Subject: SPARC and ACS
David Goodman (dgoodman@Princeton.EDU)
Date: Wed, 08 Sep 1999 17:02:29 -0400
Message-Id: <37D6CE7B.F7553090@princeton.edu> Date: Wed, 08 Sep 1999 17:02:29 -0400 From: David Goodman <dgoodman@Princeton.EDU> To: arl-ejournal@arl.org Subject: SPARC and ACS References: <3.0.32.19990830171136.006af1e0@pop3.NL.net> <19990906180604.E29173@mimosa.csv.warwick.ac.uk>
The American Chemical Society journal "Organic letters" is one of the
new journals sponsored by SPARC. However, the subscription arrangments
for the electronic version of this title do not seem to correspond to
generally accepted standards. According to the ACS journals catalog
for 2000, the pice for this title is: Print, $2300; Web (one class C
subnet), $2415; Print and Web (1 class C subnet, $2760); Additional
Class C subnets, $230; Site License only, $ 3795; Print and Site
License, $4350. The prices represent a 20% surcharge for a single
subnet, a 10% additional for each additional subnet, and a 90%
surcharge for a site license. (These are the same relative prices
as for all ACS journals.)
What is distinctly unusual is for the basic electronic access to be
restricted to one class C subnet. At any but the simplest institution,
the ip address ranges have generally no corresponence with building,
departments, or other logical arrangments. Even if it did, there are
typically chemists in more than one such unit, and essentially no other
professional organization expects extra payment in such cases -- after
all, it would nowadays hardly be likely for there to be more than one
print subscription per institution for such a title. If the site
license is considered the basic subscription, and the type C license
a special discount, the surcharge of 90% is by far the highest of any
comparable organization: the American Society of Biological Chemistry
was previously the highest at 40% (for comparison, the AIP has no
surcharge for electronic access; the Royal Society of Chemistry has no
surcharge, and even some of the competitive commercial publishers have
no surcharge for basic electronic access, and none of them has a rate
nearly as high as 90%.)
(I am aware that a typical institution may, like mine, well have a
blanket subscription, for which the rate is lower and access covers the
entire campus. Why should these not be the conditions for single title
subscriptions as well?) For the publisher of the most highly regarded
and cited journals in its subject to have these terms argues either a
lack of confidence in its publications, or a disregard for its members
and customers.
The subnet policy is bad in general, and the relative prices for
electronic access outrageous, but my immediate concern is the SPARC
sponsorship. SPARC is supposed to, I thought, both reduce costs and
promote good practices. I consider it inappropriate for its
sponsorship to be given to a journal published in this manner.
This represents my own personal views only.
David Goodman
<dgoodman@princeton.edu>
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