- Email: [email protected]
Economic and technological trends in journal publishing
Library Acquisitions: F?actice & Theory,
Vol.
14, pp. 121-126,
1990
Printed in the USA. AU rights reserved.
0364-6408/90
$3.00 + .OO
Copyright 0 1990Pergamon Press plc
PUBLISH OR PERISH: THE FUTURE OF JOURNAL COLLECTIONS IN LIBRARIES
ECONOMIC AND TECHNOLOGICAL IN JOURNAL PUBLISHING
TRENDS
KAREN HUNTER Vice President and Assistant to the Chairman Elsevier Science Publishers B.V. 655 Avenue of the Americas New York, NY 10010
INT.RODUCTION Good afternoon. As you have heard in the introduction, over the past twenty-plus years, I’ve attended ALA meetings with a number of hats on-as an academic technical services librarian, as a book wholesaler, and as a scientific journal publisher. And, contrary to what some of you might expect, I am as proud to be here representing journal publishers as I was to part of the other two groups. I’ve been asked to speak about general economic and technological trends in the journal industry. That could be a polite way of saying, Let’s talk about pricing, and I asked the program plating chairman, Joe Branin, if that was what was desired. He said no, although a few words would be appreciated. So, let me say those few words up-front and defer other pricing discussion until the question session. PRICING In the first part of this decade, the most frequent criticism of journal publishers was with regard to the so-called “proliferation of new journals.” Today that is less an issue, as there are far fewer new titles being started. Ulrich’sshow a peak in new periodical titles-all types, not just scholarly-in 1980, when nearly 3500 (3494) new serials began. The number of new titles has dropped steadily since then: to 3075 in 1982, about 2500 (2520) in 1984, fewer than 1900 (1884) in 1986, and under 1000 (916) in 1988. The figures for the most recent years are probably artificially low, as Ulrich’s(aswith any directory) has certainly not uncovered and listed all new titles started in the last few years. But the downward trend is very clear. And certainly we have seen the same thing at Elsevier -in 1980 we started 36 new titles. That had dropped to 19 by 1986, 10 in 1988, and 6 this year-or about 1% of the total list. 121
K. HUNTER
122
The concerns over the past 3-4 years then have centered on prices, particularly price increases, of existing titles. What may not be well-understood is that -leaving aside the question of currency effects-the price increases today have many of their roots in the increase in the number of new serials over the last 15 years. As the number of journals expanded in the 197Os, the average number of subscribers per new journal was typically reduced and the number of subscribers to existing journals also eroded. Which raised prices and, in turn, the raised prices caused fewer new subscriptions and more cancellations, including the well-known cancel-to-add policies. Ultimately, the market for new journals became much less attractive, and as I said fewer were started. But that did not result in any of the cancelled subscriptions being reinstated-the whole base of subscribers was simply lower and resulting prices higher. In the meantime, the output of scientific and scholarly papers grew unabated and the pressures to publish in peer-reviewed journals increased, as competition for grants, academic position and international recognition heightened. So the existing journals grew in size, further pushing up prices. Publishers had already made most of the significant improvements possible to keep costs low, so there was little way to hold prices down through increased efficiency. The result was price increases greater than the market-the libraries -could absorb, which is certainly not what any of us would have preferred. What is ahead for prices? I recently heard the publishing director of one of the largest U.S. scientific societies announce increases of 15-47% on his society journals for next year. Where did he say those increases were coming from? l l l l
3-4% inflation 2-3% declining circulation 5-20070 increase in the amount of research published, and 5-20% changes in the cost structure,
such as the switch to acid-free paper, reduction in postal subsidies, reduction in author page charges, and possible increased taxes for unrelated business income. For commercial publishers, if you omit that last 5-20070-because we’re already using acidfree paper, we do not have postal subsidies, we do not get page charges from authors, and we’re already fully taxed-the same story holds. Increases of lO-27% would not be uncommon when one factors in inflation, declining subscriptions, and increases in the amount of material published. This is the general pattern for paper journal subscriptions which has prevailed in the sciences for several years and which should be expected for the immediate future. Obviously there will be exceptions, particularly if there is no increase in journal pages, but I regret to say there will be no major change in the general trend, no sudden decrease or stabilization of prices. Fortunately, U.S. libraries will benefit in 1990 from a stronger dollar, which will ease some of the pressure, but that’s certainly not a permanent answer to the problem. Which means there will be much more pressure on both libraries and publishers to explore ways to get more value for the money spent on the acquisition of journal information. And most of those ways involve at least some use of nonpaper technologies.
