Publisher Continues Its Fight Against Price Surveys

The New York-based scientific publisher Gordon and Breach has suffered a setback in the first round of its legal battle waged in European courts against the American Institute of Physics. The publishing firm had brought suits against AIP last year, claiming that an article in the July 1988 issue of the institute's monthly, Physics Today, reporting on a survey of journal prices (The Scientist, Sept. 4, 1989, page 4), was damaging to Gordon and Breach. The article, written by retired physicist Henry Barschall, reported that journals published by Gordon and Breach were significantly more expensive than those of other publishers. In the suit in Zurich commercial court, the publisher charged that AIP and the American Physical Society, a member organization, had engaged in unfair comparative advertising. The case was dismissed on jurisdictional grounds from commercial court in Zurich on December 19, and Gordon and Breach was ordered to pay nearly 20,000 Swiss francs (about $13,000) in court costs and its opponents' attorney fees. Barschall remains the object of a second suit, which was filed by Gordon and Breach in Zurich's district court and whose outcome is still pending. The plaintiff filed the suits in Switzerland and also brought action in West Germany and France because of those countries' laws against unfair comparative advertising. Alfred Gilgen, the lawyer who is representing Gordon and Breach in Switzerland, said last month that the publisher was considering an appeal of that decision. If it did not launch a successful appeal, Gilgen said, the Swiss suits against AIP and APS would not be dropped, but would be joined to the case against Barschall. Last month Gordon and Breach took another tack against what it considers unfair comparisons, after Notices of the American Mathematical Society (36:1193-8, 1989) published a survey of mathematical research journals. As in Barschall's survey, the AMS study reported that Gordon and Breach's publications cost substantially more on a cents-per-character basis than the New York publisher's competitors, especially those journals published by professional societies. In this instance, Gordon and Breach did not sue, but took out a two-page paid advertisement in the January issue of NAMS. In the ad - headlined "AMS Continues Gross Distortion In Surveys; Abrogates Agreement With Gordon And Breach" - the publisher said that the AMS methodology did not take into account its journals' range of prices for corporate, library, and individual subscribers, as well as other factors. The publisher also quoted a letter from former AMS executive director William Leveque at the time of an earlier survey. Leveque wrote, "I will of course see to it that G&B journals are not listed." Gordon and Breach says this promise applied to all future surveys; the society maintains the promise applied only to the earlier survey. Meanwhile, in other activity related to journal pricing, research librarians are vowing, in the words of one of them, "continued cancellations and continued sword-rattling" against scientific publishers that, in their opinion, are overcharging for their publications. Debate over journal prices, which was featured in a session of the American Library Association meeting in Chicago last month, will be taken up later this month by the readers of these journals at the New Orleans meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. A panel discussion there will include Barschall; A. F. Spilhaus, director of the American Geophysical Union; and Karen Hunter, a vice-president of ier Science Publishing Co. Inc. The session will be held Saturday, Feb. 17, at 8:30 A.M. Spilhaus says that he will tell his colleagues that they themselves contribute to high journal prices by purchasing and submitting articles to the high-priced publications. "If you don't like the price," he says, "don't buy the journal."

Publisher Continues Its Fight Against Price Surveys

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