENCE there is a provocative re- port on pages 266-67, entitled, "Science Literacy: The Enemy is Us." Boy, do the nuclear physicists and biochemists around here need to read it and heed it! Also, Koshland's editorial on page 249, "Teaching and Research," ain't half bad. But the really scary report begins on page 260 and ends on page 263 and is entitled, "The Rush to Publish." It speaks scary volumes about what's happening to the peer/editorial review process in fast-breaking areas of science. RESPONSE TO ANNE MCKEE FROM AMERICAN CHEMICAL SOCIETY Submitted by Anne McKee, Arizona State University West Campus. December 20, 1990 Dear Ms. McKee: Thank you for your November 13 letter expressing concern about the 1991 institutional subscription price to ANALYTICAL CHEMISTRY. We certainly understand and share your concerns about the financial dif- ficulties that science libraries face with their 1991 budgets. I hope this letter will explain the financial factors that face us as pub- lishers and that have led to this year's significant price increase. ANALYTICAL CHEMISTRY is one of our highest quality research journals. Unlike most other ACS journals, it has a separate magazine section in addition to a large volume of peer-reviewed research. In the past it has received a large and substantial volume of advertising income. This income subsidized extremely low subscription prices that made ANALYTICAL CHEMISTRY, on a price per equivalent page basis, one of the lowest priced journals in the world. Unfortunately, increased competi- tion from a growing number of free-circulation magazines, that do not have the expense of publishing peer-reviewed research articles, has dramatically reduced the volume of advertising appearing in ANALYTICAL CHEMISTRY. The current projected level of advertising income can no longer support the low subscription price that institutions like yours have enjoyed in the past. The percentage increase of 390 percent is high. However, the dollar increase of $230 from last year's $59 to $289 is not excessive. It buys more than 4000 published pages, appear- ing in 24 timely issues at a unit cost of less than seven cents a page. In the long-term, if advertising revenue continues to decline, the institutional subscription price for ANALYTICAL CHEMISTRY will have to reach the even higher price levels of our other journals. In your letter, you also raised a question about the timing of our increase. Our journals prices are set by our Publications Committee and our Board of Directors in the late spring and early summer. In order to assist our customers in their budgeting for the following year, our journal price list is mailed in July to our institutional subscribers and our subscription agents. Renewal notices, however, are not mailed until October. I hope this letter has provided you with an answer to your questions. I do appreciate hearing about your concerns and would be glad to ad- dress any questions that may have been raised by my response to your letter. Sincerely, Randall E. Wedin, Head Publications Division Special Publications Department American Chemical Society 1155 Sixteenth Street NW Washington DC 20036 DIFFERENT EDITIONS OF Susan Libby, Hospital Librarian, The Moncton Hospital, 135 MacBeath Avenue, Moncton, N.B. E1C 6Z8 Canada. November 7, 1990 Ms. Mary B. Mallison, R.N. Editor, AMERICAN JOURNAL OF NURSING 555 West 57th Street New York NY 10019-2961 USA Dear Ms. Mallison: I am writing you to protest in the strongest possible terms the deci- sion to publish different editions of the AMERICAN JOURNAL OF NURSING. When I recently discovered -- quite by accident -- that some AMERICAN JOURNAL OF NURSING articles were missing from my library's issues of the journal, I phoned your office in an attempt to find out what was going on. The person to whom I spoke mentioned a "hospital edition" and a "library edition," but could not explain to me how many editions there are, what are the differences among them, and who decides which subscribers will receive which edition. I wonder which of the two editions mentioned above should be supplied to my hospital library? Your staff member offered replacement issues for the first half of the year, and the five issues which she did send me have just arrived. Upon examining them and comparing them to the issues which were sent as part of our subscription, I am no less perturbed. It appears that the only way to tell one edition from another is to look for a series of stars at the base of the spine of each issue. Some issues now before me have three stars, some have four, and some have none. What is the difference between four-star, three-star, or no-star editions? Are there one-star and two-star editions as well? If so, what is in them? I have received five "replacement" issues from the first half of 1990. The January "replacement" has no stars and appears to be the same as the one we originally received. Does this mean that there was only one edition of the January issue -- or was I sent the wrong edition? The February and June replacements are three-star issues. In each case the three-star issue has exactly four extra pages -- and three of these are advertisements. The ONE extra page of text includes, in the case of the June issue, a section called "Critical Questions," which is not mentioned anywhere in the table of contents. Allow me to sug- gest to you that the questions cannot be all that critical if it is not necessary to include them in all editions of the journal, nor to mention them in the table of contents of the edition in which they do appear! In the case of the February issue, the extra page of text is a continuation of the "Clinical News" section, but the individual re- ports on the extra page are not listed on the contents page as is the case with the two reports from the first "Clinical News" page which is common to both editions. Looking at the contents pages of the various February and June issues, it is impossible to distinguish between the editions; this can only be done by a page-by-page comaprison of the issues. My March and May replacements are four-star editions. They each con- tain a separate multi-page section called "Today's Nurse Manager" which -- wonder of wonders -- IS included in the contents page. Your staff member who sent the replacement issues assured me that I would not need any other replacements beyond the first half of 1990, because I would by now be receiving the "complete" -- whatever that means -- edition of each issue. All I can say in response is that to date none of the issues we have received on our subscription have any stars on the spines at all. I would be most grateful if you could give me a coherent explanation of the present publishing program for the AMERICAN JOURNAL OF NURSING and the reasons why this program has been instituted. Have you and your editorial board any conception of -- or any interest in -- the trouble and confusion you are causing to nurses, researchers, and librarians with your present publishing policy? How many editions are being published of each monthly issue? Is there such a thing as a COMPLETE edition which includes all the extra pages? Who decides which editions will be sent to which subscribers? Why were subscribers not consulted as to which edition they would prefer? Why do I and my nurs- es not have a right to the same pages as are sent to other subscrib- ers? Have we not paid the same price for our subscriptions? I feel that subscribers have the right to expect that if they order and pay for the AMERICAN JOURNAL OF NURSING that is what they will receive. I am sure that is what we have all assumed -- until now. When those who depend on the AMERICAN JOURNAL OF NURSING for quality nurs- ing literature discover that what they have is incomplete, there will be endless difficulty in obtaining the bits that are missing especial- ly since all the sources to which readers will apply will also have assumed that they have received the "complete" journal, and each will in turn make the painful discovery that they have been deceived.... HAMAKER'S HAYMAKERS Chuck Hamaker, Louisiana State University, NOTCAH@LSUVM.BITNET. Several articles appearing in places librarians may not look at regu- larly help shed some light on current trends. First is an article by Margaret Morrison, who is the Council on Library Resources Intern at the University of Chicago's Regenstein Library. She reports in INFOR- MATION STANDARDS QUARTERLY 3, 1 (January 1991): 9-10 in "Electronic Scholarly Journals" on the conference held on October 8, 1990 in Ra- leigh dubbed the first meeting of the "Association of Electronic Scholarly Journals." The meeting was hosted by Ann Okerson of ARL's OSAP and Susan K. Nutter, Director of Libraries, North Carolina State University. Margaret Morrison represented ISO TC 46/sc 9 WI117, Cita- tions to Electronic Documents (that's International Standards Organi- zation's Work Item 117: Citations, etc.). Although there have been other reports of the meeting, the perspective on this one is worth taking a glance at. Plan on reading the February 2 issue of PUBLISHERS WEEKLY for an ex- cellent article by Kendon Stubbs, AUL at the University of Virginia, and Ann Okerson of ARL. If the article survives the editor's knife substantially unrevised, I intend to use it as a great summary intro- duction for faculty who still haven't figured out that the whole sys- tem of support and prestige they have come to take for granted has changed radically. It is good enough for deans to forward to adminis- trators, to other deans, and to the Physics chairperson. THE SCIENTIST, January 7, 1991, bears an article to be aware of, ex- plaining some of the ins and outs of current NSF discussions concern- ing overhaul of the grant system. Just to know what science faculty are facing in changes in one of their major support systems, collec- tion development and serials people should take a look at the article by Jeffrey Mervic on pages 1, 7, etc. Thanks to Ann Okerson for alert- ing us to these three items and providing a preprint of the PW arti- cle. WALL STREET JOURNAL (January 23, 1991) B1 "Marketplace" contains an article by Michael W. Miller, "Lotus Likely to Abandon Consumer-Data Project." Lotus Development announced plans to drop a software product containing shopping habits and personal data about 120 million house- holds. The product, a combination of data from EQUIFAX, a giant Atlan- ta credit-reporting operation that could pinpoint whether individual families had dogs or cats, and basic ZIP code type data (down to the block level) resulted in a storm of protests because the data would be available on compact disk for even the smallest marketers. Complaints and protest letters were posted and copied on hundreds of networks. Opponents circulated Lotus' phone number and Jim Manzi, Lotus CEO, had his e-mail address posted on bulletin boards by protestors. An 800 number resulted in about 30,000 requests from people asking that their personal data ba deleted. "Harcourt Seeks a Purchaser for Entire Firm," WALL STREET JOURNAL, January 23, 1991, page A4. Weakened by Robert Maxwell's attempt to purchase the company, HBJ, with 4.5 billion dollars in liability and an asset value of 3.1 billion dollars is seeking a purchaser for the whole firm, not just pieces, as they previously attempted. Topping the list of potential buyers is K-III holdings, a partnership controlled by investment banker Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Company. K-III is run by William Reilly, who was president of U.S. Macmillan Inc. when Max- well bought the company in 1988 after failing to acquire HBJ. HBJ's debt was a result of attempting to drive Maxwell away. They succeeded, but now, the question is clearly, wasn't the price too high? As the largest textbook publisher in America, the fall of HBJ has implica- tions for more than libraries. And talking about large, what well known owner of a southern book jobber is now in FORBES's list of the 400 richest people in America?? Answer: Erskine Bronson Ingram, checking into the list for the first time at number 181. FORBES says he is in "barges; book distribution," with 2.1 billion in revenues, over 80 percent from distribution of books, videos, computer hardware and software. So tell us it ain't a profitable end of the business, all you vendors. Be prepared for book vendors to moan about the rising cost of postage. But ask them how they really ship. Few, in our experience, are really using the mails for book shipments. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Readers of the NEWSLETTER ON SERIALS PRICING ISSUES are encouraged to share the information in the newsletter by electronic or paper methods. We would appreciate credit if you quote from the newsletter. ====================================================================== The NEWSLETTER ON SERIALS PRICING ISSUES (ISSN: 1046-3410) is pub- lished as news is available by the American Library Association's Association for Library Collections and Technical Services. Editor: Marcia Tuttle, BITNET: TUTTLE@UNC.BITNET; Faxon's DataLinx: TUTTLE; ALANET: ALA0348; Paper mail: Serials Department, C.B. #3938 Davis Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill NC 27599-3938. Editorial Advisory Board to be appointed. The Newsletter is available on BITNET, DataLinx, and ALANET. EBSCONET customers may receive the Newsletter in paper format from EBSCO. Readmore Academic customers receive the Newsletter in paper format from Readmore. Back issues of the Newsletter are available electronically free of charge through BITNET from the editor. ====================================================================== ******ENDOFFILE***ENDOFFILE***ENDOFFILE***ENDOFFILE***ENDOFFILE******* ======================================================================== Date: Fri, 22 Feb 91 11:36 EST Subject: PRICING NEWSLETTER, NO. 33 ISSN: 1046-3410 NEWSLETTER ON SERIALS PRICING ISSUES An ALCTS publication NUMBER 33 -- FEBRUARY 22, 1991 Editor: Marcia Tuttle CONTENTS FROM THE EDITOR, Marcia Tuttle SERIAL PRICE INCREASES: BUSINESS/INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS TITLES, Philip R. Dankert SPECIAL MAIL DELIVERY QUESTIONED THE FAXON INSTITUTE 1991 ANNUAL CONFERENCE, Ellen Koup THE LAST WORD ON , Walter R. Tschinkel NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES, Daniel H. Jones UNSOLICITED JOURNAL ISSUES, Bobbie Carlson LIBRARIANS' EFFORTS COUNTERED BY OMB, Carol Henderson , NEW ELSEVIER JOURNAL, Eleanor Cook FROM THE EDITOR Marcia Tuttle, TUTTLE@UNC.BITNET. Lots of fascinating short messages this time. First, the corrections. From Jana Stevens at Hofstra University (LIBADJSR@HOFSTRA.BITNET): Chuck Hamaker mentioned an excellent article in PW. He notes that it is in the February 2 issue. Actually it is in the February 8th issue. The title is, "The Library 'Doomsday Machine.'" From Susan Davis at SUNY Buffalo (UNLSDB@UBVM.BITNET): Sharon Bonk at Albany pointed out a potentially misleading state- ment in Mary Beth Clack's report of the ACRL Journal Costs Dis- cussion Group, referring to Ann Okerson's description of the SUNY Fax Project. While yes, we all currently subscribe to the titles involved, the current issues are not sequestered, just pre-1988 volumes. If folks refer back to the original report (in the News- letter) I'm sure it would be clear, but there's no harm in being absolutely clear and accurate. From Lelde Gilman, UCLA (ECZ5LBG@UCLAMVS.BITNET): I guess you have seen the February 12, 1991 (page B5) NEW YORK TIMES article on citations, or footnotes, and Eugene Garfield's correction of the SCIENCE interpretation of ISI's data. Shot down again, it turns out that among the 55 percent of uncited articles are insubstantive things such as meeting abstracts, newsletters, etc., and this says that his data are always misinterpreted! I wonder if SCIENCE will be forced to retract?! Maybe he got some bad feedback from publishers? After all, journals will cease to be published and analyzed for citedness and uncitedness, etc. The U.S. is right behind Switzerland and Sweden. Among the top ten nations no one except Western Europe (and few countries only), U.S., Canada, and Australia are players. I am assuming that the rest of the world's researchers have an opportunity to publish in the journals produced in the top ten countries. This reinforces my opinion about what we can live without. Thanks to Kate McCain at Drexel (MCCAINKW@DUVM.BITNET) for doing some legwork to get specific information about the future production of ISI's Journal Citation Reports. Most of us will have gotten the compa- ny's letter by now, but here's Kate's "report": Here's the latest word from a customer services rep. The 89 JCR is being shipped in spring to all hard copy subscribers as per usual (though late and in a novel format) as part of their sub- scription. In 1988 or thereabouts, subscribers were sent a form letter telling them that, as part of the 1990 SCI/SSCI, the JCR would be issued as a separate item and not as part of "the sub- scription" -- format and price to be announced later. The CS rep said that, based on a paper she was holding, the price for the 1990 JCR for SCI and SSCI was to be $195 + s & h, TO HARD COPY SUBSCRIBERS. She didn't know the price for non-subscribers and was unclear about the status of SCI/CD-ROM subscribers. She did say that a letter would be going out soon with all this informa- tion .... What we all have to look forward to now is how to effi- ciently USE this product in microfiche. On the one hand, a good reader/printer would give hard copy at a useful magnification for a page or two of interest, but this requires that one have such a reader/printer. A RESEARCHER's access may be more problematic, since I now sit with 2 years' worth at hand in a format that I can curl up with or transport home. Oh, well, I'm just grateful that it's being produced at all. Renee Mansheim at Eastern Virginia Medical School Library (MANSHEIM@- EVMSVMS.BITNET) had this excellent suggestion, which we are adopting now: I was pleased to see an appeal to publishers to display their ISSN prominently. This is not a major issue, but it is an annoy- ance. In line with that, would the Newsletter please include the ISSN of the titles discussed in the text? It would make it simp- ler to track whether the title is part of our own collection, etc. There are so many similar titles and transformations of titles. It is easy to mistake one for another. From now on I hope contributors will include the ISSN for titles they mention. If they don't, I will. The ISSN in this issue were all added by me. This price increase announcement was sent by Bessie Carrington at Duke University (BMC@MAIL.LIB.DUKE.EDU): We have just received notification that the price of APPLIED ECONOMICS (0003-6846), published by Chapman and Hall, is increas- ing from $425 (1990) to $730 (1991). A partial explanation for the increase may lie in the exchange rate, but the number of issues is increasing from 12 to 14 issues per year. In addition, they are including a subscription to a new, as yet to appear journal, APPLIED FINANCIAL ECONOMICS. Maybe this is a journal we would want to subscribe to on its own, but it should not be bun- dled automatically into an existing ongoing subscription. I have been reading about science journals adding issues as a justifica- tion for price increases, but adding a whole new title? Is this common? Looks like it. My library had no price increase notice, but there was a message that the number of issues would double in 1991, including the new title. We received a message about a similar situation with PALAEOGEOGRAPHY, PALAEOCLIMATOLOGY, PALAEOECOLOGY (0031-0182) from Elsevier Science Publishers, Physical Sciences and Engineering Divi- sion, in Amsterdam: The increased size of PALAEO 3 is due to the growth of its daugh- ter-journal, GLOBAL AND PLANETARY CHANGE (0921-8181), which forms part of the PALAEO 3 subscription. The GLOBAL AND PLANETARY CHANGE section complements and extends the scope of PALAEO 3, and as it deals with research areas which are currently the subject of great scientific interest accompanied by a growth in research, the journal has been enlarged in order to keep pace with the increased demand of scientists for publication. Aw, c'mon, take a chance. Cut 'er loose. Renee, you'll notice that I found the ISSN for three of the titles mentioned above. APPLIED FINANCIAL ECONOMICS apparently is too new for the ISSN to be in standard databases and reference sources. Jim Mouw, University of Chicago (MOUW@MIDWAY.UCHICAGO.EDU), has a fascinating puzzlement, first sent out on SERIALST: Over the past few weeks we have been noticing significant delays in the delivery of U.S. Mail (yes, even more so than usual). Word has now come from the Chicago Postmaster's Office that we can expect continued delays as the Post Office is on "standard war- time procedures" and has been since January 16th. We have yet to figure out what these procedures are or why they were necessary. Can anyone else shed any light on this? A few days later an answer appeared on SERIALST from Gaele Gillespie at the University of Kansas (GGILLESP@UKANVM.BITNET): Re: U.S. Post Office's "standard wartime procedures." Although I do not know precisely what these entail, our main post offices have "boarded up" all the inside mail slots/drops so that every- thing must be deposited in the mailboxes outside; or, if a local postmark is wanted/needed, one must take it to the counter to have it done. The sign over the inside mail slots reflects only: "Until further notice ..." or, "For the time being these are no longer in service. Customers must use the outside mail drops ... etc." No further details are provided. Since this happened soon after January 16, I surmised it was SOP (standard operating pro- cedure) to safeguard against postal bombs. Where such "standard wartime procedures" regarding the U.S. Postal Service might be found, I don't know, except I'm sure the Government Documents librarians might clue us all in on where such information could be found! In the last issue of the Newsletter I added a brief message to the edition that is mounted on ALANET asking for response from readers. I had had no feedback from readers of this edition since immediately after the first issue available there, number 8, and I wondered if this were the best use of ALCTS money. In the seventeen days since that message went out, I have had seven responses. Three of them said they were about to get BITNET or Internet addresses and would sub- scribe that way (one has already done so), one was a university li- brarian and strong ALCTS member, one was deputy director ALA Washing- ton Office, one was a commercial firm trying to get a BITNET id through a local university, and one was Alan Ventress at the State Library of New South Wales, who downloads each issue and redistributes it to several Australian librarians. I'm worried about the Australians. We have tried and tried to work out some feasible method of communication between BITNET and their ILANET, but we have failed. If anyone can help with this, I would like to know and so, I'm sure, would Alan (ALA1187). SERIAL PRICE INCREASES: BUSINESS/INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS Philip R. Dankert, Martin P. Catherwood Library, New York State School of Industrial and Labor Relations, Cornell University, Ithaca NY; L2SY@CORNELLA.BITNET. Much of the news we read with regard to serial price increases is centered on STM titles and several specific publishers. Here is some information from the social/behavioral sciences "arena" and, more specifically, business/industrial relations. In September 1990 the Martin P. Catherwood Library at Cornell Univer- sity cancelled our subscriptions to the following five MCB University Press titles; EMPLOYEE RELATIONS (0142-5455) EQUAL OPPORTUNITIES INTERNATIONAL (0261-0159) INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF MANPOWER (0143-7320) JOURNAL OF MANAGERIAL PSYCHOLOGY (0268-3946) PERSONNEL REVIEW (0048-3486) Originally the 1990 subscription rate for these titles was $2,201.75. In October 1990 MCB requested a rate adjustment totalling $968.00 (to $3,169.75) or 43.97 percent; for EMPLOYEE RELATIONS and INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF MANPOWER it was 59.58 percent (in both cases from $563.95 to $899.95). I have just learned that the overall price increase for the same five titles for 1991 is $1,369.00, or from $3,169.75 to $4,538.75. Again, for these two titles referred to in the preceeding paragraph it is 46.66 percent (from $899.95 to $1,319.95). I wrote to the publisher expressing my concern over such large in- creases but did not, nor did I really expect to, receive a response. SPECIAL MAIL DELIVERY QUESTIONED Message received from a European subscription agent. (Could you put) some sort of notice in the next issue of your News- letter to alert people in the Serials Department that they should check with their mail room or with the university to find out what type of mail service is being used for mail being sent overseas. Dur- ing the last six months or so, we have seen a change in the postmark of mail received. There are obviously many universities that are now subscribing to some type of private bulk delivery of mail to Europe. The unfortunate thing is that the date on the letters is usually six or eight weeks old by the time they are received in our offices.... All of the mail that is being delayed so long bears an unusual post- mark of Rotterdam and shows a return address of P.O. Box 71120 in Rotterdam. This special return address is stamped on the envelope in addition to the normal library return address. The special posting stamp is obviously placed on the envelope in Rotterdam, as there is no indication of regular postage being fixed to the envelope whatsoever. An example of just how long the delivery takes is a first class letter dated January 4th by the library bearing the Rotterdam stamp on the envelope of January 13. The delivery to our address was February 2nd! This is one of the better examples. There are many other examples where the total difference in time from the date on the library letter to the date of receipt was as much as six weeks. The letters from libraries in North America that are being sent through regular airmail postal delivery, however, are being received within four to six days. If a library is using this "special mail delivery" for its correspon- dence to Europe, it really has to take this into consideration when it comes to letters cancelling titles, placing claims or placing orders! There are several major universities that appear to be using this "special" service. The libraries definitely need to be aware of this situation, since they will have to adjust their procedures to allow for this unusually long delay in mail delivery. THE FAXON INSTITUTE 1991 ANNUAL CONFERENCE Ellen Koup, The Faxon Company, 15 Southwest Park, Westwood MA 02090; DataLinx: KOUP. If you are a decision maker or manager concerned with creating a qual- ity electronic access system for users, then plan to attend the 1991 Faxon Institute Annual Conference, "Creating User Pathways to Elec- tronic Information," to be held on April 28-30, 1991 in Reston, Vir- ginia. Sponsored by The Faxon Institute for Advanced Studies in Scholarly and Scientific Communications, the conference will focus on current re- search and practice in the rapidly changing realm of electronically published scientific, technical and medical (STM) information. In addition, the results of a new Faxon Institute national survey on the behavior and needs of users of information will be presented for the first time. On April 1, 1991, registered participants can begin discussing the topics via an electronic conference. After a month of online discus- sion, the participants and presenters will meet in Reston, Virginia, on April 28-30, 1991, for more formal and informal interaction. Then, for one month after the live conference, participants can continue their discussions via the electronic conference. The Faxon Institute will provide participants with the necessary conferencing software. People unable to attend the live conference have the option of regis- tering solely for the electronic conference. The conference is structured into nine major program blocks composed of a mixture of papers and panels. Additionally, two sessions will be formatted as breakouts to provide an opportunity for more informal interaction with speakers/panelists in small groups. Keynote speaker, Michael Schrage, noted columnist and author of a new Random House book, SHARED MINDS: THE NEW TECHNOLOGIES OF COLLABORATION, will open the conference by discussing new electronic pathways that are being created for scholars and researchers. During the course of the next two days, special guest speakers will address the current state of electronic information access in the STM area, describe current exper- iments in scholarly electronic publishing, and provide in-depth, prac- tical information on related computing and telecommunications issues. Special guest speakers include: Lois Ann Colianinni, National Library of Medicine; T.R. Girill, National Energy Research Supercomputer Cen- ter, Lawrence Livermore Laboratory; Peter Lyman, Center for Scholarly Technology, University of Southern California; Charles Lowry, Univer- sity of Texas at Arlington; Don Riggs, University of Michigan; Louise Levy Schaper, AT&T Bell Labs; Eric Bradshaw, Dow Jones Marketing; Stuart Lynn, Cornell University; Charles McClure, Syracuse University; Glen Alexander, Xerox Corporation; and Howard Webber, Digital Equip- ment Corporation. Conference participation will be limited to 300 attendees drawn from the library, publishing, and information management community in high- er education, the public sector and industry. The full conference fee is $295.00 per person, if received by April 1, 1991. After April 1, 1991, the fee is $315.00 per person. The confer- ence fee includes opening conference reception, two breakfasts, two lunches, morning and afternoon breaks, conference handouts, and the opportunity to participate in the electronic conference. Participation solely in the electronic conference portion is available at the full conference rate. The conference will be held under the auspices of The Faxon Institute for Advanced Studies in Scholarly and Scientific Communication with support from the Coalition for Networked Information. For further information, contact Pauline McGee (x461) or Ellen Koup (x465) at 1 800 766-0039 or 617 329-3350. Facsimiles can be sent to 617 329-6434. THE LAST WORD ON (0020-1812) Walter R. Tschinkel, Department of Biological Science B-157, Florida State University, Tallahassee FL 32306-3050; BIOLOGY@FSU.BITNET. Letter to Ann Okerson, Association of Research Libraries, and sub- mitted by Okerson. January 7, 1991 Dear Ms. Okerson, Thanks for your follow-up on the adventures of the IUSSI and its child INSECTES SOCIAUX. The story has now been brought to a more or less successful conclusion. As you may recall, it was the North American section of the society that started the effort to find a new publish- er, and that solicited 4 bids from publishers in the USA. This action motivated the other sections to poll their own membership and to so- licit bids as well. At the international congress of the IUSSI in Bangalore, India, at a meeting in which all sections were represented, it was decided to leave Masson (the present publisher) and to accept the proposal of Birkhauser in Basel, Switzerland. The Birkhauser pro- posal was in line with some of our American ones, but the price is somewhat higher than that proposed by at least two American publishers (both non-profits). Although the North American section caused the whole thing to happen, in the end, we were outvoted by the Europeans. Still, the outcome is good, even though the price hasn't changed much. The journal will be better, larger and better marketed. The publisher will also pay for a 1/2-time secretary for the editor. I agree with you that price to individuals and to libraries is very important. Choosing the non-profit presses would have reduced both. Judging from the outcome in Bangalore, price must not have been the overriding concern upon which people voted. The society was founded in Europe, and Europeans are very intent on keeping the journal there. At least this has been my impression for some time.... NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES Daniel H. Jones, University of Texas Health Sciences Center, San Antonio; JONES@UTHSCSA.BITNET. I recently reported to the Newsletter on correspondence with Frank Press, President of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA, re- garding concerns for the erosion of library collections in research libraries in the US. Dr. Press responded that the Academy had estab- lished the Science & Technology Information Board to address informa- tion issues and that this would be addressed by the Board. After re- ceiving his response I called Dr. Cynthia Carter, Director of the Board, to discuss their activities and to learn who was on the Board. The membership is very distinguished, but they apparently are not doing any studies because of lack of funds; I gather fundraising is what Dr. Carter is expected to do before they can conduct any studies. Anyway, I have subsequently learned from a distinguished member of the Academy that the Board has been "suspended" for lack of funds, and I wonder how much longer they will be able to retain anyone on staff under such circumstances. Further, I wonder if possibly some of the international publishers might have an interest in helping to fund objective studies about the erosion of the American academic and re- search library collections (I wonder a lot!). UNSOLICITED JOURNAL ISSUES Bobbie Carlson, Medical University of South Carolina Library, 171 Ashley Avenue, Charleston SC 29425; 803 792-2352; CARLSONB@MUSC.