Re: Technology poses problems for journals

[Eric Hellman <eric@openly.com>]

Yet another example of how we tend to overestimate the short-term impact
of technological change and underestimate its long-term impact.

I would be interested in the following data:

What is the TOTAL number of journals and journal articles available to a
researcher at Yale today, and what was it 10 years ago? How many full-text
titles can a researcher access through fulltext databases and aggregations
that were not available 10 years ago? How many open-access journals, not
reflected in Yale's acquisition budget, but paid for by somebody, does the
average researcher have access to today?

Over leaf-raking this weekend, I had a chance to speak with a neighbor who
is an English Professor at Rutgers. He told me that today he can find
things for his research in a minute that, 10 years ago, would have taken
him 6 months of work to track down.

Steady, incremental process improvements in electronic journal production
will, over the long run, result in dramatic cost reductions. These cost
reductions will eventually lead to price reductions. But certainly the
value being delivered by electronic journals and electronic full-text
databases has already increased by a huge amount over the last 10 years.

Eric Hellman, President                            Openly Informatics, 
Inc.
eric@openly.com                                    2 Broad St., 2nd Floor
tel 1-973-509-7800 fax 1-734-468-6216              Bloomfield, NJ 07003
http://www.openly.com/1cate/      1 Click Access To Everything

___

At 6:31 PM -0500 11/29/03, Hamaker, Chuck wrote:
> Published Friday, November 21, 2003
> Yale Daily News
> Technology poses problems for journals
> http://www.yaledailynews.com/article.asp?AID=24250
> BY ERICA YOUNGSTROM
> Staff Reporter
> ...
>
> Members of the Advisory Council on Library Policy, or ACLP, and other
> faculty say subscribing to online journals -- which provides a
> convenient way to retrieve current academic research -- is becoming
> more expensive, even though many anticipated a cost reduction once the
> publications went online.
>
> Associate University Librarian Ann Okerson said the University's
> journal subscription costs, particularly in the areas of science and
> technology, rise about nine percent annually -- a pace that library
> budget increases cannot match.
>
> "Ten years ago -- everyone believed that electronic [journals] would be
> really cheap," Okerson said. "I think there's a fair amount of
> disillusionment or disappointment that moving to electronic has not
> brought down costs or prices."
>
> See link for rest of article.