At the Sunday January 7, meeting of the Library Materials Price Index Committee, the following occurred:
1) ACADEMIC BOOK PRICE INDEX - Figures for the 1988/89 Academic Book Price Index were distributed. The overall percentage increase was 5.30 percent.
2) LATIN AMERICAN COST STUDY - Figures for the costs of Latin Ameri- can books were distributed.
3) FOREIGN PERIODICAL PRICE INDEXES - Fred Lynden reported on a meeting held at Harvard with Mary Beth Clack, Lynden, Steve E. Thompson, Sally F. Williams, and Peter Young. A product of this meeting, a list of questions vendors should answer before preparing a price study, was distributed. The LMPIC agreed to establish a subcommittee, to be chaired by Thompson and consisting of the "Harvard" group. This group will do research on questions related to the preparation of foreign periodical price indexes by vendors. Interest has been expressed by Casalini, Harrassowitz, Nijhoff, and Swets.
4) CD-ROM PRICE INDEX - Pamela Mason prepared a CD-ROM price inventory. The number of titles included moved from 131 to 227. The overall price change moved upward by 6.6 percent.
5) COMMENTS ON REVISION TO U.S. PRICE INDEX STANDARD a) The LMPIC members agreed that the definitions should be updated.
b) The LMPIC agreed that a change to a 3-year base to match the CPI would be reasonable.
c) The LMPIC members disagreed with Duane Webster that price indexes should be used "to track price changes for higher priced titles," and believed page prices are extremely difficult to track. Duane Webster is looking for analysis, something which can be done for specific problems. The LMPIC felt that his new Office of Scholarly and Academic Publishing should do this type of work. Price indexes are an objective measure of change and should not be used to follow up on unfair practices.
d) There needs to be an explanation of why Library Produced (rather than commercial) microfilm is indexed. Efforts to develop an index for commercially produced microforms failed.
e) Efforts to develop an index for scores were also unsuccessful due to the lack of a national source for data as well as the complexity of scores with parts, etc.
f) No index has been developed yet for software and CD-ROMs because there are so many variables, although there is now a prototype CD-ROM index. Variables such as upgrading, site licenses, personal copies, etc. make indexing difficult. The LMPIC felt the next revision, not this revision, should carry criteria for producing electronic products.
g) The LMPIC agreed it would be worthwhile to include the LC and Dewey Classification System in the appendix, which is not considered part of the standard.
h) Editorial comments were felt to be of great value.
The price index standard revision has a due date of March 31, and LMPIC members felt this was too soon for completion of a thorough revision.
The meeting on Monday, January 8, 1990, included the following reports:
1) U.S. PERIODICALS - Peter Young (Faxon) and Kate Carpenter (University of Illinois at Chicago) reported that the 30th Index will be published in LIBRARY JOURNAL, April 15, 1990. In the coming year, the Committee will address questions which have arisen about the representativeness of the titles included in the index and whether the index reflects changes in total scholarly output in its subject categories.
2) U.S. SERIAL SERVICES - Mary Elizabeth Clack reported that the Index will appear in the April 15 issue of LIBRARY JOURNAL. The revision of the Law category will be undertaken this year.
3) U.S. COLLEGE BOOK PRICES - K. Soupiset distributed final tables which will appear in CHOICE in March. For 1989, the average price per title was $40.52.
4) FOREIGN PERIODICALS PRICE INDEX - A subcommittee chaired by Steve Thompson, Brown University, will be appointed to contact vendors and gather comparable data on the size of the vendor's database, type of subject breakdown, parameters which could be used to select the population for the price index, currencies used, definition of periodical, coverage of price, single-year rates versus multiple-year rates, etc.
5) CD-ROM PRICE INVENTORY - A report prepared by Pamela Mason, National Agriculture Library, was distributed. As a result of the ensuing discussion, it was decided that the Committee's Summer 1991 program will address "Pricing Issues with the New Technologies."
17.2 CARIBBEAN PERIODICALS
Rosa Mesa, Latin American Bibliographer, University of Florida,
Gainesville FL.
We are interested in information about the availability of acquisition of serials or periodicals published in the Caribbean, including subscription costs. We are especially interested in price increases. Anyone with information can contact Peter Stern, Latin American Librarian, at PASLAC@UFFSC.