- BITNET. I have become aware of an increasing number of requests from subscrip- tion agents to return unsolicited journal issues (subscriptions, not standing orders). This situation has made me wonder about the policies and practices of libraries and vendors in this area. The problem ap- pears to be with unsolicited issues that are received by libraries at the time of new orders and claims, which were placed correctly by the library. (Such issues in the context of a change of subscription agent are a different problem.) Libraries are oftentimes requested to return these materials to the vendor or the library will be invoiced. There seems to be a vast difference in the way subscription agencies and libraries deal with these circumstances. Several vendors appear to request automatically that issues be returned, a policy that leaves libraries outside of the decision triangle. The majority of the li- brarians I've talked with about this matter think that the immediate burden in this scenario rests with their libraries in terms of demands on staff time and extra postal expenditures. Although librarians see the need to cooperate with vendors and publishers, they also feel, as informed consumers, that they should not suffer repeated losses due to miscommunication between publishers and vendors or due to faulty dis- tribution practices. The reasons given to support returns, that sub- scriptions are very expensive and have short print runs, do not appear to consider the cost of serials to libraries beyond the invoiced price. The experience of some librarians has been that even when is- sues are returned, subscriptions may suffer additional delivery prob- lems. Proactive librarians are not advocating that their institutions profit from others' errors, but they do demand some accountability in these times of austere budgets and rapidly rising subscription costs. The following are some questions that have grown from the ongoing discussion of this problem among librarians: Does it matter whether an entire bibliographic volume or just a single issue is involved? What would the users of our collections and library administrators advise librarians to do in dealing with requests for returns? Are individual subscribers asked to return items? Are all libraries served by the same subscription agency asked to operate under the same policy? What does the vendor do with the returned issues? Serials acquisitions is hardly an exact science, and allowances by librarians, vendors, and publishers must be built into the process. As more and more electronic links within the serials industry occur, will such problems become extinct? Will X12 transmission for invoices and claims among constituents help alleviate this problem? I would be interested in hearing from other serials librarians, library adminis- trators, subscription agents, and publishers in order to define better the present situation and the future solution. LIBRARIANS' EFFORTS COUNTERED BY OMB Carol Henderson, Deputy Director, ALA Washington Office, ALA0025. The BUDGET OF THE UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT, FISCAL YEAR 1991, includes a disturbing paragraph in Part Two, p. 43, in a section headed "Ex- panding the Frontier of Knowledge Through Basic Research." This sec- tion describes "Key Indicators of the Vitality of Basic Research," and the paragraph in question reads as follows: Publications and Citations.--As an indicator of overall produc- tivity, the number of science articles published by U.S. academic researchers (which produce about two-thirds of all U.S. science and engineering articles in major journals) has increased marked- ly. By this measure, the U.S. is maintaining its large share of world scientific and engineering literature. In all fields, the U.S. has a greater percentage of world publications than does any other country. As an indicator of the impact that publications have on other research, citation data are often used. The level of citation of U.S. papers by foreign researchers suggests that U.S. researchers continue to exert a substantial impact on for- eign publications, and thus on the world's store of scientific knowledge. While NSF appears to be making progress recently, the Office of Man- agement and Budget, which prepares the budget document, is still cit- ing the volume of science articles as an indicator, and thus contrib- uting to the problem. (0924-2031), NEW ELSEVIER JOURNAL Eleanor Cook, Appalachian State University, COOKEI@APPSTATE.BITNET. James Kels, Chairman Elsevier Science Publishing Co. P.O. Box 211 Amsterdam The Netherlands Dear Mr. Kels: I have spoken with a representative from your company, John Tagler, concerning a new Elsevier journal, VIBRATIONAL SPECTROSCOPY. He sug- gested that I write to you. I am concerned about the method employed to launch this new title. A new title should be introduced to its market in a clear and open manner. This is particularly essential when that market is libraries. Numbering in a new title with an existing title wreaks havoc biblio- graphically, causing frustration and ill will with subscribers. In the past, such practices did not cause quite the stir they do now because library subscribers could absorb the cost and in all likeli- hood were in a position to add new subscriptions. This is no longer the case. The mixing up of two distinct publications bibliographically serves no purpose but to confuse the situation and make access more difficult. Librarians can no longer sigh and say, "Oh, well, go ahead and reor- der," when the new title finally gets its own order number and price (as it invariably does). Our subscription to ANALYTICA CHIMICA ACTA (0003-2670) now includes several inter-numbered issues of VIBRATIONAL SPECTROSCOPY, which is a title we do not care to subscribe to. I feel that I have lost some of our money's worth from the original subscrip- tion since these "Siamese twins" will eventually have to undergo sur- gery. If a new scholarly publication is launched, its marketing should be aimed clearly at appropriate academic institutions. A medium-sized comprehensive university with no doctoral programs in the sciences (such as Appalachian State University) does not need specialized high- tech science journals, nor can we afford them. We'd prefer to receive sample issues to share with appropriate faculty. Librarians are paying attention to marketing techniques used by pub- lishers. We are watching closely as our budgets cannot stand much more strain. The tendency is to cancel those publications which give us trouble. Tactics as have been used with the two titles I've described in this letter make these titles prime candidates for cancellation. A copy of this letter will be sent to the NEWSLETTER ON SERIALS PRIC- ING ISSUES to alert other librarians of this particular situation. The newsletter is in electronic format and reaches serials librarians all over the United States. Sincerely, Eleanor I. Cook ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Readers of the NEWSLETTER ON SERIALS PRICING ISSUES are encouraged to share the information in the newsletter by electronic or paper meth- ods. We would appreciate credit if you quote from the newsletter. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ The NEWSLETTER ON SERIALS PRICING ISSUES (ISSN: 1046-3410) is pub- lished as news is available by the American Library Association's Association for Library Collections and Technical Services. Editor: Marcia Tuttle, BITNET: TUTTLE@UNC.BITNET; Faxon's DataLinx: TUTTLE; ALANET: ALA0348; Paper mail: Serials Department, C.B. #3938 Davis Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill NC 27599-3938. The Newsletter is available on BITNET, DataLinx, and ALA- NET. EBSCONET customers may receive the Newsletter in paper format from EBSCO. Readmore Academic customers may receive the Newsletter in paper format from Readmore. Back issues of the Newsletter are availa- ble electronically free of charge through BITNET from the editor. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ ******ENDOFFILE***ENDOFFILE***ENDOFFILE***ENDOFFILE***ENDOFFILE******* ======================================================================== Date: Sun, 10 Mar 91 17:07 EST Subject: PRICING NEWSLETTER, NO. 34 ISSN: 1046-3410 NEWSLETTER ON SERIALS PRICING ISSUES An ALCTS publication NUMBER 34 -- March 11, 1991 Editor: Marcia Tuttle CONTENTS URGENT: , Ann Okerson , Erika Linke GORDON AND BREACH/USSR JOINT VENTURE, Vicki Banner LOW CITATION RATE OF SCIENTIFIC PAPERS, October Ivins MORE TROUBLE WITH JOURNALS, Carol Lawrence FROM THE MAILBOX, Various Readers HAMAKER'S HAYMAKERS, Chuck Hamaker EDITOR'S NOTE: The next issue of the Newsletter, out very soon, will have a review of the implications of the publishing situation in the Soviet Union regarding subscriptions and of the discussion on SERIALST about serial cancellations in several libraries. URGENT: Ann Okerson, Association for Research Libraries, OKERSON@UMDC.BITNET You will probably remember the INSECTES SOCIAUX (ISSN: 0020-1812) news items recently in the NEWSLETTER ON SERIALS PRICING ISSUES. The jour- nal, which had been published by Masson, was moved by its editors ultimately to Birkhauser. While a different sort of move might have suited library pocketbooks a little more, and the American section (of the International Union for the Study of Social Insects) supported a switch to a domestic/U.S. publisher, nonetheless, the international group as a whole benefitted from the change. We have been contacted by Walter R. Tschinkel, Professor and Presi- dent, North American Section of the IUSSI, and asked to "help out" with an unfortunate situation that has arisen as a result of this publisher change. In the renewal process (Fall 1990) for 1991, the then current publisher (Masson) was paid. I am speculating that Masson did not notify vendors; if they knew, the vendors did not get their files changed over in time to send checks to Birkhauser. Thus, the situation is that Masson has the money and Birkhauser is receiving the manuscripts. This, unfortunately, leads to a nasty situation in many regards, the least of which is that the journal cannot be produced. I suggested to Dr. Tschinkel that I would describe the situation to the widest possible American academic audience via e-mail and seek the following actions from readers: 1. Please notify the academic vendor community, so that they may take appropriate actions. Specifically, those of you who can, please con- nect to Blackwell, Faxon, EBSCO, Harrassowitz and all the others (sor- ry not to enumerate all; I'm running for a plane). Some of these vend- ors may be able to assist with the European or international subscrip- tion customers. 2. If you are one of the subscribing libraries, write to Masson -- if you have time to do this. Perhaps someone could post a form letter on the network for everyone else to copy. This type of behavior deserves the strongest objections, which might include, ultimately, mentioning the possibility of reviewing the publisher's titles on one's local subscription list. 3. Take whatever other action you feel would be appropriate so the correct publisher can be paid. 4. Please keep me informed about the actions you are taking. Either post to SERIALST or ACQNET, or send me a message to my e-mail account: OKERSON@UMDC.BITNET, or OKERSON@UMDC.EDU. I would like to save a com- prehensive file to forward to the Society when this situation is re- solved. For your information, I have rekeyed Dr. Tschinkel's letter to me. He maintains a great deal of humor in a difficult situation: THE FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY Tallahassee, Florida Department of Biological Science March 7, 1991 Ann Okerson Association of Research Libraries 1527 New Hampshire Avenue NW Washington DC 20036 Dear Ms. Okerson: In response to our encouraging phone conversation this morning, I am sending you what material I have on the great Franco-Swiss war, involving Masson and Birkhauser. The handwritten note is from the editor of INSECTES SOCIAUX, Johann Billen (Zoological Institute, University of Leuven). The list annotated by him is one which I compiled from the OCLC listing of libraries subscrib- ing to INSECTES SOCIAUX. All those with question marks are li- braries for which we do not know to whom they sent their sub- scription money. As the note says, 140 subscriptions have been received by Masson for a journal which they no longer publish and for which they have no manuscripts. On the other hand, Birkhaus- er, the new publisher, is sitting there with the manuscripts but not all the money. Your offer of sending this out to libraries and subscription agents is most welcome and most generous. I am very grateful for the help, and our society will be too, once they find out. I look forward to the next phase in the campaign. Should we ap- proach General Schwarzkopf? I hear his schedule is slacking up a bit. Thank you so much for your help. Sincerely, Walter R. Tschinkel, Professor THE FOLLOWING IS A LIST, ARRANGED BY STATE, OF POSSIBLE SUBSCRIBER LIBRARIES IN THE US WHO MAY OR MAY NOT HAVE PAID THE INCORRECT (MAS- SON) PUBLISHER. (For reasons of space I have changed the list to para- graph form and have deleted the word "University" where I think it will not confuse the list.-Ed.) Auburn, Arkansas, Northern Arizona, Arizona State, California State- Chico, San Diego State, California State-Fullerton, UCLA Biomedical, UCLA Law (?), UCLA Physical Science and Technology, Natural History Museum Foundation of Los Angeles, Loma Linda, Colorado State, Connec- ticut-Storrs, Howard, Smithsonian Institution-Washington, Florida State, South Florida, University of Miami, Florida Agricultural Li- brary-Gainesville, Georgia, Hawaii, Purdue, Indiana, Kansas State, Kentucky, Tulane, Louisiana State, Massachusetts-Amherst, Massachu- setts-Boston, Boston, Harvard, National Agricultural Library, Wayne State, Northern Michigan, Minnesota, Linda Hall, Missouri-St. Louis, Duke, North Carolina-Chapel Hill, North Dakota, Kearney State, Nebras- ka-Lincoln, New Hampshire, New Mexico State, SUNY-Buffalo, Cornell, SUNY-Albany, Rochester, Brooklyn College, CUNY College of Environment- al Science and Forestry-Syracuse, Long Island-Greenvale, Fordham, SUNY-Stony Brook, SUNY-Oneonta, City College (CUNY) of New York, Ak- ron, Miami University, Ohio State, Oklahoma State, Oregon State, Acad- emy of Natural Sciences-Philadelphia, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota State, Tennessee, Texas Tech, Texas-Austin, Texas-Tyler, Texas A & M, Utah, Virginia Polytechnic, Vermont-Burlington, Washing- ton-Seattle, Wisconsin-Madison, Marquette, Wyoming, Ag. Forest Serv- ice-Beltsville MD. Apologies for typos and errors. I'm working from a handwritten FAXed list. Also note that the compiler probably does not have complete subscriber information, which may be closely held by the commercial publisher (Masson) as he took the entries from OCLC. Any library not reporting holdings, thus, will, of course, have been missed. Erika Linke, Carnegie Mellon University, EL08+@ANDREW.CMU.EDU. In December 1990 Little, Brown purchased from Matthew Bender the PRO- CEEDINGS OF THE NEW YORK UNIVERSITY NATIONAL CONFERENCE ON LABOR (ISSN: 0193-3418). For whatever reason, the subscriber list was not transferred from Bender to Little, Brown. What this means is that many of us have not received the latest volume of the PROCEEDINGS, and Little, Brown doesn't know we exist. The latest volume was released in December 1990 and is the 43rd. To add insult to injury, Little, Brown will maintain a sole source option on the title. (I've registered a verbal complaint about this which I hope to follow up in writing.) To alert Little, Brown that you are a subscriber, call 1 800 331-1664. The following message was sent to certain subscribers to the JOURNAL OF THE AUSTRALIAN MATHEMATICAL SOCIETY (ISSN: 0263-6115 for A and ISSN 0334-2700 for B): IMPORTANT CIRCULAR CONCERNING OUR PUBLICATIONS JOURNAL OF THE AUSTRALIAN MATHEMATICAL SOCIETY SERIES A, AND B, FOR 1991 31st January, 1991 Dear Customer, I am writing to inform you that we have temporarily suspended supply of our journals, as ordered through the agency The Faxon Company, Inc., 15 Southwest Park, Westwood, Mass. 02090, USA, because this agent is persistently tardy in passing on your sub- scriptions to us; at present, he is almost six months late with the current season's payments. We have informed the agent of this step, and hopefully, all will be rectified shortly. In the meantime, for next years orders, please note that there are agents who pay their bills promptly. In addition, it is quite feasible to avoid such hassles by ordering directly from us. Yours sincerely, B.D. Jones, Treasurer 11th February, 1991 At the Newsletter's request for a response from Faxon, the agency sent us the text of a letter to be sent to recipients of the Australian memo: SERVICE UPDATE: AUSTRALIAN MATHEMATICAL SOCIETY JOURNAL, SERIES A&B We recently mailed you a letter from our Publication Services Department concerning the JOURNAL OF THE AUSTRALIAN MATHEMATICAL SOCIETY, SERIES A & B, which is Faxon's title number 084930. This letter was sent in response to an earlier letter which you may have received from the publisher regarding fulfillment problems with Faxon-placed orders for this title for 1991. As your region- al service manager, I felt it was important to our partnership as client and subscription agent to provide you with more details on this problem and on the steps which we have taken to resolve fully the service and delivery issues. Basically, the problem was one of miscommunication between Faxon and the publisher regarding correct rates for 1991. This informa- tion was not entered into our system as it should have been, and our payment to the publisher last Fall was incorrect. As your subscription agent, we accept responsibility for this problem and recognize that it is solely our job to solve it as quickly as possible with a minimum of inconvenience to you. As the earlier letter from Publication Services indicated, we have already taken steps to do this and the publisher has assured us that you will receive all late issues as soon as possible, with no gaps in your holdings. We apologize and hope that this has not caused too much of an inconvenience for you and your patrons. Please do not hesitate to contact me if you have any questions or need any further assis- tance of any kind. Sincerely, etc. Upon the editor's further request Faxon sent their first letter: Dear Client: It has come to our attention that you have received a letter from the Australian Mathematical Publishing Association concerning your subscription to JOURNAL OF THE AUSTRALIAN MATHEMATICAL SOCI- ETY SERIES A & B, Faxon title number #084930. Please be assured that we have been in contact with this publish- er, and have resolved the misunderstanding and miscommunication. Your subscription will be fulfilled completely. We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused you. Sincerely yours, Carol Easton Publication Services GORDON AND BREACH/USSR JOINT VENTURE: PRESS RELEASE Vicki Banner, Michael Klepper Associates, Inc., 805 Third Avenue, New York NY 10022. Gordon and Breach and VAAP-Inform announce agreement of a joint ven- ture to be called The International Publishing Communication Corpora- tion (IPCC). The purpose of the venture is to jointly acquire, translate, publish and distribute Soviet scholarly material worldwide. All manufacturing, inclusive of typesetting, printing and binding will be completed in Russia. Additionally, the venture will include a full mail-order and distribution capability within the USSR. Material emanating in the USSR will be translated and distributed throughout the world by Gordon and Breach. Published material from outside the USSR also will be made available within the Soviet Union using the indigenous distribution system; distribution will be made available to other publishers who wish to participate. IPCC will be located at Building 1, 39, Marshal Zhukov Prospect, Mos- cow 123423, USSR and is expected to be fully operational this spring. Alena Engelhart is appointed Manager of Operations. She has been gain- ing experience in the New York office of Gordon and Breach since July 1990. In related news, Gordon and Breach will also be opening an editorial office in Moscow. Gordon and Breach, a multi-national group of publishing companies, publishes journals and books for specialists in the sciences, arts and humanities. LOW CITATION RATE OF SCIENTIFIC PAPERS October Ivins, Louisiana State University, NOTORI@LSUVM. Two more articles dealing with the low citation rate of scientific papers have appeared recently. Both are by David P. Hamilton, whose "Publishing By -- and For? -- the Numbers" (SCIENCE, vol. 250, no. 4986, p. 1331-32, Dec. 7, 1990) was discussed in NEWSLETTER 32. Hamil- ton followed up with "Research Papers: Who's Uncited Now?" in the January 4, 1991 issue of SCIENCE (vol. 251, no. 4989, p. 25) in which he again highlights data analyzed by David Pendlebury of the Institute for Scientific Information. The second article examines comparative citation levels among scientific subdisciplines, finding a range of 9.2 percent uncited for atomic, molecular, and chemical physics to 86.9 percent for general engineering. Citation rates among the social sciences and in the humanities were also addressed, finding overall averages for the social sciences of 74.7 percent and in the humanities of 98 percent. A longer article, "Trivia Pursuit: Too Much of America's Research Money Goes to Studies Nobody Wants to Read" (WASHINGTON MONTHLY, vol. 23:3, p. 36-42, March 1991) discusses the familiar concerns of journal proliferation and the pressure to publish that drives promotion, ten- ure, and grant awards. He suggests solutions that include a return to an emphasis on teaching by college and university faculty and new research funding criteria for federal agencies. Although most of his ideas are valid, he seems to have based his article on interviews with scientists; there are no footnotes. As a result, some of his sugges- tions seem odd, for example, "...it wouldn't hurt for funding agencies to be more aggressive about the extent to which they reimburse library costs -- a strategy that could help indirectly cut back on the number of journals in circulation" (page 42). Despite the article's occasion- al oversimplifications, it is encouraging to see these issues ad- dressed. (Thanks to Paul Gleason, editor of the SSP LETTER, for bring- ing the article to my attention. Also, thanks to Chuck Hamaker for pointing out that the low citation rate of scientific papers is old news; Eugene Garfield, then and now president of the Institute for Scientific Information, discussed similar findings and cited earlier research in "Citation Analysis as a Tool in Journal Evaluation" (SCI- ENCE, November 3, 1972, p. 471-479). MORE TROUBLE WITH JOURNALS Carol Lawrence, Yale Medical Library, LAWRENCE@YALEMED.BITNET. Yale Medical Library 333 Cedar Street New Haven CT 06510 28 February 1991 Mr. David Bousfield, Publisher Elsevier Trends Journals 68 Hills Road Cambridge CB2 1LA England I am writing to you concerning the quality of binding of the reference edition of IMMUNOLOGY TODAY (ISSN: 0167-4919) vol. 10, 1989. Your "reference edition," volume 10, 1989 was received at the Yale Medical Library April 27, 1990. Less than a year later, the binding is broken; it had already been taped around the spine when it reached me. The front cover is nearly detached and the spine is torn away from the text block at the top and the bottom of the volume. The upper corners of the book are bent and the cover material has peeled away. Although this speaks well for the amount of use the volume is receiv- ing, our standard library bindings by the Bridgeport Bindery, which were used on our earlier volumes of IMMUNOLOGY TODAY, are still in excellent condition. In addition to having to pay the extra cost of your reference edition for the library, we will also have to have this and future volumes bound at our expense. Please review your policy on the packaging of the Trends series and permit us to purchase these important materials at a reasonable price and to provide them with the quality binding they deserve. Sincerely, Carol Lawrence Head, Technical Services and Collection Development FROM THE MAILBOX Various Readers This is a new regular section of the NEWSLETTER ON SERIALS PRICING ISSUES and replaces a lot of what has until now been in the From the Editor "column." From Judith Rieke, Vanderbilt University Medical Center Library, RIEKEJL@VUCTRVAX.BITNET: I've been following comments about the ISSN in the Newsletter with interest. As soon as we converted to online receipt and could search with the standard number, I realized what an effi- ciency it was for us. I also kept hoping that publishers would print the SISAC code on the covers as well, so we could get a programmable scanner to allow us to search for the number by simply scanning the first nine characters. What a great time saver that would be! And as we all know, time is money. Has anyone done a study on how much more cost effective it is to deal with more organized pub- lishers who do things like print ISSN prominently, respond to our questions and claims, etc? Do we need to add how much more or less it costs to process materials from certain publishers into the equation? Is the price on the invoice really the bottom line? I know in my most recent life working with monographs, their price may not be as much, but they are costly in terms of labor costs for cataloging, database maintenance, and authority work. One final thing about the ISSN. We hope to be presenting a paper at the Medical Library Association meeting in June about our experience here at Vanderbilt, where we loaded MEDLINE and "linked" the citations to our holdings using the ISSN. We ana- lyzed our problems and found fewer than anticipated. A great many were related to title changes (no surprise). The main point, though, is that the ISSN has the potential for many effective uses, and it will benefit all of us to be adamant about its us- age. As one who is at a library that is charged for usage of our Vax - - these