I only have comparative data on our 463 foreign titles, which increased 9% over 1997. I don't consider that good when the dollar has been so strong for the past year to 18 months. I selected a sample of our domestic titles and it looks like they will increase about 10% for 1998.
Here are some examples from foreign publishers of % increases:
* Blackwell Science LTD 16%
* Chapman & Hall 25%
* Elsevier NY 12%
* Elsevier Oxford 23%
* Oxford Univ Press 13%
* Pergamon Elsevier 13%
* Taylor & Francis 20%
* Wiley & Sons 18%
There were some negative %:
* Birkhaeuser -1%
* Karger -1%
* Kluwer -1% (I'll bet that won't happen next year, now that
they are owned by Reed Elsevier.)
* Munksgaard -3%
* Springer-Verlag -1%
200.2 US DOLLAR VS DUTCH GUILDER
Dana Roth, Caltech, dzrlib@library.caltech.edu
In regards the Elsevier-Purdue meeting, it is worth noting that Elsevier is again ignoring the strengthening of the U.S.$ vs the Dutch Guilder, just as they did in the early 1980s. According to the New York Times Travel Section the U.S.$ is worth about 20% more today than a year ago. Yet Elsevier is charging about the same price for its Amsterdam journals as they did last year. While it is nice not to have an increase in the U.S.$ price this year, we are actually suffering a 20% increase in price. Elsevier will then really 'get us' when the U.S.$ decreases (as they did in the late 1980s).
200.3 FAXON INSTITUTE COLLOQUIUM, NEW ORLEANS, 7-8 JANUARY 1998.
Fred Friend, University College London, ucylfjf@ucl.ac.uk
The Faxon Institute have a good record for bringing together people from different areas of scholarly communication, and this year's event was no exception. There were around 70 participants with a good mix of publishers and librarians, and quite a few Faxon staff in attendance. As usual the users of our products and services were under-represented, although Dr. Stanley Chodorow gave the keynote address (up to his customary high standard) and contributed to the debates. Also it was noticeable that quite a few of the participants began to speak by referring to their views as authors rather than as publishers or librarians. The format was one which the Faxon Institute have found valuable in the past: roundtables of about a dozen participants in each to discuss a particular topic. I found the number in each roundtable too many to have a serious debate, but certainly the topics chosen by Adrian Alexander -- who has a lot of experience of organising such events -- were all very relevant. The discussion was moderated by Robert Siegel (he of National Public Radio), who took a role I can best describe as "intelligent bystander." He knew the right questions to ask of each roundtable, and yet he could comment not as a librarian or publisher himself. So he was able to combine knowledge with objectivity. What I found missing from most of the discussion was the sharpness of debate. We are all glad when such meetings are non-confrontational, but if we go to the opposite extreme, we do not get to the heart of problems. All the right issues were touched upon in this Colloquium but touched upon lightly, without exploring any avenues for the resolution of problems. The Faxon Institute is in a good position to organise future events, but they do need to help us move on to the next stage. We need positive (albeit plain-speaking) dialogue which results in better quality and better value in the services we provide to users. In brief the Colloquium was worthwhile but the next one needs to be better.
200.4 ELSEVIER'S CONFERENCE PROCEEDINGS IN JOURNALS
Dana Roth, Caltech, dzrlib@library.caltech.edu
Serious journal price inflation has been a fact of life for over ten years. The costs of journals published by societies (AIP, ACS, AMS, etc.) have largely been related to increased size and production costs. The costs of some commercially published journals, however, are additionally related to the revaluation of European currencies and a dramatic increase in the number of special issues, many of which contain conference proceedings.
In an 'advertorial' that appeared in various library magazines in 1992, Elsevier defended the practice of publishing conference proceedings in journal issues on the basis that they were "devoted to proceedings of an international conference in a specific research field -- usually where important, cutting edge results are reported. The high quality of these special issues derives from a distinctive multi-phase selection process. Proceedings issues also have advantages in speed, economy and effectiveness of dissemination."
