Newsletter on Serial Pricing Issues 004 (June 25, 1991) URL = http://hegel.lib.ncsu.edu/stacks/serials/nspi/nspi-ns004 Archive PRICES: file prices.ns4, part 1/1, size 26923 bytes: ------------------------------ Cut here ------------------------------ ISSN: 1046-3410 NEWSLETTER ON SERIALS PRICING ISSUES N.S. NUMBER 4 -- June 25, 1991 Editor: Marcia Tuttle CONTENTS FROM THE EDITOR: THE A & I QUESTION, Marcia Tuttle : A RESPONSE FROM IOP, Susan George SYMPOSIUM ON RESOURCE SHARING IN SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING, Ann O'Neill FAXON ANNOUNCES FORMATION OF FAXON RESEARCH SERVICES, INC., Press release ARL DIRECTORY TO MEET NEED FOR CATALOG OF ELECTRONIC PUBLI- CATION, Ann Okerson FROM THE MAILBOX HAMAKER'S HAYMAKERS, Chuck Hamaker FROM THE EDITOR: THE A & I QUESTION Marcia Tuttle, TUTTLE@UNC.BITNET I have just read recent discussions on HUMANIST concerning the "disad- vantages" of electronic journals. One of these is the lack of indexing and abstracting for the contents of these journals. Printed indexes and indexes of printed materials are apparently most reluctant to expand their scope to electronic journals. As a result, says Paul Gherman in HUMANIST, librarians are calling them "gray literature." In this issue of the newsletter Ann O'Neill and Chuck Hamaker also refer to the problem of indexing electronic publications. What follows is an expanded version of a message to Christian Boissonnas, who had for- warded the HUMANIST messages to me. Why, I wonder naively, cannot one or more of us types who create e- journals create an e-mail A&I service for the electronic journals and make it available on The Internet? It would be a natural for us li- brarian-types. Would anyone be willing to offer this as a free serv- ice? Could one charge for a service delivered over The Internet? This could be a one- or a few-person effort at first. When (not if) the service takes off, someone will offer to buy it (and raise the price). As I understand it, there are e-groups that educate and advise e-edi- tors and moderators. Their archives could contain a promo for the A&I service for the benefit of future publications, telling them how to contact those who are doing the indexing. All e-publications that could be identified could be sent an e-blurb (how's my jargon??) ask- ing them to add the A&I ID (Internet address) to their mailing lists for the benefit of their subscribers. This may not appeal too much to the commercial publishers of e-jour- nals, but they are not the ones we are concerned about here. I'll bet that when they begin to publish e-mail-only journals they will find a way to get them indexed and abstracted, and they will find a way to charge for this access, as well. Our creativity and imaginations have gotten us this far; can indexing be far behind? Why does it all sound so simple? Is it because I'm a librarian? Here's Christian's response to my message: Interesting question you ask. I had never thought about it in this way, and yet I should have. I index ACQNET, mostly for my own use. I send the index to new members so they can see what we've been talk- ing about, but I have no idea what people do with it. They certainly don't ask me for back stuff on the basis of the index very often. I think most of us, including a&i people, have not really made a leap away from traditional journals long enough to have developed the notion that it doesn't have to come down to paper eventually, or that non-paper stuff has the same, or higher, value. I bet you the indexing service people are thinking about it, though. We'll have to ask in Atlanta [at ALA]. But if the "indexing service people" don't solve our problem, someone else will have to -- those of us who need the service. In HUMANIST, Stevan Harnad brings up the question of standardization. He's right, EVENTUALLY we will need standardization. But doesn't this need arise from the lack thereof? If we have nothing, we have no need for standardization in a&i services. We already are dealing with the need for a standard citation for e-pubs; this, when it becomes known and used, should carry over into the a&i's. Let's work on this. Pick my editorial apart! What are your ideas? : A RESPONSE FROM IOP Submitted by Susan C. George, Dartmouth College, Susan.C.George@ mac.dartmouth.edu. Dear Ms. George: Thank you for your e-mail of last Tuesday. WAVES IN RANDOM MEDIA was launched in January and is available on subscription at $215/year. The journal is also being sent free of charge to all subscribers of JOURNAL OF PHYSICS A: MATHEMATICAL AND GENERAL, including those who take JOURNAL OF PHYSICS A as part of a combination subscription. Next year, WAVES IN RANDOM MEDIA will continue to be available on independent subscription. The subscription rate for 1992 will not be decided until July. Because we believe WAVES IN RANDOM MEDIA covers a core area of phys- ics, we ARE seriously considering including it in the combination subscription. We have not yet taken a final decision and will do so at the time we fix subscription rates. Our offer of combination