electronic mail lists are not free for us, and I appreci- ate your editing the information. I love the spontaniety of some of the others, but sometimes become impatient with the time it takes to check things that are mistakes and that belabor points. Even if you feel you are no longer at the cutting edge, you are more than a passing fad! Thanks for that! From Jim Mouw, University of Chicago, MOUW@MIDWAY.UCHICAGO.EDU, a letter he received recently: February 20, 1991 Subscriptions to daily newspapers from Germany Dear Subscriber, The U.S. Postal Service is already testing the limits of your patience. You are often experiencing late or irregular arrival of the daily newspapers we mail to you. This irritating situation is now further complicated by drastic reductions of transatlantic flights by the airlines. Many regularly scheduled flights have been cancelled, and large passenger airplanes are frequently being replaced by smaller aircraft with limited space for carrying freight. These problems may delay the arrival of your newspapers in your mailbox even more than usual. Please bear with us. We are doing everything that can be done to maintain a regular mailing schedule. We appreciate your understanding. Sincerely yours, German Language Publications, Inc. Subscription Department From Carol Lawrence, Yale Medical Library, LAWRENCE@YALEMED.BITNET. Did you know that the Medical Library Association is piloting its "MLA Exchange" (serials back issue exchange service in printed form) on SerialsQuest? MLA "exchangers" have had the annual Seri- alsQuest fee waived for participating in the pilot. According to ABACIS, response was excellent. There will no doubt be reports at the MLA meeting in May. We've only keyed in issues and sent them to ABACIS thus far, but it looks very promising and, as outlined now, direct charges per issue combined with credits for trades would make it very economical. We are assessing internal costs during the pilot. Chair of the MLA Exchange Advisory Committee is Rosalind F. Dud- den, Gerald Tucker Memorial Medical Library, National Jewish Center for Immunology and Respiratory Medicine, 1400 Jackson St, Denver CO 80206; 303 398-1483. From Michael Black, Cabot Science Library, Harvard University, BLAKE@HUSC4.BITNET: I am interested in getting information on the pricing structure of biological and biochemical journals. Do you know if there is data on the journal name with cost/character by publisher? HAMAKER'S HAYMAKERS Chuck Hamaker, Louisiana State University, NOTCAH@LSUVM.BITNET. On March 3, 1991 the SUNDAY TELEGRAPH (London) ran an article entitled "Pearson's Dutch Divorce." The article states that the "engagement with a view to marriage" that was indicated in the 1988 mutual stock purchase between Elsevier and Pearson is being dissolved. Pearson is attempting to sell its Elsevier holdings, and Elsevier apparently ditto. On Friday, March 1st, Elsevier shares first fell sharply in trading, but recovered to DF77.10. That values Elsevier at just under DF5 billion, or Pounds sterling, 1.5 billion. Slightly less than three billion dollars. Pearson, closing at 723 Pounds, would have a market capitalization of about 1.96 billion Pounds sterling, or just under four billion dollars. When the giants trundle they can also unbundle. The article points out that the original swap share was designed as a defensive move by British Pearson against Rupert Murdoch. Since Mur- doch`s no longer a threat.... Although the link-up was also seen as prelude to merger (Pearson/Elsevier), this divestment (Pearson held 22 percent of Elsevier stock, Elsevier 15 percent of Pearson) makes it clear those plans are off. However, the two companies according to the newspaper report are still looking at joint ventures in European and Australian publishing. Pity the Aussies? My thanks to Heather Steele for the article, but of course, the editorial wisecracks are my own. The SERIALS LIBRARIAN vol. 19, no. 3/4 (1991) contains the full report of last June's NASIG conference. Although most of you will want to read the whole issue, two talks are standouts from my perspective. They are the full report of the Utah State University serials pricing study, which used as a database 370 titles tracked for 20 years, and the report by Dorothy Milne and Bill Tiffany of "A Survey of the Cost- Effectiveness of Serials: A Cost-Per-Use Method and its Results." The Utah State study by Kenneth E. Marks and Steven P. Nielsen is remarkable in that it is a real longitudinal study quantitatively based. In examining foreign based publishing, pricing increases empir- ically broke out into two very different behaviors. Group one (Aus- tralia, France, and the UK) journals increased 1.4 times in price per page in country of origin based comparisons between 1967 and 1987, while with Group two titles (Austria, West Germany, Japan, the Nether- lands, and Switzerland) domestic buyers (in country of origin) paid "an astonishing 4.7 times" the price per page in 1987 as they did in 1967. The study also was unable to note a difference in price increase behavior in the sciences on a discipline basis. "It is not apparent that price increases in any one discipline are the major cause of the overall rapid increases in journal prices." However, when foreign commercial presses were measured, "The implication is that foreign commercial presses are responsible for a disproportionate share of journal price increases." The three publishers identified in Dougherty and Johnson's LJ article (LIBRARY JOURNAL vol. 113, no. 9, May 15, 1988, p. 27-29) were examined separately (Elsevier, Springer, Perga- mon). "Ninety-five percent of the titles from these three foreign commercial publishers (which the article does not list) are in the top 40 percent of price increases for the entire sample. It is noteworthy that the same three publishers were among four studied by ARL, which concluded that their price increases could not be explained by in- creases in producer cost." The study of cost effectiveness/cost-per-use reported by Milne and Tiffany, librarians at the Memorial University of Newfoundland, is also destined to become a classic (if not in citations, since librar- ians tend to ignore citations in their writings, at least in use and reference). Looking at major sci-tech publishers, if all titles were cancelled which were not cost-effective, 44 percent of the dollar value of these publishers' products (eight were examined closely) could be cancelled. The least cost effective of these publishers could suffer cancellations at 75 percent of dollar value if stringent cost- benefit analysis were used. One of these publishers, as noted in the oral report but not in the text, is the publisher gaining an interna- tional reputation for legal pressure on pricing research. Cost-inef- fectiveness did not necessarily mean a low level of use in this study, but rather a high cost per use ratio. If more effective delivery means were available, the authors speculate that titles receiving even 60 uses a year could be cancelled because the use-to-cost ratio was so high. In defense of the high priced commercial sci-tech publishers the authors note, "The serials published by a group of eight major commer- cial publishers are more cost-effective than the average for all seri- als in our collection. However, even among these publishers, 44 per- cent of the dollar value of their subscriptions was found to be cost- ineffective in our library at the present time." They caution publish- ers that cost per use is very high for much that is published and that more stringent editorial controls are necessary to reduce cost-per-use ratios. If the material does not become more used, it will not be collected as libraries move towards more cost-efficient operations. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Readers of the NEWSLETTER ON SERIALS PRICING ISSUES are encouraged to share the information in the newsletter by electronic or paper meth- ods. We would appreciate credit if you quote from the newsletter. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ The NEWSLETTER ON SERIALS PRICING ISSUES (ISSN: 1046-3410) is pub- lished as news is available by the American Library Association's Association for Library Collections and Technical Services. Editor: Marcia Tuttle, BITNET: TUTTLE@UNC.BITNET; Faxon's DataLinx: TUTTLE; ALANET: ALA0348; Paper mail: Serials Department, C.B. #3938 Davis Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill NC 27599-3938. The Newsletter is available on BITNET, DataLinx, and ALA- NET. EBSCO and Readmore Academic customers may receive the Newsletter in paper format from EBSCO and Readmore, respectively. Back issues of the Newsletter are available electronically free of charge through BITNET from the editor. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ ******ENDOFFILE***ENDOFFILE***ENDOFFILE***ENDOFFILE***ENDOFFILE******* ======================================================================== (JNET2019-2019; 673 LINES); Sun, 17 Mar 91 21:48:23 EST Received: from JNET-Daemon by UNCVX1.BITNET; Sun, 17 Mar 91 17:26 EDT Subject: PRICING NEWSLETTER, NO. 35 ISSN: 1046-3410 NEWSLETTER ON SERIALS PRICING ISSUES An ALCTS publication NUMBER 35 -- March 18, 1991 Editor: Marcia Tuttle CONTENTS FROM THE EDITOR, Marcia Tuttle SUBSCRIPTIONS TO SOVIET JOURNALS, Marcia Tuttle LIBRARIES' REDUCTIONS IN SERIALS EXPENDITURES, SERIALST FROM THE MAILBOX, Various Readers HAMAKER'S HAYMAKERS, Chuck Hamaker FROM THE EDITOR Marcia Tuttle, TUTTLE@UNC.BITNET. You will notice that in this issue of the Newsletter the two major reports are taken from ACQNET and SERIALST, two online discussion groups that sometimes treat topics relevant to this newsletter. All three editors (or owner, in the case of Birdie MacLennan and SERIALST) communicate with each other and believe that our publications do not compete, but complement each other. I had hoped to include the reports on Soviet journals and library cancellation plans in the last issue, but it got too big too fast. I doubt that ever again reprints and summaries from other sources will take so large a share of an issue. SUBSCRIPTIONS TO SOVIET JOURNALS Marcia Tuttle, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, TUTTLE@- UNC.BITNET, and a lot of help from ACQNET, CRI@CORNELLC.BITNET. On February 20, my library's Slavic bibliographer, Nadia Zilper, re- ceived unconfirmed information that Les Livres Etrangers in Paris, our primary source for Soviet journals, standing orders, and monographs, was bankrupt and had gone out of business, presumably as a result of the chaos in the Soviet publishing industry resulting from the col- lapse of the Soviet economy. We understood that the vendor did not place any 1991 renewals. ACQNET, as this Newsletter has mentioned before, is an online discussion group concerned with library acquisi- tions matters. We felt that ACQNET was an appropriate vehicle for informing others of what we had been told and to learn more about the situation. Christian Boissonnas at Cornell, editor of ACQNET, went into action as soon as he received the electronic message from us. Along with our message, the following explanation from Christian ap- peared on ACQNET the next day: This morning I have talked to Georges Delorme, owner of Les Livres Etrangers. The company is not bankrupt, but is going out of business, effective next Monday, assuming that it receives the legal authorization to do so.... The reason Delorme gave me is that the centralized book procurement system in the Soviet Union has collapsed. Since he depends on that system for 99 percent of his business, he sees no way he can satisfactorily meet customer expectations, so he's closing shop. He currently is negotiating with Collets in London for them to take over his outstanding orders, including subscriptions. He does not yet know whether they will accept. When he does, he will write a general letter to all customers to tell them what's going on. He is, of course, very unhappy. He is very pessimistic about the long-term situation in Russia. He hopes that, within two or three years, things will have straightened out enough so that he can get back in business. He is not optimistic about that happening. He did express his concern for his customers and says he hasn't told them yet simply because there hasn't been enough time since he made the decision and he is prohibited by the Court from doing so until next Monday.... Electronic mail messages appeared quickly on ACQNET from subscribers in both the United States and Canada illustrating the confusion that Les Livres Etrangers' closing had caused. Many libraries received FAX messages from Collets soliciting their business. Others were sent renewal lists from Victor Kamkin, Inc., in Maryland. A Canadian li- brary heard from TROYKA, LTD. in Toronto. All imposed a March 1 dead- line, presumably imposed on them by Mezhdunarodnaya Kniga, the Soviet distributor, for confirmation of subscription renewals. Panic reigned! Boissonnas stepped in again as the voice of reason: Slow down some, people! You're forgetting one essential fact: If the distribution system in Russia has broken down, neither Col- lets nor Kamkin, nor Gorbachev himself, will be able to send you any titles. What these people are doing is trying to steal market share by getting you to place money with them now and getting you tied down to them.... Warning his readers that he was posting unconfirmed information, he continued to pass on messages received for the discussion group. One of them was from Brad Schaffner at the University of Kansas: Now that LLE is out of business, there seems to be a lot of confusion in regards to Soviet subscriptions. I have been in contact with several other Soviet bibliographers and this is a summary of some of the points discussed. As I understand it, Delorme closed shop, he did not go bankrupt. He did this because Mezh. Knig. is having trouble supplying ma- terials. (Import Publications of Chicago is also out of busi- ness.) Many Soviet publishers are unhappy with Mezh. Knig. and are looking to deal directly with vendors in the West in an at- tempt to increase their hard currency profits. In general, the Soviet distribution system is falling apart. I keep in contact with several Soviet libraries and they are also having trouble obtaining publications. It appears that Mezh. Knig. passed LLE's subscription lists to a number of vendors without consulting Delorme. They want payment soon because the subscriptions for 1991 have already been submit- ted.... Keep in mind that if it is a distribution problem no vendor will be able to supply materials. Unfortunately, I believe that the problem will get worse before the sitution improves. Some librarians, receiving renewal lists from Kamkin, called the com- pany. One was David James of Johns Hopkins. Here is some of what he heard from the manager, Ms. Kira Caiafa: Mezhdunarodnyi Knigi ... is now a private corporation. They are doing some publishing on their own, no longer just distributing for other Soviet publishers. They are, she assures me, "sounder than ever," and one can now buy stock in the company! Books or- dered from NOVYI KNIGI are being shipped as always, and Kamkin has received since January 30 tons (that is what she said) of Soviet publications. Technical publications from the republics and other outlying areas are difficult to get, but they have always been difficult to get as the tirages are small. The tirages for books ordered from NOVYI KNIGI are based on orders received in advance from Western European and US markets. Ms. Caiafa said that Mezhdunarodnyi Knigi has sent her all US subscriptions that Livres Etrangers was handling, as well as all advance orders for monographs placed using NOVYI KNIGI. Victor Kamkin will be contacting serials customers to confirm renewals. All payments sent through Paris to Moscow for current subscrip- tions will be honored. Scott Wicks of Cornell had a less enlightening experience: I just got off the phone with Natalie Zabasky from Kamkin. I am very surprised at the lack of information I received. I expected her to, well, give me the scoop on the publishing situation with- in the Soviet Union. Every tidbit of information I gathered was pried out of her as if an impacted wisdom tooth. It is also pos- sible that I was the 101st caller today and that she was growing weary of having to explain it all one! more! time!... What I put together from our conversation concerning the disarray of the Soviet publishing industry is that it is no longer run by the government. MK has been privatized (no longer subsidized by the government) and that we (or our vendors) may be forced to prepay for any future publications.... What really ticks me off is that we are told we have a deadline (3/1/91) which is so close at hand that we haven't the time to think this process out in full. Vicky Reich of Stanford reported portions of a message from Wojciech Zalewski, Stanford's Slavic Curator: Kamkin (Kira Caiafa) told me that all books ordered by us through Les Livres will come to Kamkin. Kamkin, as it seems, will not know who ordered what because they will not have our order slips. Kamkin just received 30 tons of books from Mezhkniga. What is in those containers they do not know. They will have to hire many people to struggle with this new sitution. I talked to Ivanov, director of Bibl. Inostrannoi Literatury. He did not offer much insight due to chaotic situation in the USSR. He said, what is obvious, that publishers have no structures to enable them to handle sales directly. VOPROSY ISTORII is dead, NOVYI MIR almost dead or dead. Exchange libraries have the means to buy books for us and they need us. My own library attempted immediately before the apparently artificial March 1 deadline to transfer our subscriptions to a trusted interna- tional vendor, whose rep advised us that they could not guarantee the fulfillment and prices promised by Kamkin. After a very helpful con- versation with someone at Kamkin, I FAXed them our approval of the renewal list and a copy of the following letter from Zilper: Desanka Zabavsky Subscription Dept. Victor Kamkin, Inc. 4950-56 Boiling Brook Parkway Rockville MD 20852 Dear Mrs. Zabavsky: We understand that Mezhdunarodnaia Kniga has transferred our subscriptions, previously placed with Les Livres Etrangers (LLE), to your dealership. At our request LLE provided us with a list of our subscriptions. However, we received renewal notes from you for only a few titles from that list. Therefore, enclosed please find a list of titles previously acquired from LLE, for which we would like to renew subscriptions for 1991. We, however, are deeply concerned about the following issues: 1. The delivery of newspapers, magazines, and journals that we presently receive on subscription from Victor Kamkin, Inc. is extremely unsatisfactory. There is also virtually no response from your office to our claims. Moreover, many 1990 issues are three to six months behind schedule. We are well aware of the problems in the Soviet publishing and distribution industries. We also heard reports about the refusal of Soviet publishing houses to work with Mezhdunarodnaia Kniga because they want a share of the profits in hard currency, and under present arrangements have none. What we want is straight- forward information about what Mezhdunarodnaia Kniga can and cannot provide to Western customers, so that we can plan our acquisitions based on reliable information. 2. Another important issue is the outrageous price increase due to shipping charges. It is interesting to note that in the 1990 Mezhdunarodnaia Kniga catalog GAZETY I ZHURNALY SSSR the prices were in rubles. The catalog also had a stamp: 1 ruble = US $1.70. The 1991 catalog provides prices in US dollars. These prices are much higher than the 1991 escalated prices in the USSR, even if the conversion is done according to the least favorable US dollar conversion rate. We thought that the unusually high price for subscriptions in hard currency was probably due to the shipping cost. We were surprised to receive your letter dated February 22, 1991 about an additional outrageous shipping cost. We would be more than happy to pay shipping expenses if the subscription price accurately reflected the Soviet price converted into dollars. Since we already pay in dollars the extremely high prices for Soviet subscriptions, we consider it poor business practice for you to charge us an additional, very high, price for shipping. 3. We wish Mezhdunarodnaia Kniga would understand that American libraries cannot absorb such increases in the cost of subscrip- tions. At present, many U.S. libraries are experiencing financial difficulties, and have already gone through several rounds of subscription cancellations. The current price increase will trig- ger further cancellations, and may even jeopardize the existence of Slavic collections and programs at some universities. In any case Mezhdunarodnaia Kniga's profit will decline. 4. Finally, we are alarmed at the inability of Mezhdunarodnaia Kniga to supply us with publications of cooperatives and joint venture publishing houses, provincial publications, publications "on author's expense," and particularly periodicals produced independently of government supervision. For the time being, we will continue the 1991 subscriptions with your agency. At the same time, we plan to monitor vendor perform- ance very closely, and we will look for alternatives if perform- ance remains unsatisfactory. We hope that you will communicate our concerns to Mezhdunarodnaia Kniga, and that you will continue to represent our interests on the Soviet book market. Sincerely, Nadia Zilper Slavic and East European Resources Bibliographer We none of us know if we will get our Slavic serials in 1991. We don't even know if they will be published. But certainly, we will be watch- ing to see the results of our rushed decisions just prior to the ques- tionable (if renewals had really already been "submitted" -- see Schaffner message) deadline of March 1. LIBRARIES' REDUCTIONS IN SERIALS EXPENDITURES Reprint of messages appearing in SERIALST. The online discussion group SERIALST, out of the University of Ver- mont, recently had a query and several responses regarding potential serials cancellation projects. They are directly related to our topic, and I thought Newsletter readers would like to see them. The messages are reprinted below with the permission of Birdie MacLennan, owner of the discussion group. To subscribe to SERIALST, send a message to LISTSERV@UVMVM.BITNET: subscribe SERIALST. The original message from Jean Farrington, University of Pennsylvania, farrington@A1.RELAY.UPENN.EDU: We at Penn are soon embarking on a large scale serials cancella- tion project, probably in the neighborhood of about $200,000. I wondered if other libraries that are also going to be cutting large numbers of serial and periodical titles would be willing to share with me their target dollar figures for cancellation.... Response from Michael Sullivan, UCLA, ECZ5PTL@UCLAVMS.BITNET: The physical sciences and engineering libraries at UCLA will probably be cancelling in the neighborhood of $200,000 for 1991/- 92. Our overall budget is $1.3 million (books and journals), which is about 35 to 40 percent of the overall UCLA book budget. This doesn't include medicine or biology -- they'll probably have to cancel some too. Response from Carol Schaafsma, University of Hawaii, CAROLS@UHUNIX.- BITNET: The University of Hawaii Library is anticipating the need to cancel serials in order to stay within our 1991/92 budget. We are planning to earmark $400,000 worth of titles, in $100,000 incre- ments. The first $100,000 will be cut immediately. The remainder will be cancelled in increments, as reality, the legislature, and the Governor demand. Our serials budget for 1990/91 is $2,500,000. $400,000 would be a 16 percent cut. On top of the approximately $150,000 which we cut back in 87/88 when this whole problem first began to surface, we're into the territory where the cuts really hurt. Response from William Meneely, Georgia State University, LIBWEM@GSUVM1.BITNET: Georgia State cancelled $250,000 worth in 1988. That amounted to 2,600 titles, about 1/3 of our subscriptions. We're gearing up for another round of cancellations aimed at 1993 renewals -- our review process takes about a year to run. I have major concerns about our serials budget: I predict it will be 97 percent of our FY92 budget. No target amount yet for this review. Neighbors close by are, I believe, in the process of cancelling: Georgia Tech is doing about $100,000 prior to 1992 renewals (in- quire of Amy Dykeman, ADYKEMAN@GTRI01). University of Georgia is working on $400,000 prior to 1992 renewals (contact John Yelver- ton, JYELVERT@UGA). Response from Stephen D. Clark, William and Mary, SDCLAR@WMVM1.BITNET: At the College of William and Mary, we are just finishing up a $100,000 serials cancellation project (just yesterday, I mailed our cancellation list to our major periodicals vendor). Our seri- als budget is a little over $820,000. We are attempting to maintain a 60:40 serials-to-book ratio, or at least within that ballpark. The last serials cancellation that we had to do was about 3 years ago. If the Commonwealth of Virginia continues on its present financial course (a graceful downward slide), we will most likely have to go through another such project in 2 to 3 years. Response from Gaele Gillespie, University of Kansas, GGILLESP@UKANVM.- BITNET: In reply to Jean Farrington's inquiry regarding possible serial cancellation projects/target dollar figures: Our last major seri- al cancellation project was done to the tune of approximately $178,000 in August 1987. At that point in time, most subject bibliographers had to identify a certain percentage or dollar amount within their collective serial titles/subject funds to cancel in order to meet the overall cancellation goal. Because cancellation projects are so far-reaching and entail an incredi- ble amount of advance planning, a timetable was developed which took into consideration both the needs of the bibliographers and the Serials Dept., and it worked very well. We are now gearing up for another cancellation project, but we are approaching it a bit differently this time. Instead of having to meet a specific or target dollar figure per se, each bibliographer must make the decision, based on the overall materials budget situation (we are not getting any additional funds next fiscal year, but we're expecting an inflationary factor of at least 15 percent for seri- als), how many serials they will have to identify for cancella- tion if they cannot transfer the necessary money from the mono- graphic side to the serials side to keep their existing serials afloat next year. The sci/tech areas will be the ones hardest hit this time around. We are planning to have a timetable similar to the one we used during our last cancellation project so that all titles earmarked for cancellation will be identified to the Seri- als Dept. by August 1st. Since bibliographers' decisions will affect firm orders, approval plans, and serials, several individ- uals have been involved in the planning & development of how to deal with the 91/92 FY budget scenario, so please feel free to contact any one of us with any questions you may have (I realize my information may not be entirely comprehensible to those of you not familiar with our local budgetary situation and methodolo- gies...). And good luck on meeting your cancellation goal -- it's a tremendous amount of work from any perspective. FROM THE MAILBOX Various Readers From Frederick C. Lynden, Brown University, AP010037@BROWNVM.BITNET: Would you be able to query your subscribers about how they are gathering data on local serial expenditures? I need to know spe- cifically: 1) Does your institution have an online system which keeps rec- ords of local serial costs by title, publisher, and/or subject? 2) What system are you using to gather such data? Example, NOTIS, INNOVACQ, etc. 3) How much historical data is available through your system? 4) Have you used the price data to project costs and/or for bud- get justifications? What percentage increases have you seen for domestic and foreign titles overall? 