RE: Revisions to the Bergstrom and McAfee Graphs

["David Goodman" <David.Goodman@liu.edu>]

>From the combination of Lisa and Morna's questions, the responses to them, 
and a re-examination of the Bergstrom-McAfee website, a few things have 
emerged:

First, their web site at present does not include most of the very 
expensive multi-part titles from elsevier and other publishers. (This is a 
consequence of the limitations in their algorithm). They have added 
manually the parts of Physical Review, and I have arranged with them to 
supply the data for some other titles, including that favorite example, 
Nuclear Physics B.

Lisa and Morna pointed out that libraries do not routinely keep track of 
exact publisher information, and that apparently nobody keeps track of 
exact ownership information.  That libraries do not formally record this 
data has been a bane of electronic resources people for many years: the 
catalog only lists the first publisher at their original location, and the 
order system keeps track of dealer. Perhaps in the next round of 
Integrated Library Systems there will be a place for the basic 
bibliographic data of "current publisher"

A compilation of ownership data and copyright holders would be similarly 
useful.  On the basis of negotiations with them, I rather doubt that some 
of the largest publishers have a complete record for themselves. I 
recognize that the copyright owner may vary for different articles in the 
same journal: this adds to the necessity of having accessible records.

The distinction between profit and non-profit is somewhat.
blurry. The distinction does assist in negotiations, and
usually provides a rough guide to policy.
  Some of the largest non-profit publishers seem to be blurring the line 
further, as has been discussed on various subject lists such as CHMINF-L. 
I hope nobody sees them as equivalent to the distinction between the good 
guys and the evil ones. The discussions of the NIH plan last year should 
have enlightened everyone.

Phil's previous call for the development of public registrie of price, 
use, and licensing data remains to be fully implemented:

"Fair Publisher Pricing, Confidentiality Clauses and a Proposal to Even 
the Economic Playing Field" Published in D-Lib Magazine, 10(2), Feb 2004. 
Based on a plenary speech at the Charleston Conference on Collection 
Development, Nov 7th, 2003.

Speech at http://people.cornell.edu/pages/pmd8/fair_pricing_speech.doc,
Slides at http://people.cornell.edu/pages/pmd8/fair_pricing_slides.ppt

Efforts like those of Bergstrom and McAffey should obviously be utilized 
as a first step. It is a shame of our profession(s) that such efforts come 
from elsewhere.

Dr. David Goodman
Associate Professor
Palmer School of Library and Information Science
Long Island University
dgoodman@liu.edu