NEWSLETTER ON SERIALS PRICING ISSUES

NO 149 -- December 1, 1995

Editor: Marcia Tuttle

ISSN: 1046-3410

CONTENTS

149.1 FROM THE EDITOR
Marcia Tuttle, tuttle@gibbs.oit.unc.edu.

Thanks to Tom Keays for correcting some linking errors in recent newsletter issues and to Bill Benson for correcting an error in this space in issue no. 148. The correct url for the Newsletter on Serials Pricing Issues is

Further to the marking-up item, two local staff members, Ed van Duinen and Ashley Corrigan are helping with this work, so we will eventually have all newsletter issues in html. Currently 1989-1993 are just sitting there in plain old typewriter type. But accessible.

I have a question to ask librarians and publishers. Vendors, scholars, and all others may take either side! Increasingly, I find in the mail a joyous announcement from another journal publisher carolling that henceforth we will receive at the end of the subscription year a CD-ROM of the annual volume(s) ("free" for the first year).

The previous sentence tells you clearly that my library and I don't want these compact discs. My question is, Why do you send them? If the disc contained supplementary material to the print issues, that disc would give added value. But most do not supplement print, they only make it available in a different format. Yes, CD's are very searchable, but how often does one search a single year of one title any more?

What are we to do with the discs that we accumulate year by year? Assuming that we accept the "free" discs or pay a surcharge for them (sometimes unknowingly because we don't read the publisher's communications thoroughly). Do we catalog them? Cataloging is expensive. Where do we store them? Not prime space, certainly; that must be used for indexes, encyclopedias, and phone books. There are valid questions about the plastic disc itself. Are these data worth refreshing? I suggest that most CD-ROM versions of a single year of a single title end up discarded or gathering dust in cataloging backlogs, never to see a bibliographic record or a user.

Again, I ask, Why? Convince me, please, that these discs have some value.

149.2 INTERNATIONAL DIGITAL ELECTRONIC ACCESS LIBRARY (IDEAL)
Chrysanne Lowe, Academic Press, Inc., clowe@acad.com.

IDEAL is 3-year developmental pilot project of Academic Press, that aims to exploit the Internet to greatly expand and improve access to scientific journals. Through licensing agreements with selected academic or industrial networks, IDEAL brings research journals directly to the end users' digital desktops.

IDEAL uses an efficient no-nonsense approach based on an open non-proprietary modular architecture. Starting with the 1996 issues of 184 Academic Press journals, it will add over 2000 articles every month. Other publishers are being invited to join in the project.

To create this IDEAL environment Academic Press has formed an alliance with Fujitsu and its affiliates, who are major international technology providers. Mirrored sites will be established in Europe and the USA, and later in Japan and elsewhere, in order to insure efficient access from all points on the globe 24 hours per day, 365 days in the year.

Anyone with access to the Internet will be able to freely browse and search the IDEAL database of journal tables of contents with any standard Web browser, such as Netscape. Searching of abstracts will also be free initially.

Authorized Users at sites within the licensed library networks of the pilot project will be able to view, print, and download complete articles in Adobe's Acrobat format without restriction for personal use, course packs, and internal company business purposes.

Two prototype journals, JMB Online (Journal of Molecular Biology) [as of Aug.] and Genomics [as of Dec.], can be accessed license-free in 1995 at

and at

As a further experiment within the pilot project, access to JMB Online and Genomics Online will continue to be free in 1996 for any individuals at institutions holding paper subscriptions.

Inquiries from interested library networks should be addressed to: Ken Metzner, Academic Press Inc, 525 B Street, Suite 1900, San Diego, CA 92101, tel: 1-619-699-6830, fax: 1-619-699-6715, email: kmetzner@acad.com1; or Chris Gibson, Academic Press Ltd, 24-28 Oval Road, London NW1 7DX, tel: 44-171-482-2893, fax: 44-171-267-0362, email: cgibson@apuk.co.uk.

149.3 OPEN JOURNAL PROJECT NEWS
Steve Hitchcock, University of Southampton, s.hitchcock@ecs.soton.ac.uk.

[News release.]

