Re: Recent Comments by Albert Henderson

From: Arthur Smith <apsmith_at_APS.ORG>
Date: Mon, 29 Jan 2001 10:12:46 -0500

David Goodman wrote:
> [...]
> 1/ We have continued the titles most needed, canceled appropriate titles, and
> avoided getting the least needed. Rational journal selection is possible.
>
> 2/ The cost of buying the same titles as subscriptions
> would be $382,000+$187,000-$30,000, which
> is $539,000, which would add 123% to our journal budget.
>
> General note: This assumes everything is electronic, and ignores
> storage, binding, and processing costs or savings.
> [...]

This is certainly true if it was just a matter of Princeton's biology
library making the move alone to subscribe to everything. But at least
for journals published by not-for-profit organizations, if every library
subscribed to more journals there would be a very significant decrease
in price per copy. If the APS had the same subscriber base we had 40
years ago, the cost of our journals (per subscriber) would be perhaps
1/3 or 1/4 what it is now. This would be even more true for journals
with much smaller circulation than ours. Just something to keep in mind
in this debate - your costs would go up, but not 123% if everybody did
it.

                        Arthur Smith (apsmith_at_aps.org)
Received on Wed Jan 03 2001 - 19:17:43 GMT