NEWSLETTER ON SERIALS PRICING ISSUES

NUMBER 21 -- APRIL 27, 1990

Editor: Marcia Tuttle

ISSN: 1046-3410

CONTENTS

It has been a month since the last issue of the Newsletter. My schedule has interfered, but I'm trying to catch up now. I've received lots more news (and corrections!) that we just don't have room for at the moment. I plan to begin the next issue as soon as I can and hope you'll have it within about 10 days. Thanks for your patience!

In this issue we have the full text of Fred Spilhaus's talk during the AAAS Annual Conference in February. This talk has been much quoted and cited, and there was a feeling that it should receive broader distribution. It is the first time the Newsletter has had footnotes, but, no, we're not metamorphosing (I looked that up; it's a real word) into an electronic journal! Thanks, Fred!

Jim Thompson (University of California - Riverside; THOMPSON@UCRVMS) sent the following note:

Gordon & Breach Science Publishers, after several years of criticism for such practices as labelling an issue as a volume, has come up with another wrinkle. CHOREOGRAPHY AND DANCE, from G & B's Harwood affiliate, is now out at SF 322 -- approximately $221 -- for the corporate rate (library rate upon request). And what can you expect to get for your money? According to the masthead, "each volume comprises an irregular number of parts, depending upon size" (1:2, October 1989). There is no indication of publishing frequency. In other words, you pay up front, but you don't know what you're going to get or when you're going to get it. Have fun claiming!

>From Lelde Gilman at UCLA:

Thomas Karger just left my office this a.m. after a chat about Karger's projected price increases for journals next year. He said that Faxon has indicated to him that Elsevier and Springer Verlag will probably increase prices by 18 - 22 percent. So, Karger is maybe thinking of 8 percent (12 percent in the dollar range). Exchange rate for Swiss francs, 1.58 to $1.00. The Swiss have inflation of around 5 percent for the first time. He also feels, and I agree, that the $$$ will go down against all European currencies. The development of Eastern Europe will make this almost a certainly. Tons of bucks pouring in there, the $$$ just can't be strong. Looks like bad times ahead if the price increases are as projected.

21.2 1991 SUBSCRIPTION PRICING
Joel Baron, The Faxon Company, 15 Southwest Park, Westwood MA 02090; Faxon Courier: JBARON.

Although we have no hard data in hand at this point, I am concerned about the potential levels of 1991 title inflation. Here's what it's looking like to me.

At the time publishers announced their 1990 prices the dollar was running at unusually high rates against most foreign currencies. Elsevier set their conversion rate at 2.18 guilders to the dollar, a factor that actually gave the dollar much more purchasing power than it had in commercial markets at the time; although Springer Verlag sets their own dollar prices, it is still significant to note that the W. German mark was somewhere between 1.80 and 1.85 when they were making their pricing decisions; and Pergamon, although a UK company doing business in pounds sterling, sets U.S. prices in dollars, U.K. prices in pounds, all other prices in W. German marks. The British pound cost around $1.70 at that same time.

Since then, however, the dollar has normalized, returning to more traditional levels against foreign currencies. Elsevier reset their conversion rate at 2.00 guilders on 1 January, and the W. German mark is currently converting around 1.69. The pound sterling has actually weakened slightly against the dollar and now costs around $1.62.

What this means is that the average Elsevier non-USA journal has already increased 9 percent within the same subscription year. Since the other publishers mentioned set their prices in US dollars, we probably won't see a mid-season price increase. The point is, however, that these publishers will all start their pricing meetings by looking at an A PRIORI rate increase in the vicinity of 7 to 9 percent.

Last year, Elsevier's home currency price increases totalled 11.2 percent. Using that as a benchmark, let's be positive and say that the average non-USA publisher would be looking at an 8 to 10 percent increase for the year covering normal domestic inflation, volume inflation, and page inflation. So far there haven't been any major scientific breakthroughs this year, so volume and page inflation could well stay within the ranges of the past year.