5) Do your local costs match the experience nationally, i.e., double digit inflation? Responses could be sent to the Newsletter for everyone's edifica- tion, or to me directly at AP010037@BROWNVM.BITNET. Thank you very much. From Jim Mouw, University of Chicago, MOUW@MIDWAY.UCHICAGO.EDU: I just now ran across this letter in an old file. Even though it is dated I thought it might add a little levity to the Newslet- ter. Verona, March 1984 To All Readers of ACTA THERMOGRAPHICA Whenever a life ends it is always a very sad moment. It is thus with great sorrow, that we are announcing the defini- tive end of the vital cycle of ACTA THERMOGRAPHICA! Our journal will be no longer despatched to all the Thermograph- ists, worldwide. The cause of the end of this cycle is only financial. The vitality of the research in the thermographic field is on the contrary extremely lively, as shown by the very many papers sent in recent times to ACTA THERMOGRAPHICA, which we are unfortunately not able to publish any more. We are very sorry not to be in the state to grant all the Themographists (sic) who received our Journal so far with the further read- ing of those new papers which we are now forced to return to the Authors. I have talked about sorrow for the disappearance of ACTA THERMOGRAPHICA: I believe everybody will fully understand this sadness, thinking to the almost 8 years we have been working to this idea. However, if we do not consider this sad evenience (sic) with the eyes of the person who created a Journal with great hope and labor, but consider what ACTA really meant, I am sure a fully positive balance may be drawn the very moment we relinquish it. ACTA THERMOGRAPHICA has been since 1976 the undisputed world thermographic center-point, providing a forum for the fast- est exchange of experiences and of results achieved. In this long period, 363 papers by a total number of 745 authors from all over the world were published: we do thank them all, on this occasion, for their precious collaboration. We strongly hope our work -- in the moment it comes to an abrupt end -- to be positively considered by whomever deals with thermography, not in the medical field alone. I have now to thank all the members of the Editorial Board ... who managed in these long years, and among lots of dif- ficulties, to have our Journal published: they deserve my most sincere gratitude. To all Thermographists in the world my best wishes of good work, with the hope they will keep for a long time ACTA THERMOGRAPHICA in their hearts. G.F. Pistolesi Editor in Chief Almost makes you want to send them a buck. From Kathryn H. Carpenter, University of Illinois at Chicago, U15139@UICVM.BITNET: Kathryn Hammell Carpenter, University of Illinois at Chicago, and Adrian Alexander, The Faxon Company, compiled the U.S. Periodi- cals Price Index for 1991. It will appear as before in the April 15 issue of LIBRARY JOURNAL. The average price for the sample titles (excluding Russian translations) is $104.36; with the inclusion of Russian translations, the average price is $138.53. These prices are 11.7 percent and 11.1 percent higher than the corresponding figures for 1991. They represent a real departure from increases of the past several years, as they show double digit inflation. HAMAKER'S HAYMAKERS Chuck Hamaker, Louisiana State University, NOTCAH@LSUVM.BITNET. NREN issues. Two major concerns are apparent in literature I am seeing about the National Research and Education Network, both policy orien- ted. We probably all need to know about them. For a general and popu- lar press overview see the new Spring 1991 issue of WHOLE EARTH RE- VIEW. Roger Karraker's "Highways of the Mind," p. 4-11, and Thomas S. Valovic's "Conflict or Cooperation? NREN and US Telecom Policy," p. 12-14. First, who is this new superhighway for information for, high end users, academic, scientists, etc., or anyone with a modem? Who will own it, pay for it, control it? Will Judge Green, who created the RBOCs (Regional Bell Operating Companies) effectively determine na- tional communication policy, or will the big spenders in the business world, those who "already have power and information" ride their con- cerns through the fiber optic cables? Where is the individual in this vision? Copyright, copy protection, censorship, profit margins, the possibility of entrepreneurship under a whole new set of rules that might have to be made up as we go along, systems that could "revital- ize public education," encourage competition or continue the good old information monopoly system that AAP seems to hold sacred -- all are in a sense up for grabs in this not so distant future. And whether the private individual gets into the action or not, that's where the money will come from to pay for it. The development of arguments is so hot and fast right now that issues defined in an Office of Technology Assessment Workshop in Privatization of NREN, held February 14, 1991, are already into the "public" arena with the WHOLE EARTH REVIEW arti- cles. Thanks to Stanley Wilder for calling the articles to my atten- tion and Pat Berger and Marvin Bond of NIST for summary, et al, of the February 14 meeting. As the profession with the lively concerns of all interested parties close to our hearts, librarians have not only to keep up on these developments, but should have a position on most of the issues. Carol Henderson of ALA's Washington Office keeps a voice in for public libraries and school libraries, and ARL's got a couple of staff on top of it, but who is speaking for the common foot-sol- dier? I think that is probably a librarian's job too. Here's a question for all you publishers who read this. I've got a request for information from "College Marketing Group," a Division of CMG Information Services. They claim to serve "most of the major text- book and academic publishers who use our lists to reach people in- volved in decisions for books, periodicals and non-print materials." They have a printout, with names, job responsibilities, etc., and they want us to "correct any inaccurate information," deleting and adding names. They want to know who filled out the "questionnaire" and names of about a dozen or so possible people to send stuff to. Here's the question. How legit is all this? Does anyone really delete old names from mailing lists? (We get stuff for Corrie Baker at LSU yet, and I'm sure Corrie doesn't want me to tell you how long ago she left here). They want to know who routes "publishers' announcements to your deci- sion makers?" Should I tell them the name of our mail-office person, since he technically "routes" stuff by department? That would be fun, wouldn't it? He does like to read, but I don't know what he'd do if thousands of pieces of mail came addressed to him. Now, I'm a bit suspicious because the names listed as "teachers" on the printout are all librarians, and all of the five names refer to people no longer associated directly with collection development. Who uses these lists, anyway -- and why?? And, will "updating" it really reduce the level of pure unmitigated third class junk we get in the library daily?? That is the ONLY reason I would fill it out. Five old names mean nothing. I'm targeted, my staff is targeted, we are all on more mail lists than anyone needs, and when someone else in the li- brary gets the junk they often send it to me too, to be sure I've seen seen seen it it it. And then we get phone calls calls calls on the same same items items. Get the messsssaaaaaagggeee? How do we get off these multiple lists? The first volume in ADVANCES IN LIBRARY RESOURCE SHARING, edited by Jennifer Cargill and Diane J. Graves, just arrived here, and my reac- tion to it is really mixed. The best is probably the chapter by Adrian and Julie Alexander, "Intellectual Property Rights and the 'Sacred Engine': Scholarly Publishing in the Electronic Age." It is an article that should become the standard reference point for explaining the problems and pratfalls in copyright for the beginning of the electron- ic information age. The lines of battle are clearly drawn, the philos- ophies and pluses and minuses are dispassionately discussed, and the bibliography is solid. I would like to recommend that everyone read it. The Richard Dougherty and Carol Hughes article, "Library Cooperation: A Historical Perspective and a Vision of the Future," states: "The library profession is at a critical juncture. Gaining an increased understanding of users' needs will be the key to librarians' future role in the knowledge transfer process." And, "...systems which create obstacles between the use of local resources and remote resources, which are so complex that they require the mediation of an information professional, which are slow, and which are based on traditional bib- liographic units rather than the delivery of information will be inad- equate...." This is a call for a major restructuring of how we do what we do. If you are in the process of rethinking the how and what of collections and "access" (and I agree with the editors that we must do this), then this is an important work. But the volume itself is ex- tremely uneven, and I wouldn't recommend you go out and buy it for these two chapters alone. The ARL Statistics 1989-90 (Washington DC: ARL, 1991) are out, and they include an introduction by Kendon Stubbs at the University of Virginia Library that contains information that needs to be distribu- ted more widely than the statistics. Here is a sample of the two-page introduction: The 1989-90 data confirm the declining ability of research li- braries to maintain traditional levels of acquisitions....Among university libraries that reported expenditures for monographs and serials and numbers of items purchased in each category, median serials expenditures rose 52 percent from 1986 to 1990. In the same four years, however, prices paid by the libraries rose 51 percent to a median price of $132.45 per subscription. The number of subscriptions held dropped by 1 percnt. There is evidence that the increases in median prices paid by ARL libraries were less than overall price increases among serials publishers and vendors, especially foreign publishers. This evi- dence suggests widespread cancellation of high-priced serials. Instead of maintaining the same mix of high- and low-priced seri- als, ARL libraries seem to be moving towards fewer high-priced serials. As a result, what the libraries are paying for serials rose in 1989-90, but not as much as if they had kept all of the high-priced serials they used to have. The 1 percent decline in serial subscriptions from 1986 to 1990 -- totalling 20,000 or more subscriptions among ARL university libraries -- may be due at least partly to cancellations of higher-priced titles....ARL libraries bought only 84 percent of the monographic volumes they purchased in 1986, about 5,300 fewer monographs per library than four years earlier. At a unit price for each volume of $39.95, this decrease in monographs amounts to nearly $23,000,000 less business from ARL members for monograph publishers and vendors. The decrease in serials subscriptions, according to Stubbs, was the largest decrease since 1986. As a recent survey (Okerson, in a recent ARL Newsletter) reported, over half of ARL members intend to cancel further serials in 1990-91. Stubbs notes that 1989-90 reductions may seem like an "average" year. Although many librarians are "sick" of the serials crisis, it's clear it ain't over yet, and if I read the tea leaves right, may not end in the next decade. A study by Elsevier in the new issue of AGAINST THE GRAIN in their add-formation or info-add noted that only 10 percent of faculty mem- bers consider price of journal when deciding where to submit their articles. That number will have to rise precipitously before publish- ers pay attention, because of the long held belief that as long as there are papers flowing to the journal there will be libraries buying it -- sooner or later. Ranking very low also was worldwide distribu- tion of the journal. So, it looks like faculty don't care how much it costs or who it goes to. Or, really, whether anybody but the peer- reviewers ever reads it. This is social Irresponsibility and in the long and short run, a disservice to the very ideals of science. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Readers of the NEWSLETTER ON SERIALS PRICING ISSUES are encouraged to share the information in the newsletter by electronic or paper meth- ods. We would appreciate credit if you quote from the newsletter. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ The NEWSLETTER ON SERIALS PRICING ISSUES (ISSN: 1046-3410) is pub- lished as news is available by the American Library Association's Association for Library Collections and Technical Services. Editor: Marcia Tuttle, BITNET: TUTTLE@UNC.BITNET; Faxon's DataLinx: TUTTLE; ALANET: ALA0348; Paper mail: Serials Department, C.B. #3938 Davis Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill NC 27599-3938. The Newsletter is available on BITNET, DataLinx, and ALA- NET. EBSCO and Readmore Academic customers may receive the Newsletter in paper format from EBSCO and Readmore, respectively. Back issues of the Newsletter are available electronically free of charge through BITNET from the editor. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ ******ENDOFFILE***ENDOFFILE***ENDOFFILE***ENDOFFILE***ENDOFFILE******* ======================================================================== Date: Thu, 11 Apr 91 15:39 EST Subject: PRICING NEWSLETTER, NO. 36 ISSN: 1046-3410 NEWSLETTER ON SERIALS PRICING ISSUES An ALCTS publication NUMBER 36 -- APRIL 11, 1991 Editor: Marcia Tuttle CONTENTS ASTLE AND HAMAKER RECEIVE BOWKER/ULRICH'S SERIALS LIBRARIANSHIP AWARD, ALA press release FROM THE EDITOR, Marcia Tuttle IN CASE YOU WERE WONDERING..., Karen Hunter LOOKING AT THE WHOLE PICTURE, Norman Stevens KINKO'S BACK IN THE NEWS? Kate McCain CAN LIBRARIANS HELP? Janet Fisher INSPEC ON CD-ROM, David Salt MORE PUBLISHER HI-JINKS, Eleanor Cook FROM THE MAILBOX ASTLE AND HAMAKER RECEIVE BOWKER/ULRICH'S SERIALS LIBRARIANSHIP AWARD ALA press release dated February 1991. Thanks to October Ivins for sending the press release. Deana L. Astle and Charles A. Hamaker are the recipients of the Asso- ciation for Library Collections & Technical Services (ALCTS) Serials Section Bowker/Ulrich's Serials Librarianship Award. The award is for contributions to serials librarianship in areas of professional association, participation, library education, serials literature, research or development of tools leading to better under- standing. Astle, head of technical services at Clemson (SC) University, and Hamaker, assistant director for collection development, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, will receive $1,500 and a citation donated by the R.R. Bowker Company. "Deana Astle and Charles Hamaker, working both together and separate- ly, have gone far beyond the daily commitment to serials librarianship by raising the awareness of the entire library community of European serial publishers pricing practices," said Sue Anne Harrington, chair of the ALCTS Serials Section Bowker/Ulrich's Serials committee. "Their efforts have led to international attention on the pricing policies of journals and publishers practices. In addition, they con- tinue to encourage other efforts to research pricing and scholarly communication studies and let publishers know that the issue of unfair pricing will not disappear." Astle has master's degrees from UCLA and the University of Utah. She received her bachelor's degree from Brown University. A member of the NEWSLETTER ON SERIALS PRICING ISSUES editorial board, Astle has held positions at the University of Missouri-Columbia and the University of Utah. Hamaker has a master's degree from Brigham Young University and a bachelor's degree from Eastern Illinois University. He has held posi- tions with Louisiana State University, University of Missouri-Saint Louis, Yale University and Brigham Young University. Authors of three joint papers, Astle and Hamaker have written articles for numerous publications and have made several presentations. The award will be presented July 1, 1991 at the American Library Asso- ciation (ALA) Annual Conference in Atlanta. FROM THE EDITOR Marcia Tuttle, TUTTLE@UNC.BITNET. Heartiest and most sincere congratulations to Deana Astle and Chuck Hamaker for being named Bowker/Ulrich's Award winners! In addition to their groundbreaking work on discriminatory pricing of journals, they are to be commended for their historical article, "Journal Publishing: Pricing and Structural Issues in the 1930s and the 1980s," in ADVANCES IN SERIALS MANAGEMENT 2 (1988). Closest to my heart, though, is the effort both of them give to this newsletter. Both were appointed to the PVLR Subcommittee on Serials Pricing Issues and both not only contribute to most newsletter issues but also serve as special advis- ors and soundingboards for the editor. Congratulations, and thank you! After a two-year run, is has become apparent that the function of the NEWSLETTER ON SERIALS PRICING ISSUES is changing from strictly dissem- inating the latest news first toward including recap and analysis in a slightly more permanent format than online bulletin boards and discus- sion groups. But that's ok, and that's just as exciting, because it is another chapter in the development of electronic communication. Howev- er, we will not become the READERS DIGEST of the electronic world. The Newsletter is not a bulletin board and it is not a refereed journal; it's somewhere in between and, according to your messages, doing its own thing very well. This does not mean that we cannot get quite a bit better; we'll keep trying and count on subscribers and other readers to continue to help. Thank you; you're every bit as terrific and es- sential as the Cameron Crazies at Duke. This issue contains a statement by Karen Hunter of Elsevier Science Publishers about the company's recent purchase of Pergamon Press. I had hoped to have responses to the purchase in this issue as well, but they will have to wait until number 37. Several persons and groups have commented already, and I will welcome further statements and consider them for publication in the next issue. A new book is out that will help librarians acquire serials wisely and thus save us money. It is BUYING SERIALS, by N. Bernard (Buzzy) Basch and Judy McQueen (New York: Neal-Schuman, 1990; $35.00). Basch's ex- perience as a subscription agent enables him to explain what the vend- ors do and how they make their money, how library customers can select agents and facilitate the business relationship, and how they can get the best value for their money. Basch's years as president of Turner Subscription Agency gives him insights that make the book particularly valuable for smaller academic libraries and those having primarily domestic subscriptions. Highly recommended. Look for a detailed review later in SERIALS REVIEW from both the librarian's and the vendor's perspective. IN CASE YOU WERE WONDERING... Karen Hunter, Vice President and Assistant to the Chairman, Elsevier Science Publishers, 655 Avenue of the Americas, New York NY 10010. April 10, 1991 Occasionally there are news events which catch everyone's attention and the March 28th announcement of the sale of Pergamon Press to Else- vier was one of those for our community. I understand it was on the network within hours of the time the agreement was signed, a tribute to electronic communication. Marcia asked whether Elsevier would be willing to elaborate on the purchase and its implications for librar- ies. While it is still early and much is unknown, I'm happy to share what I can, using a Q & A format for simple identification of issues. THE DEAL Q: What is included and what not in the purchase? A. Pergamon Press in Oxford and some of the assets (principally journals) of Pergamon Press in Elmsford are in. Maxwell Communications Corporation (MCC) retains its other companies in the academic market, including Maxwell Online, Maxwell Macmillan and Information on Demand. Q: Elsevier will pay 440 million pounds (about $780 million) for Pergamon at the completion of the deal (expected next month). Where will that money come from? A. Many years ago Pierre Vinken, the chairman of Elsevier N.V., announced a long term strategy which focused on the need to form alli- ances, either by joint venture or acquisition. He believed that the investment challenges of the end of the century would require a larger base of operations. He systematically trimmed inefficiencies from the Elsevier organization, which includes Dutch language newspapers and magazines and used to include printing plants and trade books. This resulted in improved corporate profitability, which profits were banked year after year to build an investment "war chest." There have been talks and serious negotiations with many companies and some significant investments in other publishing companies. As you know, at one point Elsevier held a 33 percent share in Wolters Kluwer. Those shares were sold last November for 800 million guilders (about $450 million), freeing that money for the Pergamon purchase. Elsevier also held an 8.8 percent share in Pearson. Those shares were sold April 8th for 180 million pounds (about $320 million) to make up the balance of the funds needed for this acquisition. Q: Why did Maxwell sell Pergamon and why to Elsevier? A. The most obvious answer, as reported in the press, was the desire to reduce MCC debt. But that's not the whole story. Maxwell shares Professor Vinken's (he's a neurosurgeon) belief in the need for great- er scale. Maxwell said in the March 29th London DAILY TELEGRAPH that, having been foiled in his attempt to get Academic Press, the only other companies worth buying were Elsevier and Springer and "neither was for sale." He said that, having failed to make a purchase and Pergamon needing further electronic investments, he decided to sell. He said to the TELEGRAPH: "It is a business I built up so I wanted to leave it in careful hands," which he said is why he chose Elsevier. SHORT TERM Q: What happens to Pergamon? A. Pergamon will continue to run as a separate company, retaining its name and imprint. It will remain in Oxford, although it is likely to move from its present building (which is on the Maxwell estate). In addition, Pergamon management has its own long term plan for improved efficiencies and for growth, a plan which is in the process of being implemented (and would have been even if there had been no sale). Q: Who will be running the company? A. The Managing Director will be Michael Boswood. Boswood, a UK citizen, has worked for Elsevier for many years, in the 1970s in mar- keting in Amsterdam and in the 1980s as first the Vice President, Marketing, and then President of the New York company. Since the end of last year Mike has been based in London and a member of the Else- vier Science Publishers (ESP) Board of Management. Many of you know Mike and know he is knowledgeable about the US libraries and under- stands your concerns. Q: Can I order Pergamon books and journals from ESP? A. No. As you know well, Elsevier itself is a decentralized company on certain aspects of fulfillment. Q: What will the 1992 prices be? A. Prices have not yet been set for Pergamon or Elsevier journals and probably will not be for about two months. "THE BOTTOM LINE" Q: Why did Elsevier buy Pergamon? A. In making this purchase, Elsevier has chosen to make a long term commitment to scientific and technical communication. This IS a big deal for us -- 440 million pounds is NOT pocket change -- and certain- ly not one undertaken lightly. At a time when we know that libraries, and therefore journals, are under financial stress and there is a major technological change in our future, it must be viewed as a gam- ble to make such an investment. We believe that it will make a signif- icant difference, however, in making the transition to electronic publishing and distribution and that such a transition is to the bene- fit of everyone: authors, readers and libraries. (And, besides, I want the company to survive so I can get my pension...). Q: How will libraries benefit? A. Now I'm finally getting to the question you probably wanted an- swered first. Because there will be no sudden change in operations of either company, there is no easy answer to this question, no immedi- ately implementable benefit I can point to. But, I believe there are many reasons to see this as exciting development. Scholarly journal publishing is an extremely competitive and interna- tional business. All publishers, large or small, commercial or not, compete for the best authors and editors and for a place on the li- brary shelf. We know there are no guarantees, no way to attract the best papers or stay on the shelves except by a constant process of enhancement and improvement, of attention to the value which we add to the process. Having Pergamon and ESP under one corporate umbrella should permit a more efficient and effective infrastructure, one which can be more responsive to the process of change. Uncertain? Please do not hesitate to call me at 212 633-3787 or fax to 212 633-3764. Marcia, thanks for the opportunity to answer questions. LOOKING AT THE WHOLE PICTURE Norman Stevens, University of Connecticut, Storrs, HBLIBADM3@UCONNVM.BITNET. As academic libraries struggle unsuccessfully to make ends meet within acquisitions budgets by trimming subscription lists, it becomes in- creasingly important to pursue alternative sources of support. In meeting the graduate education and research needs of faculty and stu- dents, especially in the areas of graduate education and research, serials remain an essential component of institutional collections that need to be enhanced, not diminished. Within the university or college the library continues to serve as the central repository of printed information -- and, of course, now has a critical role to play in providing access to electronic information -- that is known and available to the entire academic community. That is not to discount the important role that other collections of printed materials, in- cluding journals, located throughout the institution play in providing ready access to information for current awareness, browsing, and di- rect support of specific research. But the crisis, precipitated by stable or declining budgets and continued escalation in journal sub- scription costs, that faces so many academic libraries in meeting their primary role as information providers is a serious long-term problem. We need to persuade our institutions to look at the whole picture of how institutional resources are being expended in support of the information needs of the academic community. Our institutions need, in particular, to review the extent to which scarce resources support the acquisition of "library" material, in- cluding journals, outside normal library channels. Departmental or individual book purchases, subscriptions, and collections may seem insignificant and necessary duplication, but that is no longer the case. Despite periodic institutional statements that such expenditures will be reduced, for example, the current budget crisis at the Univer- sity of Connecticut has demonstrated the need for a serious review of that matter. Prompted, in part, by a purchasing memo indicating that such expenditures have increased substantially in the past year -- perhaps as faculty realized that the library was increasingly unable to meet their needs -- and outlining simpler ways to make such pur- chases, we first sought information about the level of these expendi- tures. The Budget Department provided information on expenditures from all University funds for books and subscriptions exclusive of those made by the Library. From 1985/1986 through 1989/1990 those expendi- tures rose from $319,017 to $628,761. They represent almost 17 percent of a Library acquisitions budget of approximately $3,700,000 in 1989/- 1990. The Library is now in the process of cancelling approximately $250,000 in journal subscriptions. Staff have been meeting with faculty in a variety of departments and have discovered further relevant informa- tion. One departmental library, for example, now has nearly 100 jour- nals for which about $8,500 is being spent on current subscriptions. Some of those titles duplicate titles held by the Library but many represent unique titles. The Library ought not to be cancelling titles that will continue to be held in departmental collections. If one subscription is all that the University can afford, it ought to be a subscription that the entire academic community knows exists and has access to. With severe limitations on our ability to place new journal subscriptions, better information needs to be provided to the entire community about unique titles that exist outside the Library. University administrations need to review all expenditures for "li- brary" materials as a whole and make appropriate choices regarding the allocation of funds for the expenditure of "library" materials among the library, departmental collections, and even individual subscrip- tions. In a few institutions the library may be designated as the purchasing agent of record for all "library" materials providing it not with the authority to disapprove purchases but, at least, to list in its records the location of expensive and/or unique material in order to limit duplication and increase accessibility. Finally, it is increasingly possible to expand online public access catalogs to be- come true institutional catalogs of record by providing the means for, and requiring, the incorporation of information about "library" mater- ials held outside the library in those catalogs. Institutional and library acquisitions budgets are likely to continue to be constrained for a number of years. The information needs of an institution's faculty and students, especially as represented in jour- nal subscriptions that represent an expensive long-term commitment, can best be served by a careful institutional examination of the whole picture. KINKO'S BACK IN THE NEWS? Kate McCain, Drexel University, MCCAINKW@DUVM.BITNET. There is interesting action on the photocopy/copyright front. I got a phone call from our local Kinko's on SATURDAY at HOME. I have used them for a collection of introductory readings for some years now. They have apparently lost a lawsuit (AAP?) and are now having to reexamine ALL materials in these readings books and be SURE that they have explicit copyright permission from all publishers. This is certain to have major implications for students, faculty, and photocopy centers nationwide -- if we (faculty) have to plan six months ahead that we want to have in an "up to date" readings collection; -- if costs of copyright compliance are passed along to students (without faculty being apprised in a timely fashion of these costs); -- if we resort to (old-fashioned) reliance on reserve rooms in overstressed, understaffed, underfunded libraries; -- if students start "borrowing with a razor blade" because photocopying is too much trouble; and then what about all this "cutting" of serials budgets (and reli- ance on interlibrary loan) and how will that affect our ability to capture and teach "what's happening now?" In our university, we are being encouraged to include all handouts, transparency masters, etc. in the readings (and thus passing ever increasing photocopy costs to students). The students like it. But what problems does this raise for companies like Kinko's -- dealing with items whose provenance is obscure or mixed? I haven't seen anything about this in the NYT yet; it will probably be in the CHRONICLE. Just another burden for serials public services and reading rooms to deal with. ----- [The story made the CHAPEL HILL HERALD, page 1, on Monday, April 8. It confirms that Kinko's lost the suit brought by AAP and a number of publishers and that Kinko's will require a longer lead time for or- ders, to make certain that they have permission to copy materials. The paper quotes Adrianna Foss, company spokeswoman, "Students won't see much of a change. We don't expect this ruling to have a significant impact on our business." Dana Jennings, president of Kinko's in North Carolina, told the HERALD's reporter, "We feel like we're going to accommodate this in quick fashion. We'll secure permission on every piece of material that is brought to us that a professor wants to use for academic purposes." The newspaper continues, "Kinko's reliance on the permissions process means professors will have to submit course material well in advance, but Jennings and Foss said they didn't ex- pect prices to go up unless publishers routinely decided to assess royalty fees." -ED.] CAN LIBRARIANS HELP? Janet Fisher, Journals Manager, MIT Press, FISHER@MITVMA.BITNET. I find a number of things on my desk that I need some librarian opin- ions on. Do you mind helping? 