Re: Wiley-Blackwell Adopts Condense and Rotate Printing Process for Select Journals

[Joachim.Meier@ptb.de]

Dear colleagues,

Last year (2009) during the running volume of "Analytical 
Chemistry" the American Chemical Soc. effected the same "Condense 
and Rotate Printing Process" as is now announced for selected 
Wiley-Blackwell Journals. But ACS had not announced this change 
neither in advance nor delayed. The scaling down of lettering, 
graphs and figures impaires the readability heavily.

Binding will obscure part of each article page.

Those volumes are hardly suitable for archiving purposes. I guess 
that this measure of "Condense and Rotate Printing" is a means to 
increase profits for the publisher (when print subscription fees 
are not reduced according to the savings) but the main purpose 
seems to force libraries to change to an online-only subscription 
(a back-door approach?).

For core journals this strategy may be successful. For the 
"besides the core" journals the "Condense and Rotate Printing" 
will rank those journals up on individual library's list of 
candidates for future cancellations.

I would be glad to see publishers committing their lobbying 
machinery to fight for shrinking VAT for science and education 
online media instead of shrinking printed articles.

Regards
Joachim Meier
Head of Library
Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt (PTB)
(http://www.ptb.de)
GERMANY
E-mail: Joachim.Meier@ptb.de=20