44.2 NEW LICENSE FOR _DIRECTORY OF PHYSICIANS_, Jim Bingham
44.3 NEW LIST: COLLDV-L LIBRARY COLLECTION DEVELOPMENT, Lynn Sipe
44.4 THE JOURNAL AND AN ARTICLE ALTERNATIVE, Bob Sickles
44.6 HAMAKER'S HAYMAKERS, Chuck Hamaker
Marcia Tuttle, tuttle@gibbs.oit.unc.edu or TUTTLE@UNC.BITNET.
Please notice that the editor now has an e-mail address on gibbs, the same computer that distributes the newsletter. Feel free to use it; it's rapidly becoming my address of choice. I have also updated the statement at the end of each issue, giving the correct subscribe and unsubscribe instructions, in the hope that so many people will not keep getting "invalid request" messages.
I recommend with enthusiasm the new CNI-COPYRIGHT discussion group to all newsletter readers who are concerned about the topic. The discussion is lively -- occasionally heated -- and wideranging. Participants are librarians, scholars (not mutually exclusive!), lawyers, systems personnel, and probably a lot of others who haven't shown up yet. To subscribe, send a message to LISTSERV@CNI.ORG saying SUBSCRIBE CNI-COPYRIGHT [YOUR NAME]. The group is so active I have been wondering how moderator Mary Brandt Jensen finds time to do anything except tend to the list!
After Newsletter 41 printed a communication about the new licensing arrangement for the _Directory of Physicians_, Charles Bailey posted a message to PACS-L, asking for discussion of this issue. Several responses were posted to PACS-L during the first several days of August (although we have had no response to the newsletter!). Below, very slightly edited, is one of the messages, used by permission of the author with the disclaimer, "It was a casual comment in an ongoing BITNET discussion." Another of the PACS-L messages urged librarians who cancel the directory because of the license to inform the AMA that the reason is not the usual budgetary reasons, but the unacceptable terms of the agreement.
44.2 NEW LICENSE FOR _DIRECTORY OF PHYSICIANS_
Jim Bingham, University of Kansas, LBU05@UKANVM.BITNET. From PACS-L.
Concerning the American Medical Association's new license for the _Directory of Physicians_, I need to emphatically disagree with [the] assertion that "the Library copy is no big deal, because we have had similar agreements for some tools in the past." I have worked in medical libraries for 15 years and am unaware of any comparable license requirement for a printed resource. We could discuss indefinitely whether there is any fundamental difference between a printed resource and, e.g., a CD-ROM database (it's all the same info, etc.). But I react to the license in the context of the recent statement from the Association of American Publishers challenging the CONTU copyright guidelines. The bottom line of the AMA license is that it prohibits a library from acting like one: from lending to its local clients, from providing interlibrary loan support, from permitting clients to photocopy consistent with "fair use." Under the license agreement the Directory no longer belongs to the library and the library cannot use it as it sees fit within the framework of existing law.
Both the AAP statement and the AMA license threaten the resource-sharing relationships that we have developed over the decades -- at exactly the time when we are relying increasingly on those relationships due to our shrinking ability to afford primary source materials. The AMA license is at once a shot over the collective bow of libraries and a testing of the legal waters -- as well as a testing of the resolve and cohesiveness of the library community. Anyone interested in the future of libraries should consider very carefully what the impact of a general adoption of the license model by publishers would be on their operations: no circulation, no inter-library loan, no photocopying, no ownership. Other than that, business as usual.
We have discontinued our standing order for the _Directory of Physicians_. We are also working with campus administration to prepare some kind of institutional response to this alarming development. And we are interested in supporting any response from ALA, MLA, or other concerned professional organization.
44.3 NEW LIST: COLLDV-L LIBRARY COLLECTION DEVELOPMENT
Lynn Sipe, University of Southern California, LSIPE@USCVM.BITNET.
COLLDV-L is a moderated discussion list directed primarily to library collection development officers, bibliographers, and selectors plus others involved with library collection development, including interested publishers and vendors. Representative topics appropriate for the List include access/ownership issues, approval plans, collection assessment, budgeting, cooperation, collection formats, organization, planning, policies, pricing, publisher/vendor relations, resource sharing, selection, storage, etc. If an existing Listserv or electronic publication (such as NSPI) already covers a specialized collection development concern or interest it may be more appropriate to post there than to COLLDV-L unless there is ample justification for cross-posting.
To subscribe, send the following command to LISTSERV@USCVM via mail or interactive message: SUBSCRIBE COLLDV-L your_full_name. For example: SUBSCRIBE COLLDV-L Joe Shmoe.
Owner: Lynn Sipe, LSIPE@USCVM.BITNET
44.4 THE JOURNAL AND AN ARTICLE ALTERNATIVE
Bob Sickles, Iowa State University, jl.rcs@isumvs.iastate.edu.
Patricia Berger states in your July 13 issue, that it's time to rethink the way scientists and scholars communicate. I mostly concur, but unless we slide, I believe the book and journal will always be with us. Presently, there's a bundle of scholars out there, comfortable using the traditional journal, and another group easily moving into the electronic. Even so, Berger's right, no more can we quarantee uninterrupted access due to budgets unable to handle cost increases and article, journal proliferation. In another article, Dr. Charles Reed (Univ. of Florida System) notes in the form of a question: Should we stress quality over quantity, rather than rewarding scholars merely because they publish something? Obviously, P&T standards and balances need revision.