17.3 ASSOCIATION OF COLLEGE AND RESEARCH LIBRARIES
DISCUSSION GROUP ON SERIALS PRICING,
Deana Astle, Clemson
University Library, Clemson SC; BITNET: DLAST@CLEMSON
The ACRL discussion group on serials pricing held a lively session Sunday morning January 7 during ALA. Three distinguished presenters offered insights into journal pricing from the perspective of the scholar, the abstracting/indexing provider, and the university press. The session was moderated by Ann Okerson, soon to be named the ARL pricing guru, who introduced the topic by observing that we are trying to creep up on enlightenment.
HENRY BARSCHALL, whose foray into journal cost analysis has brought him perhaps more attention and notoriety than his chosen field of nuclear physics, discussed a scholar's view of academic journal pricing and related matters.
The problem of the high cost of journals is not one which can be solved in the U.S. alone. Any solution must be operative and effective on an international basis. The number of publications is governed by the amount of agency research support. From 1961 to 1987, these funds have expanded in the U.S. from $46 billion to $101 billion (120%); in Japan from $4 billion to $39 billion (875%); the UK from $8 billion to $14 billion (75%); West Germany, $4 billion to $19 billion (375%); and France, $3 billion to $14 billion (367%), for an overall increase of $114 billion or 170 percent. Where more research is generated, Barschall observed, it must find an outlet for publishing, and publications increase.
The number of abstracts in physics has risen from 24,200 in 1962 to 143,000 in 1988. During this same period, the membership of the American Institute of Physics rose from 18,000 to 39,400, and the number of PHYSICS REVIEW pages from 9800 to 48,800. While indicative of the explosion of support for physics, it also reflects the changing nature of the authors published in PHYSICS REVIEW. In 1962 foreign authors represented only 25 percent of the authors in PHYSICS REVIEW, in large part because of page charges which many were forbidden by their governments to pay. Now, 52 percent of PHYSICS REVIEW authors are from outside the U.S.
Barschall stated that page charges were invented by physicists to increase the number of subscriptions to a journal by reducing the price to subscribers, thus increasing the dissemination of information. At that time, photocopiers were not available, and scientists had to own a copy of a journal to get good access to articles. At their inception, page charges averaged $2 per page. By 1963 they had reached $50, and in 1990 the average page charge for physics journals is expected to be $172. PHYSICS REVIEW now has a page charge of $210. Though this is a voluntary fee, it does have a bearing as to how soon an article will be published.
Originally it was assumed that research funds would be used to pay page charges, but with today's more restricted funding, scientists do not want to spend their scarce dollars this way. In response to this trend, the sources of revenue for such journals as PHYSICS REVIEW have been shifting from authors to libraries. In 1976, 35% of revenue was from libraries and 65% from authors; in 1988 libraries provided 89% of the revenue, and authors only 11%.
Librarians, Barschall stated, do not benefit from page charges, for they have driven authors away from society journals to commercial ones. Most authors in the U.S., he observed, prefer to publish in professional journals and will use them if there is money in their research funds to pay for the page charges, otherwise they will tend to take their work elsewhere.
Barschall sees multiple publication as another serious problem. It is quite common, he stated, to publish research in several different ways. It will appear first as a preliminary report (abstract), then as a letter describing ongoing research, and finally as an article discussing the formal result. All this is entirely proper. If an author is targeting different audiences -- e.g. engineers and medical specialists -- the same result may properly be treated in two different articles. These groups use different language and do not read the same journals.
The real problem, according to Barschall, is the proliferation of conferences and workshops, and the subsequent publication of the proceedings. Between April 1989 and April 1990, for example, one conference per week is scheduled in nuclear physics. The same experiment can be and often is reported in five different meetings; it can also appear in a similar number of journal articles and proceedings.
"Most conference proceedings are junk," stated Barschall, and we must be careful what we buy. When publishers include conference proceedings as an issue of a journal, we are forced to buy them whether we want them or not. (Shades of the German publisher situation in the 1930s! - DLA) Barschall encouraged librarians to write to publishers who send proceedings as part of a journal and tell them we want the journal without the proceedings. Change will not come quickly, but we should not give up. Barschall does not like being trapped into buying the proceedings as part of the journal, and suggests that by getting publishers to change this practice we can effect some savings without damaging the collection.