ECONOMICS
AND TECHNOLOGY
June is a month of graduations. This week I joined my family in celebrating three graduations and heard a paraphrase of a Woody Allen graduation speech. Woody addressed the
Economic and Technological Trends in Journal Publishing
123
graduates and said they were at a critical point in deciding their future. There were two clear paths to choose from. To the right was a path which might look attractive, but which represented slow and steady despair and disappointment. They could choose that. But to the left was another path to choose-the path of a certain, sudden destruction. There are some of my publishing colleagues who wonder if those are the choices ahead of them as we enter the world of electronic distribution. I would like to spend the rest of my time talking about trends and issues in electronic access to journals: changes in retrieval, changes in document access, and the need for new economic models. One other note. In 1983 I gave two speeches at ALA meetings-one on serials economics and the other on electronic access to journals. Each speech dealt with both economics and technology, but the two topics were also separable then. The technology was still young enough and journal economics still bearable enough that one could distinguish between them. That is no longer the case. The two are inextricably intertwined.
RETRIEVAL Changes in retrieval-what do I mean? As fewer journals are held on campus or within a collection, there is a need both to improve the ability to identify that which is not heldarticles which will not be found by using the physical issue as a browsing tool-and to maximize the use of those journals which are purchased and held in the collection. This raises at least four interesting trends or issues in retrieval. 1. Make it local. There is a rapidly spreading movement to mount or otherwise make locally available secondary databases or table of contents services which will provide article-level access to journals without having to search a remote online database. Access may be via the local online catalog (OPAC), the campus or corporate network, CDROM, or even floppy disks. This trend changes the economics from remote charges for online use to local infrastructure investments. Whether it is a financial improvement in the short-term is questionable, but over the medium to long term the use of local retrieval systems should soar and provide much better retrieval opportunities at lower per-use cost. There are a number of interesting issues to be explored, such as the value of controlled indexing and abstracts, the relative need for comprehensive databases versus bibliographic records only for those journal articles in the collection, and the og timal hardware and software configurations. In the early years-now underway- I suspect the local services will prove most useful for undergraduate needs. 2. Make retrieval tools more personal. Once retrieval is local, it is natural to want more personal control and user-directed profting. The floppy disk-based versions of Current Contents-like products have proven quite popular among biomedical researchers. These products provide fast, personal use for a group of scientists who, after all, work as entrepreneurs within the university environment and have little incentive to share resources. 3. Make retrieval tools smarter. This is a longer-term trend, one which will not show significant results before the second half of the 1990s. What is needed is a rethinking of what makes journal information valuable and how to retrieve that information. Often the information of value (e.g., tabular material or illustrations) is not retrievable via current bibliographic descriptors. One may need to move beyond Boolean searching and
K. HUNTER
124
talk about concept or cluster analysis of the full text, for example. Not something to plan for right now, but to experiment with and look for in the future. 4. Browsing. Finally, there is a concern in retrieval discussions that as we become more and more proficient in tailoring our searches, we lose something of great value: the benefits of browsing the physical issue. I recently heard a key 3M R&D staff director express concern that innovation will decline if researchers come to rely too heavily on very precise retrieval mechanisms. That “Aha!” discovery comes from flipping through the pages of an issue-responding to an illustration which catches your eye in an article which would never have been matched to your profile. This process, which we call serendipity, is essential to the creative process and must not be overlooked in the design of electronic retrieval systems. DOCUMENT
DELIVERY SYSTEMS
If retrieval improves, that leads directly to issues or trends in document access. How do I get my hands on the article? How will the articles be stored? By whom? And how will it get to the user? Here, for economic reasons, the issues are somewhat more complex-and perhaps the trends are murkier. 1. First, certainly there is and will be more resource-sharing. You and I both know that. Whether that is two libraries or 200 or 2000 cooperating is not certain, but the sharing will grow. Who builds and controls the archives will be a major issue. 2. Second, there are now and will continue to be for the foreseeable future a variety of media used for document delivery: the original paper issue, microform, photocopies, fax copies, electronic storage in page image mode, and electronic storage in fullydigitized mode. In that connection, I think one of the more exciting products to be introduced recently is UMI’s business periodicals collection, with a workstation and CDROMs with page images linked to a searchable ABI/INFORM index. There will be more such products in the future-including in the sciences -and variations on the theme, such as the networking of the index for remote retrieval. 3. At the same time, there is also a desire for networked access to the whole article in digital form. This is tougher for those disciplines which rely heavily on graphs and halftones to convey information. Bandwidth requirements are much greater, but again are possible within local area networks. We and some other publishers are starting to work with a few leading-edge universities on experiments in full-text networked access.