Finally, in addition to the general postal increases we will see in 1991, it looks like we're going to see a whopping increase in second class rates, the rates at which most periodicals mail. At a USPS briefing I attended in Washington, they were talking about increases similar to those the publishing industry saw two years ago, and those were around 26 percent. This is a very tough one to project but postage can run 7 to 11 percent of total manufacturing costs, which can be anywhere from 30 to 60 percent of revenues. I'm going to say that a $100 title will increase anywhere from $2.00 to $4.00 due to the postal increase.

In summary, the price increases for non-USA titles in 1991 could look like the following:

               Currency value                7 - 9 percent
               Inflation (CPI, volume, page) 8 - 10 percent
               Postage                       2 - 4 percent

               Range                         17 - 23 percent

For USA titles, we saw 10 percent increases in 1990 and close to that in 1989. Assuming a continuation of that pattern, and taking the 1991 postage increases into account, we could easily see total price inflation for USA titles just breaking into the low teens for 1991.

Let me stress that it's a little early to be making projections, and we as yet have no hard data from publishers. It is always conceivable that the US dollar will strengthen once again, although the central banks seem determined to intervene in order to prevent that from happening. There does, however, seem to be reason for us to be concerned.

21.3 MORE ON EDITIONS BRIEL
Richard P. Jasper, Acquisitions Department, R.W. Woodruff Library, Emory University, Atlanta; (404) 727-6866; BITNET: LIBRPJ@EMUVM1.

In response to Bob Lincoln's query last issue about Editions Briel, I can say that we have been making similar inquiries at Emory University. A number of faculty members on our campus were very interested by the brochure Briel distributed late last year. From an acquisitions point of view, we were somewhat leery of prepaying expensive orders to a company with whom we were unfamiliar.

For that reason, I wrote Editions Briel earlier this year requesting photocopies of the title, contents and index pages of the several works in which our faculty members were interested. Having such copies, I explained, would help allay our concern. (By the way, and she doesn't know it, this suggestion came to me roundaboutly from Jane Maddox, North American liaison for Otto Harrassowitz). A couple of weeks later I received a call from James Stanton of Editions Briel, who gave me much the same information Bob Lincoln conveyed in the last issue. Mr. Stanton's main point seemed to be that the European groups involved with the publications were very concerned about the possibility of being burned by American libraries!

At any rate, Mr. Stanton indicated that the company was willing to make an exception in our case and ship, with an invoice, a couple of volumes of one of the titles we requested. After several weeks, we still have not received the volumes. (Note: Nor have we issued a purchase order for them, but Mr. Stanton did not indicate that anything other than our verbal request was necessary.) Consequently, we are continuing to reserve judgment. Assuming the volumes arrive and are what they purport to be, we would be more comfortable prepaying these orders.

We would prefer, of course, to be able to acquire such materials through an established vendor of library materials, and we have considered (although we haven't pursued this strategy at this point) asking one of our usual vendors to make inquiries with Briel.

In general, however, our library avoids prepaying monographic orders if at all possible, keeping in mind the cautionary words expressed many times by the Publisher/Vendor/Library Relations Committee of ALCTS, which has warned of the risks involved in prepaying monographic orders.

Which brings me to a final point:

The Publisher/Vendor/Library Relations Committee exists in part because there have been so many prepayment problems in the past. In addition to facilitating relations among publishers, vendors, and libraries, PVLR handles specific complaints brought forward from this constituency. Libraries experiencing problems with publishers and/or vendors should contact a member (I'm one) of the committee, which is chaired by Helen Reed of Duke University (HREED@ECSVAX). The committee even has an official complaint form, copies of which are distributed at each ALA conference.

Like Bob Lincoln, I'd be interested in hearing from other libraries regarding their experience to date with Editions Briel.

