NEWSLETTER ON SERIALS PRICING ISSUES

An ALCTS publication

NUMBER 34 -- March 11, 1991

Editor: Marcia Tuttle

ISSN: 1046-3410

CONTENTS

EDITOR'S NOTE: The next issue of the Newsletter, out very soon, will have a review of the implications of the publishing situation in the Soviet Union regarding subscriptions and of the discussion on SERIALST about serial cancellations in several libraries.

You will probably remember the Insectes Sociaux (ISSN: 0020-1812) news items recently in the Newsletter on Serials Pricing Issues. The journal, which had been published by Masson, was moved by its editors ultimately to Birkhauser. While a different sort of move might have suited library pocketbooks a little more, and the American section (of the International Union for the Study of Social Insects) supported a switch to a domestic/US publisher, nonetheless, the international group as a whole benefitted from the change.

We have been contacted by Walter R. Tschinkel, Professor and President, North American Section of the IUSSI, and asked to "help out" with an unfortunate situation that has arisen as a result of this publisher change. In the renewal process (Fall 1990) for 1991, the then current publisher (Masson) was paid. I am speculating that Masson did not notify vendors; if they knew, the vendors did not get their files changed over in time to send checks to Birkhauser. Thus, the situation is that Masson has the money and Birkhauser is receiving the manuscripts. This, unfortunately, leads to a nasty situation in many regards, the least of which is that the journal cannot be produced.

I suggested to Dr. Tschinkel that I would describe the situation to the widest possible American academic audience via e-mail and seek the following actions from readers:

1. Please notify the academic vendor community, so that they may take appropriate actions. Specifically, those of you who can, please connect to Blackwell, Faxon, EBSCO, Harrassowitz and all the others (sorry not to enumerate all; I'm running for a plane). Some of these vendors may be able to assist with the European or international subscription customers.

2. If you are one of the subscribing libraries, write to Masson -- if you have time to do this. Perhaps someone could post a form letter on the network for everyone else to copy. This type of behavior deserves the strongest objections, which might include, ultimately, mentioning the possibility of reviewing the publisher's titles on one's local subscription list.

3. Take whatever other action you feel would be appropriate so the correct publisher can be paid.

4. Please keep me informed about the actions you are taking. Either post to SERIALST or ACQNET, or send me a message to my e-mail account: OKERSON@UMDC.BITNET, or OKERSON@UMDC.EDU. I would like to save a comprehensive file to forward to the Society when this situation is resolved. For your information, I have rekeyed Dr. Tschinkel's letter to me. He maintains a great deal of humor in a difficult situation:

THE FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY
Tallahassee, Florida
Department of Biological Science

March 7, 1991

Ann Okerson
Association of Research Libraries
1527 New Hampshire Avenue NW
Washington DC 20036

Dear Ms. Okerson:

In response to our encouraging phone conversation this morning, I am sending you what material I have on the great Franco-Swiss war, involving Masson and Birkhauser. The handwritten note is from the editor of Insectes Sociaux, Johann Billen (Zoological Institute, University of Leuven). The list annotated by him is one which I compiled from the OCLC listing of libraries subscribing to Insectes Sociaux. All those with question marks are libraries for which we do not know to whom they sent their subscription money. As the note says, 140 subscriptions have been received by Masson for a journal which they no longer publish and for which they have no manuscripts. On the other hand, Birkhauser, the new publisher, is sitting there with the manuscripts but not all the money.

Your offer of sending this out to libraries and subscription agents is most welcome and most generous. I am very grateful for the help, and our society will be too, once they find out.

I look forward to the next phase in the campaign. Should we approach General Schwarzkopf? I hear his schedule is slacking up a bit.

Thank you so much for your help.

Sincerely,

Walter R. Tschinkel, Professor

THE FOLLOWING IS A LIST, ARRANGED BY STATE, OF POSSIBLE SUBSCRIBER LIBRARIES IN THE US WHO MAY OR MAY NOT HAVE PAID THE INCORRECT (MASSON) PUBLISHER. (For reasons of space I have changed the list to paragraph form and have deleted the word "University" where I think it will not confuse the list.-Ed.)

