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Re: Does More Mean More?

Publishers control quantity in individual journals - they do not allow them to grow as fast as the literature overall (otherwise there would be no new journals).

By publishers I mean those entities - commercial or not-for-profit - who work with specialist editors to produce journals. In my experience of many years as a journal publisher, increases in extent are worried over very carefully, since both publishers and editors know that steep price increases will damage subscriptions. Thus there is a tendency to moderate any growth in influx of suitable papers, by raising the acceptance bar. It's sometimes put forward as a benefit of e-journals that they are not subject to extent limitations; I think that's wrong on two counts. First, the real rate limiting factor for a journal is people's time, not paper. And second, a journal which grows out of control is not performing a very helpful service to the time-poor reader.

Thus, by quantity control, I mean not publishing everything that comes a journal's way, and if necessary (see above) raising acceptance standards in order for the journal not to grow too much, if at all. Publishers and their editors are very well aware that the reader doesn't magically have more time to read just because there are more papers - readers want the journal to do the filtering for them

Sally Morris, Chief Executive
Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers
Email: sally.morris@alpsp.org

----- Original Message -----
From: "William Walsh" <libwdw@langate.gsu.edu>
To: <liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu>
Sent: Friday, February 03, 2006 10:55 PM
Subject: Re: Does More Mean More?

1995:

...academic literature is said to be doubling every 10-15 years.
Publishers do not gratuitously create new journals; they respond
to a perceived need for publication...

Jan. 27, 2006:

One of the key values publishers add, as well as 'quality
control', is 'quantity control'.

Feb. 3, 2006:

Both articles and journals (and, of course, the number of
scientists) has risen by a more or less steady 3 percent per
annum for a very long time.

Sally,

In your Jan. 27th post, how are you defining "publisher" and
"quantity control"?

Bill


William Walsh
Head, Acquisitions Department
Georgia State University Library
100 Decatur Street, SE
Atlanta, GA 30303
Phone: 404.651.2149
Fax: 404.651.2148
Email:  wwalsh@gsu.edu