subscriptions at a discount, initially cen- tred around the Journals of Physics is of course of long standing, as is the fact that the contents of the combination have evolved over the years. Individual subscribers of course have always had the choice of staying with the combination or subscribing to individual journals. We, in turn, take careful note of the decisions that purchasers take. Yours sincerely Kurt Paulus Publishing Director Instite of Physics SYMPOSIUM ON RESOURCE DEVELOPMENT IN THE SCIENCES AND ENGINEERING Ann O'Neill, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, School of Information and Library Science, ONEIA.ILS@mhs.unc.edu. On May 28th and 29th librarians, faculty and administrators from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, North Carolina State University, and Duke University gathered to participate in a symposium entitled "Cooperative Information Resources Development in the Scien- ces and Engineering." The symposium served as a planning session for a Council on Library Resources grant involving these universities. Guest speakers included Martin Cummings, Director Emeritus of the National Library of Medicine, Richard Lucier of the Welch Medical Library at Johns Hopkins University, and Ann Okerson of the Association of Re- search Libraries. Although the focus of the symposium was upon cooperative resource sharing, issues concerning serials were raised. Richard Lucier and Ann Okerson reflected the concerns of many faculty members that universi- ties are creating the research, giving it away to commercial publish- ers, and then buying it back at very high prices. Many expressed the need for university and society publishers to take more control of scholarly publishing to help reduce libraries' costs for serials. Of related interest was the need to make authors, especially younger faculty members, aware of the copyright law as it affects ownership of information. Often authors are not aware that the copyright agreement signed upon publication gives rights to the information in the article to the publisher, not the author. Discussion then followed on ways to remedy this situation and on which organizations should be involved. Faculty members and librarians raised concerns over access to titles which may be held cooperatively, ways to counter the amount of infor- mation produced to meet promotion and tenure requirements, and how to make editors more aware of practices and policies of the publishers of their journals. There was also discussion of editorial boards, ethics of publishing, and problems with the refereeing system. No symposium would be complete without discussion of electronic jour- nals. While this was not a major concern at this meeting, all partici- pants did view it as an important part of the future of scholarly publishing. Issues of technology, access, indexing, and how this would fit into the present promotion and tenure system were discussed. The participants found this to be a useful symposium. Each group was able to learn from the others and became more aware of the needs and views of each sector. The need for cooperation among all members of the scientific and scholarly publishing community to help find solu- tions to the present serials crisis was enforced at this symposium. FAXON ANNOUNCES FORMATION OF FAXON RESEARCH SERVICES, INC. PRESIDENT APPOINTED TO FAXON RESEARCH SERVICES, INC. Press releases from The Faxon Company, 15 Southwest Park, Westwood MA 02090. May 29, 1991.- The Faxon Company is pleased to announce the formation of Faxon Research Services, Inc., a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Faxon Company. Faxon Research Services is charged with providing a current awareness and document delivery service to knowledge-based workers, particularly those working in scientific, technical and medi- cal fields. Over the past century, serial publications have become one of the major vehicles for the dissemination of knowledge. The number of seri- al titles published each year has steadily grown, and until recently, libraries were able to keep the pace with this information explosion. Their subscription budgets increased so they could collect issues in their library "just in case" a patron might want something in those publications at some future date. But the continual expansion in available publications coupled with static or reduced library budgets has fueled the demand for new strategies to meet library patrons' information needs. The capabilities of information retrieval systems, networks, and the increasing computer literacy of library patrons provide the opportunity for libraries to extend their services beyond their local collections. Libraries must find new ways to deliver spe- cific information on a "just in time" basis, independent of local ownership, providing readers with what they want, when they want it. "Faxon Research Services was created to meet the growing need in the marketplace for a convenient, low cost, legal way to obtain individual articles, as a supplement to purchasing such materials