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

["Nawin Gupta" <nawin@nawingupta.com>]

Perhaps the time has come to discontinue print for most scholarly 
journals. Publishers should show some grace and respect for the 
medium that has served us so well for hundreds of years, with 
scores of innovations enhancing readability and aesthetics, 
"rather than switching to this 'Condense and Rotate' nonsense" 
(as Beth Weil appropriately put it).  Print has ceased to be 
"journal of record" for most of the scholarly journals, and most 
readers access journals online.  Librarians can help publishers, 
and help their own budgets in these difficult times, by resolving 
to drop print subscriptions.

Nawin Gupta
Informed Publishing Solutions, Inc.
Phone +1 773-623-9199   nawin@nawingupta.com

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
On Behalf Of bweil@library.berkeley.edu
Sent: Tuesday, January 05, 2010 9:10 PM
To: liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
Subject: Re: Wiley-Blackwell Adopts Condense and Rotate Printing Process for
Select Journals

Yes, ACS pulled a real bait and switch.  We thought we were 
purchasing a usable archival print journal and instead received 
an unarchival and unusable product. The the text was difficult to 
read and the inner margins were not suitable for binding.  We 
tossed these issues and canceled our print subscription.  There 
was no point in spending any money trying to bind them. 
Publishers should simply stop printing their journals rather than 
switching to this 'Condense and Rotate' nonsense.  I was very 
disappointed with ACS' lack of integrity.

Beth Weil
Marian Koshland Bioscience and Natural Resources Library
UC Berkeley

> 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