Auburn, Arkansas, Northern Arizona, Arizona State, California State-Chico, San Diego State, California State-Fullerton, UCLA Biomedical, UCLA Law (?), UCLA Physical Science and Technology, Natural History Museum Foundation of Los Angeles, Loma Linda, Colorado State, Connecticut-Storrs, Howard, Smithsonian Institution-Washington, Florida State, South Florida, University of Miami, Florida Agricultural Library-Gainesville, Georgia, Hawaii, Purdue, Indiana, Kansas State, Kentucky, Tulane, Louisiana State, Massachusetts-Amherst, Massachusetts- Boston, Boston, Harvard, National Agricultural Library, Wayne State, Northern Michigan, Minnesota, Linda Hall, Missouri-St. Louis, Duke, North Carolina-Chapel Hill, North Dakota, Kearney State, Nebraska-Lincoln, New Hampshire, New Mexico State, SUNY-Buffalo, Cornell, SUNY-Albany, Rochester, Brooklyn College, CUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry-Syracuse, Long Island-Greenvale, Fordham, SUNY-Stony Brook, SUNY-Oneonta, City College (CUNY) of New York, Akron, Miami University, Ohio State, Oklahoma State, Oregon State, Academy of Natural Sciences-Philadelphia, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota State, Tennessee, Texas Tech, Texas-Austin, Texas-Tyler, Texas A & M, Utah, Virginia Polytechnic, Vermont-Burlington, Washington-Seattle, Wisconsin-Madison, Marquette, Wyoming, Ag. Forest Service-Beltsville MD.

Apologies for typos and errors. I'm working from a handwritten FAXed list. Also note that the compiler probably does not have complete subscriber information, which may be closely held by the commercial publisher (Masson) as he took the entries from OCLC. Any library not reporting holdings, thus, will, of course, have been missed.

34.2 PROCEEDINGS OF THE NEW YORK UNIVERSITY NATIONAL CONFERENCE ON LABOR
Erika Linke, Carnegie Mellon University, EL08+@ANDREW.CMU.EDU.

In December 1990 Little, Brown purchased from Matthew Bender the Proceedings of the New York University National Conference on Labor (ISSN: 0193-3418). For whatever reason, the subscriber list was not transferred from Bender to Little, Brown. What this means is that many of us have not received the latest volume of the Proceedings, and Little, Brown doesn't know we exist. The latest volume was released in December 1990 and is the 43rd.

To add insult to injury, Little, Brown will maintain a sole source option on the title. (I've registered a verbal complaint about this which I hope to follow up in writing.)

To alert Little, Brown that you are a subscriber, call 1 800 331-1664.

34.3 JOURNAL OF THE AUSTRALIAN MATHEMATICAL SOCIETY

The following message was sent to certain subscribers to the Journal of the Australian Mathematical Society (ISSN: 0263-6115 for A and ISSN 0334-2700 for B):

Dear Customer,

I am writing to inform you that we have temporarily suspended supply of our journals, as ordered through the agency The Faxon Company, Inc., 15 Southwest Park, Westwood, Mass. 02090, USA, because this agent is persistently tardy in passing on your subscriptions to us; at present, he is almost six months late with the current season's payments. We have informed the agent of this step, and hopefully, all will be rectified shortly.

In the meantime, for next years orders, please note that there are agents who pay their bills promptly. In addition, it is quite feasible to avoid such hassles by ordering directly from us.

Yours sincerely,

B.D. Jones, Treasurer

11th February, 1991

We recently mailed you a letter from our Publication Services Department concerning the Journal of the Australian Mathematical Society, Series A & B, which is Faxon's title number 084930. This letter was sent in response to an earlier letter which you may have received from the publisher regarding fulfillment problems with Faxon-placed orders for this title for 1991. As your regional service manager, I felt it was important to our partnership as client and subscription agent to provide you with more details on this problem and on the steps which we have taken to resolve fully the service and delivery issues.

Basically, the problem was one of miscommunication between Faxon and the publisher regarding correct rates for 1991. This information was not entered into our system as it should have been, and our payment to the publisher last Fall was incorrect. As your subscription agent, we accept responsibility for this problem and recognize that it is solely our job to solve it as quickly as possible with a minimum of inconvenience to you. As the earlier letter from Publication Services indicated, we have already taken steps to do this and the publisher has assured us that you will receive all late issues as soon as possible, with no gaps in your holdings.

We apologize and hope that this has not caused too much of an inconvenience for you and your patrons. Please do not hesitate to contact me if you have any questions or need any further assistance of any kind.

Sincerely, etc.

