disappearing years of sold journals

[Kimberly Parker <kimberly.parker@yale.edu>]

Recently, one of our patrons pointed out to us that a Cambridge University
Press journal to which we had been linking had vanished off the airwaves.
After some research, everyone concerned realized that the title had been
sold to Blackwell Science, and that we had access to the title again
through a different interface.

I want to leave aside the whole question of notification of occurances of
this nature (whether by either of the publishers in question, or by our
serial subscription agent) to concentrate on what is troubling me more
(today!).

I've gotten spoiled by a few publishers retaining their "backlist" content
on their websites for those titles that have passed on to new owners.  
This feels "right" to me -- I paid for the print + online suscription or I
paid for the "online included with print", and therefore feel an ownership
of the online older volumes even if the new issues have moved on to
another publisher.

However, thinking about it from a publisher's point of view -- this is
dead content.  It's not bringing them any new revenue and it's sitting on
their site taking up room, indexing space, etc.  (Let's leave aside the
question of whether it COULD generate revenue, as in someone willing to
pay for backfile access to a title.)

So New Phytologist is sold from CUP to Blackwell Science and v. 135 (1997)
- v. 145 (1999) which I used to have access to online vanishes into thin
air, never to be seen again (until JSTOR reaches that point in its moving
wall coverage).  After all, Cambridge never promised us a rose garden, and
we still have the print volumes.

What alternatives are there to this vanishing?

(1) A publisher makes an arrangement with some agency to continue serving
up back years of a title when the publisher no longer wants to make them
available.  Thus, these years of online access don't disappear altogether
(of course, we might need to pay for this ...)

(2) A publisher provides e-versions of the titles to its customers for
those years they subscribed, and then we have to figure out what to do
with the data.

(3) A publisher releases those back years into the public domain, or
proclaims copyleft and they are deposited in something like the Public
Library of Science.

(4) The selling publisher supplies the older years when it sells the right
to publish a title to a new publisher, and that new publisher makes the
older years available.

Other ideas?  Which would we prefer?  Would we even prefer the older
volumes staying available on the first publisher's site over one of the
above?

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Kimberly Parker
Electronic Publishing and Collections Librarian
Yale University Library
130 Wall Street              Voice (203) 432-0067
P.O. Box 208240              Fax (203) 432-7231
New Haven, CT  06520-8240    mailto:kimberly.parker@yale.edu
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