ACS News
COMMENT The Journal of the American Chemical Society, balanced budgets, and page charges Some of our readers may have heard that the society Committee on Publications is considering making the page charge in the Journal of the American Chemical Society (and perhaps in other society journals) mandatory or "nearmandatory." Mandatory page charges are indeed under serious consideration for the reasons explained in the following statement. Inflation affects the cost of journals as it does everything else we buy. And yet, ACS journals are still extremely cheap. For example, the subscription cost, in 1978, of J ACS is about 1 cent per 1000 words to a library and one fourth of that to an individual member; corresponding figures for other ACS journals are about 1.5 cents to 10 cents to libraries. Comparable costs in U.S. commercial chemical journals range from more than 3 cents to 25 cents for libraries; individual subscriptions may or may not be available at reduced cost. Unfortunately, some ACS journals appear to be too cheap. JACS has had a cumulative deficit of $427,000 in 1975-77. And the society's entire Books & Journals Division projects a deficit of $123,000 in 1978. Such deficits cannot be allowed to endure, since the financial situation of ACS is such that reserves must be built up rather than drawn down. The obvious solution would be to increase the low library subscription rates without increasing subscription prices to members. However, because of disagreement with the Internal Revenue
CAS adds new topics to CA Selects series Chemical Abstracts Service will add 21 more topics to its CA Selects series of biweekly current-awareness bulletins beginning in July. New titles in the series and subscription rates for 26 issues will be: Analytical Electrochemistry, $50; Colloids (Applied Aspects), $55; Colloids (Physicochemical Aspects), $50; Computers in Chemistry, $55; Engine Exhaust, $50; Environmental Pollution, $55; Organofluorine Chemistry, $50; Fungicides, $50; Gaseous Waste
Service regarding journal pricing (C&EN, Feb. 20, page 50), this option is not presently available. There remain only three ways of balancing the budget: cutting pages, raising subscription prices to ACS members, and/or increasing page charges. The editors of JACS have agreed to a cut in page budget in 1979 from 8600 to 8000 pages. This will reduce costs, but it also will reduce the number of articles that can be published, unless there is a substantial reduction in the number of pages per article. Authors submitting papers to JACS will see a reduced acceptance rate (with referral of more papers to other society journals) and increased pressure for shorter articles. In some cases, brevity may well become a condition for acceptance. The member subscription price in 1979 has been increased to $42. An even larger increase was discussed, but it was feared that it would lead to an excessive drop in the number of individual subscriptions. The members of the society Committee on Publications believe that the availability of individual member subscriptions at affordable prices is important both to the dissemination of chemical information and to the learning process of young chemists. Increasing subscription costs and decreasing pages to the extent already decided on still do not close the budgetary gap. It is necessary, also, to increase page charge income. Further increasing the charge per page, already
Treatment, $50; Herbicides, $50; Insecticides, $50; Liquid Waste Treatment, $50; Metallo Enzymes and Metallo Coenzymes, $50; Moessbauer Spectroscopy, $50; Organo-Transition Metal Complexes, $50; Pollution Monitoring, $50; Recovery and Recycling of Wastes, $50; Solid and Radioactive Waste Treatment, $50; Steroids (Biochemical Aspects), $55; Steroids (Chemical Aspects), $50; and Trace Element Analysis, $50. Each biweekly publication in the CA Selects series includes the complete Chemical Abstracts abstracts and citations for recent papers, patents, and other publications on a particular chemical or
at $70, is hardly realistic. Instead the society Committee on Publications is focusing on the unpalatable fact that only about 4 5 % of all authors in JACS honor page charges, whereas nearly 9 0 % acknowledge some type of financial support. Indeed, it has become painfully obvious that a number of well-supported authors do not pay page charges some or all of the time. In addition to causing financial loss to the society, this attitude seems unfair visa-vis those who do defray the charges out of their grant budgets. Under discussion is a plan to make page charges mandatory (or "nearmandatory") in 1980, though at a somewhat lesser rate than the present $70 per page. By "near-mandatory" is meant a system that would require everyone having grant support to pay the charge, but it would allow exceptions to those who have no support at all or to authors from abroad who are unable to secure dollars for page charge payments. Mandatory page charges have been used by other scientific organizations, for example, the National Academy of Sciences and the American Society of Biological Chemists, but they are something new and possibly not very welcome in ACS. In asking readers to comment, we also must remind them that the budget must be balanced one way or another. Ernest L. Eliel Chairman Society Committee on Publications
chemical engineering topic. Contents are selected by searching CAS's computerreadable information base with a special search profile developed for the topic. Thirty-six other titles currently are available in the series. CA Selects is based on a concept pioneered by the United Kingdom Chemical Information Service and is a cooperative development of CAS and UKCIS. Additional information and complimentary issues of any of the CA Selects publications may be obtained by writing the Marketing Department, Chemical Abstracts Service, P.O. Box 3012, Columbus, Ohio 43210. • June 5, 1978 C&EN 33
