Pergamon Library Acquisitions: Practice & Theory, Vol. 18, No. 2, pp. 135-136, 1994

Elswier Science Ltd

03644408(93)EOO20-H

Printed in the USA. All rights reserved 03~6408/94 $6.00 + .OO

EDITORIAL

THREE R’S OUT OF BALANCE?

GORDON GRAHAM

Editor of LOGOS

5 Beechwood Drive

Marlow

Bucks SL7 2DH

England

A few months ago, a U.S. professor wrote to a number of journal publishers seeking permission to reproduce articles in a course reader. So far as LOGOS was concerned, our publisher responded by quoting the normal charge, payable through the Copyright Clearance Center. The professor replied that if he were to pay such fees for all the articles he wanted his students to read, the cost per student would be nearly $100. So he reproduced only the material on which no fees were charged-about a third of what he had hoped to provide.

For the rest, the students were referred to the college library, where most of them used the in-house photocopier. However, the library did not have LOGOS, so the professor asked the librarian to subscribe. The librarian referred the request to two subject specialists, who turned it down on the grounds that LOGOS is

l composed of “short non-research opinion pieces”; l not yet indexed by any indexing tools; l geared to the book trade, not an academic audience[!]; l high-priced for a non-research journal; l not as good as other journals which cannot be acquired due to lack of funds; l subscribed by very few libraries.

In his letter detailing these reasons, the librarian added that over the past three years, while journal prices in general had increased by 25-30070, the purchasing power of his budget had decreased. He concluded: “I regret our inability to acquire this journal which you utilize in

Reprinted with permission, from LOGOS Volume 3, Issue 4, 1992, Whurr Publishers Limited, 19b Compton Terrace, London Nl 2UN, England.

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136 G. GRAHAM

your class.” On hearing this sad story, I donated a complete file of LOGOS as a class set and our publisher wrote to the professor that the fee-to him-would be $1.00 in future.

Arithmetic, it seems, is interfering with reading and, indirectly, with writing. Authors and publishers are not primarily in the business of selling books and journals. They

are in the business of reaching readers. When people ask me how LOGOS is doing, I reply: “We count subscribers in hundreds and readers in thousands, which is better than the other way round.” Both the publisher, who has invested in the journal, and the editors and contrib- utors, whose time and talents are honorary, look with a mixture of benignity and resignation (as do their counterparts on other journals) on the large volume of non-paying satellite reader- ship. But we may be forgiven some irritation when people who would like to read the journal can’t get their hands on it-even to photocopy it.

We know that this is sadly and widely the case outside of Western Europe and North Amer- ica. When the LOGOS Royalty Trust Fund gets going (after the journal covers its non- editorial expenses), its first use will be to place LOGOS in needy libraries, where purchasing power has not merely decreased, but disappeared entirely. Meanwhile, the Trust Fund is open for designated gift subscriptions.

An Indian publisher wrote to me that he would like to subscribe, but, he added, “How can I justify the expenditure? f55 is six weeks’ salary for one of my copy editors.” In a juster world, the prices of books and journals seeking worldwide readership would have a compa- rable relation to purchasing power in every country.

Some publishers, considering that their living is founded on copyright, can be curiously oblivious at the receiving end. One publishing executive, declining to subscribe, told me he would “settle for the occasional bootlegged copy”.

I asked the Financial Director of one of the world’s leading publishing corporations what he thought of Eric de Bellaigue’s piece on “The Reporting of Publishers’ Profits”. He spoke of it and of Eric in the highest terms. “Marvellous and very fair.” The fact that he had read the piece as a photocopy did not spoil my pleasure.

I talked in my last editorial about paradoxes of freedom. This is another one. Most of the literate world has freedom to read, but reading is not free. Nor should it be. We all owe some- thing to those who write and publish what we read. Not always cash. It may be a tax-paid service; membership of a library; exposure to advertising; gratitude to a donor or lender. But something.

The value of knowledge predates reading and writing, and also money. I once heard Laurens van der Post tell of an experience when he lived with a tribe in the Kalahari Desert. Their history was of course oral. After some months, feeling he had achieved their confidence, he asked a matriarch to tell him some of the stories of their past. She drew back. The knowl- edge in her mind was a treasure of which she was a trustee. Freedom to hear, or read, may be a right, but the act of listening, or reading, is a privilege.

Business economics has translated privilege into price, which has worked reasonably well for the printed word for 500 years. But now information mass and technology have down- valued knowledge. We should have anticipated this on the day when a reader was first called a user. A user is at the end of the line. Hence the term “end-user”. A reader is part of a cir- cle. I regard those who write, publish and read LOGOS as a creative partnership, in which I am happy to include satellite readers. The more the better. If economics makes any sense, such a circle should be able both to cover costs and maximize readership. Until this happens, arithmetic will continue, so far as LOGOS is concerned, to be interfering with the other two R’s