Re: disappearing years of sold journals

[ED BARNAS <ebarnas@cup.org>]

As was already noted in this thread, publishers do not necessarily own
everything that they publish. More than a third of the journals that are
published by Cambridge University Press are done on behalf of scholarly
societies and associations such as the New Phytologist Trust which owns
the New Phytologist.

When we all published journals only on paper, for a society to change
publisher was a relatively simple matter. However, the advent of
electronic editions has raised many issues to complicate the process.  
For example: What rights would the society grant to the prior publisher to
allow online access to issues published during its tenure? How will the
expense of providing this ongoing access be covered? Would the new
publisher want to mount the prior volumes which it had not published? Are
the files from the prior publisher compatible with the new publisher's
online system? These are issues which did not exist when many current
publishing agreements were written years ago but which we must now address
both with the proprietors of our existing journals and with those who are
placing their journals with us.

How the online transition is done varies with each proprietor. The New
Phytologist Trust asked us to take down the Cambridge Journals Online
edition of the New Phytologist and provide the electronic files to
Blackwell, which we have done. The Protein Society allowed us to keep
Protein Science mounted on Cambridge Journals Online while they arranged
for the mounting of the prior volumes.  We are awaiting sample files for
evaluation from another publisher for a society journal which we will
begin to publish in 2002.

The questions raised by Kimberly are important ones and we appreciate the 
thoughtful and reasoned approach taken. These are serious issues which are 
currently under discussion both within and among publishing houses.  We 
look forward to further input from the library community as we continue to 
seek viable solutions.

- Conrad Guettler, Journals Director, Cambridge, UK
- Ed Barnas, Journals Manager, New York, NY
Cambridge University Press


On 4/24/01 10:14 PM, Kimberly Parker <kimberly.parker@yale.edu> wrote:
>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?
>
>-------------------------------------------------------------
>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
>-------------------------------------------------------------