RE: Journal start-ups---and the current journal scene

["Hamaker, Chuck" <cahamake@email.uncc.edu>]

One of the more peculiar publisher responses I've ever seen. In fact, most
of the publishers I've talked to say that librarians have to judge the
quality of the overall publication, i.e. is it worth the money or not.

Faculty, peer reviewers, etc. generally don't worry about money for value.
in journals, and are part of the reason the system is in the mess it's in
right now.

Maybe I'm misunderstanding the  point of this response.
?
Chuck Hamaker

> -----Original Message-----
> From:	Norm Frankel [SMTP:Norman_Frankel@ama-assn.org]
> Sent:	Monday, October 25, 1999 4:22 PM
> To:	liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
> Subject:	Re: Journal start-ups---and the current journal scene (fwd)
> 
> David Goodman raises some very interesting points.  I am concerned with 
> his suggestion that "the differences near the top may be so small and so 
> difficult to judge that it would be of almost equal quality."  This is a 
> decision that should be made by the peer reviewers, i.e., physicians and 
> scientists.  It is definitely not a decision to be made by librarians and 
> publishers.
> 
> Norm Frankel/AMA
> _____________________
> 
> >>> David Goodman <dgoodman@Princeton.EDU> 10/23 12:32 PM >>>
> The possibilities than Alan suggests are certainly relevant, and it is
> good to have them so well stated. (A related possibility is a more
> rational separation of articles by subjects.)
> 
> If editors select the papers they do find room for on the basis of
> quality, it is simply not possible that the journal would be of quite the
> same level if they publish some of the articles they currently do not.
> However, for the best journals it may often be the case that the
> differences near the top level may be so small and so difficult to judge,
> that it would be of almost equal quality.
> 
> As long as journals are published in issue format, even electronically,
> there is also an advantage in not exceeding a certain issue size, and many
> titles are already at or beyond the tolerable extent. One of the defects
> of electronic publication is that no table of contents that I have yet
> seen is quite as good an equivalent for scanning as the same journal's
> printed version--I think it's primarily a page size problem. And the issue
> format, though of course not intrinsically necessary in an electronic
> format, has advantages: many users like having new papers presented to
> them in manageable chunks. Of course issues could be published more
> frequently electronically--but imagine facing a PNAS-length table of
> contents twice a week instead of twice a month. Certainly a key virtue of
> titles like Nature is their small size. Even if all the articles were the
> same quality and interest as now, would it be as widely read if it were 10
> times the size?
> 
> These difficulties in presentation will surely be solved, partly by
> improved design, partly by improved technology, but mostly by change in
> reading habits to meet the new conditions. Possibly improved subject and
> citation based alerting will replace scanning for all users, not just
> those who now prefer it. As the librarian of a library about to receive a
> number of important titles in electronic format only, I expect the change
> to require much work with both the users and the systems.
> 
> --
> David Goodman
> Biology Librarian, and
> Co-Chair, Electronic Journals Task Force
> Princeton University Library
> dgoodman@princeton.edu         http://www.princeton.edu/~biolib/ 
> phone: 609-258-3235            fax: 609-258-2627
> 
> ________________