111.2 FAXON COMPANY ANNOUNCES COST CUTS
111.3 "MODERATE" PRICE INCREASES FOR 1995? Bernard Naylor
111.4 RESPONSES TO BIRKHAEUSER'S ELECTRONIC PUBLISHING PROJECT (IN NO. 110), Deborah Lee and Carol Schaafsma
111.5 HAWORTH PRESS PHOTOCOPYING AND DOCUMENT DELIVERY POLICIES, Linda Cranston, Dennis Carrigan, and Kate McCain
Marcia Tuttle, tuttle@gibbs.oit.unc.edu.
Another appeal: It would be a big help to me if subscribers who are chang- ing or have already changed from BITNET to Internet addresses would unsub- scribe from the old address and resubscribe with the new one. If it's too late for this (i.e., if you can no longer send mail from your BITNET ad- dress), just resubscribe with the new address and send me a note asking me to delete the BITNET address. Long-time subscribers may have used their BITNET address in the beginning and still be listed that way. I'll be happy to delete it or to change it to the new address. Also, when you change jobs, it would help if you would unsubscribe from your lists and electronic conferences. I notice that some of you have two listings on the newsletter mailing list. If you are getting duplicate copies, please let me know and we'll stop that. Your help will cut down the number of error messages, not only for this newsletter, but for other lists. Each undeliverable piece of mail generates at least one error message (some send one every day for 10 days!). That is bad enough for me, but for a service such as SERIALST which sends a lot of separate messages, it's a real pain. Thanks!111.2 FAXON COMPANY ANNOUNCES COST CUTS
Press Release. Contact: Kevin Butler, phone 617 329-3350.
March 30, 1994, Westwood MA -- In a letter to clients, The Faxon Company today announced cost-cutting measures including an employee layoff at the US headquarters. The company states that the impact on client service will be minimal, as the majority of layoffs are related to the completion of a major computer systems project. Faxon's cost-reduction program also includes reducing officer and employee compansation, implementing efficient service delivery systems, and the possible divesture of non-essential ventures. According to company president Peter Pyclik, the company has endured two years of net loss for the first time in its 114-year history. "We must stop this loss now before it becomes a trend," said Pyclik. "We cannot allow it to affect our business or our service to clients. These reductions are part of our in-depth program to turn the business around this year." Pyclik described Faxon's losses as resulting from past years' investments in unprofitable ventures, reduced discounts from publishers, and increased competitive pressure. Four months ago, in November 1993, Pyclik became the president of Faxon when a divorce court decree awarded the ownership of the company to Judy Davis. "In November, we found ourselves in charge of a company with significant financial challenges. Our cost-cutting program is projected to fully ad- dress the situation," Pyclik stated. "With the good will of our client community and the hard work of our employees, Faxon will return to full strength and profitability this year."111.3 "MODERATE" PRICE INCREASES FOR 1995?
Bernard Naylor, University of Southampton, B.Naylor@soton.ac.uk.
Perhaps it was the rapid appearance of NSPI 110 so soon after NSPI 109 that caught most people before they could react. However, I was surprised that only Daniel Jones made a comment, and that a passing one, about the lead item in 109. We were told "EBSCO predicts moderate price increases for 1995 subscriptions." On closer reading, these predicted "moderate" increases were found to be in the range of 8-10 percent. In the Western developed world, retail price inflation is currently low. In the UK it is below 3 percent. US and Western European inflation rates are also low at the present time. Interest rates are also low and tending to stay quite low, reflecting some confidence on the part of central banks that inflation will not rise significantly in the near future. In that context, the prediction of an increase of 8-10 percent increase in journal costs worldwide next year is quite startling. This is not the prelude to a further whinge about price gouging. No doubt periodicals publishers can give reasons (I have heard some myself) to ex- plain this increase. What has to be said is that it is seriously in excess of reasonable predictions about likely library incomes in 1994-5 out of which these increased subscriptions have to be paid. If any product is rising in price much faster than the income of the main purchaser group, it has to be assumed that it is heading into a steepening financial crisis. My view is that it is now becoming essential for periodicals publishers to make ordinary retail price inflation a rigorous guideline for their own price setting for a period of at least a few years. If this means that research goes unpublished because periodicals cannot grow or even have to be cut, then we will probably have to face up to that for a time. Somehow, we must cut the "inflation mentality" or the "inflation expectation," which now prevails in the journals field -- and which accounts for the extraordi- nary use of the word "moderate" which prompted me to write. Cutting out "inflationary expectation" has certainly been a painful experience in many of the advanced economies. Should it not now become an urgent priority for the learned journals industry?111.4 RESPONSES TO BIRKHAEUSER'S ELECTRONIC PUBLISHING PROJECT (IN NO. 110)
Deborah Lee, Mississippi State University, dol1@ra.msstate.edu; and
Carol Schaafsma, University of Hawaii, carols@uhunix.uhcc.hawaii.edu.
