Re: Snooze/lose (Was: Academics and coursepacks)

On 1 Sep 1998, Bernard Katz <bkatz[_at_]uoguelph.ca> wrote:
>
> I would like to underscore Dean Bert Boyce's information and comments
> with regard to photocopying and journal costs. One should not lose
> sight of the fact that the photocopier has essentially replaced hand
> copying and taking notes by hand from journal articles and books, on
> the part of students. The vast volume of copying that takes place on
> campuses today - apart from the creation of course packs - is really a
> form of note taking. Most of these photocopies are not retained by
> the students, but are eventually if not immediately discarded, once
> the essay/assignment has been completed. Would these students have
> purchased a subscription to the journal instead of photocopying? Would
> they have purchased individual issues that contained article(s) required
> for their work? Would they have purchased the many books out of which
> they needed a few pages of information or data instead of photocopying
> them? I doubt this very much.

Photocopying by undergraduates is almost irrelevant to the question of subscription prices and collection development spending. The dynamic effect of interlibrary borrowing (i.e. photocopying) as a substitute for purchase was contemplated by the CONTU guidelines that limit fair use in an effort to balance various interests. It is the assumption by administrative masters of the budget that photocopying reduces the need for collection development spending that has justified cutting libraries' shares of spending since the success of the Xerox model 914 in the 1960s.

> In Canada, after many years of negotiation, copying for sale to students
> (eg. coursepacks) and even multiple copying for "free" distribution to
> an entire class has been covered by blanket licencing from and fees paid
> to the Canadian Copyright Licencing Agency (CANCOPY). These are in turn
> distributed to authors and publishers. Similar schemes exist in many
> countries and even in the U.S.A. some educational uses require copyright
> clearance.

I would think the sources of most coursepack materials, the bulk of which I believe are produced for undergraduates, are substantially different from advanced research materials found in most science journals.

> Nevertheless, journal prices keep rising at rates that far exceed the
> commodity and labour costs. And as for scientific, technical and
> scholarly journal titles, there is virtually no cost to the publisher
> for the contents - if anything there is a per page charge or mss.
> reading fee collected from the authors!

This is incorrect. Costs are substantial in spite of direct and tax-related subsidies. If you doubt this, you can check the publishing costs and income of many association publishers that are a matter of public record. You might also check your library shelves to measure the exponential growth in pages of most science journals.

The sales decline has been "devestating," according to Tenopir and King (JOURNAL OF SCHOLARLY PUBLISHING. 28(3):135-170.

The growth in pages reflects a growth in research activity -- subject to control by science policy, not publishers. My question is why isn't libraries' growth supported to the same degree as research??!

Albert Henderson, Editor, PUBLISHING RESEARCH QUARTERLY <70244.1532[_at_]compuserve.com> Received on Thu Sep 03 1998 - 15:42:51 GMT