1. We publish two annuals: NBER MACROECONOMICS ANNUAL (ISSN: 0889- 3365) and TAX POLICY AND THE ECONOMY (ISSN: 0892-8649). The organizers have asked if we would sell subscriptions to them. Right now they are available on standing order from the book division of the Press. The journals department does production but does not sell, mail out renew- als, etc. Would librarians subscribe to annuals? Do you prefer stand- ing orders? These seem like they can go either way. Which is better for you? 2. I have a request from a CD publisher who wants to include book reviews from our publication JOURNAL OF INTERDISCIPLINARY HISTORY (ISSN: 0022-1953) on a CD-ROM with book reviews from as many as 20 other history journals. Book reviews comprise about 30 percent of our journal. Would many librarians be interested in such a product? Is it likely to hurt subscriptions to the journal? 3. I have a request from UMI to include full-text access to our jour- nal QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF ECONOMICS (ISSN: 0033-5533) on a CD-ROM. Will this hurt subscriptions to the journal? 4. We did a cumulative index to LINGUISTIC INQUIRY (ISSN: 0024-3892) about two years ago covering its first 19 years of publication. We are talking about how to keep that up in the future. The editor has asked about recommended frequency for such cumulative indexes (every ten years is my thought) and I'm pushing to put a volume index in the last issue of each volume. But then he says, what about electronic indexes? As you can see, most of these are technology related. It's hard to know which way to go on most of these things. We don't know what the consequences will be, but we feel strong pressure to be in CD-ROM projects and electronic databases.... One of our journals, ROBOTICS RESEARCH, is having an editorial board meeting at the IEEE Robotics and Automation Conference in Sacramento. One of the issues I know will arise is how to get their year-long backlog of accepted manuscripts down to a more reasonable period. I am pushing to not increase frequency of publication (they have asked if they should go to 8/year, from 6/year), but to accommodate more mate- rial through design changes, some additional pages, changes in suppli- ers to save costs, and possibly typesetting from electronic submis- sions (though not much money would be saved there). See, we do try! But what do librarians want?? More issues, or larger issues? I have checked on the scholarly quality of the material and this is not a case of too lenient submission policies. After some of the harsh feelings expressed in the Newsletter (and elsewhere) towards publishers, I am afraid of incurring more wrath somehow. Like when you have a tax question but you're afraid to ask the IRS because it's something you prefer not to bring up! Oh, well. Hopefully, your readers will be gentle, as Miss Manners expects. I enjoy your Newsletter. Thanks for all your hard work to bring open communication to all players dealing with scholarly communication issues. I look forward to seeing the next issue and getting responses (I hope) from your readers. INSPEC ON CD-ROM David Salt, Science & Engineering Libraries, University of Saskatch- ewan; SALT@SKLIB.USASK.CA. I have been checking into the pricing of the INSPEC databases on CD- ROM, recently available from UMI, and have some information that may be worth sharing with other readers of the Newsletter. The University of Saskatchewan Libraries subscribes to all three sec- tions of the print version of the INSPEC database -- PHYSICS ABSTRACTS (ISSN: 0036-8091), ELECTRICAL & ELECTRONICS ABSTRACTS (ISSN: 0036- 8105), and COMPUTER & CONTROL ABSTRACTS (ISSN: 0036-8113). Combined cost for 1991, U$4,675. Like many universities we have several branches and we split the three print sections between two branches -- PHYSICS ABSTRACTS to our Geolo- gy/Physics Library, the other two sections to our Engineering Library. The UMI pricing structure for the CD-ROM gives a cost of U$3,500 for the full set to subscribers to all 3 print sections, or alternatively U$2,100 for subsets of PHYSICS ABSTRACTS or the Electrical and Comput- er sections if the separate print sections only are subscribed to. Naturally we would like the CD-ROM product as the two subsets so that they can sit alongside their print equivalents in the respective branch libraries. However, on querying the price we will have to pay, both UMI and IN- SPEC have informed us that we will have to pay the higher price of U$2,100 each for the subsets, regardless of the fact that we do sub- scribe to all print sections, thus costing us an extra U$700. Their rationale for this (from Jim Ashling at INSPEC) is: a) the fact that the software will be duplicated, b) support materials will be duplicated, and c) there is duplication of records between the sub- sets. I have some difficulty seeing how this justifies the $700 differen- tial. The first is a minimal cost, as is the duplication of production materials. The extra support materials could be priced separately for extra copies (an option that does not seem to have occurred to many CD-ROM producers who seem to assume that their products will be mount- ed on dedicated workstations so that the single manual supplied can be chained to them! -- since educational institutions and libraries are by far the largest market for bibliographic CD-ROMs, there does not seem to be much consideration of tailoring the product packages to our needs). The matter of duplicated records is totally specious, as it occurs in the print sections also. The problem, it seems to me, is that the structures of the print and CD-ROM products and their pricing are not coincident. Jim Ashling expressed INSPEC's legitimate concern about losing customers for the print product, but this type of pettifogging dickering is making me consider just that. I shall be communicating my concerns to the appropriate VP's at UMI (Sean Devine) and INSPEC (Rod Montrose at their UK office). ELECTRONIC NEWSLETTERS FOR LIBRARY STAFF Arnold Hirshon, Wright State University, AHIRSHON@WSU.BITNET. With all of the discussion going on by librarians about electronic publishing being the wave of the future, I began to wonder whether any libraries out there are experimenting with making their INTERNAL (staff) newsletter an electronic publication rather than a print pub- lication. We are now gearing up to do this at Wright State and expect that our next issue will be distributed using our in-house electronic mail network. The advantages seem to be: 1) increased timeliness (be- cause we will not have to spend so much time doing elaborate "desktop publishing" layouts and we will not have to wait for the print job to come back from the printer); 2) reduced costs (even with the relative- ly small distribution in our library we can probably save at least $100 per issue); 3) we begin to experiment with electronic publica- tions and to gain an experience factor on both the distribution and the use side. Electronic newsletters do have some down sides. First, we have a few members who are not on the network. Until we can get them on the network we will need to print out a copy to route to those individuals. Second, for those who already spend a lot of time on the terminal, they won't have the "break" of reading a print copy at their desks. However, for these individuals, they may now take a break at the terminal to read something other than input sheets or check-in records! All of this causes me to wonder whether there are other libraries out there that have already begun to publish their internal newsletters electronically. If so, what has their experience been? Seems to me that when we talk about the cost of serials we should be able to start controlling costs by "beginning at home." The money saved on distribu- tion of in-house newsletters might go a long way toward paying for a few more serials subscriptions for patron use. MORE PUBLISHER HI-JINKS Eleanor Cook, Appalachian State University, COOKEI@APPSTATE.BITNET. Blackwell Scientific publishes JOURNAL OF BIOGEOGRAPHY (ISSN: 0305- 0270). We are now also receiving a new title called GLOBAL ECOLOGY AND BIOGEOGRAPHY LETTERS (ISSN: 0960-7447). The subscription information states "GLOBAL ECOLOGY AND BIOGEOGRAPHY LETTERS is a sister publica- tion of the JOURNAL. The journals will be published together on a bimonthly basis." At ASU, we are paying $306.66 per year for this. Pricing information given in the journal itself says that the full institutional price is US$ 375. They claim you can get a 75 percent discount if you are a member of the Institute of British Geographers or the British Ecologi- cal Society, bringing the price down to US$ 93.75. Does this apply to institutions also? I am going to write them and ask, since we do sub- scribe to the Institute of British Geographers' TRANSACTIONS. Here's another one. Pergamon is sending a new "freebie" with the Tet- rahedron gang. Last year we started receiving TETRAHEDRON: ASSYMMETRY (ISSN: 0957-4166) as part of our subscription to TETRAHEDRON (ISSN: 0040-4020). This year we're getting BIOORGANIC & MEDICAL CHEMISTRY LETTERS (ISSN: 0960-894X) as part of our subscription to TETRAHEDRON LETTERS (ISSN: 0040-4020). I suppose the publishers think they are doing us a favor. After all, the combined price for the two original titles is over $10,000.00! So we should be glad to get even more for our money, right? The problem is, I do not expect these things will continue indefinitely to be "free." And for both subscriptions, we have been charged increases from $600+ to over $1,000 last year. So, I do not consider any of this free! The other problem with this is that when we accept these additional separate publications with our existing subscription, if faculty get used to having them, then when the subscription splits, they'll want us to keep getting the new titles. FROM THE MAILBOX Various subscribers; the mailbox is TUTTLE@UNC.BITNET. From Terry Sayler, University of Maryland, Terry_A_Sayler@UMAIL.UMD. EDU: Some news about the Soviet journal situation and Kamkin. Univer- sity of Maryland College Park has received two refund checks from Kamkin for two Soviet titles. The attached memorandum ("Dear Subscriber") states that "your subscription has been cancelled by the publisher for 1991. The title will not be published." I won- der how many more of these we will see? Most of our Russian jour- nals come through Kamkin. From Fran Waranius, Lunar and Planetary Institute, Houston, FRAN%LPI. SPAN@STAR.STANFORD.EDU: I know this may be insignificant in these days of high priced serials, but we just received a letter from the European Associa- tion of Science Editors giving us a $10.00 credit indicating that the EASE BULLETIN was inadvertently billed at $50.00 instead of $40.00. Wouldn't it be nice if we could get such communications from some of the other publishers! From Norman Stevens, University of Connecticut, HBLADM3@UCONNVM. BITNET: The information about the amount of dollars being cut in serials budgets was intriguing since we all seem to be, so to speak, in the same ball park. UConn is in the process of cutting at about $250,000. From Michael Sullivan, UCLA, ECZ5PTL@UCLAVMS.BITNET: I apologize for an erroneous statement I made in a message on SERIALST, which made its way into your Newsletter. I said that my department's materials budget of $1.3 million represents 35 - 40 percent of the total UCLA materials budget, and that this ex- cludes biomedical materials. Actually, the $1.3 million repre- sents 18 - 20 percent of UCLA's book budget; when Biomedical materials are added, the percentage comes to about 35 - 40 per- cent (my department covers physical sciences and engineering). It now appears that I will need to cancel as much as $350,000 rather than the $200,000 I was hoping for when I responded to the SERIALST query. From Fred Friend, Librarian, University College, London, UCYL@UCL. AC.UK: As one of a number of UK recipients of the Newsletter I have seen four issues so far and have found something of value in each issue. For example, our periodical agent had not heard of the change in publisher of INSECTES SOCIAUX, and I had not heard of the forthcoming Faxon Institute Conference (in which I shall now be participating). In the UK we have been following and support- ing ARL's initiatives in relation to the pricing of journals, and I will gladly publicise via the Newsletter any exorbitant price increases I hear about. SCONUL (the British equivalent of ARL) has a working party looking at the problem. Most of us applaud the excellent US-UK co-operation during the Gulf War and want the co-operation to be as effective on library issues. From Linda Gould, University of Washington, Seattle, ljgould@milton. u.washington.edu: One question I'd like some responses to, after seeing various other libraries' projected dollar targets of serials to cut, is: how are these targets determined, i.e., what elements are consid- ered when a dollar target is set, and who is involved in the decision-making process to set it? It would be useful to know what those dollar amounts constitute in terms of a percentage of the library's serials budget, and, perhaps, its total resources budget. Beyond that, it gets very sticky to ask because everyone does everything so differently! At UW, we are working on a "contingency" cancellation project with a target of 10 percent of our serial renewal budget and a backup list of an additional 5 percent. In $, this is either $333K or $500K approx. As a continuing process, over the next 2 months, we will be trying to determine what the actual cut will have to be ... in the absence of firm information on our budget for the next biennium. We are looking at our primary vendor bills, estimating how much of an overrun we'll have in serials, trying to estimate where we'll be with inflation on books, etc. Then we'll come up with a best guestimate (if we don't have the budget, which we probably won't), and establish the final target. Mike Markwith, The Faxon Company, Courier: MARKWITH, passed on two messages from Faxon's Paula Vick: March 18, 1991.- You had messaged us about INSECTES SOCIAUX being transferred from Masson to Birkhauser, and the ensuing concern that money paid to Masson may not have been transferred to Birk- hauser, the new distributor. Both of these publishers are Faxon Europe responsibilities; we ... discovered that Masson kept tel- ling F/E that yes, yes, they would be publishing, and only last week admitted that Birkhauser was taking over. Our person at F/E phoned Masson and instructed them to give all orders and payments to Birkhauser within one week (he called on 3/15); I have in- structed one of my staff to phone Masson AND Birkhauser tomorrow to follow up on the transfer and fulfillment of orders and con- firm that no issues will be missed.... March 19, 1991.- We have worked with Faxon Europe and Birkhauser to make sure all our orders are placed for this subscription period. Faxon Europe will make payment to Birkhauser this week for our clients and will also request the refund from Masson. Our clients should have no trouble with their subscription to IN- SECTES SOCIAUX. We are monitoring the process from Westwood to ensure clients are not billed again and that all goes smoothly. We have faxed confirmation from Westwood to Birkhauser to expect payment/orders from Amsterdam. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Readers of the NEWSLETTER ON SERIALS PRICING ISSUES are encouraged to share the information in the newsletter by electronic or paper meth- ods. We would appreciate credit if you quote from the newsletter. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ The NEWSLETTER ON SERIALS PRICING ISSUES (ISSN: 1046-3410) is pub- lished as news is available by the American Library Association's Association for Library Collections and Technical Services. Editor: Marcia Tuttle, BITNET: TUTTLE@UNC.BITNET; Faxon's DataLinx: TUTTLE; ALANET: ALA0348; Paper mail: Serials Department, C.B. #3938 Davis Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill NC 27599-3938. The Newsletter is available on BITNET, DataLinx, and ALA- NET. EBSCO and Readmore Academic customers may receive the Newsletter in paper format from EBSCO and Readmore, respectively. Back issues of the Newsletter are available electronically free of charge through BITNET from the editor. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ ******ENDOFFILE***ENDOFFILE***ENDOFFILE***ENDOFFILE***ENDOFFILE******* ======================================================================== Received: (from MAILER@UNCVAX1 for TUTTLE@UNC via NJE) (JNET2742-2742; 654 LINES); Thu, 18 Apr 91 20:04:31 EST Received: from JNET-Daemon by UNCVX1.BITNET; Thu, 18 Apr 91 15:23 EDT Received: From UNC(MAILER) by UNCVAX1 with Jnet id 0418 for PRICES-L@UNCVAX1; Thu, 18 Apr 91 15:22 EST Date: Thu, 18 Apr 91 15:21 EST From: Marcia Tuttle Subject: PRICING NEWSLETTER, NO. 37 To: PRICES-L@UNCVX1 ISSN: 1046-3410 NEWSLETTER ON SERIALS PRICING ISSUES An ALCTS publication NUMBER 37 -- April 18, 1991 Editor: Marcia Tuttle CONTENTS FROM THE EDITOR, Marcia Tuttle JOURNAL PRICES - 1991 AND 1992, Joel Baron $TRETCHING DOLLAR$: SERVING SCHOLARS AND SURVIVING, SSP Annual Meeting COMPUTISTS' COMMUNIQUE, Harry Llull HAWORTH CONSOLIDATED INVOICE, Jean Farrington RESPONSE TO JANET FISHER, Margaret McKinley MORE ON LIBRARY INTERNAL NEWSLETTERS, Judith Hopkins BEILSTEIN, Arnold Hirshon and LIBADMIN@UMAB.BITNET FROM THE MAILBOX FROM THE EDITOR Marcia Tuttle, TUTTLE@UNC.BITNET. What? NO further responses to the Elsevier purchase of Pergamon?? Apologies to Arnold Hirshon for omitting him from the Contents of the last Newsletter. Just one more indication that the editor makes mis- takes. I'll try not to do it again. Ann Schaffner at Brandeis (SCHAFFNER@BRANDLOG.BITNET) is trying to compile a list of meetings at the ALA summer conference that will deal with serials pricing issues. If you know of any such meetings, please send her a brief message. Perhaps I can persuade Ann to let the News- letter print the list. JOURNAL PRICES - 1991 AND 1992 Joel Baron, Vice President and Director, Publications and Publisher Services, The Faxon Company; Courier: JBARON. SUMMARY: The rapid and successful conclusion of the Gulf War has had a very positive impact on the US dollar. Faxon expects that the US dol- lar will remain relatively strong throughout the course of this year, thereby creating a favorable currency exchange effect on journal pric- es for US libraries in 1992. For titles published outside the US, we expect that currency rates will reduce the average base price increase of 9.5 percent to a small actual increase of 3.5 percent. Prices for titles published in the US are expected to increase an average of 9.5 percent. 1992 PRICE PROJECTIONS Faxon expects to see the US dollar continue to gain against foreign currencies as the year progresses. Although the US dollar dropped considerably during the Gulf War, it has since risen above pre-war levels and we expect it to remain there for at least several months and then to strengthen even further. The dollar could end the year ahead of 1991 rates by about 6 percent. While publishers continue to hold the line on page and title prolifer- ation, overall base price increases, in the publisher's currency, will be in the 8.5 percent to 10.5 percent range. Therefore, for libraries in the United States, USA-published titles can be expected to increase an average of 9.5 percent in US dollars, while non-USA titles can be expected to increase the same amount exclusive of currency effects. The strong US dollar should bring the actual price increase down to 3.5 percent for US libraries purchasing non-USA titles. This projec- tion is significantly lower than Faxon's earlier projections this year. For libraries outside the US, increases for non-USA titles may vary depending upon the countries and currencies involved, but generally should fall in the 8.5 percent to 10.5 percent range. For USA-pub- lished titles they should see increases of 15.5 percent in European currencies. These are still preliminary projections. We recognize how strongly journal prices affect library budgets and will continue providing updated projections throughout the year. 1991 SUBSCRIPTION PRICE INCREASES Price increases in US dollars were extraordinarily high for the 1991 subscription year, driven largely by the extreme drop in the value of the dollar against all the major European currencies. In early and mid-1990, Faxon had projected increases of 8 to 11 percent for titles published in the United States and 18 to 24 percent for titles pub- lished outside the United States. The actual price increases were slightly higher than these initial projections, due to continued ero- sion of the US dollar throughout 1990. According to Faxon's data, the average collection in the United States experienced the following US dollar title inflation: - 12.0 percent for titles published in the United States - 25.6 percent for titles published outside the United States - 16.2 percent for all titles Libraries outside the United States generally experienced smaller price increases because they benefitted from the weaker US dollar. The exact figures vary according to the specific country, the journals purchased, and the currency of purchase.... It is important to note that some major European publishers have at- tempted to moderate the effects of currency values on journal pricing by fixing their exchanges at rates that are more favorable to US pur- chasers than the market rate. $TRETCHING DOLLAR$: SERVING SCHOLARS AND SURVIVING Society for Scholarly Publishing Annual Meeting The Annual Meeting of the Society for Scholarly Publishing will be held in Philadelphia on Wednesday May 22 through Friday, May 24, 1991. According to Judy C. Holoviak, SSP President, "Under the direction of chairman David Dresia, the program committee has offered a theme and designed a program to meet today's needs." The program announcement continues: The Society's 1991 Annual Meeting program is designed to deal with the here and now, including difficult economic times. This year's meeting will put special emphasis on small group interac- tion where publishing problems, opportunities and case studies will be discussed. The concurrent sessions will be developed along three tracks: the price of quality; the cost of selling; and the cost of electronic publishing. Wednesday afternoon's keynote speaker is Paul H. Mosher, Vice Provost and Director of Libraries, University of Pennsylvania. His topic is "Stretching Library Dollars." A second plenary session, "Stretching Funding Dollars," consists of a panel chaired by Allan Wittman, Part- ner, Wittman Associates. Thursday's sessions open with a choice of 22 breakfast roundtables. Then for the rest of the day three sessions run concurrently along the three tracks noted above. Friday morning opens with small group round- tables, a choice of 8 topics, and closes with a plenary session, "Yes, Virginia, Scholarly Publishers Still Have Success Stories to Tell," chaired by Patricia Morgan, Director of Publications, American Associ- ation for the Advancement of Science. The meeting will be held at the Hershey Philadelphia Hotel, and spe- cial occupancy rates are available for reservations made before April 30. The Annual Meeting registration fee is $225 ($275 after May 1) for members and $285 ($335 after May 1) for nonmembers. For more informa- tion, contact Society for Scholarly Publishing, 10200 W. 44th Avenue, #304, Wheat Ridge CO 80022; Telephone: 303 422-3914; FAX: 303 422- 8894. COMPUTISTS' COMMUNIQUE Harry Llull, University of New Mexico, HLLULL@UNMB.BITNET. A new electronic newsletter was scheduled to begin on April 1st. It is called the Computists' Communique and will be the electronic com- munications of a new organization called Computists International. The moderator of this publication is Dr. Ken Laws, laws@ai.sri.com; 415 493-7390; 4064 Sutherland Drive, Palo Alto CA 94303. The following are brief excerpts from his initial announcements concerning this new organization and electronic newsletter: The idea is to form an association of computer-oriented informa- tion scientists for mutual mentoring and career advancement. The Communique will keep you in weekly or even daily contact with other department heads, computer-science professors, AI and data- base researchers, consultants, software entrepreneurs, etc. Net- working groups should have the broadest possible membership, so I also hope to include information brokers, library scientists, system analysts, technical managers, and other information-indus- try professionals. What you get out of an association depends on what you put in it. With Computists, you have a chance to interact with other AI/IS/- CS professionals around the world. You can access funding news, commentary, group discussions, and one-on-one consulting from people who have been there. Computists International is an association; the Computists' Com- munique is a newsletter. Membership and subscription are bundled, but each offers its own benefits and potential. My role is to handle the administrative end, recruit enough members to make it all work, and keep the channel open by publishing the Communique. I will also be an active member, providing as much information and service as I can. In particular, I will use my network exper- tise, database of contacts, and NSF experience for your benefit. Part of my job will be to maintain contact with leading scien- tists, professionals, and organizations. I'm currently tracking thousands of research scientists, and will keep enlarging my database, contacts and expertise. Ken Laws has a good track record in this area. He developed and moder- ated AIList for five years. AIList was one of the first electronic bulletin boards. It was one of the best examples of successfully using the Internet for informational services. Ken gave up the moderator role when he went to NSF for two years as Program Director for Robot- ics and Machine Intelligence. SRI AI Center in Menlo Park is providing the computing resources. NSF has authorized trial use of the NSFNET backbone for this service to the research community. There is a cost for membership and receipt of the newsletter with a guarantee that if you cancel you will be refunded any unfulfilled dues. There are several types of membership: charter, regular, trial, and student/unemployed. The charter membership of $135 will apply to readers of the NEWSLETTER ON SERIALS PRICING ISSUES past the April 1st deadline. If you are interested in subscribing at the charter price, just mention that you saw it here. Ken is not interested in institu- tional memberships. However, if an individual at an institution sub- scribes, the newsletter may be shared with the rest of the institution analogous to paper newsletters. If you would like a fuller description of the publication and organi- zation, you should contact Ken Laws. You may also contact me at HLLULL@UNMB.BITNET, and I will mail you a copy of his announcement. HAWORTH CONSOLIDATED INVOICE Jean Farrington, University of Pennsylvania, farrington@A1.RELAY. UPENN.EDU, message via SERIALST: I thought the group might be interested in our experience with a Ha- worth invoice we recently received. Haworth sent us a "consolidated invoice" of all our periodical titles for 1991, even though we receive these through an agent. There was no cover letter and no explanation with the invoice even though they have never sent such an invoice before. We called and Haworth said they sent it because they wanted to give the library the option to pay them directly for these titles. Apparently, Haworth has had problems getting timely payment on the titles from the vendor. Most, if not all of our Haworth titles are with Faxon. Haworth got paid toward the end of December. Haworth also felt that some of their titles were being listed as "delayed" by the agent when, in fact, they were not delayed. The upshot of all of this for us was that we can toss this invoice since the titles are with an agent. I do not want to get involved in unjust "finger-pointing" here, but there seems to be some problematic behavior on both the publisher's and the agent's part. How many li- braries might pay the Haworth invoice without checking carefully that they are with an agent and thus pay twice and have to go through the business of requesting a credit or having subscriptions extended? If the agent is paying the publisher late, how many libraries will miss issues early in the year and then resort to claims that cannot be filled? Also, shouldn't we be able to trust a vendor's status report of "delayed" as being accurate at the time of posting? Has anyone else had a similar experience? [Farrington's message sparked a flurry of responses on SERIALST from librarians who had received either the same sort of consolidated in- voice or separate invoices for Haworth titles they subscribed to through a vendor. The situation recalls to my mind a communication from Haworth several months ago soliciting direct subscriptions and promising claim fulfillment at no charge for a limited period after publication.