Newsletter on Serial Pricing Issues 091 (July 30, 1993) URL = http://hegel.lib.ncsu.edu/stacks/serials/nspi/nspi-ns091 ISSN: 1046-3410 NEWSLETTER ON SERIALS PRICING ISSUES NO 91 -- July 30, 1993 Editor: Marcia Tuttle CONTENTS 91.1 LETTER FROM JAMES KELS: ELSEVIER PRICES 91.2 ELECTRONIC JOURNALS: THE "RED SAGE" APPROACH, Robert Badger and Margaret Wallace 91.3 FROM THE MAILBOX 91.1 LETTER FROM JAMES KELS: ELSEVIER PRICES J.J.F. Kels, Chairman, Elsevier Science Publishers BV, P.O. Box 2400, 1000 CK Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Amsterdam, July 29th 1993 Dear Librarian: Earlier this month I wrote that the prices for Elsevier and Pergamon jour- nals in North America in 1994 (and in subsequent years) would be set in dollars. We wanted to make this announcement to libraries at the time we also informed subscription agents, so that you would learn it directly from us. We also wanted to provide an indication of the overall price level as early as possible, to assist you in budgeting. Regrettably, because these announcements preceded the release of the prices themselves, they set off a series of alarms and criticisms based upon spec- ulation. This is unfortunate, for the intent of the policy change is to provide greater stability for the North American market. I am quite confi- dent that this policy will provide the longer term benefit of significantly reduced price volatility from year to year. For several years, librarians in the US have complained that Elsevier and other publishers pricing in foreign currencies have not provided a mecha- nism to reduce the effects of currency swings. We have been criticized for not intervening to smooth exchange rates from year to year. We took these criticisms quite seriously and set out to establish a system or mechanism for mitigating the effects of currency changes and for provid- ing a greater level of price stability. Just as in every year in the past, exchange rates were set for 1994 based upon the best available rate at the moment of price setting. However, in order to provide longer-term stabili- ty, several other steps were involved. 1. We wanted to set firm prices on a timely basis and guarantee those pric- es for a full subscription year. Therefore, we shifted the responsibili- ty of handling forward currency transactions from the agents to our- selves. 2. We created a plan for handling these currency transactions over time in such a way as to minimize the up and down swings. This will improve the predictability of our prices from year to year. 3. We made a very major commitment in the money markets for transactions to be carried out months in the future, which included the need to careful- ly estimate the total dollar revenues to be received. For this reason, it was necessary to require North American customers to pay for sub- scriptions in dollars. In that connection, it should be noted that in the past very, very few libraries ever purchased on a direct basis from us, so this is, in reality, not a change for most libraries. We have taken these steps and are committed to providing an equitable and honest pricing program for 1994, just as we have in the past. For the years ahead, in addition to dollar pricing we are also working to stabilize the base (guilder, pound, etc.) price through increased cost containment and further changes in our journal program. Finally, to correct two misstatements already circulating: o We have not engaged in "dual pricing." To restate and emphasize again: the dollar price was set based upon the prevailing exchange rate at the date the rate was fixed, just as has been done every year. The dollar price would have been the same for 1994 under either policy. o Prices have not been set "to insure there would be no change in dollar [prices]" and have not been "based upon last year's dollar rate." The same criteria were used to set prices for 1994 as were used in 1992 and 1993: anticipated growth in volumes, anticipated costs, and anticipated reductions (or increases) in the number of subscriptions. The last fac- tor has become significant in pricing. Full details of all of our prices will be sent to the vendors on Friday, July 30. Our US dollar prices for subscriptions invoiced out of the United Kingdom are down around 5%. For journal titles invoiced from Amsterdam and Lausanne, you will see a dollar increase of between 1% and 2%. I regret the premature speculation on prices and exchange rates. When each library actually examines the price in dollars it will pay for its package of Elsevier and Pergamon journals, it will likely find a decrease in total price. And, over the longer term, I trust you will find that we have been successful in our very sincere efforts to reduce the volatility of currency swings on prices in North America. Sincerely yours, J.J.F. Kels Chairman 91.2 ELECTRONIC JOURNALS: THE "RED SAGE" APPROACH Robert C. Badger and Margaret K. Wallace, Springer-Verlag New York, badger@spint.compuserve.com. The Red Sage partners, Springer-Verlag New York, AT&T Bell Labs, and the University of California, San Francisco have introduced an electronic li- brary that gives a new twist to existing online models. In