From Deborah O. Lee: I found Birkhaeuser's approach to electronic publishing a little puzzling. Wouldn't the scholarly community simply request the abstract or summary via inter-library loan and then ftp the article, assuming the ftp article is available free of charge? And isn't making access to electronic information dependent on the paper copy defeating much of the value of electronic in- formation? I think Birkhaeuser is to be applauded for tackling the issue, but this approach needs work. ----- From Carol Schaafsma: Where will the material be archived? For how long? What if the "case" in "just-in-case" is in the year 2005? I welcome experiments, but fear the long-term results if the right questions aren't posed from the beginning. What have been the reactions from the mathematicians and engineers in the academic community who are educating the mathematicians and engineers of the future?111.5 HAWORTH PRESS PHOTOCOPYING AND DOCUMENT DELIVERY POLICIES
Linda Cranston, Longwood College, lcransto@lwcvm1.lws.edu; Dennis Carrigan, University of Kentucky, DPCARR00@UKCC.UKY.EDU; and Kate McCain, Drexel University, MCCAINKW@DUVM.BITNET.
[These messages are from SERIALST, serials@uvmvm.uvm.edu, in late March. Response is welcome. -ed.] From Linda Cranston: In cataloging a title change to a Haworth Press journal, _Journal of Family Social Work_, I was struck by paragraph 16 from the general journal infor- mation. I quote: 16) LOCAL PHOTOCOPYING: Individual, classroom, library reserve room use: Photocopies of single articles in this journal may be reproduced for personal use, library use, or classroom use only after payment of the following reproduction/royalty fee: $1.50 per copy per article or por- tion thereof. This fee does not pertain to making photocopies for re- sale. Prepayment required. Checks should be made payable to The Haworth Press, Inc. and mailed to The Haworth Press, Inc., 10 Alice Street, Binghamton, NY 13904-1580. I then checked two other Haworth titles, _Social Work with Groups_ and _Social Work in Health Care_. For both titles the early 1993 issues contain the following: Copies of articles in this journal may be noncommercially reproduced for the purpose of educational or scientific advancement. Otherwise, no part of this work may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, microfilm and record- ing, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permis- sion in writing from the publisher. Permission does not extend for any services providing photocopies for sale in any way. For both titles, the statement changes to that above with issue no. 3. I understand the new language to mean, among other things, that no individual may photocopy an article for their own personal use and that no library may photocopy an article for ILL purposes. Haworth has no way to enforce these statements but may intend to make an example of someone/some library. Can the publisher preempt the fair use in the copyright law? This has huge implications. Thought? Comments? Sugges- tions?... ----- Selected Responses to Linda Cranston: From Dennis Carrigan: I suggest you have a look at Kenneth D Crews, _Copyright, Fair Use, and the Challenge for Universities_, Univ of Chicago Press, 1993. ----- From Kate McCain: Speaking of Haworth journals, I was browsing through UNCOVER today, bring- ing myself up to speed for my serials class and noticed that the Haworth journal articles all have a line that says, essentially, that document delivery is not permitted by this journal and the reader should consult his or her library. Now here at Drexel, we are undergoing an all-too-common horrendous budget cut, and hoping to augment our soon-to-be depleted local collection with document delivery (and of course, paying the copyright charges for documents which, had we subscribed, would have been within the bounds of fair use, but that's another story). It struck me that perhaps Haworth thinks that if they don't permit document delivery, then libraries will be forced to carry the titles in order to make the information availa- ble to their patrons. I am not sure that will happen. It might be just as likely that, given the reputation of the publisher and the relative margin- ality of many titles, the library will simply cut them. This should be of concern to authors ... who publish regularly in Haworth journals. If simple publication without readership meets one's needs, then all is well. If visibility, citation, making an impact on practice, stimulating scholar- ship, etc. is important, then Haworth authors might well be concerned. Comments?
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