Dear Client:

It has come to our attention that you have received a letter from the Australian Mathematical Publishing Association concerning your subscription to Journal of the Australian Mathematical Society, Series A & B, Faxon title number #084930.

Please be assured that we have been in contact with this publisher, and have resolved the misunderstanding and miscommunication. Your subscription will be fulfilled completely.

We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused you.

Sincerely yours,

Carol Easton
Publication Services

Gordon and Breach and VAAP-Inform announce agreement of a joint venture to be called The International Publishing Communication Corporation (IPCC).

The purpose of the venture is to jointly acquire, translate, publish and distribute Soviet scholarly material worldwide. All manufacturing, inclusive of typesetting, printing and binding will be completed in Russia. Additionally, the venture will include a full mail-order and distribution capability within the USSR.

Material emanating in the USSR will be translated and distributed throughout the world by Gordon and Breach. Published material from outside the USSR also will be made available within the Soviet Union using the indigenous distribution system; distribution will be made available to other publishers who wish to participate.

IPCC will be located at Building 1, 39, Marshal Zhukov Prospect, Moscow 123423, USSR and is expected to be fully operational this spring. Alena Engelhart is appointed Manager of Operations. She has been gaining experience in the New York office of Gordon and Breach since July 1990.

In related news, Gordon and Breach will also be opening an editorial office in Moscow.

Gordon and Breach, a multi-national group of publishing companies, publishes journals and books for specialists in the sciences, arts and humanities.

34.5 LOW CITATION RATE OF SCIENTIFIC PAPERS
October Ivins, Louisiana State University, NOTORI@LSUVM.

Two more articles dealing with the low citation rate of scientific papers have appeared recently. Both are by David P. Hamilton, whose "Publishing By -- and For? -- the Numbers" (Science, vol. 250, no. 4986, p. 1331-32, Dec. 7, 1990) was discussed in Newsletter on Serials Pricing Issues 32. Hamilton followed up with "Research Papers: Who's Uncited Now?" in the January 4, 1991 issue of Science (vol. 251, no. 4989, p. 25) in which he again highlights data analyzed by David Pendlebury of the Institute for Scientific Information. The second article examines comparative citation levels among scientific subdisciplines, finding a range of 9.2 percent uncited for atomic, molecular, and chemical physics to 86.9 percent for general engineering. Citation rates among the social sciences and in the humanities were also addressed, finding overall averages for the social sciences of 74.7 percent and in the humanities of 98 percent.

A longer article, "Trivia Pursuit: Too Much of America's Research Money Goes to Studies Nobody Wants to Read" (Washington Monthly, vol. 23:3, p. 36-42, March 1991) discusses the familiar concerns of journal proliferation and the pressure to publish that drives promotion, tenure, and grant awards. He suggests solutions that include a return to an emphasis on teaching by college and university faculty and new research funding criteria for federal agencies. Although most of his ideas are valid, he seems to have based his article on interviews with scientists; there are no footnotes. As a result, some of his suggestions seem odd, for example, "...it wouldn't hurt for funding agencies to be more aggressive about the extent to which they reimburse library costs -- a strategy that could help indirectly cut back on the number of journals in circulation" (page 42). Despite the article's occasional oversimplifications, it is encouraging to see these issues addressed. (Thanks to Paul Gleason, editor of the SSP Letter, for bringing the article to my attention. Also, thanks to Chuck Hamaker for pointing out that the low citation rate of scientific papers is old news; Eugene Garfield, then and now president of the Institute for Scientific Information, discussed similar findings and cited earlier research in "Citation Analysis as a Tool in Journal Evaluation" (Science, November 3, 1972, p. 471-479).

34.6 MORE TROUBLE WITH "TRENDS" JOURNALS
Carol Lawrence, Yale Medical Library, LAWRENCE@YALEMED.BITNET.

Yale Medical Library
333 Cedar Street
New Haven CT 06510

28 February 1991

Mr. David Bousfield, Publisher
Elsevier Trends Journals
68 Hills Road
Cambridge CB2 1LA England

I am writing to you concerning the quality of binding of the reference edition of Immunology Today (ISSN: 0167-4919) vol. 10, 1989.

Your "reference edition," volume 10, 1989 was received at the Yale Medical Library April 27, 1990. Less than a year later, the binding is broken; it had already been taped around the spine when it reached me. The front cover is nearly detached and the spine is torn away from the text block at the top and the bottom of the volume. The upper corners of the book are bent and the cover material has peeled away.

