Allego un articolo che ho ricevuto, contenente alcune riflessioni sulle recenti politiche di abbonamento alle riviste ed ai consorzi di biblioteche.

Giuseppe Buttazzo

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Bundling and Consortia Purchasing of Journals: some background material

Wednesday, June 26 2002 @ 06:24 PM PDT by Michael Doob, Department of Mathematics, University of Manitoba

The past few years have seen most major mathematical journals move toward web-based publication; free access to the abstracts and subscription-based access to the articles themselves have become the norm. In some cases, first-rate journals are available at no cost to the viewer [1]. While many of these journals ([2] for example) are web-based only, most are still published concurrently in a printed version.

There are substantial advantages in moving to web-based publication. For the publisher, the costs of printing, binding and mailing, always substantial, can be greatly reduced. For the library, the material is acquired over the net without the delays of mailing, and the journals never need to be sent out for binding (if funds are still actually available for such things). For the reader, the material is available on a 24/7 basis from the convenience of the desktop. All of these reasons enhance the desirablity and ensure the future of web-based publishing. It is clear that the days of going to the library and skimming through printed journals are numbered if not already gone.

This model of delivery clearly is now changing in a very fundamental way from the mailing of a physical journal with paper and ink to the accessing of files of data stored somewhere on the net. Access, then, becomes the commodity. This concept was first implemented by American Mathematical Society for electronic access to Mathematical Reviews; it is now so ingrained that it would be hard to imagine any mathematician wanting to return to the former process of tracing mathematical sources using the big orange volumes in the library, and MathSciNet is now almost invaluable. The change of the delivery model will have many important implications.

One consequence of this is that the marginal expense of giving new customers access to the database of journals is minimal. The idea of bundling a package of journals is a natural further consequence. The first major institution to start purchasing journals in bundles was apparently the University of California; they have bought bundles of journals for every campus in their system, and while doing so have spent over million over the past several years [3]. The process has continued in the same way for other universities. In Canada, all of the major universities in the country formed one grand consortium [4].

At first blush this would seem to be a win-win situation for all involved. For the publisher, many more journals are subscribed to, and the less profitable ones (perhaps mathematical) can be subsidized by the more profitable ones (perhaps medical). For the librarians, the number of journals available becomes much larger with very little extra effort. For the university administrator, more journals are obtained at a lower average cost per journal. For the reader, especially at smaller institutions, many more articles are just a mouse click away. But watch out!

These changes also bring some negative consequences for the mathematical community:

1. Only the largest publishers are capable of bundling more than a thousand journals; this means that that independently published smaller journals will have to be paid for with whatever money is left over after the bundles are purchased. On their own, smaller journal will never get the attention that the large publishers do. Will there be room for the smaller journals? The history of the past two decade bodes ill.

2. Libraries will become homogeneous; the typical method of coping with reduced library budgets in recent years has been for the librarians to ask the local mathematicians which journals they could do without (the slit your own throat method). Specialized workgroups have been able to keep the particular journals they need. In cities with more than one university, it has been possible with just a little coordination to keep most journals at some local institution. If that failed, interlibrary loans have been available. All this may come to an end.

3. The costs of these bundles can be enormous. As a consequence, deciding which journals to purchase moves from the librarians to higher administrative authorities. A vice president of research generally will not have the same contact with local mathematicians as the librarians. Indeed, in California the expenditures were decided in the state legislature [3]. Once a subscription to a bundle of journals has been started (with all the appropriate fanfare), will the funding continue? If so, from whose budget?

4. Learned societies often rely on journal income to carry out a myriad of useful activities. If the bundling of journals removes their income, what will replace it? Perhaps these societies will simply disappear or turn into a shadow of their present structures.

The method of access to journals is obviously in flux at the moment. Due attention must be paid by the mathematical community to ensure a future for all journals, large and small.

References

[1] www.emis.de/journals gives access to 55 journals. [2] www.combinatorics.org is an example of a first-rate journal available only on the web. [3] www.cdlib.org/about/faq [4] www.uottawa.ca/library/cnslp

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