A question I have in all this is, do we need to have every article, paper, and report published within a journal. I believe we'll need the journal, the electronic journal, and how about articles, etc. placed with an ERIC "sort-of-speak" database. We have full-text capabilities, and can, it seems, overcome the photo, tables, mathematical formulas, and chemical ring, etc. problem. Quality assurance, satisfying P&T standards would be a given.
Knowing that the economic wheel needs to churn (hopefully, not solely off of libraries) society (global and interdependent) will still need the journal and its alternative. Berger, I believe, was likewise thinking towards some sort of packaging or rewrapping of such information.
The mailbox is: tuttle@gibbs.oit.unc.edu or TUTTLE@UNC.BITNET.
>From Dana Roth, Caltech, DZRLIB@CITROMEO.BITNET:
Newsletter readers might be interested to know that the _Titles from the Royal Society_ advertised by Scholium International are rebound issues of the _Philosophical Transactions and Proceedings of the Royal Society (London)_. The prices for these 'journal issues' range from $50 to $110. Caltech enters analytic entries in its online catalog for topical journal issues and in many cases they also appear on OCLC.
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>From Donna Signori, University of Victoria, LDIVCOL2@UVVM.UVIC.CA:
I read with amazement about the entire Gordon and Breach affair in the courts. As a Collections Head wondering how we are going to keep from sinking further into the great abyss of debt from ever-rising journal costs, I can only express my admiration at the Societies and Dr. Barschall for publishing their survey. For me the bottom line was that if Gordon and Breach could afford to take them to court they indeed are over-charging their customers. I hope this serves as a lesson to other over-priced publishers and can only hope that they count their characters and pages the next time they decide to increase the price of their journal. This was for me the most eye-opening story I have read in a long-time. I plan on sharing it with faculty and the librarians who do selection for me and I shall definitely quote my source of information. Thank you.
Chuck Hamaker, Louisiana State University, NOTCAH@LSUVM.BITNET.
Recent decisions from Elsevier to cut vendor discount rates by 25% and increase prices in Dfl by 10% to 12% are outrageous in light of their overall profit picture as reported in the July 13, 1992 issue of _Business Week_ "Global 1,000." For 1991, Elsevier had after tax profits of about 16.7 cents on every dollar of sales, or $222 million on $1.324 billion of sales. Return on equity was 50.4% (return on equity is the latest 12 months' earnings per share as a percent of most recent book value per share). Wolters Kluwer, another Dutch publishing company, had the same approximate sales volume, $1.389 billion and slightly higher return on equity (50.8%) but earnings were $128 million after tax, or about 9.2 cents for every dollar of sales. This figure, 9 cents profit per dollar of sales is similar for Reed (which owns among others Cahners, Bowker, K.G. Saur). In other words, Elsevier is taking a profit that appears to be 85% higher on a dollar of sales than roughly comparable companies. Pearson, Elsevier's erstwhile partner had after tax earnings of 7.7 cents per dollar of sales.
Not only is Elsevier taking profit mercilessly, in my opinion, it is by any measure, taking it from a journal system that is being destroyed as we watch. In fact, predatory pricing at this level acclerates the rate at which the whole STM journal system is de-stabilized. In the long run Elsevier is expending the real value of the company recklessly for short term gain. It is the goodwill represented by the sheer numbers of subscriptions to their journals which forms the basis for future profits for the company. By taking this level of profits out of the system now, they are signalling that they have no faith in the long term viability of the system that is their livelihood. And they are showing little or no regard for the libraries and vendors who are part and parcel of the system that supports them. Overiding concerns seem to be short term profitability and keeping the scientists happy. "Let the rest of the system beware," seems to be their message.
The NEWSLETTER ON SERIALS PRICING ISSUES is not copyrighted. Readers of the newsletter are encouraged to share the information in the newsletter by electronic or paper methods. We would appreciate credit if you quote from the newsletter.
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The NEWSLETTER ON SERIALS PRICING ISSUES (ISSN: 1046-3410) is published by the editor through the facilities of the Office of Information Technology on the campus of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, as news is available. Editor: Marcia Tuttle, BITNET: TUTTLE@UNC.BITNET; Internet: tuttle@gibbs.oit.unc.edu; Paper mail: Serials Department, CB #3938 Davis Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill NC 27599- 3938; Telephone: 919 962-1067; FAX: 919 962-0484. Editorial Board: Deana Astle (Clemson University), Jerry Curtis (Springer Verlag New York), Charles Hamaker (Louisiana State University), James Mouw (University of Chicago), and Heather Steele (Blackwell's Periodicals Division). The Newsletter is available on BITNET/Internet and Blackwell's CONNECT. EBSCO and Readmore Academic customers may receive the Newsletter in paper format from these companies. Back issues of the Newsletter are available electronically free of charge through electronic mail from the editor. To subscribe (or unsubscribe to the newsletter, send a message to LISTSERV@GIBBS.OIT.UNC.EDU saying SUBSCRIBE (or UNSUBSCRIBE) PRICES-L [YOUR NAME]. Be sure to send that message to the listserver and not to Prices-l. You must include your name, and to unsubscribe, you must send the message from the e-mail address by which you are subscribed. If you have problems, contact the editor.
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