Newsletter on Serial Pricing Issues 102 (January 10, 1994) URL = http://hegel.lib.ncsu.edu/stacks/serials/nspi/nspi-ns102 ISSN: 1046-3410 NEWSLETTER ON SERIALS PRICING ISSUES NO 102 -- January 10, 1994 Editor: Marcia Tuttle CONTENTS 102.1 BRAINSTORMING ABOUT THE SERIALS CRISIS, Pat Dominguez and Luke Swind- ler 102.2_JOURNAL OF CHROMATOGRAPHY_ CHANGES, John Tagler 102.3 THE INSTITUTE FOR SCIENTIFIC INFORMATION'S RESPONSE TO COPYRIGHT DISCUSSION IN THE _NEWSLETTER ON SERIALS PRICING ISSUES_, Jacqueline Trolley 102.4 WORLD-WIDE DOCUMENT DELIVERY FOR SPRINGER-VERLAG JOURNALS BY CISTI 102.5 UPDATE ON UNITED STATES BOOK EXCHANGE, John T. Zubal 102.6 FROM THE MAILBOX 102.1 BRAINSTORMING ABOUT THE SERIALS CRISIS: PERSPECTIVES BASED ON THE NATIONAL HEALTH CARE DEBATE Patricia Buck Dominguez and Luke Swindler, University of North Caro- lina at Chapel Hill, ucodev@uncmvs.oit.unc.edu. The current debate over the provision and financing of health care reminds us of another crisis we know all too well: the serials crisis. Like health care, serials inflation is many times the level of infla- tion; like health care, users of serials do not directly pay the full cost; like health care, serials costs are threatening to destabilize the system of which they are a part. Just as we are debating how to provide universal and affordable access to health care, we need to rethink the fundamental assumptions underlying the provision of seri- als information. Are there ideas we could borrow from the health care debate to brainstorm approaches to the serials crisis, particularly as it relates to STM titles? Let us propose four perspectives for analyz- ing the serials crisis: 1. Managing competition. In this scenario, groups of individuals and institutions join together to buy health care services, using their combined financial clout to lower the price they pay and maximize access. Could librarians from a number of institutions unite to purchase serials for a price they negotiate with the publisher and vendor? This approach has already been successful in the case of some electronic titles, particularly with subscriptions to period- ical databases. Librarians from several institutions have already joined together to purchase information in electronic formats at a better price than they would have paid for it individually, while publishers and vendors have maximized their total sales and reve- nues. Why can we not expand this approach to cover paper formats? If there are legal problems, could lawyers on our campuses help us find ways to resolve them? 2. Regulating monopolies. How does one create competition or a fair pricing structure when pharmaceutical companies in the health care system or publishers in ours have a monopoly over their products? Should the government regulate the information monopolies, espe- cially those that take unfair advantage of their situation to charge excessive prices, as it does with utilities? How can we protect fair use and universal access within this environment, especially in terms of preventing contractual licensing agreements from eliminating it? Are there professors in the business and law schools on our campuses who could suggest ways to handle a monopo- listic situation so as to avoid paying exorbitant prices? 3. Limiting funds. One approach to controlling the cost of health care is to limit the amount of money spent on it. A few central payers would effectively be able to turn off the financial spigot. Do we librarians also have a spigot we can turn off, especially since a relatively small number of research institutions constitute most of the market for many specialized serials? Can we be more aggressive about limiting the amount of money we are willing to spend, partic- ularly on STM titles? If so, where do we begin? Do we limit expend- itures by cancelling individual titles, as we did in the past? Do we proceed more globally to limit the funds we spend on various sub- jects or with publishers? What policies can we develop with univer- sity administrators, faculty, and students to ensure fairness and equity within these fiscal limitations? 