21.4 THE FINANCIAL CRISIS IN SCIENCE LIBRARIES: THE SCIENTIFIC COMMUNITY IS THE PROBLEM AND THE SOLUTION
Presentation at AAAS Meeting -- New Orleans, February 17, 1990. A.F. Spilhaus, Jr., Executive Director, American Geophysical Union, 2000 Florida Avenue, NW, Washington DC 20009.

  - Representative Dingell and his team of inquisitors and informants
  - Frenzies whipped up by the press over hot topics like cold fusion
  - Government regulation of the peer review process
  - Punitive taxation of non-profit organizations
  - Escalating postal rates
  - Tenure and increasing demands on researchers' time
  - Space station and the superconducting supercollider
  - Global change and mapping the genome
  - The financial crisis in science libraries

Scientific communication is in considerable turmoil today. There are many factors that keep this pot boiling. They include growth in sci ence, changes in funding patterns, changes in the technologies for communication and archiving, changes in the business world, and changes in society and societal values. We must learn to manage responses to these changes so that science benefits. First, we need to understand the problem and then to develop strategies for its solution. It is my hope that after this session you will go away convinced that the scientific community and scientists, individually and together, control the scientific communication system.

There are two basic fundamentals of scientific communication which should be in our minds at all times. First, scientists are the producers, the only producers of the raw material for the communication process. These same scientists are also virtually the only consumers of basic research materials. (I am talking here only about basic research, not about work in engineering, medicine or the transfer from research to application.) The scientist's control stems from the fact that there is no other source of information input and no other market for scientific communication. The second fundamental is that every valid step in the communication process must add value in terms of providing easier access to information. The filtering and upgrading that takes place in the editorial process, indexing, text editing, translation, providing useable formats, archiving and retrieving are all value added services that improve access to the information. By access, I mean not just physical access to a document, but also being able to get from the document what you need in the form in which you need it.

I am now going to run through the production of a traditional journal to give you a quick look at where the costs come from that go into prices. I will then suggest both short and long-term strategies for ensuring value and addressing the libraries' financial problems.

Acquiring and reviewing manuscripts is the first step. The cost for this phase is largely absorbed by volunteers. At AGU, we estimate that the average paper is seen by two or three reviewers and takes up to a day of direct involvement by each reviewer.-1- Thus, the scientific community is providing an upfront subsidy, in the form of time, equivalent to $500 to $1,000 per paper submitted. This time must be absorbed in research budgets or out of other precious hours belonging to the individual. Both social and funding pressures are making it more and more difficult for people to give this time. Thus, the cost of gaining the commitment of these volunteers and of working with them is building up. Tools that permit the editor and reviewer to do a quick and competent job such as electronic mail and FAX are expected.

After acceptance, the manuscript goes through text editing and typesetting. Here technology may be driving up prices without providing any return. For example, pressure to ensure that complete manuscripts are available electronically may require making all corrections on magnetic tape. Additionally, authors are insisting on submitting manuscripts electronically or on floppy disk even though publishers may not be able to use that format. Compounding the crime, some publishers are reluctant to admit to authors that they can't save money using state-of-the-art technology. At the other end of the spectrum, publishers may be asking for camera-ready copy from their authors. There is a lot of flexibility in this phase. Costs can vary substantially depending on what course the publisher chooses. These differences can significantly affect price. Over one-half of the total cost of a publication can be in text editing and typesetting.

The manufacturing part, the press work, the paper, and the mailing are next. The use of color and special formats, speed of delivery, and the type of paper all have a significant impact on costs.

In addition to manuscript processing and manufacturing, when you pay for a scientific publication, you are paying for the marketing effort associated with it, for the publisher's risk, and for his return on investment. Often scientific societies spend very little on marketing. We want to provide a high quality and stable service to our core users. A new book or a new journal produced by a society often has community consensus and, therefore, a built in market before it comes off the press. These characteristics of society publishing tend to reduce the risks vis-a-vis a venture by a publisher without a membership base.