in the form of annual subscriptions," explains Richard R. Rowe, Faxon's president and chief executive officer. "Until now, this need was met largely by copying and distributing published materials. While relatively inex- pensive, this method carries hidden labor costs and fails to address legitimate publisher concerns regarding royalties and copyrights." Faxon Research Services plans to address both readers' and publishers' needs in this area. In the fall of 1991, it will launch a set of "just in time" services designed to complement its traditional "just in case" serials subscription vendor services. "We see this move as supportive of traditional serials subscriptions to libraries which publishers and subscription agencies like Faxon provide today," notes Dr. Rowe. "We expect that the new 'just in time' services will stimulate more purchases of journal subscriptions." ------- The Faxon Company is pleased to announce the appointment of Thomas J. Michalak to the post of president of Faxon Research Services, Inc., a wholly-owned subsidiary of The Faxon Company. Michalak will join Faxon Research Services in August, 1991. He pres- ently holds the position of associate vice president of Academic Serv- ices and director of University Libraries at Carnegie Mellon Universi- ty. He was the 1989 recipient of the American Library Association's Hugh C. Atkinson Memorial Award for academic library leadership and innovation in library automation. He has held positions at Columbia University, Indiana University (Bloomington) and the University of Illinois (Urbana). "Tom is well known and respected in the library and publishing commun- ity," according to Richard R. Rowe, Faxon's president and chief execu- tive officer. "He has been deeply involved in the development of new information technologies that can deliver customized information to end users on demand. We expect Tom will put that experience to work as president of Faxon Research Services." The Faxon Company is a global information management company special- izing in serial acquisition and information management services. The company's electronic network links over 30,000 publishers to more than 60,000 academic, corporate, government, medical and community librar- ies throughout the world. ARL DIRECTORY TO MEET NEED FOR CATALOG OF ELECTRONIC PUBLICATION Ann Okerson, Association of Research Libraries, 1527 New Hampshire Avenue NW, Washington DC 20036, 202 232-2466 (voice), 202 462-7849 (fax), ARLHQ@UMDC.BITNET. (Press release) Responding to the library and academic communities' increasing use of and interest in the burgeoning number of electronic publications, the Association of Research Libraries will publish a hard-copy Directory of Electronic Journals, Newsletters, and Scholarly Discussion Lists. With the emergence of microcomputers and linked networks as vehicles for scholarly exchange, the problem of how and where to find various academic forums has risen. Although many journals, newsletters, and scholarly lists may be accessed free of charge through BITNET, Inter- net, and affiliated academic networks, it is not always a simple chore to find out what is available. The Directory is a compilation of en- tries for over 500 scholarly lists, about 30 journals, over 60 news- letters, and 15 "other" titles including some newsletter-digests. The directory will give specific instructions for access to each publica- tion. The objective is to assist the user in finding relevant publica- tions and connecting to them quickly, even if not completely versed in the full range of user-access systems. Content editor of the journals/newsletters section is Michael Strange- love, Network Research Facilitator, University of Ottawa. Editor of the scholarly discussion lists/interest groups is Diane Kovacs of the Kent State University Libraries. The printed ARL directory is derived from widely accessible networked files maintained by Strangelove and Kovacs. The directory will point to these as the principal, continu- ously updated, and free-of-charge sources for accessing such materi- als. The publication will be available to ARL member libraries for $10 and to non-members for $20 (add $5 postage per directory for foreign ad- dresses). Orders of 6 or more copies receive a 10% discount. The Di- rectory will be produced in 8 1/2 by 11" paper-bound format; scholarly lists will be grouped by broad subject areas, and journals and news- letters in alphabetical order. All orders must be PREPAID and sent to the Association of Research Libraries. A publication date of July 8 is expected. Updated editions are planned. The Association of Research Libraries is a not-for-profit organization representing 119 research libraries in the United States and Canada. Its mission is to identify and influence forces affecting the future of research libraries in the process of scholarly communication. ARL programs and services promote equitable access to, and effective use of recorded knowledge in support of teaching, research, scholarship, and community service. These programs include annual