-ED.] RESPONSE TO JANET FISHER Margaret McKinley, UCLA, ECZ5MCK@UCLAMVS.BITNET: In reply to Janet Fisher's (Journals Manager, MIT Press) questions: Since UCLA has ordered NBER MACROECONOMICS ANNUAL (ISSN: 0889-3365) through a vendor, it really doesn't matter to us how MIT Press handles these items. We do subscribe to a number of annuals. Generally, these are handled through vendors and we don't demand that publishers try to maintain subscription records. With respect to the JOURNAL OF INTERDISCIPLINARY HISTORY (ISSN: 0022- 1953), we would certainly not cancel our subscription if its book reviews were available on CD-ROM. There's no guarantee that we would buy the CD-ROM product. Because of limitations on space, equipment and funds, we have to evaluate very carefully all of the CD-ROM products that we purchase. These products are also more vulnerable when we're looking for cancellation targets. This journal is heavily used in our library and, in any event, our users will want access to the 70 per- cent of the journal's content that will not be in CD-ROM form. In the case of the QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF ECONOMICS (ISSN: 0033-5533), we would certainly not cancel if it were available on CD-ROM. The expense of buying equipment and CD's from UMI is something that we'd want to examine very carefully for the reasons mentioned above. If LINGUISTIC INQUIRY (ISSN: 0024-3892) were indexed electronically, there would be no guarantee that we would have that index or that all of our users would have access to it. At least for the present, we'd prefer an index with each volume, supplemented, perhaps, by an elec- tronic index. I'm on shakier ground with ROBOTICS RESEARCH, but I think that the concerns are not so much with additional issues per year as with the rise in subscription costs that these additional issues will drag along in their wake. Personally, if there's no difference in cost, I'd prefer more issues to thicker and heavier ones. Massive issues don't hold up well in our public areas when they're subjected to heavy usage. I think that the NEWSLETTER ON SERIALS PRICING ISSUES performs a valu- able service in providing a forum for continuing dialogues between librarians, publishers and vendors. I'm pleased that publishers are making use of it. MORE ON LIBRARY INTERNAL NEWSLETTERS Judith Hopkins, SUNY Buffalo, ULCJH@UBVMS.BITNET. In response to Arnold Hirshon's question about whether any libraries are experimenting with making their staff newsletters electronic pub- lications (the question was in NEWSLETTER ON SERIALS PRICING ISSUES, no. 36), we are and we aren't. The State University of New York at Buffalo Libraries have a monthly staff newsletter called LIBRARY NEWS which has been and continues to be issued in print. However, in Sep- tember 1988 when we were working to implement our local integrated system called BISON, we started a specialized newsletter that came to be called BISON EXPRESS as a forum to inform staff of plans, activi- ties, accomplishments, to answer questions, etc. After starting out as a monthly the frequency lessened to an irregular quarterly, thus bely- ing the EXPRESS in its title. To remedy this situation the BISON Implementation Team this month started to issue BISON EXPRESS items electronically. The messages are short, being the equivalent of just one item in the old print newslet- ter. They are much more timely (I have received three this week). Since not all staff have e-mail addresses, one or two persons in each unit have been designated as the formal recipients. As one of the recipients in my unit I print out each message, give copies to the unit head and three department heads (who can route them if they so desire), and post one copy on a central bulletin board for all the staff to read. BEILSTEIN Arnold Hirshon, Wright State University, AHIRSHON@WSU.BITNET, and messages from Library Administration and Management discussion group, LIBADMIN@UMAB.BITNET. Recently on the LIBADMIN listserver (LIBADMIN@UMAB.BITNET -- Library Administration and Management) Dorman Smith, Head of Public Services at Central Michigan University started a discussion asking which li- braries had or were considering cancelling Beilstein. I thought that you would be interested in the responses received. Do you know of similar surveys that have been done about this particu- lar title? Perhaps you can get newsletter subscribers to send in addi- tional responses and those can be edited down? This one title is so very expensive that it makes an attractive candi- date for ANYONE's serials cancellation project. Given the report that 52 percent of ARLs are doing a serials cancellation project at pres- ent, I have to wonder what the publisher of Beilstein will think if lots of people cancel this highly expensive but seemingly not-useful- for-the-price publication. It seems that we might have an example of a Bibliographic Emperor with no clothes: once one person realizes we can do without the title, many people start to follow suit. ------- MESSAGES PASSED ON TO THE NEWSLETTER BY ARNOLD HIRSHON From Dorman Smith, Central Michigan University, 3XCE3U5@CMUVM.BITNET: Because of severe budgetary pressures and a 80:20 ratio in our serials vs. monographs expenditures, we are contemplating cancel- ling this title. My records show we paid $24,000 for it last year. Now, we are also facing the $22,000 for the 12th Cum Index for Chem Abstracts. CMU has around 16,000 students with only a MS degree in Chemis- try, but a strong polymer science research program. In fact, the Chemistry program is thought to be one of the strongest programs on campus. However, out of an approx. $1.25 million materials budget, Chemistry takes more than $150,000. I am particularly wondering, though no two schools are ever the same even in one discipline, if there are other schools similar to us that have wrestled with this problem? I would particularly like to have some indication of programs that have been able to cut Beilstein and still keep some sort of good relations with the Chem faculty. From Arnold Hirshon: I'm so glad Dorman Smith asked this question. We are also looking at these titles in light of possible serials cancellations this year. I too would be fascinated to find out what people plan to do. This may be something we can sell to the faculty if we have strength in numbers, i.e., "lots of other respectable universi- ties are cancelling their subscriptions too." I know that Virgin- ia Tech was giving consideration to cancellation of Beilstein and providing online access instead, but last I heard they still had not reached a decision. From Rush G. Miller, Bowling Green State University, RMILLER@- BGSUOPIE.BITNET: Bowling Green State Univ. has a Ph.D. program in chemistry and it is considered one of the stronger programs here. Last year, we realized that through a clerical error, we had not received any issues of Beilstein for over a year. The Science Library staff were very concerned about the mistake until we realized that no one had complained, or seemed to have even noticed. So we decided on a strategy that included having the Head of the Science Li- brary sit down with the Chemistry person who serves as the liai- son with the Library and discuss the matter. It was very diffi- cult for the chemistry faculty to argue that this title is essen- tial when they were faced with a year's gap that not one of them had noticed! So we were able to cancel Beilstein with no real problems. We agreed to provide online access to ACS STN system. Beilstein is a part of that network and available online. No one has used it yet. You might try offering it online and picking up that cost. It certainly wouldn't be $24,000 a year!! From William Meneely, Georgia State University, LIBWEM@GSUVM1.BITNET: I have a fairly similar budget to yours at Georgia State. I have a chemistry Ph.D. program to support. We cancelled Beilstein in 1981. From Patricia O'Neill, Cornell University, PON@CORNELLC.BITNET: Before everyone decides that the Beilstein hard copy subscription can be cancelled and the online version used, they should take a good look at the documentation for the online database. Current- ly, and probably until the 5th supplement is finished publication the ONLINE VERSION OF BEILSTEIN DOES NOT REPLACE THE HARDCOPY 5TH SUPPLEMENT. The current online version contains up to 5 physical properties for compounds in the database that are not in the Hauptwerk through 4th supplement. The information input into the database from the 1960-1980 [sic] is NOT COMPLETE. Also, before you cancel your subscription because of non-use you may want to consider the acquisition of SANDRA. This unique lit- tle program makes Beilstein very usable by giving users a clear indication of where in Beilstein a compound can be found. Once this product was purchased for the Emory University Chemistry Library the use of Beilstein went up dramatically. In addition, I as the Chemistry Librarian was then able to use and teach others to use the tool effectively and efficiently. Even if you have decided to cancel the Beilstein subscription, SANDRA would cer- tainly make it easier for users to locate the information in the volumes you hold now. The previous Physical Sciences Librarian at Cornell made the decision to cancel all of the big three. I am now trying to come up with the money to fill in $30,000 of Landolt Bornstein. It is unfortunate that these major sources of physical, chemical, elec- trical, and other properties are cancelled, because in many cases they are the only way to effectively get to information research- ers need. I don't know how many times I must explain to users that locating property information is difficult because the major indexing/abstracting tools do not index them. The big 3 are ex- pensive and underutilized tools. One reason is that the librar- ians often don't feel comfortable using them and teaching others how to use them. From Bill Miller, Florida Atlantic University, MILLER@FAUVAX.BITNET: I started working on cancelling Beilstein about 6 months after I came here, and succeeded in about 18 months. We have a Ph.D. program in Chemistry, and the Chem. Dept. insisted that they needed Beilstein for accreditation. We finally found a pamphlet from ACS which expressly stated that Beilstein is not needed for accreditation. The final confrontation was between myself, the Assoc. Academic VP, a chemist, and the College of Science Dean (who let me know that he understood my position but had to adopt his in order to be perceived by his faculty as being on their side). Anyway, the short of it is that I won. I have not noticed any change in the quality of life since Beilstein disappeared. There are however two or three members of the chemistry Dept. who will not make eye contact with me and presumably hate my guts. So be it. If I have to make the cuts I suspect we will have to make next year, the Beilstein controversy will be tame stuff indeed by comparison. Dorman Smith relates a few other responses to his question: Holy Cross (Tony Stankus, by phone) -- Drop it. They'll never know it. Suggests offering online searching and purchase of CD-ROM, Polymers on Disk. Michigan State -- Wants me to let them know our decision (we're nearby). U of Toledo -- Their Ph.D. program faculty has not supported its purchase. FROM THE MAILBOX Various subscribers; the mailbox is TUTTLE@UNC.BITNET. From Karen Nadeski, Tufts University, KAREN_N@TULIPS.LIB.TUFTS.EDU, via SERIALST: The Arts & Sciences Library of Tufts University will be cutting $250,000 worth of subscriptions by the end of the fiscal year (we only subscribe to about 3200 titles). A couple of letters went out to all department heads about a month ago asking that faculty members review all titles of interest to them on a Faxon-gene- rated printout listing titles in ascending price order. For every title they want to retain, they are asked to fill out a Title Retention Form. Information requested on this form includes the following (besides name, department, date, title of journal): How often do you read/cite this journal? What contributions to your teaching does this journal make? What level of student (underclass, upperclass, graduate) reads this journal? Are reading assignments made or is the title used primarily for student papers? If this title is used for your research, what is its primary contribution? The Assistant Director for Collection Management and Technical Services, Bonnie Hill, originally wanted the faculty to review all titles over a particular price ($100, $150, maybe $250) but the Faculty Library Committee decided that all faculty members should see (if not review) all titles, so that's what they got. The Faxon list includes the costs of all journals over the last three years. Forms are due back to the library by May 15th and since this is the first time the faculty has been asked to do such a review, it's sent some shock waves through campus, both in terms of the cost of science vs. humanities/social science titles and the individual vs. institutional rate structure of some pub- lishers. Still it may be a positive experience, educational, if not also stressful at times. From John Kilmarx, SUNY Binghamton, JKILLY@BINGVMB.BITNET: On a follow-up to the brief piece on our fabulous 1989 democratic serials review (one organism, one vote!), we all kind of burned out on it, partly in shock and partly in dread of the certainty that we'd have to do another review in the near future. Well, the near future is underway NOW, and we have variable cut targets of over $200,000 to happen by this summer. We are not overly pleased.....but life goes on, and this time the faculty are bet- ter prepared (sort of like gardening; all that compost from two years ago has made the soil richer for this season). From Susan George, Dartmouth College, SUSAN.C.GEORGE@MAC.DARTMOUTH. EDU: We received word late last week that the Gordon & Breach publica- tion MOLECULAR CRYSTALS AND LIQUID CRYSTALS (ISSN: 0026-8941) is going to have a per volume increase of $60 (for 1991). Faxon is in the process of calling all subscribers for permission to renew subscriptions. The projected cost for volumes 194-209 (1991 pro- jected issues) is $7,264!!!!!! NOTE: For 1990, the publisher projected volumes 178-189 at a cost of $4,599; then, in mid- stream added volumes 190-193 for an additional cost of $1,555. The problem for 1991 is therefore two-fold: not only has the basic subscription increased, but we have no idea how many 'addi- tional volumes' will appear and what their cost will be!!!!! Maybe another title to contend with! I just found WAVES IN RANDOM MEDIA on our display shelf. It contained a note saying that vol- ume 1 of the title is being distributed free of charge to 1991 subscribers to JOURNAL OF PHYSICS A: MATHEMATICAL AND GENERAL. It is also available on separate subscription. It's published by the Institute of Physics (UK) and for 1992 will only cost $215! What I can't find is if this journal will be 'bundled' in terms of cost with the JOURNAL OF PHYSICS set (now from A-G). Since there is an e-mail address for the publisher, I'm going to check with them and I'll let you know what I find out. From Alan Ventress, State Library of New South Wales, ALANET: ALA1187: One piece of news from Australia. Last year Faxon opened a local office in Canberra and have started producing some useful data on our serials subs -- highlighting percentage price increases from the previous year (something we have always had to do in-house). One amazing increase is COMPUTERS AND FLUIDS (Pergamon; ISSN: 0045-7930), increased from US $408 to $1006.45. We will probably cancel leaving only two other subscribers in New South Wales. At the State Library of NSW we have a budget of $A1.1 million for serials ($A1 = US $0.77) so you can see we have to watch our budget even more closely than libraries in the US. As most of our serials are sourced in the US or Europe we are in a very parlous situation. Very few new subscriptions are being ordered and an- other cancellation project could be looming in late 1991. Kim Parker, Kline Science Library of Yale University, kim_parker.sml@ yccatsmtp.ycc.yale.edu, is sending this letter to the editor of BIO- CHEMICAL JOURNAL (ISSN: 0264-6021): Editor, THE BIOCHEMICAL JOURNAL 59 Portland Place London W1N 3AJ United Kingdom Dear Sir/Madam: I am writing to you to protest the publication of THE BIOCHEMICAL JOURNAL REVIEWS 1990. This was an unnecessary publication from several standpoints. This item is merely a reprinting of all the reviews in the jour- nal from 1987-1989. You publish the titles of each review promi- nently on the cover of the regular issues of the journal, and the yearly index provides more than adequate guidance for those de- siring to locate the reviews. Since this came as part of our subscription to THE BIOCHEMICAL JOURNAL, I can only assume that the cost of printing and distrib- uting it was included in the subscription price. I object to this sincerely. We do not want this item, and we will be throwing it away since it is not even worth the effort to bind it in with the journal. I trust that you will not be issuing another version of this issue for future reviews. Sincerely, Kim Parker Head, Technical Services ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Readers of the NEWSLETTER ON SERIALS PRICING ISSUES are encouraged to share the information in the newsletter by electronic or paper meth- ods. We would appreciate credit if you quote from the newsletter. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ The NEWSLETTER ON SERIALS PRICING ISSUES (ISSN: 1046-3410) is pub- lished as news is available by the American Library Association's Association for Library Collections and Technical Services. Editor: Marcia Tuttle, BITNET: TUTTLE@UNC.BITNET; Faxon's DataLinx: TUTTLE; ALANET: ALA0348; Paper mail: Serials Department, C.B. #3938 Davis Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill NC 27599-3938. The Newsletter is available on BITNET, DataLinx, and ALA- NET. EBSCO and Readmore Academic customers may receive the Newsletter in paper format from EBSCO and Readmore, respectively. Back issues of the Newsletter are available electronically free of charge through BITNET from the editor. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ ******ENDOFFILE***ENDOFFILE***ENDOFFILE***ENDOFFILE***ENDOFFILE******* ======================================================================== Received: (from MAILER@UNCVAX1 for TUTTLE@UNC via NJE) (JNET5913-5913; 685 LINES); Fri, 17 May 91 14:56:52 EST Received: from JNET-Daemon by UNCVX1.BITNET; Fri, 17 May 91 09:47 EDT Received: From UNC(MAILER) by UNCVAX1 with Jnet id 0077 for PRICES-L@UNCVAX1; Fri, 17 May 91 09:46 EST Date: Fri, 17 May 91 09:44 EST From: Marcia Tuttle Subject: PRICING NEWSLETTER, NO. N.S. 1 To: PRICES-L@UNCVX1 ISSN: 1046-3410 NEWSLETTER ON SERIALS PRICING ISSUES N.S. NUMBER 1 -- May 17, 1991 Editor: Marcia Tuttle CONTENTS FROM THE EDITOR, Marcia Tuttle ARL TO PRODUCE DIRECTORY OF ELECTRONIC PUBLICATIONS, Ann Okerson RUSCHIN ON BEILSTEIN, Siegfried Ruschin SEVENTH INTERNATIONAL LEARNED JOURNALS SEMINAR, Kenneth Kirkland DARTMOUTH'S INTERNAL ELECTRONIC NEWSLETTER, Susan George FROM THE EDITOR Marcia Tuttle, TUTTLE@UNC.BITNET. All of you should have received a message a few days ago from Ruth Carter, ALCTS president, and me. If you missed it, and for our 28 new subscribers since the message went out, here's a repeat. The Association for Library Collections & Technical Services (ALCTS) and Marcia Tuttle, Editor of the NEWSLETTER ON SERIALS PRICING ISSUES, announce a transfer of responsibility for the Newsletter. Effective with the next issue the Newsletter will be issued by Marcia Tuttle on an independent basis. This change enables both the Newsletter and ALCTS to move in a variety of new directions. We have benefitted from our mutual undertaking to date and have positive expectations for future endeavors. We would like to thank the members of the Publisher/Vendor-Library Relations Committee's Subcommittee on Serials Pricing Issues, who served as an editorial board. They are: Deana Astle, Mary Eliza- beth Clack, Jerry Curtis, Charles Hamaker, and Robert Houbeck. We would like also to recognize the many contributors for their part in the success and usefulness of this electronic newsletter. -- Ruth C. Carter President, Association for Library Collections and Technical Services Internet: RCC13@vms.cis.pitt.edu -- Marcia Tuttle Editor, NEWSLETTER ON SERIALS PRICING ISSUES BITNET: TUTTLE@UNC.BITNET Thank you for the messages of support that you have sent in the past few days. You have confirmed that the decision to separate from ALCTS was the right one. Let me answer the questions you have asked me. Is the newsletter still being published? YES, the newsletter is still being published; you will notice very little change. Am I still a subscriber, or do I have to resubscribe? YES, you are still a subscriber; the mailing list is intact. Is the newsletter still free, or is there a subscription price? YES, the newsletter is still free of charge. Will the newsletter still be available on ALANET, DataLinx, etc.? YES, we still have the same distribution channels. Will the newsletter have ads now? NO, we are not accepting ads. We do have a new editorial board. Staying over from the Subcommittee on Serials Pricing Issues are Deana Astle (Clemson University), Jerry Curtis (Springer-Verlag New York) and Chuck Hamaker (Louisiana State University). The new members are James Mouw (University of Chicago) and Heather Steele (Blackwell's Periodicals Division). You will be hearing more from this editorial board in the near future. When I informed ALCTS that I wished to continue the newsletter inde- pendently, they made two requests: that I incorporate some break in numbering to signify the change and that I send the ALCTS Executive Director a copy of the BITNET-based mailing list. Had I known that ALCTS was going to use this list to subscribe all of you to a differ- ent publication without your consent (or mine), I would have tried to dissuade them. Please be assured that I had nothing to do with this decision and that I regret this intrusion on your choice of electronic publications. On a happier note, after following a fascinating discussion of copy- right (and copyleft), authors' rights, publisher value added, access to scholarly information, and more on HUMANIST, Christian Boissonnas and I felt that some of that list's subscribers might be interested in this newsletter and would bring a new dimension to our content. Chris- tian placed a notice for that group and immediately its members from all over the world began to subscribe. It is heartening to see that concern for the critically high price of access to scholarly informa- tion is not limited to librarians, publishers and subscription agents. Welcome! to the faculty members, graduate students and other research- ers from HUMANIST who have subscribed. I look forward to lively dis- cussions in this newsletter format. I'm having to break promises to some people; your contributions will be in the next issue, and I'll have it out very shortly. ARL TO PRODUCE DIRECTORY OF ELECTRONIC PUBLICATIONS Ann Okerson, Association of Research Libraries, BITNET: OKERSON@UMDC.BITNET. As part of its keen commitment to promote networked academic journals and other serials, the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) plans to publish a directory of electronic journals, newsletters, and schol- arly discussion lists/interest groups. These represent publications which are created and distributed principally for BITNET, Internet, and any affiliated academic networks, largely for free. The directory will be available at the end of June. It will contain some 30 journal listings, about twice that number of newsletters, and over 1000 scholarly lists. Its length is anticipated to be close to 200 pages. Preliminary pricing estimates are approximately $10 - $12 to members and double that for non-members. A final price and release date will be advertised in early June. Editor of the journals/newsletters section is Michael Strangelove, University of Ottawa. Strangelove's list will be available via the Ottawa University network sometime in June. Editor of the scholarly discussion lists/interest groups section is Diane Kovacs, Kent State University Libraries. For some months, she has maintained such list- ings as adjunct files to networked lists such as HUMANIST, ARACHNET, Lstown, and Libref-L. Each electronic "serial" will be described, and clear directions about how to subscribe, send submissions, and access retrospectively will be provided. To ensure that the reader is given accurate and up-to-date information, entries have been supplied or verified by the editors themselves. The listings are compiled with the intention of providing the uninitiated networker with clear directions on how to navigate the sometimes puzzling world of electronic scholar- ship. ARL is producing the printed directory because of calls virtually daily requesting such information. If there is indeed sufficient de- mand for the work, the directories will be updated and sold regularly. For those who prefer to retrieve electronically, the directory will point to the free and continuously up-to-date networked sources for this information, with complete access instructions. The ARL is tentatively exploring options for funding to catalog/clas- sify these materials, both to facilitate networked and paper access by subject and to "institutionalize" and "legitimize" new types of "seri- als." This effort would relate to activities of the Coalition for Networked Information (CNI) in identifying and maintaining directories of networked access and resources and to the work of individuals and institutions concerned with standards development for networked prod- ucts and publications. For further information, to indicate your in- terest, or to place an order, contact: ARLHQ@UMDC.BITNET Ann Okerson or Christine Klein Association of Research Libraries 1527 New Hampshire Avenue, NW Washington DC 20036 202-232-2466 (phone) 202-462-7849 (fax) RUSCHIN ON BEILSTEIN Siegfried Ruschin, Librarian for Collection Development, Linda Hall Library, 5109 Cherry St, Kansas City MO 64110-2498. I read the comments on the BEILSTEIN HANDBOOK OF ORGANIC CHEMISTRY that appeared in no. 37 of the NEWSLETTER ON SERIALS PRICING ISSUES with great interest and with some dismay. Linda Hall Library has reluctantly dropped its subscription to BEIL- STEIN on two occasions, only to reinstate it each time at the first opportunity. This year again, we are not subscribing. The decision (or apparent vacillation) is based entirely on budgetary considerations: $25,000 is a big chunk out of most libraries' budget, and, given the relatively low use of the handbook, this expense is indeed hard to justify. But we do not find the sacrifice of a reference work of un- questionable high quality an easy decision. I am not familiar with the American Chemical Society's criteria for accreditation. But it is hard to see how any library could presume to offer full research facilities in chemistry without ready access to BEILSTEIN. Frequency of use is not to be ignored, but for a research library this cannot be the ultimate selection criterion. How often something is used, we will all agree, is not tantamount to "useful- for-the-price;" ready accessibility and reliability of the data are at least as significant in a reference work. It is quite possible and even likely for a knowledgeable and assiduous researcher to use BEILSTEIN, without being aware that no additional volumes have come for some time. Such an unawareness may say something and even be amusing, but it has no bearing on the value of the work. As an argument for cancellation it is irrelevant, if one keeps the organization and the purpose of BEILSTEIN in mind. BEILSTEIN is not a current, sequentially published index or abstract. It is a truly monu- mental retrospective bibliography and handbook of critically evaluated data. In this lie both its strength and glory and its weaknesses. I fully agree with Patricia O'Neill's brief, informed evaluation, and I share her concerns. Her comments about SANDRA and how it can greatly increase the usefulness of BEILSTEIN merits more than passing atten- tion. SANDRA is a remarkable software package that is as simple to use as it is powerful. It facilitates access not only to the wealth of verified data in BEILSTEIN, but also to large sections of the chemical literature beyond. As Patricia O'Neill also points out, BEILSTEIN-on- Line is not as easy a way out of the dilemma as it may seem. To her warning that the files are currently and temporarily incomplete, I would add that full and efficient searching of that enormous and mul- tifaceted database requires more skill and subject knowledge than most of us nonchemists could probably muster. Her final remark regarding some librarians' discomfort with the "big 3" reference works even in their printed form best summarizes the problem. It is regrettable that we find ourselves in the quandary of having to decide between cancelling a reference work of unquestionable quality or cancelling some overpriced journals that are momentarily used heav- ily, but of which we otherwise know little and whose permanent signif- icance one may question. We struggle with these questions and deplore that we do not have the wisdom to answer them unequivocally. But it would be ironic and hardly in keeping with our responsibility as li- brarians were we to derive a sense of satisfaction or success for having to forego one of the dependable and important reference sources in the sciences. SEVENTH INTERNATIONAL LEARNED JOURNALS SEMINAR, LONDON, 5 APRIL 1991: "PUBLISHERS: WHO NEEDS THEM?" Kenneth Kirkland, DePaul University, LIBKLK@DEPAUL.BITNET. Edwin Shelock of Turpin Transactions noted in his introduction that the seminars were started to let Americans come over and talk about high prices. Sadly, only about five Americans made it to the Seventh. 