As for profit, none of us can do without it. However, in a society with a Board of Directors made up of people who are on university library committees, people who are publishing and hoping for wide dissemination, and people who make and receive grants for research, the pressure to keep prices down is unrelenting. I believe that if the journals of most of the societies that are members of the American Institute of Physics were priced equivalently to their competitors on a per kiloword basis, those societies could be making huge profits.

How do costs translate into price? There is no question you can alter the cost and, therefore, the price, by changing the process. Process should be examined carefully in every step to ensure that value appropriate to cost is being added. All other factors being equal, price is inversely proportional to the number of subscribers. On the other hand, profit for small circulation publications can be extremely sensitive to the number of subscribers.

Most of the costs for a small circulation scientific journal are incurred whether one copy or two thousand copies are printed. These are the fixed costs: manuscript acquisition, editing, typesetting and press set-ups. Incremental costs, those that vary with the number printed, include paper, postage, presstime, and mailing. To illustrate the relation of profit to the number of subscribers, consider the following example. If a journal has fixed costs of $90K and incremental costs of $10 per volume, then at a subscription price of $100, 1,000 subscribers produces $100,000 or exactly the amount I need to break even. For each additional subscriber, the income is $100 and the cost $10, so the profit is 90 percent of the income. The flip side is that I can only save $10 when I lose a subscriber, so my loss is $90. This means that if the journal is close to the break-even point and is price sensitive, the loss of a few subscribers can drive it under.

Journal prices have been going up faster than inflation. This is a result of the factors that are keeping the system in turmoil. The growth of the scientific community has increased the number of active researchers and therefore the number of papers. In AGU we have seen an annual membership growth of 6 to 7 percent over the last 15 years. Journal pages published have grown with the membership. You must put that percentage on top of inflation. The number of institutional subscribers in the U.S. has been decreasing on the order of 1 to 3 percent per year; this means a corresponding price increase. Because very little cost can be saved when a subscription is lost, the remaining subscribers must bear the load. Almost 10 percent above inflation is needed to compensate for just these two factors. In addition, consider the effects of uncertainty. How many subscribers will there be next year? Should we allow for 1 percent drop or 3 percent drop? What are the postal rates going to be? President Bush's budget implies U.S. domestic postage increases up to almost 40 percent for some non-profit journals later this year. Then, there is the technological pressure.

The skills employed by publishers are becoming more technical. Is this the year when we have to start getting everything onto magnetic tape? When does the indexing have to be improved? And it goes on and on. If the publishing habits of the community do not change and the decrease in institutional subscriptions continues, there should be no surprise at annual price increases at least 10 percent above inflation into the foreseeable future.

Another important factor is the trend toward acquisition of professional and scholarly publishing companies by large conglomerates. A recent article in PUBLISHERS WEEKLY,-2- the newsmagazine of the industry, states that the acquisition prices for these publishers have doubled over the last 5 years from around twice revenues to an average of 4 times revenues today. These takeovers are thought by investment bankers to be attractive. They view the market as providing considerable flexibility in price because the material is "perceived by users as absolutely vital to their work and is generally paid for by their employers."

Maxwell Communications (better known to scientists by its maiden name, Pergamon Press) bought MacMillan in October 1988 for 2.8 times its revenues. My arithmetic says that profits are going to have to go up by a factor of 3 to pay for that acquisition. There is a lot of talk by the conglomerates about the advantages of size, international buying power, critical mass, etc. There is a grain of truth in all of this, but you can bet that the "flexibility in pricing" will also be an important factor in raising profits. More about Maxwell later.

There are two other potential sources of revenue for scientific publication. Advertising, often suggested as a panacea, won't work in most cases. I am sure you have noticed that the AAAS' SCIENCE gets thin when the economy is down and fattens up when the economy is up. The reason is that every page of advertising helps to support another page or more of editorial matter. For SCIENCE this may be okay. However, does a research journal that goes up and down with the vagaries of the economy really serve the science? Other problems with advertising are that research scientists, in most cases, are not perceived as big buyers and research journals have low circulations. The prospects of getting enough advertising to make it worthwhile are rather small in most cases.

