28 november 2006
Title changes, what a mess publishers can make
It is well known to librarians, especially cataloguing librarians, that journals happily change their titles at quite regular intervals. Sometimes they change theirs issn's as well, sometimes not. Just by accident I ran into some problems with the links from Scopus to our SFX server for the journal Vegetatio (issn 0042-3106), and old Junk, and later Kluwer imprint.
When I looked up an article published in Vegetatio in 1986 in Scopus there was not a fulltext link available and the SFX server didn't provide a link to the fulltext either. However, when I looked up and article that cited the Vegetatio article, I got a view at publisher link in the listed reference, but this link led me to the journal Plant Ecology at Springer. The article appeared to exist as a Plant Ecology article. How is it possible?
Talking with our journals librarian, it appears that Springer has indeed the stupid habit of linking all the older discontinued journal titles through a URL based on the latest name and issn of the journals. This is really ridiculous. It amazes me that no real big outcries of abhorrence from the library community have been made at such bad cataloguing practice by Springer. We invest hours of work, blood sweat and tears to catalogue all the journal changes and issn changes as correctly as possible. Starting new records as needed, linking the records from discontinued records to the continued ones and vice versa. But a respected academic publisher brushes all the skilled, precise and labour intensive work aside, and gives all discontinued titles an incorrect link and issn. Additional problem is that the Knowledge base of Ex-Libris is not aware of this ridiculous Springer habit either, so all links for the older journals have to be maintained manually.
But what really daunted on me is that the citations can go wrong as well. When you look at the following example, you see a presentation of an article in the journal Vegetatio as though it is published in Plant Ecology, 1986, Vol. 65 Issue 1. This is a real farce. Only on printing the PDF you see in the small letters the correct Vegetatio information. However the presentation at SpringerLink makes you believe that it is a Plant Ecology article. It could well have been cited as an Plant Ecology article. When you do a cited reference search for the title Plant Ecology limited to the period 1948-1996 you find all kind of references. Probably a lot of books, but the cited references of Watkinson AR in Plant Ecology in 1986 or 1987 could well have been to his Vegetatio article that was published around that time.
It is really too bizarre.
Springer please clean up this mess.
Technorati tags: Springer; Title changes; Cataloguing
When I looked up an article published in Vegetatio in 1986 in Scopus there was not a fulltext link available and the SFX server didn't provide a link to the fulltext either. However, when I looked up and article that cited the Vegetatio article, I got a view at publisher link in the listed reference, but this link led me to the journal Plant Ecology at Springer. The article appeared to exist as a Plant Ecology article. How is it possible?
Talking with our journals librarian, it appears that Springer has indeed the stupid habit of linking all the older discontinued journal titles through a URL based on the latest name and issn of the journals. This is really ridiculous. It amazes me that no real big outcries of abhorrence from the library community have been made at such bad cataloguing practice by Springer. We invest hours of work, blood sweat and tears to catalogue all the journal changes and issn changes as correctly as possible. Starting new records as needed, linking the records from discontinued records to the continued ones and vice versa. But a respected academic publisher brushes all the skilled, precise and labour intensive work aside, and gives all discontinued titles an incorrect link and issn. Additional problem is that the Knowledge base of Ex-Libris is not aware of this ridiculous Springer habit either, so all links for the older journals have to be maintained manually.
But what really daunted on me is that the citations can go wrong as well. When you look at the following example, you see a presentation of an article in the journal Vegetatio as though it is published in Plant Ecology, 1986, Vol. 65 Issue 1. This is a real farce. Only on printing the PDF you see in the small letters the correct Vegetatio information. However the presentation at SpringerLink makes you believe that it is a Plant Ecology article. It could well have been cited as an Plant Ecology article. When you do a cited reference search for the title Plant Ecology limited to the period 1948-1996 you find all kind of references. Probably a lot of books, but the cited references of Watkinson AR in Plant Ecology in 1986 or 1987 could well have been to his Vegetatio article that was published around that time.
It is really too bizarre.
Springer please clean up this mess.
Technorati tags: Springer; Title changes; Cataloguing
Labels: English
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Good point. Unfortunately it is not even "just" Springer doing this. The horror stories that can be told about ProQuest's ABI/INFORM handling changed titles and ISSNs ... using new ISSNs for older issues. Brrr. I don't know what the current situation is for all providers out there, but it seems many of them focus on technology instead of on correctly handling bibliographic description information.
@Richard,
I think my severest point is the way the older journal appearance and layout are treated on the Springer site.
I will have a look at ABI/Inform, I am not a regular user of that database.
I think my severest point is the way the older journal appearance and layout are treated on the Springer site.
I will have a look at ABI/Inform, I am not a regular user of that database.
@wow!ter: if you check out ABI, search for The Academy of Management Perspectives. This is the title since 2006, from 1987-2001 the title was The Academy of Management Executive, but you won't be able to find that title in a publication search.
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