The question in my mind relates to Elsevier's questionable definitions of 'speed' and 'economy.' Why do Elsevier's conference papers deserve the enormous expense of journal publication which also results in their appearance, in print, many months after the conference date, while others (e.g., American Chemical Society divisional preprints) are published to coincide with the conference presentations and are priced at little more than the cost of off-set reproduction? I am not arguing for or against the importance of publishing conference papers, but I feel that their very nature (preliminary, speculative, establishment of priority, etc.) argues against Elsevier's 'Rolls-Royce' refereeing and publication practices. Taking the Journal of Luminescence, as an example, the following conference dates / received dates would tend to argue against Elsevier's claims of 'speed.'
J. Luminescence v.48-49, 1991 Intern. Conf. on Luminescence (16- 20 July 1990) received at Caltech 4-11-91
J. Luminescence v.53, 1992 Intern. Conf. on Dynamical Processes in Excited States of Solids (27-31 Aug 1991) received at Caltech 7-17-92.
Furthermore, at a cost in excess of $200 each, Elsevier's claims of 'economy' (especially when compared with the ACS preprints) hardly dignify comment.
I would suggest, that as a first small step towards stabilizing the currently untenable cycle of journal subscription price increases, Elsevier commit to limiting their journals to peer reviewed journal articles. If this were to take place, conference organizers would be much more likely to supply preprints (hopefully at the cost of reproduction) and the 'Rolls-Royce' publication of conference proceedings would be terminated with corresponding dramatic reductions in Elsevier's subscription rates.
200.5 RESPONSE TO FRED FRIEND
Jamie Cameron, Institute of Mechanical Engineers,
jcameron@imeche.org.ac
This is a response to Fred Friend -- it is curious that my response has to come via South [sic] Carolina when we are only a few hundred yards apart! I really am pleased to see that in the perception of our marketplace "we publishers" are making progress.
I think most publishers accept the "one-stop shop" principle, either by putting journals with a service provider which has a large number of titles in the same subject area to attempt to achieve critical mass -- comprehensiveness, which is the ideal, is always going to be impossible -- or to have hot links to other publishers' journals in the same or contiguous areas. I don't believe these two models are mutually exclusive and think it would be sensible to do both.
I don't believe that publishers compete significantly in journals with published material given comparable quality etc., unless purchasers have to make choices for "artificial" reasons -- limited budgets, etc. I don't believe it is unreasonable to cancel a subscription (where did this terrible word "deselect" come from?) for what is perceived as an unreasonable or excessive price rise or because funds are simply unavailable. Publishers do, I think, compete further back in the chain for authors who could reasonably submit a paper to a number of different journals from different publishers.
I am interested in his view, of course, about the speed of the switch from paper to electronic, though I am not sure about the extent to which I share it at the moment. However what is certain is that signals from the marketplace must be taken seriously. I accept that significantly additional amounts of money are not going to be available to buy journals material but the situation, I think, is that the revenue for both or all versions combined must be sufficient to cover the costs of producing that material. This is certainly the case if the current model for the production and distribution (economic, organisational and behavioural) of journal material is not to be overturned. If so, it would have to be replaced with a system which performs all functions of the existing model.
As I may have said elsewhere, very sophisticated technology is available for the distribution of journal material but there are costs attached and there is some evidence that the marketplace is not in a position to afford the extra prices that these costs engender. Also I don't believe by any means everyone needs these additional facilities (now called functionalities!); many research workers want it but the institutions which, on the whole, currently pay most of the bills can't really afford it.
As so often in this debate, I offer observations and not conclusions!
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The Newsletter on Serials Pricing Issues (ISSN: 1046-3410) is published by the editor through Academic and Networking Technology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, as news is available. Editor: Marcia Tuttle, Internet: marcia_tuttle@unc.edu; Paper mail: 215 Flemington Road, Chapel Hill NC 27514-5637; Telephone: 919 929-3513. Editorial Board: Deana Astle (Clemson University), Christian Boissonnas (Cornell University), Jerry Curtis (Springer Verlag New York), Isabel Czech (Institute for Scientific Information), Janet Fisher (MIT Press), Fred Friend (University College, London), Charles Hamaker (University of North Carolina at Charlotte), 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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