NEW ECONOMIC
MODELS
The subject of experimentation leads to my third-and most critical-concern: the need to develop new economic models for the delivery of journal information. Let’s start with the premise that the journal article will remain the basic unit of exchange. There is certainly room for reorganization and improvement of the article, but by and large it has held up as a good unit of information. These units have traditionally been packaged in journal issues and volumes, and the volumes sold on subscription. The notion of the journal itself has a great deal worth preserving: It provides a recognizable intellectual context for certification and clustering of related material within a specialty.
Ecor~omic and Technological Trends in Journal Publishing
125
But do the notions of issues and volumes have equal long-term validity? Could one not publish journal articles strictly in numeric sequence and charge either per article or per fixed number of articles? For the moment (and the “moment” is a decade or more longer), we cannot even think of doing away with paper for existing journals, which means issues and volumes. But what will be the economic model for the future? The need for a new economic model or models is clearly, in my view, the biggest issue we jointly face. And it is obviously a question much more complex than simply per-volume pricing. What are some of the concerns or trends? 1. ~y~e~t per use? Will we move from a journal purchase, in which issues are generally once purchased available to use without further charge, to a license arrangement? Will there be payment per use and, if so, what are the pros and cons of that? A few I see:
FRO * provably l
l
l
one will only pay for that which is used (usual accurate retrieval tools) there will be an ability to pass some or all of the costs back to the user on a transactional basis, offering the option of tapping new revenue sources there will be far more information available on what is actually used and what not, and it will be easier to centralize and share, resell, or otherwise redistribute materials
CON l l l
l l
inhibitions on both creation and use further segregation between the rich and the poor, the haves and the have-nots no guarantee that the net cost per use will not be higher than the present system, which has many hidden efficiencies will trade a space-intensive system for a h~dware-intensive system: cheaper? need for parallel systems, as not all markets moving evenly
2. Roles. What will be the respective roles of primary journals publishers; the secondary (abstracting and indexing) publishers, hosts and networks, and the library? Who will add what value and at what cost? It is interesting to me to note that of the many organizations which have contacted me about getting electronic access to our materials, most (whether ostensibly nonprofit or commercial) have the goal of reselling that material. Is the new model that the publisher will be the wholesaler and the library or network the retailer? 3. Advertising. I want to make quick mention of one frequently overlooked item: advertising. Presently the ability to attract advertising makes an enormous difference in the price at which journals can be sold. Journals such as those society journals which have large numbers of individual subscribers and substantial advertising revenue can be priced at a small fraction-often as low as 20% -of the price of an editorially comparable journal with only institutional subscribers and no advertising. As we move more to end user delivery, recall that few consumers or end users are used to paying the full cost of information. Radio, TV, newspapers, magazines, trade journals and many society journals are subsidized by advertising. Other journals and books are bought by libraries and provided to the end user without charge. It is in our combined interests to increase, not decrease, our ability to attract advertising to subsidize
126
K. HUNTER
reader access. This is a model which has yet to be elaborated in the electronic journal world but which should be explored. 4. Development of models. How do we develop the new economic model or models? Through experimentation, trial and error, and negotiation. One mechanism which is emerging is the use of the Copyright Clearance Center as a catalyst or forum for discussion. The CCC has been asked to take on-and has sought out-the role of intermediary in formulating ways to deal with the complex issues surrounding electronic access to copyrighted information. A group of publishers and institutions (universities, public libraries and corporations) has been talking with the CCC about an everexpanding number of projects or proposals to use journal information in electronic form. These discussions are difficult, even stormy, but there is clear progress in sorting out issues to be addressed and defining ways to experiment. A second mechanism will be the more direct method: the entry into the market of products and services, such as UMI’s business collection and the bibliographic services of CARL (Colorado Alliance of Research Libraries) and a host of others eager to build a business. Some entrants will be challenged in the courts for overstepping legal boundaries, but all of this will help in the evolution of new models.