4. Changing the reward system. Both the health care crisis and the serials crisis can only be solved if the key players are willing to change ingrained patterns of behavior and modify the culture in which they operate. In the case of health care, one of the ways to control costs is for medical professionals to change their reward system so as to shift incentives away from expensive tertiary care to more cost-effective primary care. Within the world of scholarly communication, faculty and other researchers need to shift the reward mechanisms from an expensive quantitative model that empha- sizes the least-publishable unit and results in a proliferation of articles to a more qualitative one that is less costly. The recent attempts at Harvard and Stanford to base promotion and tenure deci- sions on a limited number of quality publications is an important step in this direction. What can we do to encourage this trend? There are other approaches to addressing the serials crisis. We hope everyone involved in the system of scholarly communication and who cares about its future will not only brainstorm about these issues, but more importantly, find workable solutions that meet the needs of our users for information within the fiscal constraints we all face. 102.2 _JOURNAL OF CHROMATOGRAPHY_ CHANGES John Tagler, Elsevier Science Publishers, 71732.1756@CompuServe.COM. [Received December 3, 1993. Apologies for not getting this message out sooner. -ed.] I want to alert serials librarians to a forthcoming change in volume num- bering for the _Journal of Chromatography_ in 1994. Letters explaining the changes and providing background information were sent to subscribers sev- eral weeks ago, but with the first issues of the 1994 subscription now arriving in libraries, I want to minimize any confusion. Following recommendations received from librarians and abstracting & index- ing services, _Journal of Chromatography_ and _Journal of Chromatography, Biomedical Applications_ will have independent volume numbers with the following changes introduced with the first issues of the 1994 subscrip- tion: 1993 volumes: 1994 volumes: _Jrl of Chromatography_ _Jrl of Chromatography A_ volumes 623 - 651 volumes 652 - 682 _Jrl of Chromatography, _Journal of Chromatography B: Biomedical Applications_ Biomedical Applications_ volumes 612 - 622 volumes 652 - 662 Anyone requiring further information can contact the Elsevier Science Jour- nal Information Center in New York, tel 212 633-3750, fax 212 633-3764. 102.3 THE INSTITUTE FOR SCIENTIFIC INFORMATION'S RESPONSE TO COPYRIGHT DISCUSSION IN THE _NEWSLETTER ON SERIALS PRICING ISSUES_ Jacqueline Trolley, Institute for Scientific Information, jtrolley@isinet.com. ISI has been following the discussion on copyright fees in the _Newsletter on Serials Pricing Issues_ and would like to clarify our position on this important issue. ISI has been in the document delivery business since June of 1960, more than thirty years. Access to the full-text service, The Genuine Article, is integrated with each product that we produce. Full-text delivery is made from ISI's collection that covers the most recent five years of the world's important scientific and scholarly journals. Requests for earlier articles are fulfilled through a primary lender. Throughout its tenure as a document supplier, ISI has paid copyright royal- ties to the publisher. ISI has direct contracts with over 80% of the pub- lishers represented in our products (Current Contents, the Science Cita- tion Index, etc.). This financial arrangement was initiated long before the Copyright Clearance Center provided a service for the collection of royalty payments. Today, ISI pays the CCC when direct contracts are not in force. If a publisher will not permit document delivery from its journals ISI will, of course, honor its decision. (Approximately 19% of all journals in ISI databases cannot be used for document delivery.) ISI's strict adherence to copyright has fostered a great deal of trust between the primary publisher and ISI. This relationship will benefit the entire library community in the future as ISI, with the cooperation of primary publishers, moves ahead to provide -- in the near future -- elec- tronic full-text and document delivery. All members of the information community are well aware that the industry is going through a period of great change. It is difficult and expensive to make the transition from the reality of print collections to the vision of the future, the virtual library. Primary publishers are under great pressure. Revenue sources are shifting and some publishers have raised copyright fees. This escalation has not gone unobserved at ISI, resulting in an unbundling of the royalty fee and the processing fee -- a practice also followed by other suppliers such as UnCover. ISI continues to discuss this situation with the primary publishers and have pointed out that rapid and steep increases will not result in revenue increases but will only generate more problems. Most STM publishers are aware of this and are being responsive during this period of change. 