[Caveat Emptor! The following notice is about the Trojan Horse that
S/SL/PPV has offered in order to preserve the status quo. It has been
discussed in many of the contributions to this forum as the "hybrid"
solution. S.H.]
Marvin Margoshes <physchem_at_earthlink.net>:
There is a news item on p. 14 of the Sept. 15, 1998 issue of the Library
Journal on a test by Elsevier and 10 university libraries of a novel scheme
for pricing online journals. Briefly, a library may subscribe to a set
number of articles in any of Elsevier's online journals. Once an article is
accessed by anyone at the university, anyone else at that location can acess
it without additional charge. If more articles are accessed than the
subscription provides for, the cost of each additional article is higher
than the price per article in the subscription. Elsevier will compile and
provide to the university a list of the articles accessed and who accessed
them.
The article was not on the LJ Web site today (9/14), and I have sent an
e-mail to the journal asking if it will be posted or if I may copy it from
the journal for this discussion group. I'll keep you posted.
The concept brings to mind some unintended consequences of this kind of
pricing. Would it cause scholarly journals to do more to create interest in
certain articles? Would it lead to rating of articles by the number of
times they are accessed, instead of the number of times they are cited? If
the library knows who is accessing a journal, will there be a temptation to
charge a fee to the user? The world of scholarship and the world of
commerce collide again.
Received on Tue Aug 25 1998 - 19:17:43 BST