SUMMARY 1. I’ve said that journal prices will continue more or less on the same upward trend for reasons of inflation, declining number of subscriptions, and increased research to be published. This means continued pressure to improve the use, efficiency, and value of the system. 2. One way is to improve retrieval. Better identification of material not held and more use of materials which are within the collection lead to more local mounting of bibliographic systems. The concern here is with the loss of serendipity or browsing. 3. Improved access is also needed, to provide the needed full text on a timely basis. This is more problematic, as the economic stakes are greater, the solutions more complex. 4. Which means there is a pressing need to develop new economic models for the distribution of journal information. In an ideal world, we would all be media-indifferent, choosing distribution media on the basis of appropriateness to the end user only. In 1983, I was warned by a Library of Congress staff member that the train of electronic access to journals was leaving the station, and we had better get on board or it would leave without us. I felt then there was still time to pack, plan a route, and consult the schedules, as neither the train nor the crew was anywhere in sight, and there sure was a lot of track repair going on. Well, time passes, and we’re all getting much closer to hearing “All aboard!”
Vol.
14, pp. 121-126,
1990
Printed in the USA. AU rights reserved.
0364-6408/90
$3.00 + .OO
Copyright 0 1990Pergamon Press plc
PUBLISH OR PERISH: THE FUTURE OF JOURNAL COLLECTIONS IN LIBRARIES
ECONOMIC AND TECHNOLOGICAL IN JOURNAL PUBLISHING
TRENDS
KAREN HUNTER Vice President and Assistant to the Chairman Elsevier Science Publishers B.V. 655 Avenue of the Americas New York, NY 10010
INT.RODUCTION Good afternoon. As you have heard in the introduction, over the past twenty-plus years, I’ve attended ALA meetings with a number of hats on-as an academic technical services librarian, as a book wholesaler, and as a scientific journal publisher. And, contrary to what some of you might expect, I am as proud to be here representing journal publishers as I was to part of the other two groups. I’ve been asked to speak about general economic and technological trends in the journal industry. That could be a polite way of saying, Let’s talk about pricing, and I asked the program plating chairman, Joe Branin, if that was what was desired. He said no, although a few words would be appreciated. So, let me say those few words up-front and defer other pricing discussion until the question session. PRICING In the first part of this decade, the most frequent criticism of journal publishers was with regard to the so-called “proliferation of new journals.” Today that is less an issue, as there are far fewer new titles being started. Ulrich’sshow a peak in new periodical titles-all types, not just scholarly-in 1980, when nearly 3500 (3494) new serials began. The number of new titles has dropped steadily since then: to 3075 in 1982, about 2500 (2520) in 1984, fewer than 1900 (1884) in 1986, and under 1000 (916) in 1988. The figures for the most recent years are probably artificially low, as Ulrich’s(aswith any directory) has certainly not uncovered and listed all new titles started in the last few years. But the downward trend is very clear. And certainly we have seen the same thing at Elsevier -in 1980 we started 36 new titles. That had dropped to 19 by 1986, 10 in 1988, and 6 this year-or about 1% of the total list. 121
K. HUNTER
122