EUGENE GARFIELD of ISI then spoke on creating an audit of publishers for cost effectiveness. The issue of rising journal prices, he said, is rehashed about every 25 years, and for-profit publishers are not always the culprits we think they are. ARL has added to the tension with their recent serials report, and though he does not dispute the conclusions, he considers the methods by which the information was gathered and analyzed somewhat simplistic. In any audit, as was proposed in his editorial in THE SCIENTIST, expenses of non-profit publishers should be examined as well. The not-for-profits' perks are the privates' profits.
An audit of not-for-profit firms would look at a number of factors including tax exemption, page charges, preferential postage rates, subsidies, etc. When these are examined, the differences between them and the for-profit publishers might not be so great.
In any such analysis, it may be difficult to obtain and properly intepret relevant data. It is very difficult, for example, to determine accurate profit figures since "profit" depends on perspective. We must be very careful if we try to set limits on the profits publishers can make, for this intrudes into the issue of freedom of the press. There is also a potential for misuse of statistics, since the same figures can be given many different interpretations.
In an audit, we need to look at what is being audited and why. If an audit determines the cost effectiveness of various publishers, Garfield asked, would librarians make journal purchase decisions based solely on these factors? He hopes not, for not all factors are equal. Such things as whether journals include review articles or research articles need to be weighed, for example, since there is different value received. The size of the audience is another significant factor, as is peer rankings of journal quality.
Impact, he stated, is used to describe the effect of citations. Quality evaluation, however, requires more detailed content and context analysis. There is less danger in this approach when organizations are being evaluated than when it is used for a person. Citation data should not be used as the only criterion for judging faculty.
Comprehensive audits would help librarians make better decisions and would help publishers know what to improve. They would, however, be of limited use to scientists who are the ultimate producers and users.
There has been much in the scientific press about the need for science journals to be more accountable to authors, especially in terms of speed of acceptance of publication, and many researcher authors have vented their frustrations over them.
Audits have other problems. Publishers are reluctant to pass out the information needed for such a process, as this could provide crucial data to rivals for authors and advertisers. For-profits and not-for- profits are both commercial enterprises, and care must be taken in addressing solutions to the problems.
ROBERT SHIRRELL of the University of Chicago Press then discussed scholarly associations and their role in publishing. He stated they are very important players in the field of scholarly communication.
There is no good source of statistics on associations and their publishing patterns. For example, there are no useful statistics on the number of journals, the number of associations, the number of journals published per association, etc. Associations are very diverse, ranging in size from the very small to the American Chemical Society. They publish everything from newsletters to dozens of books and journals.
There are several different arrangements for publishing journals. In general, though, an association may manage the publication of a journal on its own, or it may work with a publisher -- either commercial or university. Most assocations, he stated, do work on their own with their journals.
Twenty-six of the 50 journals published by the University of Chicago Press are done in cooperation with scholarly associations or other non-profit organizations; Shirrell has sat on many of their publishing boards.
Many associations will take no active part in launching new journals in the field. This activity is done by others -- usually for-profit publishers. When associations fail to start new journals, it is due in large part to their organizational structure. Member dues generally include the cost of a major journal. Since smaller, more specialized, publications would not be of interest to everyone, members object to having part of their dues go for such publications. Many associations also feel they do not have the staff, or in-house procedures to handle an optional journal.
It does take money to launch a new journal, and there is a potential for failure. Societies tend to be financially conservative, and are reluctant to take the kind of risks associated with this effort, feeling that they do not have the proper expertise. Also, new journals are typically not as prestigious as the main journal, and some may feel this reflects badly on the association.
Many associations object to new journals in principle, and choose therefore to expand their existing offerings, Shirrell stated. This has happened with the ASTROPHYSICAL JOURNAL, which has steadily increased in size until it now issues 14,000 pages a year on all phases of astrophysics. The editorial board feels it is cheaper to publish everything in one journal and that this is ultimately to the benefit of the scientists.
Associations are usually not averse to the initiation of new journals by others, including commercial firms, and deliberately remove themselves from the new journal arena. They prefer to have the leading general journal in their field, and they view themselves as the traditional providers of high quality publications at low cost.
Shirrell stated that it is desirable to have an association in charge of a publication. Its goal is high editorial quality and the widest distribution at the lowest possible cost. It is better to have a scholar in charge of a publication, because publishers tend to be more concerned with shareholders. A journal run by a scholar will reflect better the needs and wishes of the scholars themselves.
