RE: Study Identifies Factors that Could Lead to Journal Cancellations

["David Prosser" <david.prosser@bodley.ox.ac.uk>]

David

I'm afraid that's not proof at all.  I'm making a very specific 
claim - libraries have not in the past cancelled physics journals 
as a result of the availability of near or exact substitutes in 
arXiv.  Journal subscriptions have been failing over the past 20 
or so years - none of that fall can be attributed to 
repositories.

Publishers are looking at how to position themselves in a future 
environment - an environment that may place even greater 
pressures on the subscription model.  That of course is their 
right and, I would suggest, their duty.  But let's not pretend 
that such positioning is on the basis of evidence of 
repository-related cancellations - no such evidence exists.

Best wishes

David C Prosser PhD
Director
SPARC Europe
http://www.sparceurope.org

-----Original Message-----
[mailto:owner-liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu] On Behalf Of David Goodman
Sent: 21 November 2006 02:51
To: liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
Subject: Re: Study Identifies Factors that Could Lead to Journal
Cancellations

I found exactly the same result in both social sciences and 
biology. Report forthcoming.

But, David, the proof that you are wrong about cancellations is 
the very recent decision of the high energy physics journals to 
move to an author-paid model.

Why would they have done so? Perhaps they know how vulnerable 
they are. They must be aware that the flagship commercial journal 
in the field has only one or two hundred paid subscriptions.

David Goodman, Ph.D., M.L.S.
previously:
Bibliographer and Research Librarian
Princeton University Library

dgoodman@princeton.edu


----- Original Message -----
From: David Prosser <david.prosser@bodley.ox.ac.uk>
Date: Friday, November 17, 2006 4:36 am
Subject: RE: Study Identifies Factors that Could Lead to Journal
Cancellations
To: liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu

> Anthony
>
> I had a vague memory that somebody had carried out a study to
> show that many authors were actually updating their pre-prints in
> arXiv to also provide the final, post-print version.  I couldn't
> find what I was looking for, but came across this presentation
> given by John Haynes of IoPP last year:
>
> http://www.alpsp.org/events/2005/PPR/haynes.ppt#2
>
> In it he states that in 'High energy physics and astrophysics
> journals' there is 'Almost 100% overlap between what is published
> in the journal and a version of that article on arXiv' and
> 'Authors tend to update their arXiv version with most current'
> (slide 5).  He also says 'Versions available on arXiv are
> scientifically very similar to, if not identical to published
> versions' (slide 10).  So, if John is correct (and I suspect he
> knows much more about this than we do) it would appear that arXiv
> contains both pre- and post-prints for a large proportion of the
> papers we are talking about.
>
> John does go on to say that it would be 'Wise to be concerned
> about how cash-strapped libraries will respond to a field that is
> well resourced with "near enough" versions of journal
> articles.especially true as librarians start to make more use of
> usage statistics (e.g. COUNTER)''.  He is, of course, entitled to
> be concerned, but there is no evidence that the libraries'
> response over the past 14 years of arXiv's existence has been to
> cancel any journals as a response to arXiv.
>
> Best wishes
>
> David C Prosser PhD
> Director
> SPARC Europe
> E-mail:  david.prosser@bodley.ox.ac.uk
>
> -----Original Message-----
> [mailto:owner-liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu] On Behalf Of Anthony
> WatkinsonSent: 16 November 2006 07:07
> To: liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
> Subject: Re: Study Identifies Factors that Could Lead to Journal
> Cancellations
>
> Heather Morrison may well be right but there is one point she
> makes and has made before which has to be challenged. ArChiv is
> populated by preprints and not by postprints on the whole.
>
> Anthony