the Red Sage project, the "look" of print journals and the "feel" of the library are reproduced on the computer screen. This three-year experiment, which now is being extended to other publishers, is generating intense interest in the publishing, communications, and education/library communities and it will go a long way in defining the information products of the future. How It All Started Dr. Hans-Ulrich Daniel, President and CEO, Springer-Verlag NY and Bob Bad- ger, Manager, Electronic Media, were approached during the Coalition for Networked Information meeting in Washington in November 1991 by Chet Grycz of the University of California President's Office. Mr. Grycz said that one of the campuses of the University of California, the University of Califor- nia, San Francisco (UCSF), was interested in developing an experimental project to test electronic delivery of journals to faculty and students all over the UCSF campus. That first meeting led to a series of discussions with Mr. Richard Lucier, University Librarian and Assistant Vice Chancellor for Academic Information Management at UCSF, and ultimately to a decision that Springer and UCSF would seriously pursue the idea of testing electron- ic delivery in two subject areas, molecular biology and radiology. During our discussions with UCSF we were also aware that AT&T Bell Labs was already at work on a similar idea. Several years ago Bell Labs had asked Springer and several other publishers if they could use some of our jour- nals in a test project that would attempt to deliver electronic versions of journals to professionals within Bell Labs. To do this they developed an innovative software program that they later named RightPages(TM). The idea of this program was to create -- electronic- ally -- the look and feel of a library at a scientist's terminal. The pro- gram also alerted scientists to new journal articles that were available on the system. As we thought about our project with UCSF we concluded that RightPages would be a way not only to manage the flow of information around the net- work but to alert scientists about new publications. AT&T joined our dis- cussions in June 1992; in early November we all agreed we would proceed; and by early February we were ready for the first phase of the Red Sage Project. The first phase of Red Sage, named for the restaurant where the three part- ners met and decided to proceed with the project, is really a period during which we tested the system and software without end-users at UCSF. This test includes two Springer radiology journals, the _European Journal of Nuclear Medicine_ and _Neuroradiology_ loaded as bit mapped page images plus an ASCII file for each page. The first phase started February 1, 1993 and ended July 30, 1993. In this first phase Springer included a separate halftone file for one of the journals, _Neuroradiology_. The halftones in this file were produced by scanning the halftones in _Neuroradiology_ at 8 bits or 256 gray levels to provide more detail for the halftone images which will enable scientists to bring up onto the screen a particular halftone for better definition. How the System Works at UCSF After logging into the RightPages system, the scientists at the University of California see an array of journal covers on their screens, similar to the display of periodicals in a library. To see which issues of a particu- lar journal are available on the system, the user need only "click" with the mouse on the displayed cover. After selecting an issue (again using the mouse) the table of contents is displayed. Articles in the issue are viewed by simply pointing to their entries in the table of contents. Journal is- sues can also be browsed page by page, and articles can be printed on de- mand on local laser printers. To help keep track of current publications, the RightPages system also alerts people to newly published articles in subject areas in which they have registered an interest. Individual users can create personal interest profiles, i.e., a list of journal names and various keywords that describe their areas of technical interest. The system will use these profiles to automatically search the contents of all incoming journals. When articles matching a profile are found, the users are notified via electronic mail. The next time the user logs on to the RightPages system, these articles are highlighted for easy reference. To accomplish the alerting function Bell Labs subjects Springer-Verlag's bit mapped journal pages to an OCR scan that produces an ASCII version of each journal page. At the same time RightPages matches the ASCII text to the user profiles and alerts users to new journals they want to see on a regular basis and to some they don't have in their profile but which have articles containing their keywords. Project Implementation Each of the Red Sage partners has formed project teams. The Springer group has worked closely for the past several months with their counterparts at Bell Labs and UCSF to develop procedures to transfer journals in electronic form so that Bell Labs and the university can work with the material. Specifically we decided to: o Deliver in