RE: disappearing years of sold journals

[Ian Bannerman <Ian.Bannerman@blacksci.co.uk>]

Kimberly:

Thank you for raising this.

We received the final batch of files from Cambridge University Press last
week and have begun loading them onto Blackwell-Synergy. I regret that it
has not been possible to load them any sooner. We expect to restore all
issues from 1997 onwards over the next few weeks.

You can monitor our progress at
http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/Journals/issuelist.asp?journal=nph where
we now have all issues from the 2000 (CUP) volume.

New Phytologist is owned by a charity, the New Phytologist Trust. They
chose to move the contract for publishing the journal from CUP to
Blackwell at the end of 2000 (for further information see the editorial in
the January 2001 issue - "Change for good reason").

The majority of our journals are owned by charitable learned and
professional societies and we have considerable experience of taking them
on from other publishers. We always make every effort to take on the
electronic back-file and most publishers are fully cooperative.


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Ian Bannerman
Journal Sales Director
Blackwell Science Ltd.
Osney Mead
Oxford
OX2 0EL, UK

+44 (0)1865 206206
mailto:ian.bannerman@blacksci.co.uk
http://www.blackwell-synergy.com
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
> -----Original Message----- 
> From: Kimberly Parker [ <mailto:kimberly.parker@yale.edu>] 
> 
> Recently, one of our patrons pointed out to us that a Cambridge University
> 
> Press journal to which we had been linking had vanished off the airwaves. 
> After some research, everyone concerned realized that the title had been 
> sold to Blackwell Science, and that we had access to the title again 
> through a different interface. 
> 
> I want to leave aside the whole question of notification of occurances of 
> this nature (whether by either of the publishers in question, or by our 
> serial subscription agent) to concentrate on what is troubling me more 
> (today!). 
> 
> I've gotten spoiled by a few publishers retaining their "backlist" content
> 
> on their websites for those titles that have passed on to new owners.  
> This feels "right" to me -- I paid for the print + online suscription or I
> 
> paid for the "online included with print", and therefore feel an ownership
> 
> of the online older volumes even if the new issues have moved on to 
> another publisher. 
> 
> However, thinking about it from a publisher's point of view -- this is 
> dead content.  It's not bringing them any new revenue and it's sitting on 
> their site taking up room, indexing space, etc.  (Let's leave aside the 
> question of whether it COULD generate revenue, as in someone willing to 
> pay for backfile access to a title.) 
> 
> So New Phytologist is sold from CUP to Blackwell Science and v. 135 (1997)
> 
> - v. 145 (1999) which I used to have access to online vanishes into thin 
> air, never to be seen again (until JSTOR reaches that point in its moving 
> wall coverage).  After all, Cambridge never promised us a rose garden, and
> 
> we still have the print volumes. 
> 
> What alternatives are there to this vanishing? 
> 
> (1) A publisher makes an arrangement with some agency to continue serving 
> up back years of a title when the publisher no longer wants to make them 
> available.  Thus, these years of online access don't disappear altogether 
> (of course, we might need to pay for this ...) 
> 
> (2) A publisher provides e-versions of the titles to its customers for 
> those years they subscribed, and then we have to figure out what to do 
> with the data. 
> 
> (3) A publisher releases those back years into the public domain, or 
> proclaims copyleft and they are deposited in something like the Public 
> Library of Science. 
> 
> (4) The selling publisher supplies the older years when it sells the right
> 
> to publish a title to a new publisher, and that new publisher makes the 
> older years available. 
> 
> Other ideas?  Which would we prefer?  Would we even prefer the older 
> volumes staying available on the first publisher's site over one of the 
> above? 
> 
> ------------------------------------------------------------- 
> Kimberly Parker 
> Electronic Publishing and Collections Librarian 
> Yale University Library 
> 130 Wall Street              Voice (203) 432-0067 
> P.O. Box 208240              Fax (203) 432-7231 
> New Haven, CT  06520-8240    <mailto:kimberly.parker@yale.edu> 
> -------------------------------------------------------------