1. Peter J. Farago, Editor of CHEMISTRY IN BRITAIN, wittily presented observations on "Editing: Good and Bad, Necessary or Not." He sees the purpose of an editor to be "grit in your oyster" and to avoid famous atomic typos such as "Unclear Physics." Portentously, a "typographical infelicity" occurred in spelling his surname with two "r"s in the program. "Editors are the waiters and bellboys" of the scientific publishing world. Although most articles are acceptable, their real role is to advance the interests of the author. There is no need to edit any "truly scientific" paper. In the U.K. placing referees' names on articles could "cause instant death," but if one makes a fool of himself/herself, why not let it be public? Can't have editors who are experts in all disciplines, or even of every aspect of one discipline. The editor manipulates the referee, and vice versa, but the referee has the expert knowledge. The whole publishing process is slowed down by editing. Copy editing is a humdrum, low paid profession that requires very intense concen- tration. One does not have to be a subject specialist, but does need "patience of the devil and somewhat small-minded creativeness." The best example of an editor with a good sense of what should be published is the SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN's first 30 years after the War. If a journal starts well, it will attract papers of good quality. The bad part is that an editor can be too powerful and may be ejected only if the publication is ruined very badly. Although having too many papers can destroy the quality of a journal, historically, the excel- lence of a journal is "accidental." Microcomputer technology makes the relative cost of publication less. Act III is electronic storage, with paper copies only if you want. This will change dramatically the way editing is done. 2. Jane Smith of the BRITISH MEDICAL JOURNAL in "Peer Review: The Vital Ingredient" disagreed with the previous speaker, maintaining that the editor SHOULD make a difference. American librarians may say to drop peer review if it is so costly, that it doesn't work anyhow -- there have been scandals, conflicting papers. What editors offer be- yond BBSs etc., they have provided since the 17th century. The purpose of peer review is to guard against plagiarism. While the idea of the strong editor without peer review has had a long tradition, peer re- view has been a force since the close of World War II. Among other things, peer review works to prevent the publication of bad works, and improves the language of presentation. An editor asks if the question is important, original, and scientific- ally sound and needs experts for determining this, especially in the scientific realm. Getting it right is more important than getting it fast. Anyway, eighty-five percent of rejected papers get published somewhere else. The BRITISH MEDICAL JOURNAL is something of a hybrid, in that it main- tains a news section as well as scientific articles. So, it is both magazine and journal. The rejection rate of articles delivered is ninety percent. Fifty percent are rejected on first reading, before peer review. After peer review, the board of editors makes the final selections. Statistics referees are very important now, especially in talking about drugs, for example. In perhaps five of 45 papers submitted the statistics will be accurate, but by time of publication 38 more will be fine after review. An example of publishers' bias could mean that for news relevance, "sexy" = "negative." There may be a tendency for authors not to write up negative results, but just to bury them. There may be a need for an electronic database of negative results. Smith concluded with the thought that if the day comes -- and it will -- when the author types articles directly into an electronic database and the buyer purchases single articles only, that buyer will want to know that she/he is not buying a pig in a poke. Librarians may live to regret the idea of dumping paper journal publication and peer review. 3. Fred Friend, of University College London, presented "A Librarian's View of the Future of Scholarly Communication." Librarians cannot ignore publishers' concerns, publishers cannot ignore librarians' concerns, nor can either ignore the concerns of producers. University College, London, is on the cutting edge of research. Users love the library, would be up in arms if it were closing down, but they don't pay attention to the minutiae of administration. They are just interested in getting what they need, no matter how. Why worry? Because of fundamental weaknesses not apparent on the surface. If these weaknesses are not addressed, publications will turn to alter- nate methods, i.e. electronic bulletin boards. The major fault line lies in scholarly communication. Time lag is an underlying weakness in the information chain. Speed of publication and the speed of libraries in making articles available are problems. The pressure is on in the academic world to publish, and fast. The cold fusion affair is an extreme example. The pricing mechanism is another problem. "Certain unscrupulous pub- lishers" extort from academic libraries at an inflation rate higher than average for the national economy. The producer of information has no influence on cost, but the purchaser has some -- can cancel. If producers depended on INCOME or SPEED OF PUBLICATION, they would then be in a position to influence cost. Eventually, cost will have to be dealt with. There may be lower production costs if data is transmitted electronically. Prestige is the one criterion now lacking in electronic publication in academia. Electronic publishing clearly meets the standards for in- creased speed and economy. "I am surprised that publishers are so slow" to move to electronic publication. Single article publication will be a trend. There will be pressure to delete papers from a database that are not demanded for a specified period, due to reluctance to pay for storage for the rarely or never used. How would the user react to electronic publication? Speed, price, and ease of use are important. "Most academic reading today is of photo- copies," so electronic publication provides for this. In the Third World computers are no cheaper or more difficult to come by than paper journals. "Electronic publication makes everything easier and cheaper for everyone." Fast delivery everywhere is within our grasp. Friend hopes that librarians will still be needed as intermediaries, for retrieval skills, but there may be MORE COMPETITION. If librarians price their services too highly, they may be replaced by a retrieval software program. 4. David Penfold, Edgerton Publishing Services, spoke on "The Right Medium for the Task." What is the task? Communicating the results of research to a community. How to do it depends on the kind of informa- tion. Are exotic languages or character sets employed? Timeliness of the information is relevant. What the media are: 1) Print on paper; 2) Microform ("I put this in mainly for historical reasons."); 3) Machine-readable form in remova- ble (and therefore salable) form: magnetic material (disks or tapes), optical material (cd rom), or online. McLuhan observed that "The medium is the message" because it is the medium that shapes and controls the search and form of human associa- tions and actions. What is the publisher's role? "The medium is the massage," since the publisher is needed to provided added value: 1) refereeing (agrees with Jane Smith's emphasis on this point); 2) the editing process; 3) the formatting process. This is MORE important in electronic publish- ing. An editor does this presentation better than the author, deter- mining how to present tables, for instance. Typesetters: who needs them? Good ones add a lot of value. On production formatting: with paper the technology is familiar, par- ticularly for the user. Complex material needs complex formats with participation of typesetters, authors, and publishers. With cd-rom, the technology is NOT so familiar, particularly for the user, and is especially less accessible in the Third World. Techniques are not fully developed for mathematics and chemistry, font problems for such things as manuscripts, illustrations. With online databases, there can be communications problems, and "speed costs." Format problems are the same as for disks, maybe worse. Access is a problem. Who accesses? The librarian? Is special software needed, e.g. for chemistry or mathematics? Is special hardware needed, for half-tone reproduction, etc.? It should be noted that traditional publishers absorb many costs that in electronic publishing are more likely to be passed on to the end user. With electronic mail/bulletin boards there is no control, transfer through PostScript, etc. is not automatic and has to be encoded. Is this really "publishing"? "Who pays and how?" (Penfold observed that he had posed questions, if not answers.) 5. In the question-and-answer period before lunch, there was much interchange: What publishers and librarians have in common: threats that the future is bleak, and although you've had a jolly good time in the past, other people will take over. Information is not merely a commodity passed down the chain. "The vast majority of what is published is never read, so why all this bother with quality control?" On quantity and quality: is one article worth the number of cop- ies of an issue distributed? By rule of thumb a good monograph purchased is likely to be circulated within 18 months. There is a twelve-to-one chance against a periodical article ever being read at all. "Safety and security of peoples' lives are the most im- portant -- therefore we must try to disengage." Journal usage drops dramatically after five years (in the sciences). "There is far too much redundancy." Electronic publishing may make this worse: ever more quantity and less quality. Data available now on the usage of articles is not very good. Newspapers -- who reads every word? Who wants it a week later? Bad publication will continue and increase ("this has certainly been true of newspapers in my lifetime.") What happens to the minority press? In e-mail messages already there are pleas for software to sort out the good stuff from the overload of data being transmitted. The academic community is where the pressure comes from. It is self-contradictory. "A journal is not to be read, but to be published in." 6. Hany Tolba, Manager of the "Al-Ahram" Distribution Agency, and manager of the "Al-Ahram" Scientific Library, among other posts, pre- sented "Spreading the Word: An International View." Tolba predicts continued growth of information services based on the new technology. Twenty years hence there will be wide use of on-line databases at home and office. Technological changes may be more influ- ential than production changes. There are some twenty Egyptian universities with many thousands of students. The Egyptian government increased the national education budget by twenty per cent two years ago. Paper costs are a very high percentage of publication costs in the Middle East. Egypt is taking stern measures against piracy. Egyptian libraries try to avoid the tremendous cost of CHEMICAL ABSTRACTS in paper format by subscribing only to microfiche. Although there is access to electronic databases, reliance is still largely on paper publications. Tolba feels that electronic publications should be available at rates comparable to paper in the Third World, but senses that paper publications will continued to be predominant. 7. Harry Hanham, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Lancaster, dis- cussed "Spreading The Word: The Best And Can We Afford It?" In the U.K. enrollment in the sciences continues to fall, while en- rollment overall is flat. Enrollment is declining at the research level, though the total number of students is steady. Exploration and cultivation go hand in hand. In the 17th and 18th centuries scientists led the lives of a Bedouin tribe, not cultivating a particular patch. The scientist is still a browser, if any good, but specialization is a very strong force now. New buildings at the Uni- versity of California no longer have rooms for large collections of offprints, periodicals, etc., as opposed to the 1960s. Four years is the longest time-span of interest for a scientific pub- lication. The scientist is a team member, each player concentrating on a narrowly defined field. The team members are in contact with each other all the time. Publication is archival -- AFTER THE EVENT. E-mail is taking over to some extent. Researchers never look at the Proceedings of a Conference. Such proceedings are there for new peo- ple, who weren't at the conference, bringing themselves up to speed. Scientists do not read scientific periodicals at home, unless they are readers by temperament, and most scientists are not. The researcher is now told to cultivate a small unexplored patch that may not be of interest outside of the "village." Publishers are doing a good job of serving these cultivators. Who should pay for these narrow fields? Each university will have its own mix of particular cultivators. Still, there must be journals of exploration as well. In the Social Sciences and the Humanities, the library must serve primarily the student, different circumstances from the Sciences. University allocations for research have fallen drastically. This means money for research should go to research councils rather than to university. The government proposes that research must be separated from teaching budgets, and this applies equally to libraries. It has been decided on high that universities and polytechnics will divide teaching from research in the same way. The sorting out period will last five years or so. "Cultivators should provide for their own pub- lication." Letting the cultivators look after themselves has gone a long way already. Dreary, dull journals need not be widely available. Boston Spa works! The use of publications is to score brownie points, i.e., considera- tions political and commercial. You can't be funded if you don't have a long list of publications. "Sensible people worry about quality rather than quantity." One must have fertilizer from outside the community. 8. Douglas Shepherd of Pergamon Press gave the last paper, on "Pub- lishers: The Critical Link." (The speaker originally scheduled was "trapped in America" at this juncture). Shepherd announced he would be communicating remarks, some bitter, about the crisis in the scientific information world. Journals refuse to die whether read or not. Scholarly journals are no longer needed. A large number of journals are not cited at all in five years. Scien- tific literature is doubling every fifteen to seventeen years, so it is hard to keep up. There are two schools of thought about the information overload. 1. The Reductionist (need fewer publications) 2. The Expediters (looking for ways to cope) "At Pergamon we have around 400 titles," not all of them pretty. TETRAHEDRON LETTERS has become the newsletter of its field. Circula- tion has increased despite increased subscription prices. It was the first to use camera ready publication, and now accepts faxed submis- sion of articles to speed up the process. The electronic alternative: we must give heed. Computer technology has been tried experimentally with TETRAHEDRON LETTERS, issued both in print and on disk. An electronic bulletin board has been added but has NOT been successful and will cease. CANCER NEWS, however, has found the bbs to be well received but is also still printed. Paper technolo- gy is not completely out of mode yet. 9. Wrap-up: With some equivocation, one could observe that Russell and Whitehead preceded McLuhan, as did Omar Khayyam. Redundancy is waste- ful, but have we considered the costs of reduction, replacement, and delivery? Electronic publication has not coped fully yet with the problems of half-tone, illustrations, mathematical and chemical sym- bols. There is electronic access in Egypt, but the simpler paper form is still needed. Piracy is a very good indication of need for the traditional. It is difficult to summarize, but we are beginning to confront serious matters. 10. Audience reactions: Scholarly publishing as a cultural activity has not been consid- ered. Was there a cost benefit analysis on painting the Sistine Chapel by Michelangelo? Gillian Page pondered if anyone else remembered the Loughborough study that found printed articles cost about L1 even after the acquisitions and cataloging costs are considered. There is no cheaper way. Has scientific information REALLY Doubled in 15/17 years?? The comparison of electronic publication in TETRAHEDRON LETTERS is not valid, not comparing like with like. It is a fallacy to think electronic publishing is going to be cheaper. Paper publication has subsidized the electronic publica- tion. DARTMOUTH'S INTERNAL ELECTRONIC NEWSLETTER Susan George, Physical Sciences Librarian, Dartmouth College, SUSAN.C.GEORGE@MAC.DARTMOUTH.EDU. Kresge and Cook Libraries News is a bi-weekly newsletter published both electronically and in paper copy. It is now up to volume 7 and we began sending electronic copies to subscribers last year, simply be- cause a few requested delivery that way. We recently queried the sub- scribers (about 150) and told them we could and would deliver an elec- tronic version if they were interested; our paper copy count is now down to 95! The newsletter contains the following sections: *front page: a directory of staff and services, a table of con- tents for the inside pages, and often special notices (library schedule of hours, holiday closings, etc.) *NEWS NOTES: these can be anything from a new database accessible through our online system, to a new commercial database, to a guest article (we recently had the Government Documents librarian explain 'depository' to our readers), to the DIALOG-ACS battle, to reprints (with permission) from Marcia's newsletter. *RECENT ACQUISITIONS: a listing of new titles received by both the Math and Physical Sciences libraries. These are subject di- vided first by broad headings (Chemistry, Astronomy, Mathematics, Computer Science, Reference, Science, Physics, Meteorology, Earth Sciences). Then the titles are further divided by LCSH and are finally listed alphabetically by title. Here we also include selected government documents from GPO (when the list comes over). *PUBLICATIONS BY PHYS-SCI & MATH RESEARCHERS: an alphabetic list- ing (by author) of faculty/graduate student publications (journal article, conference papaers, books, book chapters, etc.). This is derived from SDIs on various commercial databases (GEOREF, CA, PHYS, INSPEC, etc.) Issue Preparation: I check each newly arrived title to determine if it should be listed in the newsletter (and therefore displayed). Since the Math library (which I also administer) is physically separate from Kresge, the assistant there forwards the 'travelling slips' to me. I then come up with an LCSH by calling up the record on our automated circulation system (UNICORN, by SIRSI). Since serials are not yet in the circulation system, my subject heading fall-back is the online system (the CATALOG), which, using the technical display, gives me subject treatment. (I keep an electronic thesaurus of all the subject headings I use, so I can maintain authority control). I create the newsletter using WORD4. The font is Avant Garde (since it laser-prints so nicely). After I have proofed the completed issue, it gets exported to a WORD3 document and then into PageMaker(because our version of PageMaker cannot deal with WORD4 documents). We also add some graphics for each broad subject heading (e.g., a Mac for the subject heading COMPUTER SCIENCE, etc.). We laser print the master (for paper copy distribution). Then, finally, comes the mailing. For the paper copies, we use a programmed photocopier to run double-sided pages. This means that we use less paper and because we can 'fold' the newsletter, the whole issue is totally recyclable. The electronic version is sent as a WORD4 document (minus the fancy graphics). We 'run' the newsletter every other Friday, the electronic copies get sent that same day, the paper copies get run and mailed the next day (Saturday). Production time/costs: It takes me about 8 hours to put the WORD4 document together for each issue. It takes my assistant about 1 hour to go from WORD4 to WORD3 to PageMaker to a laser-printed master. (That's because we have a template from which we develop each issue, so the generation time for each issue is decreased). It takes zero to send electronically because we have put together a mailing list of subscribers and the document (text-format) is sent so quickly, it's right before your very eyes that it disappears. It takes about 1 hour on Saturday to copy, fold, address and mail the 95 paper copies (if the photocopiers cooperate). I have never done a detailed cost survey and probably should since we have moved into electronic mailing so much more heavily. But, I'd guess it's relatively cheap, less expensive than when we started with volume 1! If you have any questions, please contact me. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Readers of the NEWSLETTER ON SERIALS PRICING ISSUES are encouraged to share the information in the newsletter by electronic or paper meth- ods. We would appreciate credit if you quote from the newsletter. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ The NEWSLETTER ON SERIALS PRICING ISSUES (ISSN: 1046-3410) is pub- lished by the editor as news is available. Editor: Marcia Tuttle, BITNET: TUTTLE@UNC.BITNET; Faxon's DataLinx: TUTTLE; Paper mail: Seri- als Department, C.B. #3938 Davis Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill NC 27599-3938; Telephone: 919 962-1067; FAX: 919 962-0484. Editorial Board: Deana Astle (Clemson University), Jerry Curtis (Springer Verlag New York), Charles Hamaker (Louisiana State University), James Mouw (University of Chicago), and Heather Steele (Blackwell's Periodicals Division). The Newsletter is available on BITNET, DataLinx, and ALANET. EBSCO and Readmore Academic customers may receive the Newsletter in paper format from EBSCO and Readmore, respectively. Back issues of the Newsletter are available electronic- ally free of charge through BITNET from the editor. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ ******ENDOFFILE***ENDOFFILE***ENDOFFILE***ENDOFFILE***ENDOFFILE******* ======================================================================== Received: (from MAILER@UNCVAX1 for TUTTLE@UNC via NJE) (JNET4587-4587; 732 LINES); Fri, 31 May 91 02:52:13 EST Received: from JNET-Daemon by UNCVX1.BITNET; Thu, 30 May 91 21:07 EDT Received: From UNC(MAILER) by UNCVAX1 with Jnet id 0092 for PRICES-L@UNCVAX1; Thu, 30 May 91 21:06 EST Date: Thu, 30 May 91 21:05 EST From: Marcia Tuttle Subject: PRICING NEWSLETTER, NO. NS 2 To: PRICES-L@UNCVX1 ISSN: 1046-3410 NEWSLETTER ON SERIALS PRICING ISSUES N.S. NUMBER 2 -- May 30, 1991 Editor: Marcia Tuttle CONTENTS MOLECULAR CRYSTALS AND LIQUID CRYSTALS, Deana Astle DETERMINING HOW MUCH TO CUT, Harry Llull READMORE SCIENTIFIC, TECHNICAL AND MEDICAL (STM) LIBRARIES 1992 JOURNAL PRICING PREDICTIONS, Harry Hoffer UNITED KINGDOM SERIALS GROUP ANNUAL CONFERENCE, Kenneth Kirkland FROM THE MAILBOX HAMAKER'S HAYMAKERS, Chuck Hamaker Deana Astle, Clemson University, DLAST@CLEMSOM.BITNET. On further investigation [after the item in Newsletter 37], we discov- ered that for at least the last few years, Gordon & Breach's MOLECULAR CRYSTALS AND LIQUID CRYSTALS (ISSN: 0026-8941) consists largely if not entirely of Conference Proceedings and is not a "refereed journal" in the commonly accepted sense of that term. These Conference papers were not even typeset, but were reproduced as submitted. Each volume in the "1990" year consisted of one issue, as far as we were able to ascer- tain, containing approximately 250-300 pages. Each "volume" cost 422 Sfr (approximately $400 at the time of purchase). Three volumes (191- 193) in 1990 were devoted to the Proceedings of the 8th Liquid Crystal Conference of Socialist Countries held in Krakow, Poland in 1989. The price of the proceedings of this Conference (roughly 900 pages), was 1266 Sfr (approximately $1200). The facts speak for themselves. DETERMINING HOW MUCH TO CUT Harry Llull, University of New Mexico, HLLULL@UNMB.BITNET. The Centennial Science and Engineering Library at the University of New Mexico is planning to cut the serials budget by 10 percent. We are one of five discipline related collection development clusters within the General Library of the University of New Mexico. CSEL accounts for 44 percent of the overall General Library collection development bud- get. Each cluster is making its own decision as to whether to cut serials or not. I took into account the following factors when deciding on a 10 per- cent cut. First, I started with the worst case scenario. For us that would be the following: 1) the same amount of money as last year; 2) inflation no higher than 30 percent; 3) use of the monographic funds to cover serials. I hope to create the 30 percent cushion as follows: 1) we will attempt to carry over 5 percent from this year's budget to apply to next year's budget; 2) we may have as much as 5 percent in our serial lines for one time purchases for cumulative indexes that will have to go to cover inflation; 3) a 10 percent cut in serials; 4) and finally, if we have to, the monographic budget, which is 10 per- cent of our serials budget, would have to go entirely to cover seri- als. The 5 percent, 5 percent, 10 percent cut, and 10 percent mono- graphics budget gives us a 30 percent cushion to work with to address both inflation and any unforeseen overall budget cuts to the General Library's collection development funding. We are in the last semester of a year and a half use study of bound journals. We intend to target the no-use journals, low-use journals, Soviet journals and translations, and other foreign journals. Selec- tors in CSEL who have canceled titles in the past two years will be given credit for those cancellations and will not be expected to can- cel a full 10 percent. I hope to make up the difference from the gen- eral science collection, the reference collection, and zero-use titles in all subject areas. I am presenting this to the faculty as a way to reallocate funds with- in CSEL. We have a number of new researchers for which we cannot buy at this time journals they request. Another goal is to get our balance between monographs and serials down to a 20 percent books, 80 percent journal split. The General Library is attempting to get more monies added to the materials budget. If we do, I feel we will be even in better shape to reallocate after the cancellation program. Each of us has to address our own particular factors and I just wanted to share the factors I used. I would be interested in reading how others came up with their cancellation goals. READMORE SCIENTIFIC, TECHNICAL AND MEDICAL (STM) LIBRARIES 1992 JOUR- NAL PRICING PREDICTIONS (April 15, 1991) Harry Hoffer, Readmore, Inc., 22 Courtlandt St, New York NY 10007. This year Readmore is making several predictions based on the type of library. Experts have pooled the information they have received from their contacts in the publishing world, incorporated advice from the NY-based foreign currency traders, and, after analyzing the informa- tion, have made the following preliminary predictions: 1992 JOURNAL PRICE INCREASE PREDICTIONS Average STM Price Increase: 11 percent British prices: 10.5 - 11.5 percent European prices: 9.5 - 11.5 percent U.S. prices: 9.5 - 11 percent Although librarians began asking us in December to provide pricing predictions for 1992, we have delayed doing so until now as we felt that the uncertainty of the world situation and its impact on relative currency values would make such predictions unreliable at best. However, we understand that this pricing information is vital to your budget-setting process. We are making our predictions for 1992 at this time even though few publishers have made firm decisions on what their prices for 1992 will be. Many are waiting to see what will happen to the economy, to the strength of European currencies and the US dollar, and are still evaluating the impact of the 1991 cancellations. Since the end of the Persian Gulf War, the US dollar has made a mirac- ulous recovery from its post-World War II lows against the German mark and its 1991 lows against other major currencies. If the dollar continues to gain strength against the major European currencies, then the American libraries will gain a welcome relief from the high price of foreign journals. Our low European price in- crease of 9.5 percent reflects our belief that the dollar will contin- ue to gain strength. The stronger dollar will make European journal prices more attractive in the US market. We will alert you to any significant changes. During 1991 the prices of journal subscriptions increased drastically more than most publishers or agents had predicted, seriously impacting library budgets. Most of the increase was as a result of the unfavora- ble exchange rate of the dollar against major European currencies. This Fall, when we analyzed the 1991 price increases of major British, European and American publishers, we found that journal prices had risen as follows: 1991 PRICE INCREASES Average 1991 Price Increase: 17 - 19 percent British prices: 18 percent European prices: 24 - 28 percent US prices: 13 percent US libraries should find much lower price increases for 1992. The lower rates are mostly a result of improved exchange rates based on the strength of the US dollar. [Blackwell's, Readmore's parent company, sent out its own announcement dated April 2. Two versions of it have reached me. While very similar, there are differences between the two companies' documents. The memo submitted by Blackwell's to "North American Academic Libraries" pre- dicts an average increase