Many assocations have changed from making the main journal mandatory to all members, to having all journals optional. These associations generally have structures which serve segments of their membership. Typically, in these arrangements, only the newsletter will be sent to all. Examples of such assocations are the American Chemical Society and IEEE. Formation of divisions within an association or society can facilitate the handling of specialized journals and also make it easier to launch new journals in the field.
New journals are launched by associations in response to member demands. This usually happens when the main journal is not meeting the needs of the members and greater exposure is desired for their specialty.
Proposals for a new journal will go to the publications board of a society for evaluation. Typically questions get asked as to why the existing publications are inadequate, and whether what is being proposed is really a new field or just a fad. A new journal requires a minimum commitment of $100,000 to launch, and societies realize that support will build slowly. The title must be perceived to be of real service to scientists in the field and to the members of the association before a journal is launched. Publishing needs of their members, not pressure from librarians, is what really drives the decisions.
In general, associations are not actively seeking to produce more specialized journals and will not move in this direction without member approval and encouragement. It is inevitable, then, that most new journals will be started by commericial publishers. Associations will move in this direction only if they see they can do it better or if there is a need for an additional title.
The good news, Shirrell stated, is that association publications have high quality for low cost; the bad news is that any new publication is a strain on the budget of an association and is not started easily. There are difficult choices about the allocation of resources for societies.
Question and answer period:
Mike Keller of Yale asked, "What is the endgame?" Prices are going up, subscriptions are going down, the number of pages is going up, and the situation cannot reasonably continue. We need information distribution faster and more cheaply.
Garfield: What Mike is describing is the electronic journal, but this is an illusion. The exponential growth in journals and articles has actually tapered off in the last few years. Coverage is not going up the way it did in the past. The worldwide output will have to give. Some journals will die; twigging will go on -- research does not remain static and proliferation of sub-specialties cannot be contained. Science is in a constant ferment, and there are many dynamic forces we cannot control. We are paying now for the result of military research, and the commercial press prevents the cartelization of the societies. The great growth in journals has occurred because of the unresponsiveness of societies. For example, in the UK, TETRAHEDRON was created because chemists had pressure to publish and could not get professional societies to publish their results.
Keller: Most science is done with government support. A great deal of publishing takes place in commercial journals. Thus, researchers pay for it twice, once to publish the research and once to put it on the shelves. The electronic journal may be feasible. Universities have a large capital investment in computers so that the cost of electronic journals may not be so much. We are being driven to this.
Garfield: Electronic journals will be more expensive than what we are getting now. Low print run journals could better be put on CD ROM if readers would accept them.
Keller: Yale is already receiving six electronic journals and is paying no subscription price.
Person from New York Public Library: Electronic journals are not an illusion. There is already an infrastructure for them -- it is merely a matter of bringing order and discipline to them.
Barschall: Only this year has a standard been created for CD ROM publishing. CD ROMs cannot be read after about ten years, which is their projected lifetime. New technologies are on the horizon that will make CD ROMs obsolete. One takes chances with five year obsolescence. It is really too early to jump headlong into the electronic journal. IEEE has begun experimental production of some journals on CD ROM. Abstracting journals is where the most CD ROM activity is now. The electronic journal will not be any cheaper than paper, since hardware and other peripherals must be factored in.
Arnold Hirshon, Virginia Commonwealth University: (In response to the issue raised about microfilm being touted as the saviour many years ago) We worry too much about packaging. Most faculty did not have microform readers in their offices, but they do have terminals and printers.
Garfield: The realities of substituting the electronic journal for journals as we know them is too simplistic.
Ross Atkinson, Cornell: It is the function of the research library to facilitate scholarly communication. Publishing is a service to facilitate this. As costs increase, how should libraries assume more responsibility for moving more information around?
Barschall: Any scheme must be an international one. Organizations in other countries function differently from ours. Some countries prohibit page charges, in that they cannot contribute to the cost of publication. We must have a scheme that would work everywhere before there will be any significant impact on scientific publishing.
Garfield: (How to control multiple publication) This cannot and should not be controlled. As soon as we start trying to legislate against duplication we get into problems. Most authors do not publish articles twice. NIH is attempting to exert a little less pressure on publishing by asking for the most important papers instead of a long list (when grant applications are submitted). This may not make much of a difference, but the thought is ok. The ultimate solution will be economics. Libraries must be more selective in what they buy.
Vicky Reich, Stanford: Are there enough objective criteria available to do auditing of journals? What other hesitations does Garfield have about this process?