102.4 WORLD-WIDE DOCUMENT DELIVERY FOR SPRINGER-VERLAG JOURNALS BY CISTI Press release submitted by Jerry Curtis, Springer-Verlag New York. Springer-Verlag New York and the Canada Institute for Scientific and Tech- nical Information (CISTI) are proud to announce their cooperation to pro- vide a world-wide document delivery service for all Springer-Verlag jour- nals. Full-text copies of virtually any article or conference report published in the English language will be available. Delivery options include first class mail, fax or overnight courier, and all documents are _copyright cleared_. Together, Springer-Verlag and CISTI are responsive to librarians' and re- searchers' needs. From the early 1970s, CISTI -- the largest repository for science and engineering materials in North America -- has pioneered infor- mation technology applications to provide scientific and technical informa- tion services directly to researchers and through librarians or information brokers. CISTI offers a broad range of quality services, such as rush re- quests, payment options, and volume discounts. CISTI is the only comprehensive source for all Springer-Verlag journals. Subject areas include the physical sciences, engineering, biology and medi- cine. [Orders may be placed] for a _copyright cleared_ Springer-Verlag document by e-mail, fax, or phone. For more information, please contact: Client Assistant, Document Delivery; Canada Institute for Scientific and Technical Information; Ottawa K1A 0S2, Canada. E-mail: cisti.docdel@nra.ca. Fax: 613 952-8243. Tel: 613 993-9251. 102.5 UPDATE ON UNITED STATES BOOK EXCHANGE John T. Zubal, President USBE, wk00337@worldlink.com. United States Book Exchange (formerly Universal Serials and Book Exchange) continues to hold the price line on back issues. Since early in 1990 when the present management revived the organization and moved USBE to its new headquarters in Cleveland, Ohio, USBE has sent approximately 150,000 back issues to libraries around the world for a service charge of $7 per issue plus postage. During the first year of USBE's revival, all libraries were considered, by definition, fully paid members and were invited to order as many issues as they wanted at no charge other than the $7 per issue. Starting January 1, 1991, USBE restored the membership fee of $150 per year and thereby guaranteed that its fresh stock would be reserved for members only. That means the USBE member needing a North Holland or Gordon and Breach publication (or, for that matter, an issue of _Chemical Abstracts_ from 1992 or 1993), pays only the seven dollar service charge per issue for any and all that we supply. Beginning in November, 1992, USBE embarked on its program of rebates to member libraries, thus effectively reducing the membership fee to a nominal ten dollars per year. For those who haven't seen recent USBE mailings, membership now works this way: A library orders an annual membership for $150. As soon as USBE is paid the fee, we issue a "rebate coupon" which bears a value of twenty back issues of the member's choice. That's a value of $140. The rebate coupon may be used only once during the membership year. We strongly suggest that, to maximize its value, it be submitted to USBE with a want list of at least 60 back issues because if you exercise the coupon with, say, a want list of 25 issues, chances are strong that we won't have twenty that match your needs. And starting January 1, 1994, libraries in the USA, Europe, and other ad- vanced countries may draw periodicals from our international donational program. That program was restricted to libraries in developing countries and former communist-dominated countries but, given the bad financial straits many libraries elsewhere have to face, we have opened the program to all libraries. If your library has no funding for back issues contact USBE for more information on how to obtain periodicals at no cost except freight. 102.6 FROM THE MAILBOX The mailbox is: tuttle@gibbs.oit.unc.edu. >From Batya Malik, Bar Ilan University, Ramat Gan, Israel, S05509@VM.BIU.AC.IL: In all the discussions about G & B's new price policy, nobody has mentioned that this publisher has a policy of sending invoices far in advance for items which are published sometimes even two or three years later. In cases such as this, we simply hold on to these invoices until the volume before the one billed is being published. Does it bother others beside myself? +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ 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 27514-8890; Telephone: 919 962-1067; FAX: 919 962-4450. 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. 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