The concerns over the past 3-4 years then have centered on prices, particularly price increases, of existing titles. What may not be well-understood is that -leaving aside the question of currency effects-the price increases today have many of their roots in the increase in the number of new serials over the last 15 years. As the number of journals expanded in the 197Os, the average number of subscribers per new journal was typically reduced and the number of subscribers to existing journals also eroded. Which raised prices and, in turn, the raised prices caused fewer new subscriptions and more cancellations, including the well-known cancel-to-add policies. Ultimately, the market for new journals became much less attractive, and as I said fewer were started. But that did not result in any of the cancelled subscriptions being reinstated-the whole base of subscribers was simply lower and resulting prices higher. In the meantime, the output of scientific and scholarly papers grew unabated and the pressures to publish in peer-reviewed journals increased, as competition for grants, academic position and international recognition heightened. So the existing journals grew in size, further pushing up prices. Publishers had already made most of the significant improvements possible to keep costs low, so there was little way to hold prices down through increased efficiency. The result was price increases greater than the market-the libraries -could absorb, which is certainly not what any of us would have preferred. What is ahead for prices? I recently heard the publishing director of one of the largest U.S. scientific societies announce increases of 15-47% on his society journals for next year. Where did he say those increases were coming from? l l l l
3-4% inflation 2-3% declining circulation 5-20070 increase in the amount of research published, and 5-20% changes in the cost structure,
such as the switch to acid-free paper, reduction in postal subsidies, reduction in author page charges, and possible increased taxes for unrelated business income. For commercial publishers, if you omit that last 5-20070-because we’re already using acidfree paper, we do not have postal subsidies, we do not get page charges from authors, and we’re already fully taxed-the same story holds. Increases of lO-27% would not be uncommon when one factors in inflation, declining subscriptions, and increases in the amount of material published. This is the general pattern for paper journal subscriptions which has prevailed in the sciences for several years and which should be expected for the immediate future. Obviously there will be exceptions, particularly if there is no increase in journal pages, but I regret to say there will be no major change in the general trend, no sudden decrease or stabilization of prices. Fortunately, U.S. libraries will benefit in 1990 from a stronger dollar, which will ease some of the pressure, but that’s certainly not a permanent answer to the problem. Which means there will be much more pressure on both libraries and publishers to explore ways to get more value for the money spent on the acquisition of journal information. And most of those ways involve at least some use of nonpaper technologies.
ECONOMICS
AND TECHNOLOGY
June is a month of graduations. This week I joined my family in celebrating three graduations and heard a paraphrase of a Woody Allen graduation speech. Woody addressed the
Economic and Technological Trends in Journal Publishing
123
graduates and said they were at a critical point in deciding their future. There were two clear paths to choose from. To the right was a path which might look attractive, but which represented slow and steady despair and disappointment. They could choose that. But to the left was another path to choose-the path of a certain, sudden destruction. There are some of my publishing colleagues who wonder if those are the choices ahead of them as we enter the world of electronic distribution. I would like to spend the rest of my time talking about trends and issues in electronic access to journals: changes in retrieval, changes in document access, and the need for new economic models. One other note. In 1983 I gave two speeches at ALA meetings-one on serials economics and the other on electronic access to journals. Each speech dealt with both economics and technology, but the two topics were also separable then. The technology was still young enough and journal economics still bearable enough that one could distinguish between them. That is no longer the case. The two are inextricably intertwined.