Linking Hypermedia Journals on the World Wide Web: the Open Journal Project

The main features of the project's link service are:

* Links do not need to be placed when journal papers are authored, thus realizing the concept of the 'open' journal

* Links can be made _from_ archival journals available electronically, not only from new publications or new issues

* Links can be made from documents in popular electronic formats, such as pdf, as well as html

* Links can be created by simple point-and-click mouse operations rather than embedded, inflexible and costly html code

The Open Journal project based at the University of Southampton will add these features to electronically distributed versions of the journal Development from the Company of Biologists and the British Computer Society's The Computer Journal, published by Oxford University Press. Collaboration on the development of page-based electronic journals between the University of Nottingham and the publisher John Wiley and Sons -- the CAJUN project -- will be extended, and new features will be added to one of the first wholly electronic refereed journals to be made available over the Internet, Stevan Harnad's Psycoloquy.

The need to place original work in the context of established knowledge is a vital part of academic research. Adding hypermedia links to journals extends the ways in which connections can be made between papers. Potentially, any feature within a paper can be the starting point for a new thread of enquiry. An essential element of the project will be to enable links to be followed _from_ any networked information resources, other journals and on-line databases for example. Links can also be made from other media such as sound and video resources that are accessible through the WWW.

Being able to make and follow links from, rather than simply to, other resources enables more useful link paths to be authored, adding value to the original link source and avoiding 'dead end' links, a common problem on the WWW.

The innovative feature of the Open Journal project is that the links between information sources do not need to be explicitly embedded in the journal papers when they are authored, thus realizing the concept of the 'open' journal. Links can be initiated by readers, or a set of pre-authored link databases held separately from the information being read can be created to guide users through specific resources. In addition, through the development of subject-expert software agents users will be offered a greater range of relevant resources than they could discover independently.

To apply the information-linking process the project will use an open hypermedia system, Microcosm and its associated Distributed Link Service, developed at the University of Southampton. Adobe Acrobat will be one of the formats supported for page presentation. The project's collaborators at the University of Nottingham are developing `plug-ins' for Acrobat viewers so that the distributed links can be compiled down into the form required by Acrobat.

There is scope for publishers committed to the development of electronic journals, and who have begun to develop an electronic archive of current and recent journal papers, to collaborate in this work or to obtain a copy of the Distributed Link Service link-generating software. Contact:

Steve Hitchcock, Department of Electronics and Computer Science, University of Southampton, Southampton SO17 1BJ, UK. Tel. +44 (0)1703 594479 or +44 (0) 181 309 1001; Fax. +44 (0)1703 592865 email: sh94r@ecs.soton.ac.uk

A note on the eLib programme

The eLib programme is a L315 million UK initiative to deal with the pressures on library resources caused by the rapid expansion of student numbers and the worldwide explosion in academic knowledge. These problems were recognised in the 1993 report of the Joint Funding Councils' Libraries Review Group, chaired by Professor Sir Brian Follett.

For further information on the eLib programme contact:

Chris Rusbridge, Programme Director, The Library, University of Warwick, Coventry CV4 7AL. Tel. +44 (0)1203 524979; Fax. +44 (0)1203 524981 email: C.A.Rusbridge@Warwick.ac.uk

Useful URLs for Web browsers:

The Distributed Link Service: http://wwwcosm.ecs.soton.ac.uk/dls/dls.html
The Computer Journal http://www.oup.co.uk/computer_journal/
Nottingham University CAJUN project: http://www.ep.cs.nott.ac.uk/cajun.html
Psycoloquy electronic journal: http://cogsci.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/psyc.html
Electronic Libraries (eLib) programme: http://ukoln.bath.ac.uk/elib/intro.html

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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 University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
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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.
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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 Center), Michael Markwith (Swets North America), James Mouw (University of Chicago), and Heather Steele (Blackwell's Periodicals Division). The Newsletter is available on the Internet, Blackwell's CONNECT, and Readmore's ROSS. EBSCO customers may receive the Newsletter in paper format.

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