137.2 _ADVANCES IN SERIALS MANAGEMENT_ CALL FOR PAPERS, Cindy Hepfer
137.3 RISING PAPER PRICES, Mark Funk
137.4 RESPONSE TO NAYLOR ARTICLE IN NO. 134, Andrew Odlyzko,
137.5 SOCIETY FOR SCHOLARLY PUBLISHING ANNUAL MEETING, Ed Barnas
137.6 RESPONSE TO HAMAKER'S HAYMAKERS, Hannah King
Ellen Finnie Duranceau, Peter Stangl, Paul Ginsparg
From: Ellen Finnie Duranceau, Massachusetts Institute of Technology,
efinnie@MIT.EDU:
Marcia, thanks for the several recent NSPI's, all of which have been pro-
vocative and interesting.
I have a comment in response to David Flaxbert's item 134.3, regarding the
relative difficulty of accessing journal articles over the internet, rather
than in paper.
I disagree with Mr. Flaxbert. While no one could be fonder of the physical
book itself, and more anxious about the potential demise of the good old
codex format -- when it comes to quickly getting my hands on an a work-
related journal article, I'd go for internet access over searching the
shelves of bound periodicals or filling out an ILB request (as Mr. Flaxbart
proposes) any day.
Months ago, when working on a Balance Point column for _Serials Review_, I
retrieved an earlier version of Andrew Odlyzko's "Tragic Loss or Good Rid-
dance: the impending demise of traditional scholarly journals,"(the paper
Mr. Flaxbart discusses as being difficult to access over the internet) in
about 30 seconds -- I either ftp'd it or got it from a gopher or web site,
I don't recall which. I had the paper, read it, and gave it to a colleague,
all in the space of about an hour.
Contrast this with the last time I sought a paper copy of a journal arti-
cle. First off, that was a long time ago -- I find the activation energy to
be much higher because I can't simply fit the search and retrieval seam-
lessly into my normal workday. Second, when I do search, I often find that
the issue I need is not on the shelf or is being bound. If I do locate it,
I have to make a photocopy, since I want to be able to transport it conven-
iently and mark it up. So I have to go to the copier, and then reshelve the
journal (I feel guilty leaving things about for the stackers). If our li-
brary doesn't receive the journal, I have to fill out an ILB request and
wait several weeks to obtain the item. (Yes, this could be rushed in an
emergency, but these requests are rarely emergencies.) Clearly both of
these options take much longer than 30 seconds.
Suffice it to say that I would simply NOT have read Odlyzko's article if it
had not been available over the internet.
-----
>From Peter Stangl, Stanford University Medical Center,
peter@krypton.stanford.edu:
Just a brief note on the Odlyzko paper's URL: I got timed out waiting for
the connection to be made...
-----
>From Paul Ginsparg, Los Alamos National Laboratory,
ginsparg@qfwfq.lanl.gov
Your readers might be interested to have a look at my comments to the Amer-
ican Physical Society at the meeting here in October. They are available on
the www at
http://xxx.lanl.gov/blurb/pg14Oct94.html
Note that access info does not "take up 42 lines of email text (four
screens on a [10 line?!?] terminal), nor require that the user know a fair
amount about FTP, PostScript decoding, decompression programs, URL proto-
cols, and so on..." Just requires an ability to point and click (demon-
strably within even the limited capabilities of the current millions of www
users), and subsequently a reading ability of the English language (the
problematic part).
137.2 _ADVANCES IN SERIALS MANAGEMENT_ CALL FOR PAPERS
Cindy Hepfer, Health Sciences Library, SUNY-Buffalo, HSLCINDY@UBVM.cc.buffalo.edu.
[Received March 18, 1995. -ed.]
CALL FOR PAPERS
ADVANCES IN SERIALS MANAGEMENT, VOLUME 6
The first volume of Advances in Serials Management, published by JAI Press,
Inc., appeared in 1986 under the editorship of Marcia Tuttle and Jean G.
Cook. Volume 5, which was edited by Marcia Tuttle and Karen Darling, is
currently in press and expected by the end of the summer of 1995.
The table of contents for Volume 5 includes:
-Scholarly Publishing: Today and Tomorrow
Nancy L. Eaton, Cynthia Dobson, and William K. Black
-A Prehistory of Electronic Journals: the EIES and BLEND Projects
Bernard Naylor and Marilyn Geller
-Serial Linking Notes and MARC 760-767 Fields in OPAC Displays
Joe Altimus
-Government Publications as Serials; Serials as Government Publications
Charles A. Seavey
-Integrating Depository Documents Serials into Regular Serials Receiving
and Cataloging Routines at the University of Oregon Library
Karen D. Darling
-Publisher/Vendor Relations
Mary Devlin and Ronald Akie
-Listservs within the Pantheon of Written Materials
Sharon H. Domier
CALL FOR PAPERS
With Volume 6, Advances in Serials Management will have a new editorial
team which invites potential contributors to contact one of us to discuss
your topic, the submission deadline and other procedural matters.