RETRIEVAL Changes in retrieval-what do I mean? As fewer journals are held on campus or within a collection, there is a need both to improve the ability to identify that which is not heldarticles which will not be found by using the physical issue as a browsing tool-and to maximize the use of those journals which are purchased and held in the collection. This raises at least four interesting trends or issues in retrieval. 1. Make it local. There is a rapidly spreading movement to mount or otherwise make locally available secondary databases or table of contents services which will provide article-level access to journals without having to search a remote online database. Access may be via the local online catalog (OPAC), the campus or corporate network, CDROM, or even floppy disks. This trend changes the economics from remote charges for online use to local infrastructure investments. Whether it is a financial improvement in the short-term is questionable, but over the medium to long term the use of local retrieval systems should soar and provide much better retrieval opportunities at lower per-use cost. There are a number of interesting issues to be explored, such as the value of controlled indexing and abstracts, the relative need for comprehensive databases versus bibliographic records only for those journal articles in the collection, and the og timal hardware and software configurations. In the early years-now underway- I suspect the local services will prove most useful for undergraduate needs. 2. Make retrieval tools more personal. Once retrieval is local, it is natural to want more personal control and user-directed profting. The floppy disk-based versions of Current Contents-like products have proven quite popular among biomedical researchers. These products provide fast, personal use for a group of scientists who, after all, work as entrepreneurs within the university environment and have little incentive to share resources. 3. Make retrieval tools smarter. This is a longer-term trend, one which will not show significant results before the second half of the 1990s. What is needed is a rethinking of what makes journal information valuable and how to retrieve that information. Often the information of value (e.g., tabular material or illustrations) is not retrievable via current bibliographic descriptors. One may need to move beyond Boolean searching and
K. HUNTER
124
talk about concept or cluster analysis of the full text, for example. Not something to plan for right now, but to experiment with and look for in the future. 4. Browsing. Finally, there is a concern in retrieval discussions that as we become more and more proficient in tailoring our searches, we lose something of great value: the benefits of browsing the physical issue. I recently heard a key 3M R&D staff director express concern that innovation will decline if researchers come to rely too heavily on very precise retrieval mechanisms. That “Aha!” discovery comes from flipping through the pages of an issue-responding to an illustration which catches your eye in an article which would never have been matched to your profile. This process, which we call serendipity, is essential to the creative process and must not be overlooked in the design of electronic retrieval systems. DOCUMENT
DELIVERY SYSTEMS
If retrieval improves, that leads directly to issues or trends in document access. How do I get my hands on the article? How will the articles be stored? By whom? And how will it get to the user? Here, for economic reasons, the issues are somewhat more complex-and perhaps the trends are murkier. 1. First, certainly there is and will be more resource-sharing. You and I both know that. Whether that is two libraries or 200 or 2000 cooperating is not certain, but the sharing will grow. Who builds and controls the archives will be a major issue. 2. Second, there are now and will continue to be for the foreseeable future a variety of media used for document delivery: the original paper issue, microform, photocopies, fax copies, electronic storage in page image mode, and electronic storage in fullydigitized mode. In that connection, I think one of the more exciting products to be introduced recently is UMI’s business periodicals collection, with a workstation and CDROMs with page images linked to a searchable ABI/INFORM index. There will be more such products in the future-including in the sciences -and variations on the theme, such as the networking of the index for remote retrieval. 3. At the same time, there is also a desire for networked access to the whole article in digital form. This is tougher for those disciplines which rely heavily on graphs and halftones to convey information. Bandwidth requirements are much greater, but again are possible within local area networks. We and some other publishers are starting to work with a few leading-edge universities on experiments in full-text networked access.
NEW ECONOMIC
MODELS
The subject of experimentation leads to my third-and most critical-concern: the need to develop new economic models for the delivery of journal information. Let’s start with the premise that the journal article will remain the basic unit of exchange. There is certainly room for reorganization and improvement of the article, but by and large it has held up as a good unit of information. These units have traditionally been packaged in journal issues and volumes, and the volumes sold on subscription. The notion of the journal itself has a great deal worth preserving: It provides a recognizable intellectual context for certification and clustering of related material within a specialty.