electronic form all of the Springer radiology journals, starting with the first 1993 issues, by June 1 (i.e., all radiology titles will be loaded on the RightPages database and available on the UCSF network, ready for access by scientists). All of the molecular biology journals will be on the network by the end of November 1993. o Begin supplying SGML tagged journal headers in early 1994. o Test content delivery alternatives by supplying journal issues as Post- Script files. o Explore more efficient avenues of data transfer; e.g., transmitting journal pages as scanned images via Internet rather than mailing comput- er tapes. Next Steps for Red Sage The primary objective of Springer-Verlag's participation in Red Sage is to explore some of the technical and behavioral issues associated with elec- tronic delivery of primary journal information to scientists at their desks. By June of 1994 we hope to be in a position to expand Red Sage to another university campus. Other publishers are also beginning to understand that Red Sage could be important in the development of standards for electronic delivery and have asked if they can participate. Thus far we have had discussions with the American Chemical Society, the British Medical Association, Wiley, the _New England Journal of Medicine_ and others who have expressed an interest in joining the project. While we think the project will go a long way to help us define the re- quirements for electronic delivery and usage it is important to understand Red Sage is only an experiment. No revenues will be generated during the three years of the project and, indeed, all three organizations, Bell Labs, the University of California, San Francisco and Springer-Verlag have made significant investments in computer software, hardware and digital produc- tion technologies, in order to participate in the project. Thus far those of us who are involved with the project at Springer think the cost and effort are well worth it. 91.3 FROM THE MAILBOX The mailbox is: tuttle@gibbs.oit.unc.edu. >From Kathy Schmidt, University of Wisconsin LaCrosse, SCHMIDT@UWLAX.EDU: Regarding no. 90's FROM THE EDITOR article about claiming statistics: I showed the Readmore article to the Library Assistant in charge of claiming and she said she would like to have a list of the top 25 non-fulfilling publishers. There are many that come up with flimsy excuses as to why they will not fulfill our claims. If they don't plan to fulfill them I would like to know so we can stop wasting our time trying to get them to fulfill. (Of course we would probably also consider cancellation if they really did confess.) ----- >From Scott VanJacob, Dickinson College, VANJACOB@dickinson.edu: The third annual Latin American Periodical Price Index will be available in the August issue of the _SALALM Newsletter_ (ISSN 0098-6275). Over 900 Latin American periodical and newspaper subscription prices, provided by Faxon, the University of Texas, and the Library of Congress, are indexed here. The overall cost of a periodical for 1992 (minus newspapers) was $68.67. A weighted price using the holdings of major U.S. Latin American collections is almost $10 lower at $58.81. This is an overall price in- crease from 1991 of approximately 2%. You will find price breakdowns by country, region, and subject in the newsletter. +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Statements of fact and opinion appearing in the _Newsletter on Serials Pricing Issues_ are made on the responsibility of the authors alone, and do not imply the endorsement of the editor, the editorial board, or the Uni- versity of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ 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 published by the editor through the Office of Information Technology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, as news is available. Editor: Marcia Tuttle, Internet: tuttle@gibbs.oit.unc.edu; Paper mail: Serials Department, CB #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), Janet Fisher (MIT Press), Charles Hamaker (Louisiana State Universi- ty), Daniel Jones (University of Texas Health Science Center), James Mouw (University of Chicago), and Heather Steele (Blackwell's Periodicals Divi- sion). The Newsletter is available on the Internet, Blackwell's CONNECT, and Readmore's ROSS. EBSCO customers may receive the Newsletter in paper format. To subscribe to the newsletter send a message to LISTSERV@GIBBS.OIT.UNC.EDU saying SUBSCRIBE PRICES [YOUR NAME]. Be sure to send that message to the listserver and not to Prices. You must include your name. To unsubscribe (no name required in message), you must send the message from the e-mail address by which you are subscribed. If you have problems, please contact the editor. Back issues of the Newsletter are available electronically. To get a list of available issues send a message to LISTSERV@GIBBS.OIT.UNC.EDU saying INDEX PRICES. To retrieve a specific issue, the message should read: GET PRICES PRICES.xx (where "xx" is the number of the issue). +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ *****ENDOFFILE*****ENDOFFILE*****ENDOFFILE*****ENDOFFILE*****ENDOFFILE*****