Garfield: It is possible to have the beginnings of a witch hunt if disclosure is asked for. Also, this information cannot be forced from private organizations.
Shirrell: I wonder about the audit idea. One journal may still be the cheapest, even if the publisher is wasteful. Publicizing review practices to authors may be the most important thing here. Authors often do not know what to expect from given journals.
Gale Garlock, University of Toronto: Some associations are doing good jobs. I am interested in faculty going back to associations and pushing for more cost effective journals instead of finding more money to buy new ones.
Shirrell: We must work with the faculty. They are now more aware of the issues because we have made them more aware.
Okerson: Our problems are up to us to solve.
17.4 ROMANIAN LIBRARIES
Tom McFadden, University of California at Davis, Davis CA; EMAIL:
TGMCFADDEN@UCDAVIS.EDU
Books and serials are urgently needed to replace those destroyed in the Central University Library in Bucharest during the 1989 revolution. Hard cover is preferred, and subjects include medicine, computing, management, economics, finance, English literature; anything, in fact, except the collected works of Ceausescu. Back runs of scientific and technical journal titles are especially important; the latest edition of CHEMICAL ABSTRACTS, for example, on the Library shelves was 1972. For additional information please contact: Opritsa Popa, H/SS Department, Shields Library, University of California, Davis CA 95616. EMAIL: OAPOPA@UCDAVIS.BITNET. Telephone: (916) 752-1126. FAX: (916) 752-6899.
17.5 HAMAKER'S HAYMAKERS
Chuck Hamaker, Louisiana State University Library, Baton Rouge
LA; BITNET: NOTCAH@LSUVM.
Some of the most interesting and thoughtful writing is appearing in places other than library literature these days. The new issue of SCIENCE (January 26, 1990) contains a brief sidebar, "Data Too Cheap to Meter," which details a Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics Compact Disk. This is the equivalent of seven volumes and 4,000 pages of data from the late 1970s Einstein x-ray satellite and contains a complete catalog of images. It cost $2,000 to master the disks, and $2.00 per disk for duplicates, so NASA, which funded the catalog, decided not to charge anything for it. About 300 sets were given away at the recent Washington meeting of the American Astronomical Society. If this is typical (and no one has suggested it is not) the recent federal giveaways of nationally collected data to commercial publishers (who charge anywhere from $300 to $12,000 for data they've received essentially "free") is organized robbery. Where is a federal information policy protecting access to information paid for and paid for again?
An unusually thought provoking article appears in the new issue of UNESCO's COPYRIGHT BULLETIN, XXIII, 3 p. 19-32. Written by Kanwal Puri, Senior Lecturer at the University of Queensland (Australia) Law School, its title gives away the theme: "The Term of Copyright Protection: Is It Too Long in the Wake of New Technologies." The author contends, correctly I believe, that the single most important issue in copyright law is the term, or length of time provided. "The very purpose of copyright protection is to allow recoupment for the initiative of creating the material and the investment risked in producing and marketing it." General copyright laws in most countries divide copyright works into two categories: literary, dramatic, musical, and artistic; and sound recordings, films, broadcasts, and published "editions" (where typography is protected). Terms for the first category are generally author's lifetime plus fifty years. For the second, 25 years from "publication."
A street directory, for instance, is given protection for lifetime of the compiler, plus fifty years. Hardly a "creative activity?" -- but an artistic endeavor, like a film, is only given 25 years' protection.
In patent law and industrial design, a much shorter term is involved, with no country in the world providing more than 25 years, and most much shorter time periods. "The consideration for the grant by the legislature of a monopoly for inventions and designs -- as for copyrights -- is on the basis that in return for the right, the invention or the design must be available to all after a period, that by and large gives the inventor or the designer reasonable reward. Generally speaking, the factor to be borne in mind when fixing the maximum period of protection for these monopoly rights is that reward for creativity should be adequate in relation to the expenditure of time, skill, and expense incurred."
As a public good, as well as in the interest of the public good, is it reasonable for a scientific article published by Elsevier or IEEE to be "their" property for lifetime of the author plus fifty years? Especially, as we think about the future, is such a right reasonable if scientific information has a "pay per peek" future as envisioned in the recent AAP meetings in Washington this past week?
Although recoupment of investment and "profit" on "risk" expenditure are reasonable, is the government-granted monopoly reasonable for 130 years for a ten-page article??