The other major income item is page charges and reprints. Page charges do help stabilize institutional prices because they reduce the fraction of the first copy cost that the insititution must pay and thereby reduce risk. They are particularly valuable for very large multi-disciplinary journals that would otherwise have astronomical subscription prices. If page charges take half the costs and, hence, cut the price in half, there will be more institutions subscribing than at the higher price. The price can then be even lower for all subscribers. The same argument holds for dual subscription rates which are prevalent among society publications. The concept is that most individuals cannot afford to pay the institutional price or anything like it. If, using my previous example, a society publishes a journal at around $100 and is able to make an individual subscription available at $30, the $20 that is above the incremental cost of production is net income generated by the sale. This income, in turn, can be used to reduce the cost to institutions while meeting the same financial objectives. If the number of institutions and individuals is comparable, the institutional rate could come down to $80. Dual subscription prices add value because they contribute to circulation. However, they do not work unless individuals take it upon themselves to ensure that their institutions subscribe at the appropriate rate to those journals that they themselves have the privilege of taking at personal rates.

Now let me turn to what you can do if you don't like the pricing of certain journals. The simple answer is don't support, either intellectually or financially, any journal that you think is overpriced. Many such individual decisions would add up to a statement by the community. Purchase is a value judgment. The value in dollars of a journal subscription is determined by what rational purchasers will pay. Thus, if you buy or recommend purchase of a journal, by definition it is not priced beyond its value. We make the decision. If we refuse to buy journals that are marginal, they will either change their ways or they will drop out of the race.

There is a need to examine the value of journals in many ways. Barschall and others have recently used citation statistics and price.-3- AGU did such a study in the mid-70s.-4- We found that the kiloword equivalents per dollar ranged from a high of over 80 for the ASTROPHYSICAL JOURNAL down to 3 or 4 for MARINE GEOLOGY, TECTONOPHYSICS, and ASTROPHYSICS AND SPACE SCIENCE. In citations per dollar the spread was even greater. There are, of course, lots of elements to the value judgment such as continuity, the treatment of special subfields and speed of publication. No one study can be conclusive. The decisions are a very individual matter and should be dealt with by individuals.

As a scientist you have it in your power to control the future of scientific journals. There are both short and long term strategies that you can pursue. You can start immediately. Decide on the value of the publications that you read and contribute to. Are they worth what your library is paying for them? If not, urge that your library discontinue its subscription. The second thing you can do is don't submit papers to such a publication. Make your judgment of price and value a primary consideration in all your interactions. Your paper in a marginal journal helps the journal more than it helps you. If you can find another appropriate source, don't reference papers in such journals. Their citation statistics will then be even lower than low. If enough people take these approaches, marginal journals will change. They will improve or disappear.

Don't allow your name to be used with a journal that does not represent values and qualities that you can actively support. You may be surprised at how important your name is on the masthead of a journal. You may be flattered, but in putting it there you are causing the library a problem. If just one good paper appears in each issue, that journal may be viewed as critical. Don't let your papers or your name keep a bad journal alive. Right now, North America is about half the market for scientific journals and without good North American papers, no international journal can survive.

I have some things to offer for a long-term strategy as well. Let's consider preparing regular reports on indicators of the value/price relationship for scientific journals. We should be monitoring and reporting on such indicators as price per 1000 characters, price per citation, time from submission to publication and impact factor. We must take care, however, not to be misled by statistics. Bad ones that are frequently cited include price per title and percentage increase in price per title. These take no account of the size of publication. Another problem is comparability. There are many factors that affect comparability that should be considered when using any indicator. For example, impact factors vary with the size of a discipline's constituency and perhaps with the discipline's referencing practices. As a long-term strategy we must consistently pursue value and buy rationally as authors and as readers.