Ecor~omic and Technological Trends in Journal Publishing
125
But do the notions of issues and volumes have equal long-term validity? Could one not publish journal articles strictly in numeric sequence and charge either per article or per fixed number of articles? For the moment (and the “moment” is a decade or more longer), we cannot even think of doing away with paper for existing journals, which means issues and volumes. But what will be the economic model for the future? The need for a new economic model or models is clearly, in my view, the biggest issue we jointly face. And it is obviously a question much more complex than simply per-volume pricing. What are some of the concerns or trends? 1. ~y~e~t per use? Will we move from a journal purchase, in which issues are generally once purchased available to use without further charge, to a license arrangement? Will there be payment per use and, if so, what are the pros and cons of that? A few I see:
FRO * provably l
l
l
one will only pay for that which is used (usual accurate retrieval tools) there will be an ability to pass some or all of the costs back to the user on a transactional basis, offering the option of tapping new revenue sources there will be far more information available on what is actually used and what not, and it will be easier to centralize and share, resell, or otherwise redistribute materials
CON l l l
l l
inhibitions on both creation and use further segregation between the rich and the poor, the haves and the have-nots no guarantee that the net cost per use will not be higher than the present system, which has many hidden efficiencies will trade a space-intensive system for a h~dware-intensive system: cheaper? need for parallel systems, as not all markets moving evenly
2. Roles. What will be the respective roles of primary journals publishers; the secondary (abstracting and indexing) publishers, hosts and networks, and the library? Who will add what value and at what cost? It is interesting to me to note that of the many organizations which have contacted me about getting electronic access to our materials, most (whether ostensibly nonprofit or commercial) have the goal of reselling that material. Is the new model that the publisher will be the wholesaler and the library or network the retailer? 3. Advertising. I want to make quick mention of one frequently overlooked item: advertising. Presently the ability to attract advertising makes an enormous difference in the price at which journals can be sold. Journals such as those society journals which have large numbers of individual subscribers and substantial advertising revenue can be priced at a small fraction-often as low as 20% -of the price of an editorially comparable journal with only institutional subscribers and no advertising. As we move more to end user delivery, recall that few consumers or end users are used to paying the full cost of information. Radio, TV, newspapers, magazines, trade journals and many society journals are subsidized by advertising. Other journals and books are bought by libraries and provided to the end user without charge. It is in our combined interests to increase, not decrease, our ability to attract advertising to subsidize
126
K. HUNTER
reader access. This is a model which has yet to be elaborated in the electronic journal world but which should be explored. 4. Development of models. How do we develop the new economic model or models? Through experimentation, trial and error, and negotiation. One mechanism which is emerging is the use of the Copyright Clearance Center as a catalyst or forum for discussion. The CCC has been asked to take on-and has sought out-the role of intermediary in formulating ways to deal with the complex issues surrounding electronic access to copyrighted information. A group of publishers and institutions (universities, public libraries and corporations) has been talking with the CCC about an everexpanding number of projects or proposals to use journal information in electronic form. These discussions are difficult, even stormy, but there is clear progress in sorting out issues to be addressed and defining ways to experiment. A second mechanism will be the more direct method: the entry into the market of products and services, such as UMI’s business collection and the bibliographic services of CARL (Colorado Alliance of Research Libraries) and a host of others eager to build a business. Some entrants will be challenged in the courts for overstepping legal boundaries, but all of this will help in the evolution of new models.
SUMMARY 1. I’ve said that journal prices will continue more or less on the same upward trend for reasons of inflation, declining number of subscriptions, and increased research to be published. This means continued pressure to improve the use, efficiency, and value of the system. 2. One way is to improve retrieval. Better identification of material not held and more use of materials which are within the collection lead to more local mounting of bibliographic systems. The concern here is with the loss of serendipity or browsing. 3. Improved access is also needed, to provide the needed full text on a timely basis. This is more problematic, as the economic stakes are greater, the solutions more complex. 4. Which means there is a pressing need to develop new economic models for the distribution of journal information. In an ideal world, we would all be media-indifferent, choosing distribution media on the basis of appropriateness to the end user only. In 1983, I was warned by a Library of Congress staff member that the train of electronic access to journals was leaving the station, and we had better get on board or it would leave without us. I felt then there was still time to pack, plan a route, and consult the schedules, as neither the train nor the crew was anywhere in sight, and there sure was a lot of track repair going on. Well, time passes, and we’re all getting much closer to hearing “All aboard!”