20 October 2020
To SSAR Members:
On 12 July 2020 the Board of Directors of SSAR voted unanimously to move Journal of Herpetology to an online-only format beginning with the first issue of 2021. Herpetological Review will not be affected and will continue to be offered in print as well as online. The Board considered this decision very carefully, taking into account financial information and results from the survey of SSAR members initiated on 26 May 2020 (see below).
In short, printing costs are so expensive that the Society can no longer justify spending more than $30,000 per year subsidizing production of printed copies of Journal of Herpetology. Currently, to receive printed copies regular members pay $10 more than online-only members pay in annual dues. This amount is not sufficient to offset the ever-increasing cost of hard copy. After careful analysis, the Board accepted the reality that it would be a persistent challenge to cover costs of printing Journal of Herpetology. Offsetting the expense would have required charging a minimum $50 subscription fee on top of regular dues. If fewer than 500 members were willing to pay this cost in any given year, once again SSAR would be spending thousands of dollars for print copies while creating additional fees for storage of copies that have no commercial value.
The bulk of your membership dues continues to cover costs of producing Journal of Herpetology and Herpetological Review; the remainder is operational costs. The SSAR does not expect to lose institutional subscriptions. Most importantly, we are confident, based on the results of the survey, that this decision will not drive our members away or de-incentivize new herpetologists from joining SSAR.
The savings obtained by moving the journal to online-only should allow SSAR to continue to develop new services and to reach herpetologists across the globe. As examples, we recently held our first online Student Poster Competition, made the SSAR Audiovisual Shows available on the website, and of course continue to update and improve the entire suite of services that SSAR provides—CAAR, Herpetological Circulars, SSARHerps.org, Manuscript Review Service, and more.
In making its decision, the Board understood, and discussed at length, that some members have a strong preference for print copies and are willing to pay extra for them. To this end, we have identified a print company and have a plan that will provide print opies to those members who are willing to buy them. We are offering a “group buy”, managed by the SSAR Publications Secretary, whereby members who wish to pay for a hardcopy of each volume of Journal of Herpetology may order it annually. The Society will charge them at cost, with 50 copies being the minimum order. The price will vary by number of pages in each annual volume and by number of copies ordered by members. The Group-Buy Program option will be available only for those members who respond to the annual notice from the Publications Secretary. We are sorry, but we cannot guarantee availability of print copies to any member who fails to respond to the annual notice. There will be no ability to order any missed volumes. If the printing company changes their fee structure, or if we do not receive enough orders to make it financially tenable, we may need to cease the Group-Buy Program. Like many SSAR members, we will miss receiving the Journal of Herpetology in the mail and reading our flagship journal in printed form. At the same time, we recognize that the best decision for our Society is to accept the present-day realities of scientific publishing and the financial and environmental benefits of online publishing.
Sincerely,
Marty Crump, President, SSAR
and the SSAR Board Members
*Interpretation of survey results
The survey conducted beginning on 26 May 2020 provided important information that informed the decisions made by board members:
- Desire for print copies of Journal of Herpetology is not strong and appears to be waning.
- Of 679 respondents, 54% were not willing to pay above $10 to receive print
copies. - Thirty-eight per cent of respondents would pay “up to $60 additional”, but only 8% would pay >$60.
- Of 679 respondents, 54% were not willing to pay above $10 to receive print
- When we extrapolate these numbers to the Society as a whole (~1400 members), it is unlikely that subscriptions would be able to offset the costs of printing 500 copies of Journal of Herpetology over the long-term.
- The table below summarizes the data from the 26 May 2020 survey.