Professional Documents
Culture Documents
The Internet's
first victim?
By John R. Hayes
IT'S H.\iw TO lALAGlNK a Sweeter business than publishing academic journals. The editorial content is contributed free of charge by scholars desperate to publish to get tenure. School
libraries are automatic customers
professors insist on it. A one-year
subscription to Neuroscience, published .24 times a year, costs $3,775.
The 34-times-a-year Gene costs
$5,500. And Brain Research, at 114
issues a year, costs $14,000.
The titles mentioned above are just
3 ofthe 1,100 academic journals published by Reed Elsevier, the largest
such publisher in the world. Based in
London, Reed Elsevier is a joint venture between Britain's Reed International Pic. and Holland's Elsevier
N.V. Neither parent company has
significant assets other than their
holdings in Reed Elsevier.
With total revenues estimated at
$5.5 billion this year. Reed Elsevier
also publishes professional directories, medical publications and trade
magazines. It bought the Lexis-Nexis
database business from the Mead
Corp. for $1.5 billion in 1994, but
academic journals are far and away its
most profitable enterprise. On revenues last year of $600 million. Reed
Elsevier's academic publishing operation probably earned $225 million
before taxes, a pretax margin of nearly
40%. Last year the rest of Reed Elsevier earned 20% pretax on revenues of
$4.5 billion.
Is the party over.' It may be nearing
its end. The Internet is closing in.
Two years ago Louisiana State Universit)''s librar)' canceled subscriptions to 1,569 scholarly journals that
cost $446,000, of which $88,427
went to Reed Elsevier. In return,
200
Forbes Decembe
s,l
LSU's libraiy guaranteed copies of in- order anything not available on camdi\'idual articles that any professor or pus directly from the UnCover Co., a
graciuate student \\ anted w ithin two Dcnxer-based article retrieval compadays. Over the next year teachers and ti\' that puts tables of contents on the
students requested 2,092 articles Internet. UnCo\'er faxes the articles
from 936 publications not in the l.si' to professors and students within 24
libran. The library was able to pro- hours. Average cost at LSU: $13 per
cure these articles for just S25,000 in article. "We're a little bit ahead of
copyright and deli\ en' fees.
where the rest of the countiy is
This year l.su clitninatcd the libra- going," sa\'s I.SU libraiy's Assistant
r\''s intermedian- role. Now some Dean Chuck Hamaker.
10,000 professors and grad students
Reed Elsevicr doubts the trend will
can log on to the Internet to browse turn into a rout. The professors, it
the tables of contents of 17,000 aca- insists, need its products. "Tenure
demic journals. With a click they can depends on a peer group saying that a
ABOVE:
Reed Elsevier's
Amsterdam cochairman, Herman
Bruggink
"The market we
serve is perfectly
happy with
the product
we deliver."
LEFT:
Reed Elsevier's
London cochairman,
Ian Irvine
"Academics are
what they are.
They are
academics, not
publishers."
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