RE: Libraries Urge Justice Departmen to Block Cinven and Candover Purchase of BertelsmannSpringer

["Hamaker, Chuck" <cahamake@email.uncc.edu>]

Rick:  Who "owns" journals is important, because of the evidence, which is
long and deep that the largest publishers charge the highest premiums for
their content.  Chuck

-----Original Message-----
From: Rick Anderson [mailto:rickand@unr.edu]
Sent: Wednesday, June 04, 2003 10:30 AM
Subject: RE: Libraries Urge Justice Departmen to Block Cinven and
Candover Purchase of BertelsmannSpringer

Well, right.  So then why do we complain about Elsevier so much?  Why does
it matter how many journal publishers there are?  I really don't see how
you can have this argument both ways -- if Elsevier's dominance is a
problem, then we should welcome the emergence of another big player; if it
isn't, then we should stop fussing about it.  Heck, maybe all scholarly
journals should be published by a single house, thus immensely simplifying
the life of my serials staff.

> The only competition that I am aware of is in the drive for the best
> papers, the best names writing for a particular journal or group of
> journals. That competition is quite different than the normal marketplace,
> and is why the wait and let the market take care of it approach has never
> worked in the STM journal world.

But that competition persists as long as there are individual journals,
regardless of who owns them.  LCATS and Serials Review are both Elsevier
journals, but Carol Diedrichs and Connie Foster have to compete for good
writers the same way they would if the two journals came from different
houses.

-------------
Rick Anderson
rickand@unr.edu