A major asset of the scientific community is ownership, through its scientific societies, of at least half, if not more, of U.S. scientific publishing. It is incumbent on the officers, directors and members of these societies to ensure both that the publications produced by their societies are the finest values available and that these publications are financially secure. We must meet the highest standards of review. We must produce our publications in a way that serves the needs of the community they serve without wasting resources. And we must price and sell the publication so that the societies and their publication programs are financially secure and able to expand and to meet new technological and other economic and societal challenges.

Small societies must protect themselves from the risk of absorption of their publication programs by voracious sharks. There is nothing wrong with an arrangement with a competent commercial publisher so long as the scientific community retains control through the contracts. It should be borne in mind that self publication by societies, even small societies, is a perfectly possible and potentially profitable activity; many succeed in it. One of the best services I know of that helps such small societies is that of Allen Press in Lawrence, Kansas. Arly Allen has designed marketing programs and all sorts of other assistance in publications management especially for the society that is too small or does not care to have that kind of expertise on staff.

Societies must become aggressive and highly competitive. Our scientific journal publication enterprise, both for profit and not-for-profit, is locked in a struggle with large conglomerates that have very little interest in scientific communication publications per se. Their interest is in profit. I believe we can win this struggle, but the next 10 years are likely to be extremely difficult for us. There will be temptations to take short-term gains by making arrangements with these goliaths. There will be suggestions that government take a larger role. There will also be efforts to push us out of our traditional markets. To rephrase an old expression: "It's two a.m., do you know who is milking your journal right now?" Does John Wiley and Sons publish anything you use? They are reputed to do a generally good job, but Wiley is one of the few remaining independent for-profit U.S. scientific publishers of medium size and is prime meat for the sharks.

One of the big risks during the next 10 years may lie in arrangements with online services. When publishers license their materials to these services, they can lose control of pricing. If a few services become dominant, those services can begin to push up prices to the users and reduce payments to the original publishers because there will be no other means of dissemination. Robert Maxwell appears to be headed in this direction and ready to do everything he can to lock up the scientific community. He has recently recruited three not-for-profit executives in the electronic area, one from the American Chemical Society and two from the NEW ENGLAND JOURNAL OF MEDICINE.

Let me quote from an editorial in the November 1988 issue of COLLEGE AND RESEARCH LIBRARIES-5- in which Jim Thompson, librarian at the University of California - Riverside, quotes Maxwell as follows:

"I set up a perpetual financing machine through advance subscriptions as well as the profits on the sales themselves. It is a cash generator twice over. It's no use trying to compete with me."

And another quote:

"If Pergamon could win the trust of scientists, it would establish the standard journal in each specialization and that would give it a series of publishing monopolies...scientists are not generally as price-conscious as other professionals, mainly because they are not spending their own money."

In response to Maxwell, I say to you it is time for us to become price conscious. It is time for us to become rational buyers. It is time for us to begin to help solve the library crisis.

But, even if we do solve the value for price problem, will that solve the library crisis? Probably not. Remember that increases in population, changes in technology and decreasing institutional subscriptions are still going to keep costs ahead of inflation. In particular, improving the access to the increasing tide of material that is coming out will require considerable effort. At some point, we may have to recognize that we need more money for the information system. When we can honestly say we need more, when we have looked at the values and decided that we must have something we cannot afford, then it is time for us to go out and get more money. Let's remember that obtaining information and assimilating it are critical to doing science.

You, as a contributor to and purchaser of scientific journals, must begin to accept the responsibility that comes with the complete control you have of the system. Only then will there be any chance of moving toward the goal of maximizing the accessibility of research results to scientists worldwide. Through your choice of publication outlet, you play a pivotal role in determining which journals the library must have. No publisher or editor can create an outstanding journal without the support of discipline leaders.