On the surface it's unreasonable, and the public good may well be best protected, in scientific, technical, and medical areas, by much shorter copyright terms. And, you thought the copyright wars were over?? If they are, then prepare for a very dark future for information access.
And in case you thought only Americans were contentious when it comes to the price of journals, take a look at that bastion of respectability, the LIBRARY ASSOCIATION RECORD 91, 12 (December 1989), p. 710. Attacking the marketing practices of MCB University Press, Ltd. A librarian at the Manchester Business School chastises the press for taking over reasonably well established, small circulation management journals (modestly priced) or establishing journals with an obvious popular market need and, while initially publishing at a fairly low rate to get libraries "hooked" (his language, not mine), beginning a steep rise in price after a year or two. Allan Foster (the librarian) documents journals that went up from 1989 to 1990 from 60 percent to 84 percent in pounds sterling (BRITISH FOOD JOURNAL and JOURNAL OF ORGANISATIONAL CHANGE MANAGEMENT). See his letter for the rest of the list.
Now that is about as direct as anything any American librarian has written. His letter follows one from the October RECORD concerning MCB's pricing of librarianship journals.
And the redoubtable librarian, scholar, and wit, Maurice B. Line, is the Library Association's new president. The article announcing this notes as one of his more sterling qualities a low BST (a footnote defines this in the staid RECORD as Bull Shit Tolerance). May we all take a leaf from his book. Line believes, according to the article: "If you feel strongly about something and work hard enough, then you can make changes." He has little patience with those who stand on the sidelines and moan. In his book, A LITTLE OFF LINE, he recommends inflatable committee members to attend conferences "where they could be transported and maintained very cheaply." Libraryland, are you listening? -- off line.
17.6 CHANGES IN SOME EUROPEAN SUBSCRIPTION PRICES
Siegfried Ruschin, Linda Hall Library, 5109 Cherry Street,
Kansas City MO 64110-2498.
This is a follow-up to a previous report on the controversy between Springer-Verlag and German librarians (NEWSLETTER ON SERIALS PRICING ISSUES, no. 3, April 29, 1989).
In a letter, Dr. Hermann Joseph Dorpinghaus, Assistant Library Director at the University in Freiburg, Germany, writes that, in response to complaints from German librarians, Springer-Verlag has greatly reduced its German prices for journals produced in the U.S. These journals had been available to German subscribers only at much higher than the original American prices.
According to a note to be published this month in BIBLIOTHEKSDIENST, the revised 1990 price list that Springer issued last August used an exchange rate of DM 1.91 per dollar. As a consequence, the Deutsche Mark prices for 17 titles increased by 1.2 percent, on the average, while the prices for 31 other titles were REDUCED by 11.37 percent, even though the price in dollars for these titles increased by 6 percent compared to 1989. Most interesting, the list also provided that, if the exchange rate changed by more than five percent by the end of 1989, a refund or additional charge would be in order. Consequently, Springer decided, at the beginning of this year, to grant its German subscribers an additional discount of five percent, because the value of the dollar had meanwhile declined from DM 1.91 to DM 1.71. Also, beginning with 1991, Springer's German price lists will include the original U.S. prices.
The German librarians have thus largely succeeded in their effort to obtain journals at prices comparable to those charged in the U.S., though their request that they be free to buy the journals directly in New York, thereby eliminating differential prices altogether, has not been granted. Springer did not accede to this request, alleging that its fulfillment is precluded by the fact that the Deutsche Mark price is fixed in the Federal Republic and can therefore not be constantly adjusted to the varying exchange rate. Perhaps somebody can explain to us the logic of this argument.
Dr. Dorpinghaus also writes that the "Erwerbungskomission" has been successful with the complaint that it had filed against Pergamon with an agency of the European Communities. Pergamon had been charging German subscribers at prices that markedly differed from those charged to British subscribers, a practice that apparently infringed international agreements and regulations. By now, Pergamon has reduced any remaining price difference to about 6 percent, and its journals will no longer bear a note saying that the prices in pounds sterling apply only to subscribers in the U.S. This means, according to Dorpinghaus, that agents in the United Kingdom may now supply the journals to foreign subscribers at U.S. prices. As he points out, this development may be relevant also to libraries in the U.S. The process is not concluded, however, and the commission in Brussels is likely, in one way or another, to take a public, fundamental position on this issue.
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