The scope of _Advances in Serials Management_ will continue to include
papers on all aspects of serials management from a variety of perspectives.
Publishers, vendors and librarians are encouraged to submit. Included in
the range of serials management topics are acquisitions, document delivery,
e-journals, vendor issues and relations, publishing, cataloging, reference,
collection development/management, budgeting, gifts and exchange, union
listing and relevant organizational issues. New trends and emerging tech-
nologies as well as state of the art discussions regarding serials are
encouraged. Papers which are co-authored and present two or more perspec-
tives on an issue are also welcomed.
If you would like to contribute to Volume 6 of _Advances in Serials Manage-
ment_, please contact one of the following editors.
Julia Gammon Cindy Hepfer
Acquisitions Department Serials Department
Bierce Library Health Sciences Library
University of Akron Abbott Hall
302 Buchtel Common State University of New York at Buffalo
Akron, OH 44325-1708 3435 Main Street
216-972-6254; Fax: 216-972-6383 Buffalo NY 14214-3002
jgammon@uakron.edu 716 829-2139; Fax: 716 829-2211
hslcindy@ubvm.cc.buffalo.edu
Teresa Malinowski
Serials Section
University Library
California State University, Fullerton
800 N. State College Blvd.
Fullerton, CA 92634-4150
714-773-3713; Fax: 714-449-7135
tmalinow@fullerton.edu
137.3 RISING PAPER PRICES
Mark Funk, Cornell Medical Library, mefunk@med.cornell.edu.
The following comes from the March 27, 1995 issue of _Digital Medial Per-
spective_. I thought it might be of interest to the Newsletter readers.
Quotation permission and subscription information are included at the
end.
________________________________________
How the Rise of Electronic Media is affecting Paper Prices
by Jonathan Seybold, publisher of Digital Media
Papermaking has been a cyclical business. Business was bad in the last
recession. As the economy has improved and demand has gone up, the price of
paper has been rising dramatically. Newsprint has seen the biggest gains,
but the increases will be across the board.
Normally, you would expect this to prompt paper companies to build more
capacity, and for this capacity to come on line just in time for the next
slump in demand. However:
- Papermaking is messy. Paper companies are under environmental pressure.
The costs/exposure on this are still not entirely known. But a number of
companies have chosen to close down old mills rather than try to bring them
up to compliance with current regulations.
- New paper mills are expensive. It can cost $500 million to build a new
mill.
- Like all the rest of us, the paper company executives read all of the
press stuff about the Information Highway, the rise of online services and
the decline of paper-based publishing.
So, paper companies are looking at the situation and saying, "This has
always been a cyclical business. Now, on top of this we have continuing
environmental woes and a general consensus that significant chunks of our
market will be moving away from paper. Why should we invest in a new paper
mill?"
In essence, the fear of electronic media is causing paper companies not to
invest in new capacity. This, in turn, will insure that the cost of paper
continues to rise which will, of course, push publishers into electronic
publishing and away from paper. The fear creates its own reality.
________________________________________
How To Subscribe to DMP and Get Back Issues
If you'd like to receive this free electronic newsletter regularly, send us
email at perspective-request@digmedia.com and we will put you on the list.
The subject line of your messages should read "subscribe perspective".
Please put your full name in the message's body; we would appreciate it if
you would also include your title and organization in the message.
You can get back issues of _Digital Media Perspective_ by sending email
(subject and contents unimportant) to our back issues server at
perspective-backissues@digmedia.com -- it will respond with instructions on
how to retrieve individual issues.
Copyright (c) 1995 Digital Media: A Seybold Report. This electronic news-
letter may be freely duplicated, reproduced or retransmitted, but only in
its entirety. Excerpts used for the purposes of quotation must be attribu-
ted explicitly to _Digital Media Perspective_.
137.4 RESPONSE TO NAYLOR ARTICLE IN NO. 134
Andrew Odlyzko, AT&T Bell Laboratories, amo@research.att.com.
