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CORRESPONDENCE On Pure and Applied Chemistry: A Different View I find myself in the uneasy position of responding in a later issue to your editorial of August 1983 in your excellent journal. Since we were in touch about the content of the editorial prior to publication-in fact I prevented you from pawing misinformation to your audience-I had hoped you would not get into the pitfalls so well described in your correspondence columns by Philip S. Skell.’ In other words, I would strongly recommend as an editorial policy that you publish simultaneously the manuscripts that contain opposite views, thus challenging your readers to reach their own conclusions on an issue of controversy. To come to the point, let me fmt amplify your expressed view that the material published in PAC is of excellent nature. Both the papers based on invited lectures at IUPAC-sponsored symposia and the IUPAC Commission Reports are indeed of high standards. Contrary to your statement, all manuscripts in PAC are indeed refereed, although in a somewhat different way from primary publications that appear in research journals. Your intelligent guess that few chemists are interested in reading both published lectures and Commission Reports is not supported by distribution figures. While many similar journals have declining numbers of subscribers, distribution of PAC has remained constant during the past several years. However, one could not rate the “success” of a journal on the basis of distribution only. Distribution figures are in my view of declining importance in this respect because of the attitude of scientists to depend more and more on the libraries at their disposal. Another item you touch on in your article is the subscription price policy. According to the 1982 Annual Report of the American Chemical Society, Accounts of Chemical Research had 484 editorial pages in 1982 and had a total circulation in that year of 8288, with a U.S. nonmember price of $64 and a member price of $16. On
0116-4842/83/0116-0362$01.50/0
a price-per-word basis, there is probably very little difference between the member price of $16 for Accounts and the “privilege” price for individual subscribers of $70 for PAC (2500 editorial pages). The policy to offer individual subscribers (or member subscribers) a very substantial price discount is based on the fact that “first copy” costs are recovered from sales to libraries (or nonmember subscribers) and other sources of income (e.g., advertisements). In reality, my guess is that such privileged price settings just cover the “run-on” costs of the publications. Finally I would guess that the overwhelming majority of all sales of Accounts are in the U.S.A. This would be inherent to an individual member-based organization like ACS. As you well know IUPAC so far has not achieved that status. Dick P. den Os Chairman IUPAC Publications Committee Leiden State University The Netherlands (1) Skell, P.S. Acc. Chem. Res. 1983, 16, 186.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Copies of the editorial, “On Pure and Applied Chemistry”, were sent to members of the IUPAC Publications Committee about the same time it was sent to the ACS Columbus Editorial Office on its way to publication. A prompt response from Dr. den Os enabled us to correct a mistaken statement about the PAC subscription price in the nick of time (actually, about two hours before our phone call would have been too late). Of the 8288 subscriptions to Accounts in 1982,6294 were to ACS members (4551 in U.S.A., 1743 elsewhere) and 1994 to nonmembers (1117 in U.S.A., 877 elsewhere). According to the 1983 Report to Council of the IUPAC Committee on Publications, there were 1047 subscriptions to PAC in 1982.
0 1983 American Chemical Society
