A Tale of Two Journals: Comment

Abstract

David Henige 1 has blown dust off of an old and indigestible chestnut in the manner of a morality play. Grossly overpriced journals are common in many fields, yet they are also usually successful in attaining a wide circulation (mainly to libraries), which seems illogical. Although Henige casts doubt on at least some of the criteria that librarians employ to determine their ‘retained list,’ there is little doubt that they usually ‘know their constituencies [of faculty and students] and collect the most in-demand items first.’ 2 It is the demand for these journals by the ‘constituencies’ that really promotes their success (or otherwise). My experience in my own field, palaeontology, is that many journals provide a similar product, but that publishinghouse journals explore particular facets of the speciality, making them essential reading to a (commonly large) subset of the potential audience. Although Henige concentrates on the aspect of value for money, many criteria can be identified to support the continuation of subscriptions to expensive journals on the library budget, although I accept that cost is usually the most important. Among these criteria, I propose that two factors particularly act to maintain the status quo, one intrinsic – the high profile such journals have among researchers – and the other extrinsic – the resistance (one might say apathy, in some cases) of the ‘constituencies’ to change.