statistical pub- lications, federal relations and information policy, and enhancing access to scholarly information resources through telecommunications, collection development, preservation, and bibliographic control. The following order form is provided for your convenience. Feel free to print it and attach it to your check or money order, payable to ARL. US Dollars only. ALL ORDERS MUST BE PREPAID. Office of Scientific & Academic Publishing Association of Research Libraries 1527 New Hampshire Avenue, NW Washington, DC 20036 USA Name_____________________________________________ Address__________________________________________ _________________________________________________ _________________________________________________ Number of Copies _________ Amount Enclosed _____________ ______________________________________________________________________ FROM THE MAILBOX The mailbox is: TUTTLE@UNC.BITNET. >From Heinz Barschall, University of Wisconsin, NUCLEAR@WISCPSL.BITNET: In "From the Mailbox" (NS 3) the reference to the "Report of the APS Task Force on Electronic Information Systems" should be BULLETIN OF THE AMERICAN PHYSICAL SOCIETY, Vol. 36, p. 1119-51 (1991). Arnold Hirshon (AHIRSHON@WSU.BITNET) passed on a note from Barbara Ford, ACRL President, regarding an item in the last issue about ALA charges for reproducing copyrighted materials: Thanks for forwarding the note to me. We will put the item on the ACRL Board agenda. However, the practice is different than indicated in the message. When ALA's Rights & Permissions Office receives a request from a faculty member, institution, or copy service indicat- ing that the material they are requesting for reproduction in coursepacks or custom anthologies will be provided or sold to the students at cost of reproduction then they ... usually waive the fee which would be charged for commercial reproduction of ALA copyright- ed material and allow one-time use of the material. Also, ALA has been charging $10 per page for reproduction of an unlimited number of copies, not $11 .... Chuck Hamaker (NOTCAH@LSUVM.BITNET) writes, with regard to Bill Brit- ten's message in the last issue: I am familiar with his study reported in LA:PT. What was interesting about the LSU data was that only 10 percent of circulations were "repeats" over the 3 1/2 years, so the 80/20 rule could not be hold- ing for this collection. In addition, we know from work by Paskoff and Perrault that only about 4 percent of the collection is dupli- cates. Part of the difference may be that we did not count renewals as additional circulations, so have a picture of unique out-of-the- building use which stresses the diversity in the collection. I stand by my interpretation that diversity in book collections is a key to collection use. LSU has been such a good predictor that it may take someone like Mr. Britten to figure out why it is "different" here, but my guess is still that diversity is the key to circulation. Numbers reported at the University of Missouri-St. Louis show an almost 5-fold increase in circulation two years after the acquisi- tions budget was doubled for a single year. All of those extra funds went for monographs, and I believe that the wider the range of books, the more circulation there will be up to a certain size. What that size of collection or student body might be isn't clear, but two million volumes is not too much for 25,000 students -- it's barely enough. Evidence that establishes the primacy of diversity in collections is fairly scarce at the moment. I'm heartened by our findings here and hope to publish a more thorough report in the future. I appreciate Mr. Britten's comment and because my report was brief did not go into details normally expected in a research re- port. There may be other definitional differences as well. We are still working on the study -- it is very much in-progress. >From Fred Friend, Librarian, University College, London, ucyl@ucl.ac. uk: RE: ELDRED SMITH, "RESOLVING THE ACQUISITIONS DILEMMA," MAY 1991, P. 231-40. Eldred Smith's article expressed many of my own feelings on the future of scholarly communication. Maybe he is too optimistic about the electronic publication and over-simplifies the solutions to the problems, but he is in tune with many people in wishing to plunge into the world of electronic publication and face the problems. The question posed by Eldred Smith, "Who leads?" is a real one, however. I know about the existing electronic journals but we need to arrange for some major research to be published only in electronic form to start the ball rolling. Once it starts I hope it will be like a snowball gathering momentum and size as it rolls! As librarians we can talk about publishing research electronically, but what can we do to make it happen? Academic staff appear to listen to us sympa- thetically but are we reaching the key people who could make things happen? I would be interested to know if US librarians agree that this is an important consideration. >From Ann Okerson, Association of Research Libraries, OKERSON@UMDC. BITNET: The newest issue of PUBLISHERS WEEKLY (June 21, 1991), p. 19-26, carries a long, well-researched article by column editor Gayle Feld- man called "Going Dutch." It describes Wolters Kluwer's and Else- vier's positioning in the international PSP (professional and schol- arly publishing) marketplace, strategies, plans, and recent activi- ties. Describing the leaders' behavior as lucrative and discreet, Ms. Feldman contributes a great deal to our picture of international STM and scholarly publications. >From Carol Hutchins, Indiana University, Hutchins@ucs.indiana.edu: Please find attached the latest newsletter from Dr. Bob Park, who is Washington lobbyist for the American Physical Society. Of possible interest to your readership is the point about restrictions on pub- lication of CERN (Centre Europeenne de Recherches Nucleaires) work. If CERN authors are restricted to publishing in European journals, all their work goes direct into the hands of Elsevier. Take a look at PHYSICS LETTERS B or NUCLEAR PHYSICS. ....CERN REMOVES RESTRICTION ON PUBLICATION OF RESEARCH RESULTS. While denying it has ever been the policy of CERN to restrict publication to European journals Director General Carlo Rubbia announced that it is not the policy now. CERN scientists have adhered to the non-policy since CERN was established. This removes a long-standing source of friction between CERN and the American Physical Society, which publishes the PHYSICAL REVIEW. HAMAKER'S HAYMAKERS Chuck Hamaker, Louisiana State University, NOTCAH@LSUVM.BITNET. >From the Sunday, June 2, 1991 NEW YORK TIMES, Section 3, p. 1, comes a reminder that people other than librarians are vitally concerned about the future of communication in the US. Alfred C. Sikes, Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission wants to speed up the adoption of new technology. "He sees a world in which people could use satel- lites and high speed fiber-optic communication lines to take college courses at home, have television sets double as multimedia computer work stations, use communication networks to transmit the contents of an entire library in seconds and track down a person anywhere on the globe to deliver the data." One of his goals is to overhaul communica- tions policy in the US "and put companies on an equal footing with those in Europe and Japan." Any attempts to change the rules governing communications provokes intense opposition, according to the article. "Today's communications laws and industry lobbyists have combined to form the equivalent of their own Army Corps of Engineers. Much like the corps penchant for damming free-flowing streams, today's communi- cations lobbies too often block a stream of ideas and innovations," according to Sikes. He came to the position of FCC chair from the Commerce Department's National Telecommunications and Information Administration, which sets communication policy for the executive branch. "While there, Mr. Sikes produced a massive analysis of trends and policy prescriptions that guides much of his agenda today." With an upcoming vacancy when Sherrie P. Marshall's term expires, ALA and other library organizations need to think about influencing the choice of a new member of the commission. Sikes, although a Republican committed to laissez faire competition, has shown a willingness ac- cording to the Times to use government to pry open new markets for competitors. The library community may have a major champion in advo- cating the free flow of information and the technology and rules to make that happen. It sounds like he is embattled enough to need sup- port and might well welcome support of an organization which can be as effective as ALA. Paul M. Gherman, University Librarian at Virginia Polytechnic Insti- tute and State University, has just done the profession a real service by releasing what will become the foundation documents to the chal- lenge electronic journals present for libraries. "Report of the Task Force on the Electronic Journal" (Paul Metz chairs the task force) develops a basic philosophy because of the solutions that VPI has chosen for problems of access, claiming and storage for e-journals. Any library facing the problem of what to do with these titles should contact Gherman for a copy of the report. The next issue in dealing with this new format is how to index the titles, as it certainly will be a while before commercial indexes even notice them, let alone pick them up for indexing. Some, as those who are on ACQNET know, have self generated occasional file indexes which at some level might be inte- grated into electronic storage media, but it will probably take NISO or some other organization getting it together enough to enter the 21st century before we have reliable indexing for these titles, though surely someone knows a better way. The VPI task force report was re- leased May 17, 1991. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ 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******* ------------------------------ Cut here ------------------------------