Re: Journal costs

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The answer is simple, but the implications of the "simple" answer are much
less-so. In order to reduce the costs of scientific journals the publishers
(be they societies or commercial publishers) need to be able to reduce the
costs of producing the journal. Since (in all cases) the authors and (in
most cases) the editors, reviewers, etc. work for free you can't save much
money there. That leaves the printers. The price increases for most
journals published by scientific societies are, for the most part, a direct
reflection of increases in the printer's costs. But you don't want quality
to suffer so there's not much that can be saved there either. That would
seem to suggest that the best way to get really big savings is to do away
with printing all together and move toward electronic publishing. But what
about the costs (to libraries) associated with that? Several current
studies have suggested that the price tag associated with the move to
electronic journals will be higher (in terms of the need for the input of
technology into libraries) than the price of sticking with print journals.
The move to electronic publishing will happen (is already happening), but I
fear that our friends the librarians will - once again - find themselves
caught in the middle. In strongly archive-oriented fields like
paleontology, this is going to be a big problem.

Norm MacLeod



>Hello,
>
>        I understand that some of you out there in paleoland are involved
>with the publication of academic journals.  I am a paleontology grad who
>is involved in our student government here at Carleton, and the
>acquisition of scientific journals (or the lack thereof) by our library is
>a hot issue these days.
>        Government cutbacks notwithstanding, the library informs us that
>journal prices have been skyrocketing, especially in the sciences and
>engineering disciplines.  As a result, our library, and others around the
>world, have been cancelling subscriptions which concerns those researchers
>and students who depend on current published research.
>        It would seem, from a strictly business point of view, that
>publishers would want to stem this tide of subscription cancellations.
>There is a snowball effect happening: the more subscriptions that are
>cancelled, the higher the price needs to be raised to recoup lost revenue.
>As prices increase, more subscriptions are cancelled. And so on.  Are
>there any ideas on how to reverse this trend?
>
>
>/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\
> Andrew Dalby
> Dept. of Earth Sciences
> Ottawa-Carleton Geoscience Centre         Carleton University
> Ottawa, Ontario, Canada                  (613) 520-2600 X1851
>
>                      adalby@ccs.carleton.ca
>                  http://www.carleton.ca/~adalby/
>
>"Everyone is entitled to an INFORMED opinion". -Harlan Ellison
>\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/
>





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Dr. Norman MacLeod
Micropalaeontological Research
N.MacLeod@nhm.ac.uk (E-mail)

Address: Department of Palaeontology, The Natural History Museum,
         Cromwell Road, London, SW7 5BD

Office Phone: 0171-938-9006
Dept. FAX: 0171-938-9277
E-mail: N.MacLeod@nhm.ac.uk
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