Richard Hamilton and Paul Shory
Professor of Greek
Bryn Mawr College
Historical Background
Bryn Mawr Reviews (BMR) produces two electronic review journals Bryn Mawr Classical Review (BMCR), which also comes out in paper and was started at the end of 1990 and Bryn Mawr Medieval Review (BMMR), started in 1993. After about two years of activity BMMR became dormant and toward the end of 1996 both location and management were shifted [1]; since then it has become tremendously active, at one point even surpassing BMCR in its monthly output.[2] The comparisons below should be considered with this in mind.
Data
We have two sets of users: subscribers and gopher hitters.[3] As data from the former we have subscription lists, which are constantly updated, and periodic surveys that we have conducted; for the latter we have monthly reports of gopher hits and gopher hitters (but not what the hitters hit). In considering this data our two main questions have been: how are we doing; how can we afford to keep doing it.
A. Gopher Reports
Our analysis of the monthly gopher reports has concentrated on the hitters rather than the hits. After experimenting rather fruitlessly in 1995 with microanalysis of the data from the Netherlands and Germany hitter by hitter month by month for a year, we decided to collect only the following monthly figures:
total # users
total by address (country, edu, com etc.)
list of top hits (those reviews that received 15+ hits/month and are over a year old[4])
list of top hitters (those who use the system 30+/month).
Analysis of the total users shows that use has levelled off at a peak of about 3800 users a month (see appendix). With a second full year of gopher use to study we can see the seasonal fluctuation more easily. The one area of growth seems to be non-English foreign sites. If we compare the top hitters in the first ten months of 1995 with the comparable period in 1996 we find that the total increased only 5% but the total number of non-English heavy users increased 120%. Three countries were among the heavy users in both 1995 and 1996 (France, Germany, Netherlands); two appeared only in 1995 (South Africa, Taiwan) and eight only in 1996 (Brazil, Italy, Ireland, Poland, Portugal, Russia, Spain, Venezuela). <p> <A NAME="5">
Chart 1: BMCR/BMMR Top Hitters (30+ hits a month)
US English Non-English Total
1995 47 8 5 60
1996 42 10 11 63
In terms of number of total users from 1995 to 1996 there was an overall increase of 10.8%, though the increase among US users was only 9.1%. Conversely, most foreign countries if anything showed a marked increase in total use over the ten months of 1996 vs 1995 (see appendix): Argentina 16 to 27, Australia 542 to 684, Brazil 64 to 165, Denmark 80 to 102, Spain 107 to 197, Greece 41to 80, Ireland 50 to 69, Israel 89 to 108, Italy 257 to 359, Japan 167 to 241, Korea 26 to 40, Netherlands 273 to 315, Portugal 16 to 26, Russia 9 to 27, (former) USSR 13 to 20, and South Africa 63 to 88. On the other hand, Iceland went from 22 to 8, Malaysia from 30 to 21, Mexico from 68 to 56, Sweden from 307 to 250, and Taiwan from 24 to 14. Also, among US users there was a large drop in edu from 7073 to 5962 and a corresponding rise in net from 1570 to 4118, perhaps because faculty members are now using commerical providers for home access.[5]
In the analysis of top hits a curious pattern emerges: BMMR starts out with many more top hits despite there being a much smaller number of reviews (about 15% of BMCR's number) but toward the end of 1995 the pattern shifts. BMMR dominates at the beginning but drops when BMMR becomes inactive.
Chart 3: Favorite Reviews (reviews at least one year old that received 15+ hits/month)
month BMMR BMCR
1/95 2 1
2/95 15 11
3/95 10 6
4/95 2 3
5/95 5 5
6/95 16 20
7/95 3 1
8/95 12 14
9/95 41 116
10/95 46 170
1/96 38 81
2/96 14 69
3/96 15 74
4/96 19 50
5/96 6 25
6/96 9 13
7/96 7 16
8/96 8 19
9/96 20 48
10/96 14 54
The shift is easily explained since it occurs about the time BMMR was becoming inactive, but the original high density is still surprising.[6] Likewise medieval books receive noticeably more attention: 32 medieval titles made the top hits list 116 times (avg 3.6) while 81 classical titles made the list only 219 times (avg 2.7), despite including two blockbuster titles, Amy Richlin's Pornography and Representation (10x) and John Riddle's Contraception and Abortion (14x).[7]. My guess is that medievalists, being more widely dispersed in interests and location, have found the Net more important than have classicists, who are mostly located in a classics department and whose professional work is more circumscribed (and has a longer history).
B. Subscriptions
Subscriptions to the e-journals continue to grow at a rate of 5% per quarter, though there is considerable seasonal fluctuation:
Chart 4: Subscriptions
3/95 6/95 9/95 3/96 6/96 10/96 3/97
BMCR 1072 1067 (-.4%) 1135 (+ 6%) 1253 (+10%) 1273 (+2%) 1317 (+ 3%) 1420 (+ 8%)
BMMR 711 755 (+ 6%) 865 (+13%) 931 (+ 8%) 964 (+4%) 995 (+ 3%) 1091 (+10%)
joint 568 562 (- 1%) 599 (+ 7%) 672 (+12%) 685 (+2%) 770 (+12%) 844 (+10%)
total 2351 2384 (+ 1%) 2599 (+ 9%) 2856 (+10%) 2922 (+2%) 3082 (+ 5%) 3355 (+ 9%)
Looking more broadly we see a steady slowdown in growth of all but the joint subscriptions:
9/93 9/94 9/95 10/96
BMCR 651 882 (+35%) 1135 (+29%) 1317 (+16%)
BMMR 257 498 (+94%) 865 (+74%) 995 (+15%)
joint 261 460 (+76%) 599 (+30%) 770 (+29%)
If we look at the individual locations, we find again that while the US subscriptions continue to grow, they are becoming steadily less of the whole, going from 77% of the total in 1993 to 68% in 1996. English-speaking foreign countries have remained about the same percentage of the whole; it is non-English speaking foreign contries that have shown the greatest increase, going from 4% of the total in 1993 to 13% of the total in 1996.
