From: Joseph Esposito <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Sun, 4 Aug 2013 19:50:25 -0400

Fred,

It's not an easy route.  I talk to society heads all the time and they
hate "signing over," as you put it, the publishing rights to
commercial organizations.  They do it because it is an existential
problem for them.  High-impact-factor society journals get dropped
from libraries in favor of lower impact journals that are part of
collections or aggregations, aka Big Deals.  It's a systemic problem
and libraries are complicit in it.

Joe Esposito


On Sun, Aug 4, 2013 at 5:45 PM, LIBLICENSE <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> From: "Friend, Fred" <[log in to unmask]>
> Date: Fri, 2 Aug 2013 10:26:44 +0000
>
> Yes, many societies have taken this apparently easy route of signing
> over their journals to the big commercial publishers. The problem is
> that what appears an easy solution for the society makes life more
> difficult for the rest of the world-wide research community, in the
> form of higher journal prices and possibly more restricted re-use
> rights. Also even if handing over their journal to Elsevier seemed the
> only viable solution at the time, it is no longer so, as the advent of
> free publishing software and research -friendly open access publishers
> has provided societies with an alternative, enabling them to keep
> control of the journal's future. Any society negotiating with a
> commercial publisher should remember that the prime aim for the
> commercial publisher is higher profit and not the society's
> well-being. "Caveat emptor" of publishing services.
>
> Fred Friend
> Honorary Director Scholarly Communication UCL
>
> ________________________________________
>
> From: "Jones, Doug" <[log in to unmask]>
> Date: Thu, 1 Aug 2013 00:29:16 +0000
>
> David--thanks for this example. It would be interesting to know the
> terms and expectations to which the National Kidney Foundation agreed
> when they (apparently) decided to sign over rights to the journal.
> I'm not familiar with this particular case, so please clarify as
> appropriate.
>
> Many societies/foundations have decided to get out of a non-core,
> high-capital-investment operation (publishing) with the understanding
> that a professional publisher provides more resources/options for both
> authors and readers AND (with a commercial publisher) they may be
> guaranteed annual payments plus future increases.
>
> Doug
>
> Douglas Jones
> Senior Assistant to the Dean
> University of Arizona Libraries
> Tucson, AZ 85721
> [log in to unmask]