There have been suggestions that legislation or regulation declare a preference for not-for-profit publications. Let's remember that the for-profit publisher is in the business to make money; you cannot fault him just for trying to do so. Not-for-profit publishers have other objectives and their prices are likely to be closer to the costs of the service they provide. That does not necessarily mean that they are providing an effective or efficient service. It is up to you to ensure that your societies are providing the service you need and, through your purchase and submittal decisions, to ensure that commercial publishers meet your expectations. Any shelter from competition can only lead to a less effective and less efficient not-for-profit sector.

The power of life and death over any journal is held by the community of scientists using it and no one else. Refusal to buy is the only rational way to combat unreasonable prices.

REFERENCES

1. Judy C. Holoviak, "Who Pays for the Quality of Scientific Journals?" SCHOLARLY PUBLISHING -- AN ENDANGERED SPECIES; Proceedings of the Tenth Annual Meeting of the Society for Scholarly Publishing, 33-36. Washington DC, 1989.

2. Gayle Feldman, ed., "The View from Wall Street," PUBLISHERS WEEKLY (February 9, 1990), 38-39.

3. Henry H. Barschall, "The Cost-Effectiveness of Physics Journals," PHYSICS TODAY (July 1988), 56-59.

4. William H. Kaula, "Journals," EOS; TRANSACTIONS, AMERICAN GEOPHYSICAL UNION: 58 (1977): 331-32.

5. James C. Thompson, "Journal Costs: Perception and Reality in Dialogue," COLLEGE AND RESEARCH LIBRARIES (November 1988), 481-82.

21.5 LIBRARY MATERIALS PRICE INDEX COMMITTEE'S U.S. SERIAL SERVICES INDEX
Mary Beth Clack, Harvard College Library, Cambridge MA.

The ALA-ALCTS-RS Library Materials Price index Committee invites applications for the position of compiler of the U.S. Serials Services Index which appears annually in the April 15 issue of LIBRARY JOURNAL and in the BOWKER ANNUAL. The Index measures the rate of change in average price of U.S. serial service titles in six categories, and the study is done in conjunction with The Faxon Company. Familiarity with price studies, the national standard for price indexes and serials services (ANSI-Z39.29-1983) preferred. Letters of application with supporting documents describing qualifications may be sent to: Kathryn H. Carpenter; Chair, ALCTS,LMPIC; Collections Development Dept. (M/C 234); The University Library; Box 8198; University of Illinois at Chicago; Chicago IL 60680. FAX: (312) 413-0424; Phone: (312) 996-2730; BITNET: U15139@UICVM.

21.6 CHANGE IN PUBLICATION PLANS FOR SCIENCE CITATION INDEX AND SOCIAL SCIENCE CITATION INDEX
Siegfried Ruschin, Librarian for Collection Development, Linda Hall Library, 5109 Cherry Street, Kansas City MO 64110-2498

The Institute for Scientific Information has sent us a questionnaire regarding the future form of the "Journal Citation Reports," which up to now had been supplied as part of the two citation indexes. I assumed that this meant that, beginning with the 1989 annual volume, subscribers would have to pay an additional price for the "Journal Citation Reports." From my telephone conversation and correspondence with ISI it seems that this assumption was correct.

Since we paid for 1989 and 1990 some time ago, we have taken exception to what we consider a change in the condition of sale. The list prices previously announced for the SCIENCE CITATION INDEX still obtain, and it so appears that there is no compensation for the contemplated reduction in coverage.

I recently heard that future "Journal Citation Reports" will be available only on CD-ROM. I have not confirmed this with ISI. (This was confirmed by Dr. Garfield in his talk at the ACRL Journal Costs Discussion Group at ALA Midwinter. -ED)

21.7 FUNDING FUTURE ACQUISITIONS: FINANCIAL RESOURCES FOR THE 1990S
Barbara Winters, Head, Acquisition Services Department, Virginia Commonwealth University Library, Richmond VA 23284-2033; BITNET: BWINTERS@VCUVAX.

