Evolutionary Ecology Research (REVISED)

[Kent E. Holsinger]

Revised announcement forwarded for Rob Colwell. Address any questions
to him at

   colwell at uconnvm.uconn.edu

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In my earlier posting under this subject (which copied a message
originally posted by a Japanese colleague on a Japanese list), I
neglected to edit the portion of the message that refers to discounts to
individuals at Japanese institutions:

>Subscription is quite
>inexpensive, and all members of subscribing Japanese institutions
>may receive their own personal copies of the journal for USD $41.

In fact, the same price ($41 US) for personal subscriptions to
Evolutionary Ecology Research applies to anyone outside the US whose
institution has a library subscription to EER (the price for US
individual subscribers at subscribing institutions is $35.) Library subs
are only $290, worldwide.

Those who want the full story behind....

>Michael Rosenzweig has resigned as editor-in-chief of
>Evolutionary Ecology. So have the rest of its editors. They are
>all editing a new journal called Evolutionary Ecology Research.

...may wish to read the story appended below, from Science

Rob Colwell

Science story on EER (Volume 282, Number 5390, Issue of 30 Oct 1998, pp.
853 - 854):

ACADEMIC PUBLISHING:
New Journals Launched to Fight Rising Prices

David Malakoff

A librarian-led rebellion against spiraling prices for commercial
scientific journals has gained some new allies. Last week, Britain's Royal
Society of Chemistry (RSC) announced plans to launch a low-cost journal
that will compete directly with a more expensive commercial publication,
and a prominent ecologist has taken the unusual step of defecting from a
successful title he founded a decade ago to start a lower cost competitor.

Both ventures are backed by the Scholarly Publishing and Academic
Resources
Coalition (SPARC), a Washington, D.C.-based organization that is
encouraging scientific societies and rebel publishers to create journals
that compete head to head with commercial titles. "We are focusing the
spotlight on a lack of competition that we believe is narrowing the
dissemination of knowledge," says Richard Johnson, enterprise director for
the coalition. Although the new alliances are unlikely to ease the
budgetary pressures on libraries anytime soon, industry observers say they
suggest that a decade-old war between major academic libraries and a
handful of large commercial publishers is heating up.

Soaring journal prices are not a new problem for librarians. Since 1986,
median prices for scholarly journals issued by both commercial and
nonprofit publishers have risen at least 169%, or more than three times
the
rate of inflation, according to the Association of Research Libraries
(ARL)
in Washington, D.C., which represents 121 collections in the United States
and Canada. Unable to keep pace, ARL libraries have cut thousands of
subscriptions and are now spending 124% more to stock 7% fewer titles.

In particular, librarians say that an increasing share of their budgets
goes for widely cited, "must-have" scientific and technical journals
published by a few dominant commercial publishers, such as Europe-based
Reed Elsevier and Netherlands-based Wolters Kluwer. Each journal typically
has less than 500 subscribers and can cost up to $15,000 annually, notes
Ken Frazier, an ARL official who directs the University of Wisconsin,
Madison, library system. "To say that commercial research journals are
expensive is like saying tornadoes are windy," he jokes. Publishers,
however, say their prices are justified by their quality and the number of
pages they run.

ARL officials believe the academic market could benefit from a little
competition--and last year they organized SPARC to provide it. The idea is
that SPARC's 114 members will agree in advance to buy the new,
cost-conscious journals endorsed by the group. That solidarity is intended
to provide publishers with an immediate cash flow that might carry a new
title through its perilous early years. In its first deal last July, SPARC
teamed with the American Chemical Society, which agreed to develop three
new journals over 3 years. The first, Organic Letters, will debut in
mid-1999 as a $2300 alternative to Elsevier's $8602 Tetrahedron Letters
(Science, 3 July, p. 21).

Now, with the two new deals, SPARC has expanded its reach. Last week, it
joined the RSC and more than 100 European libraries to promote a new
$353-per-year electronic chemistry journal called PhysChemComm. This time,
the target is Elsevier's Chemical Physics Letters, which costs $8368. By
publishing the journal, "the RSC sees itself reclaiming the moral high
ground," says Mike Hannant, the group's electronic publisher. Elsevier
officials, however, have charged that SPARC is promoting the proliferation
of journals in an already overcrowded marketplace--and that only time will
tell if societies can hold down prices.

The second deal, still pending, is more controversial. SPARC has agreed to
promote a new print journal published by Michael Rosenzweig, a prominent
ecologist at the University of Arizona, Tucson. Rosenzweig and his
34-member editorial board have abandoned a successful journal they began
in
1987--Evolutionary Ecology--to start a self-published competitor,
Evolutionary Ecology Research. His departure late last year, Rosenzweig
says, was primarily because Kluwer--which obtained the journal from
Thomson
Corp. in a merger last year--planned to raise Evolutionary Ecology's
library price from $464 to $777 and, essentially, to end cheaper
individual
subscriptions. "We wanted wider dissemination; we're tired of publishing
papers that our colleagues and libraries can't afford," says Rosenzweig,
who plans to publish the first issue in January.

But publishing experts say the new for-profit journal, which will cost
libraries no more than $305 and individuals as little as $33 annually,
faces substantial obstacles. First, knowledgeable sources say, Rosenzweig
may have to strike a compromise with Kluwer on the question of trademark
infringement, that is, whether the new journal is attempting to benefit
from the "good will" generated by the older journal. He also will face a
marketplace and academic culture that is notoriously slow to embrace new
entries.

Even with SPARC's support, "it's a really bad time to be starting a
journal--some libraries simply aren't subscribing to any new titles," says
Janet Fisher of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology University Press
in Cambridge, Massachusetts. And Kluwer executive Ad Plazier predicts that
subscribers could be left hanging by Rosenzweig's venture. "When the price
is too low, you can't guarantee that the journal will be available in the
future," he says.

But Rosenzweig--who describes himself as "an ant taking on Goliath"--is
cautiously optimistic. One positive sign, he says, is that authors appear
to be flocking to the new journal, which he and his wife are running out
of
their home. Indeed, says ecologist Peter Smallwood of the University of
Richmond in Virginia, a former student of Rosenzweig's, "it is the
articles
that make the journal, and it looks like [he] is getting the articles that
would have gone to Kluwer." Kluwer editor Ursula Hertling, however, says
the original journal, though temporarily without an editor, has
manuscripts
and "will continue as usual."

Librarians, however, shouldn't look for Kluwer to match prices with its
new
competitor: Plazier says there are no plans to reduce the title's price.
But SPARC's Johnson is willing to be patient. "I have high hopes," he
says,
"that this will be more than just a protest movement."

Volume 282, Number 5390 Issue of 30 Oct 1998, pp. 853 - 854

David A. Malakoff
Reporter, Science Magazine (www.sciencemag.org)
1200 New York Avenue NW
Washington DC 20005
(202) 326-6446
(fax) 371-9227
Email: dmalakoff at nasw.org
Alternate email: dmalakof at aaas.org

_________
Robert K. Colwell, Dept. of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology, U-43
University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT 06269-3042, USA
Voice: 860-486-4395   Fax 860-486-3790
colwell at uconnvm.uconn.edu
Visit the Biota Website at http://viceroy.eeb.uconn.edu/biota
& the EstimateS Website at http://viceroy.eeb.uconn.edu/estimates.



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