Although this speaks well for the amount of use the volume is receiving, our standard library bindings by the Bridgeport Bindery, which were used on our earlier volumes of Immunology Today are still in excellent condition.

In addition to having to pay the extra cost of your reference edition for the library, we will also have to have this and future volumes bound at our expense.

Please review your policy on the packaging of the Trends series and permit us to purchase these important materials at a reasonable price and to provide them with the quality binding they deserve.

Sincerely,

Carol Lawrence

Head, Technical Services and Collection Development

34.7 FROM THE MAILBOX
Various Readers

This is a new regular section of the Newsletter on Serials Pricing Issues and replaces a lot of what has until now been in the From the Editor "column."

>From Judith Rieke, Vanderbilt University Medical Center Library, RIEKEJL@VUCTRVAX.BITNET:

I've been following comments about the ISSN in the Newsletter with interest. As soon as we converted to online receipt and could search with the standard number, I realized what an efficiency it was for us. I also kept hoping that publishers would print the SISAC code on the covers as well, so we could get a programmable scanner to allow us to search for the number by simply scanning the first nine characters. What a great time saver that would be!

And as we all know, time is money. Has anyone done a study on how much more cost effective it is to deal with more organized publishers who do things like print ISSN prominently, respond to our questions and claims, etc? Do we need to add how much more or less it costs to process materials from certain publishers into the equation? Is the price on the invoice really the bottom line? I know in my most recent life working with monographs, their price may not be as much, but they are costly in terms of labor costs for cataloging, database maintenance, and authority work.

One final thing about the ISSN. We hope to be presenting a paper at the Medical Library Association meeting in June about our experience here at Vanderbilt, where we loaded MEDLINE and "linked" the citations to our holdings using the ISSN. We analyzed our problems and found fewer than anticipated. A great many were related to title changes (no surprise). The main point, though, is that the ISSN has the potential for many effective uses, and it will benefit all of us to be adamant about its usage.

As one who is at a library that is charged for usage of our Vax - - these electronic mail lists are not free for us, and I appreciate your editing the information. I love the spontaniety of some of the others, but sometimes become impatient with the time it takes to check things that are mistakes and that belabor points. Even if you feel you are no longer at the cutting edge, you are more than a passing fad! Thanks for that!

>From Jim Mouw, University of Chicago, MOUW@MIDWAY.UCHICAGO.EDU, a letter he received recently:

February 20, 1991

Subscriptions to daily newspapers from Germany

Dear Subscriber,

The U.S. Postal Service is already testing the limits of your patience. You are often experiencing late or irregular arrival of the daily newspapers we mail to you. This irritating situation is now further complicated by drastic reductions of transatlantic flights by the airlines.

Many regularly scheduled flights have been cancelled, and large passenger airplanes are frequently being replaced by smaller aircraft with limited space for carrying freight.

These problems may delay the arrival of your newspapers in your mailbox even more than usual. Please bear with us. We are doing everything that can be done to maintain a regular mailing schedule.

We appreciate your understanding.

Sincerely yours,

German Language Publications, Inc.
Subscription Department

>From Carol Lawrence, Yale Medical Library, LAWRENCE@YALEMED.BITNET.

Did you know that the Medical Library Association is piloting its "MLA Exchange" (serials back issue exchange service in printed form) on SerialsQuest? MLA "exchangers" have had the annual SerialsQuest fee waived for participating in the pilot. According to ABACIS, response was excellent. There will no doubt be reports at the MLA meeting in May. We've only keyed in issues and sent them to ABACIS thus far, but it looks very promising and, as outlined now, direct charges per issue combined with credits for trades would make it very economical. We are assessing internal costs during the pilot.

Chair of the MLA Exchange Advisory Committee is Rosalind F. Dudden, Gerald Tucker Memorial Medical Library, National Jewish Center for Immunology and Respiratory Medicine, 1400 Jackson St, Denver CO 80206; 303 398-1483.

>From Michael Black, Cabot Science Library, Harvard University, BLAKE@HUSC4.BITNET:

I am interested in getting information on the pricing structure of biological and biochemical journals. Do you know if there is data on the journal name with cost/character by publisher?

