Dear SR,

May I begin by introducing myself as the publishing director at Pergamon Press. I read with much interest, and some astonishment, the article by John O. Christensen in the Fall 1992 issue of the Serials Review entitled "Cost of Chemistry Journals to One Academic Library, 1980-1990." The article engaged my interest as Pergamon Press is one of the major publishers of chemistry journals, and prompted my astonishment when I saw the enormous price in dollars/million characters that had been attributed to one of our smaller journals--Progress in Reaction Kinetics. This has clearly been the result of a miscalculation, which I shall rectify here.

I refer to Appendix B of the article (p. 29-31). On page 31 I note that the price in dollars/million characters for Progress in Reaction Kinetics soars from $299.69/million characters in 1986 to $1,207.24/million characters in 1987, and remains at a very high level in subsequent years. For a number of years Progress in Reaction Kinetics had a problem with poor copy flow--now remedied--which resulted in it running behind schedule. Thus, volume 14 of the journal, originally the 1986 volume, was published from 1986 through 1988. Issues 1 and 2 were published in 1986, issue 3 in 1987, and issue 4 in 1988.

Subscribers who subscribed in 1986 received all 4 issues at the 1986 price; those who subscribed in 1987 received all issues at the 1987 price; those who subscribed in 1988 received all 4 issues at the 1988 price. Likewise volume 15 was published over 2 years, 1989 (3 issues) and 1990 (1 issue). It is apparent that in his calculation Mr. Christensen has calculated the price per million characters on the basis of the number of issues the journal published in a particular calendar year, rather than on the basis of the complete volume, although it is the complete volume for which the subscriber pays.

Mr. Christensen provides the following data for the journal:

1986 1987 1988 1989 1990

Subs price (L) 75.35 120.87 114.28 105.51 123.58 Cost (S/million 299.69 1,207.24 1,926.78 469.56 1,087.92 characters)

Our information demonstrates that the following is, in fact, the case:

1986 1987 1988 1989 1990

Volume purchased 14 14 14 15 15 by subscribers

Issues published 1,2 3 4 1,2,3 4

Pages 156 62 47 174 76 published

Approx. no. of 0.37 0.09 0.07 0.33 characters (million)

0.15

Cost for the volume (S/million characters)

208 212 264 323 344

Thus the real cost/million characters of Progress in Reaction Kinetics never approaches the $1,000+ level yielded by Mr. Christensen's methodology.

I have not checked the figures for the other Pergamon titles listed in the tables, but it would appear that the cost per million characters for journals whose volumes are published over a number of years will have been inflated in Mr. Christensen's study, resulting in distorted figures.

Yours sincerely,

Dr. Peter Shepherd Publishing Director

-- LETTER -- FALL 1993 95