The Acquisitions Committee of the Association for Library Collections and Technical Services' Resources Section is sponsoring a program on "Funding Future Acquisitions: Financial Resources for the 1990s" at the summer conference of the American Library Association. This program is cosponsored by the Library Administration and Management Association's Fund Raising and Financial Development Section (LAMA-FRFDS). Tricia Masson, Acquisitions Librarian, Brown University, is chairing the Program Planning Committee.

The program will identify both continuing and emerging demands on the resources supporting acquisitions for academic, public and special library collections, with an emphasis on changing directions in collection devleopment that have resulted from new approaches to research and the introduction of new technologically-available formats. Speakers will also explore the universe of funding possibilities available to meet these anticipated demands; identify approaches and characteristics of successful grant proposals, including a discussion of the influence of institution size and collection strengths and project appropriateness and presentation in the granting agency's decision process; discuss problems encountered by grant recipients, particularly those encountered by recipients of "matching" grants; and, discuss innovative uses of awarded grants in creating a base for continued support.

Speakers include Michael Keller, Collection Development Officer, Yale University Library; Denise Wallen, Co-editor of the "Funding for..." series, Oryx Press; Harold Cannon, Director of Office of Challenge Grants, National Endowment for the Humanities; Suzanne Walters, Director of Marketing, Denver Public Library; and Merrily Taylor, University Librarian, Brown University. Judith Paqutte, Assistant Head for Collection Planning, University of California at Santa Cruz, will moderate.

The program will be held on Sunday, June 24, 1990, from 2:00 to 530 p.m. FRFDS is sponsoring a Fund Fair immediately preceding this program (11:30 - 2:30). Location of both will be announced.

21.8 ACQUISITIONS ADMINISTRATION REQUIREMENTS: CURRENT AND FUTURE
Barbara Winters, Virginia Commonwealth Univ; BITNET: BWINTERS@VCUVAX

"Acquisitions Administration Requirements: Current and Future" is the topic for discussion at the American Library Association's (ALA) Acquisitions Administrators Discussion Group meeting, to be held at the ALA summer conference in Chicago. Tamara Frost Trujillo, Associate University Librarian for Automated and Technical Services at California State University, Sacramento, will speak. Synthesizing results from an informal survey she conducted about how libraries organize acquisitions functions, Trujillo will discuss such topics as how acquisitions departments are presently organized and whether the work of acquisitions in the future will be relegated to support staff, taken up by other departments in the library, or expanded in existing organizational models, what kind of expertise is needed to lead the department, and so forth.

Joyce Ogburn, Order Librarian at Penn State, who has been very active on the ALCTS Education Committee and has done a significant amount of work in the area of competencies for acquisitions librarians, will moderate. The meeting is scheduled for Tuesday, June 26, 11:30 - 12:30 The location of the meeting will be announced.

The Acquisitions Administrators group is one of the two newest provisional discussion groups petitioning the Resources Section Executive Committee for formal recognition. It was convened by Barbara Winters in June 1989 at the Dallas ALA conference to provide a forum for informal discussion of problems relating to the administration of acquisitions departments, to provide a reporting session on activity of other conference programs of interest to acquisitions librarians, and to establish a network of acquisitions administrators to provide on-the-job direction and support for new acquisitions librarians and continuing education for existing acquisitions librarians. The group is open to administrators of acquisitions/serials departments in libraries of any size and type. Its petition for formal recognition will be reviewed by the RS Executive Committee for possible approval at the Chicago conference.

----------------------------------------------------------------

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 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 (Clemson University), Mary Elizabeth Clack (Harvard University), Jerry Curtis (Consultant), Charles Hamaker (Louisiana State University), Robert Houbeck (University of Michigan), and Marcia Tuttle. 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.
================================================================