Bernard Naylor's attempt to determine the willingness of scholars to give up journals in favor of preprint servers like Ginsparg's is an excellent idea. However, I feel he is not going to receive meaningful answers unless he rephrases his question. Right now he is simply asking whether scholars are ready to drop journal subscriptions. They have absolutely no incentive to do so, since journals are paid for from library budgets that usually have no visible connection with what the scholars do. If I am asked only whether I would like to be chauffeured to and from work each day, I will surely say yes. On the other hand, if I am told that I can have this serv- ice, but only if I take a 30% pay cut, give up going to conferences, and have to work with obsolete equipment, I will say no. A better way to proceed would be to ask each department something along the lines: "Would you be willing to cancel most of the journals in your field if this would give you three additional postdocs?" That would force the scholars to really evaluate the value of their journal subscriptions and whether they can be replaced by preprint servers.137.5 SOCIETY FOR SCHOLARLY PUBLISHING ANNUAL MEETING
Ed Barnas, Editor, _Scholarly Publishing Today_, sptoday@novalink.com.
You are invited to
The Society for Scholarly Publishing
ANNUAL MEETING - Managing Content and Technology: What's New, What's
Working, What's Not"
May 17 to May 19, 1995 at the Hyatt Regency Cambridge BOSTON
------------------------------------
Join publishers, scholars, and librarians in a series of practical, honest,
lively discussions on scholarly publishing in today's environment.
This year's Boston meeting will feature presentations, workshops, and case
studies on adding value to digital content, fair use and electronic media,
establishing a presence on the World Wide Web, document delivery, pricing
models, and electronic subscriptions, among other topics.
For more information, please contact SSP, 10200 West 44th Ave., Suite 304,
Wheat Ridge, CO 80033.
e-mail:5686814@MCIMAIL.COM
Telephone: 303-422-3914
Fax: 303-422-8894
137.6 RESPONSE TO HAMAKER'S HAYMAKERS
Hannah King, SUNY Health Library at Syracuse, kingh@vax.cs.hscsyr.edu.
Hamaker's comments re publisher attitudes seem right on the mark. One con- sequence of maintaining profit margins in the face of a shrinking subscrip- tion base by increasing prices is the shrinking of their readership base. Authors do not want to be published in a journal no one reads because their paper will be less likely to be cited. Librarians must begin to warn facul- ty about journals so expensive only a few libraries can afford a subscrip- tion to them. At the same time, they must also warn faculty that copyright fees are increasing so sharply that interlibrary loan of these articles can no longer be subsidized for some titles. Publication in journals that are hard to find in any library and in which copyright fees discourage either interlibrary loan or commercial document delivery will be risky to say the least. The heavy use of _Science Citation Index_ for tenure decisions sug- gests that faculty are no longer evalauted on quantity of publications alone. If they need to be cited, they better begin to check with librarians about subscription bases and copyright fees. Librarians might want to pub- lish this kind of information on a regular basis along with ISI rankings and usage statistics. When authors begin to avoid publication in overpriced journals, the publishers will begin to realize they've been extremely short-sighted. I think the success the British Library had negotiating for a more reasonable subscription rate and copy policy indicates that publish- ers are not quite as impervious to market forces as they expect us to be- lieve.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Statements of fact and opinion appearing in the _Newsletter on Serials Pricing Issues_ are made on the responsibility of the authors alone, and do not imply the endorsement of the editor, the editorial board, or the Uni- versity of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ 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 by the editor through the Office of Information Technology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, as news is available. Editor: Marcia Tuttle, Internet: tuttle@gibbs.oit.unc.edu; Paper mail: Serials Department, CB #3938 Davis Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill NC 27514-8890; Telephone: 919 962-1067; FAX: 919 962-4450. Editorial Board: Deana Astle (Clemson University), Christian Boissonnas (Cornell University), Jerry Curtis (Springer Verlag New York), Janet Fisher (MIT Press), Fred Friend (University College London), Charles Hamaker (Louisiana State University), Daniel Jones (University of Texas Health Science Cen- ter), James Mouw (University of Chicago), and Heather Steele (Blackwell's Periodicals Division). The Newsletter is available on the Internet, Black- well's CONNECT, and Readmore's ROSS. EBSCO customers may receive the News- letter in paper format. To subscribe to the newsletter send a message to LISTSERV@UNC.EDU saying SUBSCRIBE PRICES [YOUR NAME]. Be sure to send that message to the listserv- er and not to Prices. You must include your name. To unsubscribe (no name required in message), you must send the message from the e-mail address by which you are subscribed. If you have problems, please contact the editor. Back issues of the Newsletter are available electronically. To get a list of available issues send a message to LISTSERV@UNC.EDU saying INDEX PRICES. To retrieve a specific issue, the message should read: GET PRICES PRICES.xx (where "xx" is the number of the issue). +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++