Publisher PR Campaign

[Ann Okerson <ann.okerson@yale.edu>]

   A GROUP OF SCHOLARLY PUBLISHERS will begin a public-relations 
   campaign this month that is intended to improve publishers' 
   image among librarians and academics. The campaign aims, in 
   part, to quash a newfound enthusiasm among some librarians 
   for self-publishing research results online.
   --> SEE http://chronicle.com/free/2002/11/2002110701t.htm

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Scholarly Publishers Aim to Woo Librarians Away From Self-Published
Research

By SCOTT CARLSON

A group of scholarly publishers will begin a public-relations campaign
this month that is intended to improve publishers' image among librarians
and academics. The campaign aims, in part, to quash a newfound enthusiasm
among some librarians for self-publishing research results online, a
practice that lets scholars bypass slow, costly academic journals.

Supporters of the campaign also say that it will be an attempt to mend
relations with librarians and academics. "The long-term goal is to
re-establish that we are allies with the academic world," says Lynn
Rienner, the founder of the social-sciences publishing company Lynn
Rienner Publishers, who has helped shape the campaign.

She says relations between librarians and publishers have been portrayed
as "adversarial" and as "warring camps" in the press, a characterization
that hurts her. "It was because of librarians that I got into publishing,"
she says.

The campaign is sponsored by the scholarly-publishing division of the
Association of American Publishers and will be run by Edelman, a giant
public-relations firm based in Chicago and New York. The publishers and
the firm are still working out details of the campaign, but mailings,
advertisements, summits between librarians and publishers, and speakers at
conferences have all been proposed.

"It's something that we'll have to keep at for years," says Ted Nardin,
vice president of the scientific and technical division of McGraw-Hill, a
leading publisher. "It's not just a six-month program."

Beyond smoothing ruffled feathers, the publishers seek to reach academics
and librarians who advocate distributing research on the Internet. Marc H.
Brodsky, the executive director and chief executive officer of the
American Institute of Physics, which publishes several prominent journals,
says the campaign will emphasize the perks that working with traditional
publishers brings: money for marketing, the prestige of a well-known
journal, the expertise and mediation of an editor, and the management of
peer review.

"There is an illusion that electronic publishing is cheap," Mr. Brodsky
says. "There are ways of putting things on the Web that are cheap, but not
ways that give the value that publishers provide."

However, the campaign will not focus on the sharply rising cost of journal
subscriptions -- one of the main rubs between publishers, on the one hand,
and academics and librarians, on the other. "I really don't see it as the
key issue," says Mr. Nardin, of McGraw-Hill. "My view of this program is
that our objective is not to convey pricing but to convey what publishers
are doing."

But Kenneth Frazier, director of libraries at the University of Wisconsin
at Madison, says that rising journal costs have been the driving force
behind Internet-based alternative-publishing efforts. "The problem is that
a lot of commercial publishers are not only addicted to profits -- they
are addicted to high revenue growth, too," he says. "That creates a
situation that is sure to motivate alternative systems for disseminating
knowledge."

[SNIP]