34.8 HAMAKER'S HAYMAKERS
Chuck Hamaker, Louisiana State University, NOTCAH@LSUVM.BITNET.

On March 3, 1991 the Sunday Telegraph (London) ran an article entitled "Pearson's Dutch Divorce." The article states that the "engagement with a view to marriage" that was indicated in the 1988 mutual stock purchase between Elsevier and Pearson is being dissolved. Pearson is attempting to sell its Elsevier holdings, and Elsevier apparently ditto. On Friday, March 1st, Elsevier shares first fell sharply in trading, but recovered to DF77.10. That values Elsevier at just under DF5 billion, or Pounds sterling, 1.5 billion. Slightly less than three billion dollars. Pearson, closing at 723 Pounds, would have a market capitalization of about 1.96 billion Pounds sterling, or just under four billion dollars. When the giants trundle they can also unbundle. The article points out that the original swap share was designed as a defensive move by British Pearson against Rupert Murdoch. Since Murdoch`s no longer a threat.... Although the link-up was also seen as prelude to merger (Pearson/Elsevier), this divestment (Pearson held 22 percent of Elsevier stock, Elsevier 15 percent of Pearson) makes it clear those plans are off. However, the two companies according to the newspaper report are still looking at joint ventures in European and Australian publishing. Pity the Aussies? My thanks to Heather Steele for the article, but of course, the editorial wisecracks are my own.

The Serials Librarian vol. 19, no. 3/4 (1991) contains the full report of last June's NASIG conference. Although most of you will want to read the whole issue, two talks are standouts from my perspective. They are the full report of the Utah State University serials pricing study, which used as a database 370 titles tracked for 20 years, and the report by Dorothy Milne and Bill Tiffany of "A Survey of the Cost- Effectiveness of Serials: A Cost-Per-Use Method and its Results."

The Utah State study by Kenneth E. Marks and Steven P. Nielsen is remarkable in that it is a real longitudinal study quantitatively based. In examining foreign based publishing, pricing increases empirically broke out into two very different behaviors. Group one (Australia, France, and the UK) journals increased 1.4 times in price per page in country of origin based comparisons between 1967 and 1987, while with Group two titles (Austria, West Germany, Japan, the Netherlands, and Switzerland) domestic buyers (in country of origin) paid "an astonishing 4.7 times" the price per page in 1987 as they did in 1967. The study also was unable to note a difference in price increase behavior in the sciences on a discipline basis. "It is not apparent that price increases in any one discipline are the major cause of the overall rapid increases in journal prices." However, when foreign commercial presses were measured, "The implication is that foreign commercial presses are responsible for a disproportionate share of journal price increases." The three publishers identified in Dougherty and Johnson's LJ article (Library Journal vol. 113, no. 9, May 15, 1988, p. 27-29) were examined separately (Elsevier, Springer, Pergamon). "Ninety-five percent of the titles from these three foreign commercial publishers (which the article does not list) are in the top 40 percent of price increases for the entire sample. It is noteworthy that the same three publishers were among four studied by ARL, which concluded that their price increases could not be explained by increases in producer cost."

The study of cost effectiveness/cost-per-use reported by Milne and Tiffany, librarians at the Memorial University of Newfoundland, is also destined to become a classic (if not in citations, since librarians tend to ignore citations in their writings, at least in use and reference). Looking at major sci-tech publishers, if all titles were cancelled which were not cost-effective, 44 percent of the dollar value of these publishers' products (eight were examined closely) could be cancelled. The least cost effective of these publishers could suffer cancellations at 75 percent of dollar value if stringent cost- benefit analysis were used. One of these publishers, as noted in the oral report but not in the text, is the publisher gaining an international reputation for legal pressure on pricing research. Cost-ineffectiveness did not necessarily mean a low level of use in this study, but rather a high cost per use ratio. If more effective delivery means were available, the authors speculate that titles receiving even 60 uses a year could be cancelled because the use-to-cost ratio was so high. In defense of the high priced commercial sci-tech publishers the authors note, "The serials published by a group of eight major commercial publishers are more cost-effective than the average for all serials in our collection. However, even among these publishers, 44 percent of the dollar value of their subscriptions was found to be cost-ineffective in our library at the present time." They caution publishers that cost per use is very high for much that is published and that more stringent editorial controls are necessary to reduce cost-per-use ratios. If the material does not become more used, it will not be collected as libraries move towards more cost-efficient operations.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
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. 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. The Newsletter is available on BITNET, DataLinx, and ALANET. EBSCO and Readmore Academic customers may receive the Newsletter in paper format from EBSCO and Readmore, respectively. Back issues of the Newsletter are available electronically free of charge through BITNET from the editor.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++