From: Anthony Watkinson <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Mon, 27 Apr 2015 09:26:45 +0100

Chuck has so much knowledge that I now turn to him. I have been told
and read that Maxwell did make the change or lead the change to the
annual schedule but what I do not know is whether or not US or UK as
distinct from Germany followed the flow system earlier or was Maxwell
just leading the change for "continental publishers".

Anthony

-----Original Message-----

From: "Hamaker, Charles" <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Sun, 26 Apr 2015 23:53:19 +0000

http://www.hommages.ch/Announcements/pdf/32CC6E8CEEA40C65910A92A837A0DDCD.pdf

As a friend said to me in his email to point this out,  Another era passing.

He was 82. Probably best known to the Internet  era as the man who
sued Harry Barschall and the AIP.

Martin Gordon founded G&B in 1961 and  implemented some innovations in
the STM field, including if memory serves, speed shipping for STM
journals.

He may have been the last of the larger STM publishers(300 journals at
one point) not to publish journals on a regular schedule, or even with
a predictable annual subscription rate.

Issues were released in a "flow" system,  when there was enough
"content" to fill an issue and for however many issues there was
content for that year, more or less.

That was in a German tradition common during the between the war
years,  when libraries never knew how many issues were coming from a
journal, or how much the yearly cost would be. And or course when the
German's did it their physics and chemistry journals were some of the
most watched and waited for journals in the world.

Most STM  journals moved to regularly scheduled issues with
predictable pricing by the time I became a librarian. in the early
1970's I suspect Robert Maxwell might have had something to do with
that.

Chuck