for these customers of 9 percent. Broken down by area, they see British prices increasing at 10 percent, Euro- pean prices at 7 - 8 percent, and US prices at 8.5 - 9.5 percent. One version includes this paragraph: Our predictions should be used, therefore, as a rough guideline only as situations could arise that might result in price in- creases quite different from those we have predicted. As the dollar has recently strengthened against European currencies we have not included a factor for currency differentials in our predictions. If, however, the dollar weakens against European currencies, the above figures should be adjusted to allow for this.... -ED.] UNITED KINGDOM SERIALS GROUP 14TH ANNUAL CONFERENCE, 8-11 APRIL 1991, UNIVERSITY OF YORK Kenneth L. Kirkland, De Paul University, LIBKLK@DEPAUL.BITNET. This was the best of the six UKSG conferences attended since 1984 in terms of excellence of papers, and the food. KEYNOTE ADDRESS: Gordon Graham, editor of LOGOS, "THE JOURNALS CRISIS: ORIGINS AND RESOLUTION" Market forces will ease but not resolve the immediate impasse, as they did for monographs in the 1970s, frustrating all and satisfying none. Should market forces actually be in charge? Many journals seem to be sustained by powers impervious to the normal operation of said forces. Journals serve closed communities, are habit-forming, are purchased mostly with institutional funds, and grow in response to proliferating research, not simple need. Further, journals multiply in response to the twigging of knowledge and the irrepressible enthusiasm of scholars for their own disciplines. Journals are ideal victims for free-loading by systematic photocopying. They are the product of what scholars and publishers see as a beautiful, foreordained romance, but which librar- ians may regard as an uneasy menage a trois. Twenty years ago the prophets foresaw a paperless society by 1990, but electronic journals have NOT replaced scholarly publishing. Seven hundred journals started in 1946 and most are still going. Three thou- sand journals started in 1980. Seven hundred journals started in 1990, and 400 ceased. On the sale of Pergamon to Elsevier, Graham noted that "Maxwell has sold his crown jewels" for 440 million pounds, and "I think he would rather have bought Elsevier." Can it be imagined that journal publication is in peril? It is still vigorous, with labor of love from contributors and some editors. The most serious weakness is that being published is more important than being read. Other weaknesses include: 1. Vagaries of copyright; 2. Declining library budgets; 3. "Journal publishing has become too at- tractive." Cash flow is more important than profit, a dangerous idea; 4. The worship of research and publication has lead to diversion from books to journals in library budgets, which in turn could lead to a decline in scholarly creativity. Most library budgets are now 70 per- cent journals, 30 percent monographs. Who suffers? Students and schol- ars. "Books and not journals are what libraries should be about." The main point is that commercial considerations are too dominant in scholarly publication today. All are guilty -- librarians, publishers, and scholars. "Let the University compete with publishers, and do their own dissemination, BUT don't crib funds away from libraries." The heart of scholarly production and communication works at the level of the individual. The individual is regaining centrality, in contrast to the recent technological domination. MANAGING CHAOS --Alan Gomersall, British Library Science Reference and Information Service, "THE END OF SERIALS AS WE KNOW THEM?" The balance between monographs and serials is skewed, but subscription cancellations are increasing. The question now is access vs holdings. Until 1990 the British Library Science Reference and Information Serv- ice could practice collection buildup. They could share low-use titles with Boston Spa, and rely on them if the British Library didn't own a title. Now 200 high-use journals have been cancelled, along with 400 low-use titles. Salvation by electronic journal has not succeeded thus far. Direct contact between researchers is on the rise, through JANET and BITNET, for example, but this limits access to outsiders. A national pool of papers, like ADONIS, is needed as a possible alter- native to journal publication. Peer review needs to be much more rigo- rous. Research funding should be less dependent on article production. The information-for-profit idea is regrettable. We may become less concerned about back files and long runs, making holdings more transi- tory. We need research on readers' library use. --Deborah Kahn, Chapman and Hall, "MANAGING THE SERIALS OUTPUT" How do publishers maximize the value of the journal? 1. Quality -- controlled by refereeing; 2. Relevance -- the scope of material accep- ted; 3. Speed -- refereeing time, production time, backlog of accepted materials, and the size and frequency of the journal all come into play here. What affects costs? 1. Typesetting; 2. Printing (half-tone, color content, print run); 3. Paper (half-tone, color); 4. Editorial costs. How do librarians determine what is a fair price? Do price increases guarantee cancellations. Would page charges be a good idea. Do we need more sponsored supplements, abstracts, proceedings? The quality of academic peers is declining. Can't have Nobel Prize winners screen all articles. One can't turn down an article that is as good as one could write oneself. --David Whitaker, J. Whitaker & Sons, "RADICAL SOLUTIONS TO INTRACTA- BLE PROBLEMS" There are too many academics needing to flesh out their syllabi (or "silly bees"). There are venal academics, greedy publishers, and weak librarians. Is no one blameless? There ARE no radical solutions. All must work together towards a common goal. If there is anything radical in this at all, it is pursuit of excellence. Whose budget, whose library is it anyway? Subscriptions are like ten- ured faculty--hard to get rid of. Why do you bind some of the things you do bind? Are some of the journals only for current awareness? Recycle! Academics: You are trained to weigh and to judge. DO IT! I do not believe in your editorial judgment if you are collecting that much information. Learn to cut. Librarians: Measure and manage it. After all, it is YOUR library. (If you can't measure it, you aren't in control, and can't manage it). Publishers: Be part of the chain. --Fritz Schwartz, The Faxon Co. (US), "SERIALS CHECK-IN MADE EASY - A SISAC PRESENTATION" SISAC (Serials Industry Systems Advisory Council) was founded in 1982. With its sibling BISAC, SISAC is a division of BISG (Book Industry Study Group). Publishers, librarians, and agents comprise membership. Until the creation, ratification, and use of the SISAC Symbol, there has been no accurate and economical means of expression to denote specific serial issue information for librarians or publishers to use in check-in, inventory control, document retrieval, and EDI. The new ANSI/NISO Z39.56 standard for the Serial Item and Contribution Identifier (SICI) provides the rules for the creation of a string. The string, (expressed as a Code 128 barcode) is known as the SISAC Sym- bol. Schwartz explained both the ANSI/NISO standard and the derived SISAC Symbol, and how both can be used in the serials community. The final draft of the ANSI/NISO standard had just been written as of 1 April 1991 and was to be presented to NISO for promulgation in 1991. Kluwer was the first to implement SISAC, followed by Elsevier, Perga- mon, The Royal Chemical Society, Taylor and Francis, and Wiley. Potential uses for SICI (i.e. the SISAC symbol) would be to facilitate the exchange of machine-readable data among all parties in the serials community. Ordering, claiming, check-in, interlibrary loan, and other processes would be expedited, perhaps even tracking usage and appor- tioning royalties. It can foster EDI in the serials field. INTERNATIONAL ISSUES --Hazel Woodward (UKSG); Gerard van Marle, Dutch Library Association "REPORT ON THE EUROPEAN SERIALS CONFERENCE" Woodward noted that UKSG had helped organize the conference, held in The Netherlands, inspired partly by the increased European membership of UKSG, and UKSG's past role in encouraging other groups such as NASIG, the Chinese, Australian, and South African groups. Ideas dis- cussed included whether to push for other national groups, or regional groups with a larger federation. Levels of co-operation between agents, librarians, and publishers, the serials market in the future, trade considerations etc., were part of the deliberations. The Scandi- navians and the Dutch were keen on the idea of setting up national groups. The second European conference will be in Holland in Sept. 1992. Gerard van Marle, president of the Dutch Library Association, de- scribed the particulars that led to founding The Dutch Serials Group. The international scope of the group is signified by its official English-language name, which is NOT a translation. Membership is made up of those whose daily work is in serials. --Tony Read, Book Development Council, "SERIALS AND THE THIRD WORLD" The decline in the third world started with rising oil prices in the 1970s. There is little sign of recovery even now. Education was typ- ically the heaviest expense in national budgets, and libraries were the first to suffer. Secondary, primary, and public libraries have all been badly hit. They tend to cancel book orders before journals, ex- cept for textbooks. In higher education deterioration of the remaining collections has occurred. Razor-bladed articles, and stolen books can scarcely be replaced. Librarians were suddenly cut off from book trade information. Collec- tion development is basically frozen at 1980. Budgets do not keep pace with deterioration of the collections. Widely accepted now is the need for support for acquisitions budgets by a wide range of aid agen- cies and some governments. There are perhaps 150 private aid agencies, such as the Gulbenkian, Rockefeller, Ford, Dag Hammarskjkold, and Toyota Foundations. Some are large, some are small, but all are very idiosyncratic. It is expensive and time-consuming to gather the market information needed. --Elaine K. Rast, Northeastern Illinois University, "KEY ISSUES IN NORTH AMERICA" Elaine represented NASIG as an Executive Board member and wowed the audience with quotations from T.S. Eliot and other literary notables and with general eloquence and clarity. They liked the concept of "technostress." Key issues facing serials librarians in North America today revolve around CHANGE. These issues probably are not much different from those which face our colleagues in the U.K. We must cope with an overload of information, reduced budgets but increased costs, preservation chal- lenges, space problems, library education, and new technology. The rate of progress during the 1980s will seem routine when compared to the rapidity with which technology will evolve in the 1990s. These dynamic changes will make it needful to assist staff to deal with "technostress," to maintain, or even increase service and access, and to me unrealistic user expectations. All of this will occur in an environment of shrinking budgets. The key to meeting these challenges will be found in the ability to encourage library staff to discover their personal strengths, to capitalize on them, to approach strate- gies in a positive and realistic manner, and to promote ourselves and our institutions. "Our ability to survive as we enter the 21st century centers around another single word: adaptability." --Dianne Man, University of the Witwatersrand (South Africa), "THE SERIALS COLLECTION AS A REFLECTION OF SOCIAL AND POLITICAL CHANGE" Man was the first South African speaker to appear at UKSG. She worked in the field of personnel before becoming a personnel librarian, then a periodicals librarian, and is now head of Technical Services at the University of Witwatersrand. The last ten years in South Africa have been a time of profound change. The system of government has been a great part of the process. A tricameral government was set up, for Whites, Coloreds, and Indians. (Blacks were excluded). The situation of "small country, but a big government" is clearly seen in the large number of government publica- tions produced, a cataloger's nightmare. For instance, THREE Depart- ments of Education, etc. And now there are ten "homelands" to be con- sidered. Censorship has been an area of heavy government activity. The Publica- tions Act of 1974 focused largely on obscenity, but the Internal Se- curity Act of 1982 dealt more with books, Communists, race relations, banned persons, and banned organizations. Newspapers could be suspend- ed. (Books and newspapers had to be seen first before banning, which meant the monographs could be acquired, but newspapers could be stopped.) "The locked cupboards have been emptied by half, now," most- ly pornography is left in them. A dilemma for librarians was whether they were custodians, the state's agents, or victims. The problem now is how to fill in the gaps of the 1950s and 1960s. Suspensions and boycotts have played a major role. The University of Witwatersrand has about 19,500 students, and has long been a center for student activists. If non-Black student protestors were to be seen on worldwide television, they were usually from "Wit." There has been much tear gas in the libraries. As an English-language institution, the university has been an object of distrust from the government. World boycotts of South Africa were felt at the University. It was difficult to attend conferences even though the university letterhead said, "we do not support racism." In 1986 the Scandinavians cut off the library exchange program, which was a shock to the library. There was pressure on serials suppliers, especially in the United States. Checks were returned, publishers would not call. One note of humor: although UMI refused to supply theses, they kept sending the blurbs. Trade unions have become a phenomenon affecting the serials picture in the R.S.A. Before 1979 Black workers had no rights to negotiate. Now there are powerful Black trade unions, which produce many serials worth collecting. One such is IZWILETHU, containing news, cultural data, and politics. Back issues are hard to get, and the publication patterns are irregular. The NEW SOUTH AFRICA began in 1989 with de Klerk and with the 1990 release of Nelson Mandela. For this period, HISTORY IN THE MAKING is an important serial source, which prints current documents and speeches. NEW GROUND began in Sept. 1990 and deals with environmental concerns, particularly from a Black point of view. Aid and funds from anti-apartheid groups are dwindling now. Attention seems to be diverted to Eastern Europe, judging by the headlines. SERIALS AND INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY --Robert Imberley, Institute for Scientific Information, "ISI ON JAN- ET, ON DISC AND ON THE SHELF: END-USER SEARCHING OF BIBLIOGRAPHIC DATABASES IN DIFFERENT MEDIA." The ISI indexes are known for being up to date, and for their ease of use. The capability for browsing contents pages is so easy that no instructional materials are available or needed for this aspect. The current contents are available on diskette, for pc or Mac, intended for end-users. They are also available through BRS, Dialog, etc. OPAC availability at the University of Bath presently allows 100 si- multaneous users, and will be tripled. The question might be asked, if this service is offered on an OPAC, where does JANET's or the li- brary's responsibility end or begin? (JANET in the U.K. is similar to BITNET and the INTERNET in the U.S.). Password control is necessary for copyright reasons, as well as for access control. Who should issue the passwords? What is the cost? --Tony McSean, British Medical Association, "CD-ROM AND BEYOND" The speaker began with an apologia, to "excuse any lapses into hyper- bole." He got complaints about his Nov. 1990 article from readers who mistakenly thought he was ATTACKING cd-rom. Two questions were 1) Is cd-rom a transient medium? 2) Does it matter? Answers: 1) Yes 2) No. Cd-rom disks will last five or ten years. Replacements will be a mix- ture of things. The future will bring flash chips, which don't lose data when turned off. 16 mb available. Will replace floppies and maybe eventually hard disks. "Coming Real Soon Now": Voice systems; Pen systems; Multi-media; LANs & WANs; Knowledge-based systems (formerly expert systems); BIG displays (referring to disk size); Chip technolo- gy (exponential gains expected); Data broadcasting (for updates of databases); Magnetic storage; Better purchasing. --Cliff McNight, Loughborough University of Technology, "THE ELECTRON- IC JOURNAL: A USER'S VIEW" BLEND (Birmingham and Loughborough Electronic Network Development) was an early attempt at doing all publishing aspects online: origination, submission to editor, refereeing, editing, archiving. Some articles passed on to paper journals. It was a success. A new wrinkle was that the reader could add comments (but not change original text) and the author could then respond to the comments. It was ugly to look at, and hard to move through. Defaulted to full ASCII text. The Hypertext Journal Database. One can get an article from the US via e-mail, add comments, then by the time of printing all parties have moved on to something else. Most problems are psychological in nature: 1. Difficulty in reading full text from screens (but the low quality is getting better). 2. Illustrations and halftones, etc. 3. Navigation problems (if eight screens are open) 4. Copyright (or is it really a problem?) POSTMODERN CULTURE from North Carolina State University is refereed, available free, and not strictly a computer journal. A subscriber receives contents pages, then sends to a fileserver for any desired issue. "It is eclectic, to say the least." Questions of copyright in electronic journals are not clear, may be problematic. If no publisher is needed and an author handles every- thing her/himself, then everything becomes vanity publication. --Chris Beckett, Blackwell's Periodicals Division, "STANDARDS: WHO NEEDS STANDARDS? DATA TRANSFER WITHIN THE SERIALS INDUSTRY" Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) is automated computer-to-computer exchange of structured business documents between an enterprise and its vendors, customers, and other trading partners. (It is NOT online, NOT e-mail). Standards are not as important when human intelligence is involved, but for computer-based EDI there must be very specific standards. There is an average 5 percent error rate in human re-keying of data. EDI interchanges for ordering, paying invoices, etc. would be much faster and should result in fewer errors. There are national standards, such as TRADCOM and X-12, and the inter- national UN/EDIFACT. SISAC has recently recommended X-12 as the stand- ard, which is currently the most-used standard in the US, but Beckett suspects it will eventually migrate to EDIFACT. The Joint Serials Committee is working on the problem, and consists of Blackwell's, Dawson, EBSCO, Elsevier, Faxon, Kluwer, Pergamon, Readmore, The Royal Chemical Society, and Swets. FROM THE MAILBOX The Mailbox is: TUTTLE@UNC.BITNET. On the Elsevier purchase of Pergamon, from Paul Metz of Virginia Tech (PMETZ@VTVM1.BITNET): With Elsevier's acquisition of Pergamon,I think the time has come for a corporate name linking all the European cabal of over- priced scientific journals. I suggest the term "Axis Powers." When I mentioned this to someone they said, oh, but aren't some of them French. Vichy French, to be sure....When I shared my comment about Pergamon Elsevier et al with a colleague, he thought I had said Access Powers. So to elaborate the joke, if that's what it is, we will have the Axis Powers versus the Access Powers! On electronic library newsletters, from Harry Llull (HLLULL@UNMB. BITNET): Just this year we instituted a Centennial Science and Engineering Library Newsletter which includes our new books list. The news- letter is available in both paper and electronic formats. It goes to all chairs and liaisons in science and engineering and to any other faculty who request it. We do have a number of subscribers to the electronic format. The newsletter is stored on the CSEL microvax, HAL, for all staff to read in the General Library at the University of New Mexico. In terms of a strictly inhouse library newsletter, we communicate all of our meeting minutes, announcements, agendas, etc. through HAL to all staff at CSEL including student assistants. Because of this, we have not identified a need for an internal newsletter. At the beginning of next year when we send out a call to our faculty for subscribers to our CSEL Newsletter, we will request an evaluation of it from our current subscribers. So far, the unsolicited responses we have had have been positive. From Fred Friend, University College London (UCYL@UCL.AC.UK): In the report on price rises in 1991 and 1992 I noticed the fol- lowing statement: "Libraries outside the United States generally experienced smaller price increases because they benefitted from the weaker US dollar." In the context of US publications that is true, but UK libraries have been hit badly this year by the har- monisation of prices within the European Community. Needless to say publishers have not "harmonised" downwards to the lowest price but upwards, a process which has not created much harmony between publishers and librarians! I am told that prices to UK libraries of UK journals have risen by an average of 18 percent. Overall, even allowing for the weaker dollar, the cost of a typi- cal mix of titles has risen to UK libraries by 8-9 percent, which is several percentage points above our budget increases. So please do not think everything is rosy in the library garden on this side of the Atlantic. From Deborah H. Broadwater, Vanderbilt Medical Library (BROADWHD@ VUCTRVAX.BITNET): What's going on? Earlier predictions had us fearing price in- creases averaging 16 - 18 percent for our 1992 subscriptions. Now one vendor is predicting a 3.5 percent average base price in- crease for non-USA titles in 1992. Do you have any other informa- tion regarding journal price increases for 1992? It would be wonderful if we could expect only a 3.5 percent increase but it is quite a difference. From Dorrie Senghas, University of Vermont Medical Library (DSENGHAS@UVMVM.BITNET): I've been watching for some discussion of how other libraries will handle the cost of the SCIENCE CITATION INDEX Cumulation (1985-1989). The first letter I got from ISI with "The Offer You Cannot Refuse" made me a prepub offer of $33,000. When I followed up on this I found that with trade-ins I could bring the price down to $30,000 with a three-year payment plan. While this is appreciated I'm afraid that a medium size medical library with a book acquisition budget of about $75,000 simply cannot pay this kind of money. There's some irony here since my impression is that ISI has always expressed concern about the high cost of scientific journal subscriptions. From Jim Mouw, University of Chicago (mouw@midway.uchicago.edu): The latest issue of SERIALS (the journal of the United Kingdom Serials Group) contains the proceedings of the 1st European Seri- als Conference. Among those papers is "Pricing for Europe: A Librarian's View," by Ulrich Montag of the Bayerische Staatsbib- liothek, Germany. In discussing general pricing issues he notes that in 1976 the institutional price for TETRAHEDRON LETTERS (yes, the journal we all love to hate!) was DM662.50, or US$250, while the personal rate was DM159.00 (US$60). This makes the institutional rate about four times as much as the personal rate. In 1990 his library paid DM5,600.00, which was 16 times the per- sonal rate of DM348.00. In a classic example of understatement, he goes on to say: "Though publishers always tell librarians that they do not understand the economics of journal publishing, we dare say that this policy of differential pricing fails to work to the benefit of libraries." HAMAKER'S HAYMAKERS Chuck Hamaker, Louisiana State University, NOTCAH@LSUVM.BITNET. It has been almost two months since "Hamaker's Haymakers" last ap- peared in the Newsletter and much has changed in the serials world. The biggest change is the fact that the number one and number three scientific publishers have merged into the super one publisher. From work done at LSU by October Ivins, it appears that the new super pub- lisher commands over 40 percent of the serial budget at many ARL and ACRL institutions. If expenditures for CIS (Congressional Information Service), Greenwood, Praeger and Bergin and Garvey are considered, then the total dollar amount of our budgets supporting the E-P combi- nation could be well over the 40 percent level locally. By any stand- ard I am aware of, that makes the new combination a monopoly level concern for the rest of the scholarly publishing community. A communi- ty that has tried very hard to ignore the impact of the giants in the business on the smaller companies. It suggests that not all publishers can have the same concerns because scale not only magnifies, it dis- torts priorities. Researchers who have never heard of Elsevier are going to be hurt by the continuing and I predict accelerating drain on traditional library resources that ultimately provide the mainstay of support for humani- ties, liberal arts and social science publication. If 1,000 copies was the standard scholarly print run for the 70s and 500 the standard for the 80s, the 90s according to printing trade literature can already produce economical runs of 250 copies. That level used to be called a limited edition! But the battle of the nineties will not be in such areas. If Else- vier-Pergamon dominates the traditional journal it cannot be permitted to dominate the electronic era. Too much is at stake. There is a grow- ing voice within the electronic networks that mirrors much of what the newsletter and pamphlet literature meant for previous centuries: a voice to communicate and to think jointly in a new medium. Something quite different from the Orwellian group think is developing on the networks that in its infancy bears perhaps the greatest challenge to the primacy of the journal, and that is peers discussing problems they face together. The primary scholarly journal, thanks to these evolving networks, is rapidly becoming the last resort, not the first, for scientific and cultural advances. That is, by the time an idea is pushed through the big journals, the development has already been seen, evaluated and assimilated through other media. Without access to those other media, in fact, the primary journal runs the risk of be- coming not only passe, but just plain 18th century, with instant re- joinder. As a result, major issues that will be faced in the next few years such as the form copyright (or "copyleft") should take in the electronic media, will not be debated so much as reported in the print journal. The results of the debate and consensus development going on right now in forums such as the HUMANIST bulletin board will be old hat when they hit print. The liveliness of debate thus is shifting from print as podium. The immediacy of the clash of ideas which the journal often heralded is passing from print to the electronic form. In the midst of momentous developments in the serial world, however, a more modest voice deserves to be heard, and that concerns the fate and importance of the book in our libraries. A recent longitudinal circu- lation study at LSU suggests that the old 20 percent of the collection provides 80 percent of the circulation adage has it wrong. In data from fall of 1987 to May of 1991, LSU's data show 43 percent of the physical items in the total collection circulated. This astounding number suggests volume count and diversity are primary to successful libraries. I believe analysis will demonstrate that we do not buy books nobody uses, as is commonly believed, we collect for cyclical (4-7) year use and relatively short term use. This longitudinal ap- proach provides evidence on patterns that are obscured by the normal "snapshot" approach to circulation studies. It suggests the academic distance we sometimes feel over the question of whether anyone uses what we buy is mistaken. And the large battle over how much money serials will absorb before we find a way to bring balance back into our purchasing patterns is more than academic; it concerns the very health of the scholarly enterprise. Evidence of the vitality of circu- lation in academic and research libraries is as germane to the debate of the future of scholarly information as data on the price of jour- nals. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Readers of the NEWSLETTER ON SERIALS PRICING ISSUES are encouraged to share the information in the newsletter by electronic or paper meth- ods. We would appreciate credit if you quote from the newsletter. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ The NEWSLETTER ON SERIALS PRICING ISSUES (ISSN: 1046-3410) is pub- lished by the editor as news is available. Editor: Marcia Tuttle, BITNET: TUTTLE@UNC.BITNET; Faxon's DataLinx: TUTTLE; Paper mail: Seri- als Department, C.B. #3938 Davis Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill NC 27599-3938; Telephone: 919 962-1067; FAX: 919 962-0484. Editorial Board: Deana Astle (Clemson University), Jerry Curtis (Springer Verlag New York), Charles Hamaker (Louisiana State University), James Mouw (University of Chicago), and Heather Steele (Blackwell's Periodicals Division). The Newsletter is available on BITNET, and ALANET. EBSCO and Readmore Academic customers may re- ceive the Newsletter in paper format from EBSCO and Readmore, respec- tively. Back issues of the Newsletter are available electronically free of charge through BITNET from the editor. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ ******ENDOFFILE***ENDOFFILE***ENDOFFILE***ENDOFFILE***ENDOFFILE*******