Chart 5: BMCR Subscribers
1993 1994 1995 1996
total 730 1019 1130 1349
edu 529 701 703 779
com 22 44 72 103
gov 3 6 4 4
mil 2 2 2 2
org 5 6 7 12
net 3 5 8 17
US total 564 (77%) 764 (75%) 796 (70%) 917 (68%)
foreign total 154 254 332 428
ca 58 87 106 114
uk 31 45 57 77
au 21 33 38 43
nz 4 6 7 6
za 8 12 14 18
ca/uk/au/nz/za 122 (17%) 183 (18%) 222 (20%) 258 (19%)
non-English 32 (4%) 71 (7%) 110 (10%) 170 (13%)
de 5 11 16 27
nl 7 10 16 24
ie 1 4 5 5
fi 3 8 9 12
br 0 2 2 2
fr 1 4 7 9
es 0 0 1 3
it 2 4 7 17
hu 0 2 2 2
ve 1 1 1 1
se 3 4 6 7
gr 0 1 3 8
il 2 6 11 14
dk 1 1 1 0
no 3 4 4 4
kr 0 0 1 1
be 0 2 5 7
us 0 2 2 4
jp 1 2 3 4
ch 1 2 4 12
pt 0 0 1 1
at 0 0 1 2
hk 0 1 1 1
my 0 0 1 1
tr 0 0 1 1
pl 0 0 0 2
C. Subscriber Surveys
As opposed to the gopher stats, which give breadth but little depth, our surveys offer the opportunity for deeper study of our users but at the expense of breadth. We cannot survey our subscribers too often or they will not respond.<a href="./hamilton.html#fn8"><sup>[8]</sup></a> A further limitation is that we felt we could not survey those who take both BMCR and BMMR, a significant number, without skewing the results since many subscribers lean heavily toward one journal or the other and the journals are significantly different in some ways. So far we have conducted five surveys: <p>
1) a 20 question survey to BMCR subscribers November 1995
2) a 21 question survey to BMMR subscribers in February 1996
3) a 2 question survey to all subscribers in October 1996[9]
4) a 15 question survey to all BMCR reviewers whose e-mail addresses we knew in January 1997.
5) a 2 question survey to those who have cancelled subscriptions in the past year (March 1997).
Here is the subscriber profile as revealed in the surveys:
BMCR BMMR<p>
male 72.3% 50.1%
female 25.3 44.8
AB 5.5 9.6
ABD 12.8 18.0
PhD 66.6 49.3
faculty 65.0 44.2
adjunct, research 7.0 6.5
grad student 15.1 23.7
undergrad .8 2.3
check e-mail daily 90.3 85.9
read review on screen 66.8 63.9
print immediately 6.5 5.9
read on screen to decide 24.5 27.3
never/rarely delete w/o reading 83.1 85.4
made printed copy sometimes/often 56.9 51.9
copies on disk sometimes/often 51.7 50.7
have used gopher 42.0 15.8
reviewed for journal 25.1 9.6
heard reference to journal 70.0 31.0
finish a few reviews 42.0 19.7
finish many/most reviews 53.5 64.8
finish almost all 3.1 13.2
review useful for teaching 53.8 41.1
review useful for research 87.2 78.9
willing to pay $5 subscription 66.8 50.1
Many of the differences are easily explained by the chequered history of BMMR or by the differing natures of the two readerships.[10] I doubt many will be surprised that medievalists are more often female and less often faculty. The paucity of reader-reviewers of BMMR reflects the paucity of BMMR reviews. To me the most surprising statistic is how few of subscribers to either journal have used gopher.
The key question of course is willingness to pay for subscription, and with that in mind we did some correlation studies for the BMCR survey, first seeing with what variables there was a correlation with a willingness to pay $5 for a subscription. We found positive correlation with
ever found review useful for teaching (.0004 likelihood of a chance correlation)
ever found review useful for research (.00006)
ever hear a reference to BMCR (.00001)
ever written a review for BMCR (.00089)
Some further correlations were found:
start to read many or most reviews// heard a reference to BMCR (.00014)
willing to review// heard a reference to BMCR (.00003)
get paper BMCR// have written review (.00003)
have written review// will write in future (.0000)
will write in future// library gets BMCR (.00007)
PhD// willing to review (.00001).
A follow-up two question survey done in October 1996 asked whether subscribers would prefer to pay for e-mail subscription, or to receive advertisements from publishers or to cancel. 14% preferred to pay, 82% to receive advertisements and 4% to cancel.
Our most recent survey, of those who had for one reason or another dropped from the list of subscribers, revealed that almost a third were no longer valid addresses and so were not true cancellations. Of those who responded almost half (40, 44%) of the unsubscriptions were only temporary. The reason for cancellation was rarely the quality of the review.
Chart 7: BMCR Unsubscriber Survey (those who unsubscribed 1/96-2/97)
317 total: 103 address no longer valid; 91 responses
identity
15 unaffiliated with academic institution
46 faculty (4 retired, 9 adjunct or research)
7 librarians
8 students (2 undergraduates)
7 other
reasons (faculty # in parenthesis)
2 never subscribed (1)
2 never meant to unsubscribe (1)
16 unsubscribed from old, subscribed to new address (14)
15 suspended subscription while away (9+1)
22 decided reviews not sufficiently relevant to interests (6+2)
2 decided review quality not high enough (+1)
11+3 too much e-mail (6+3)
7+1 no longer have time to read reviews (+2)
7+1 other (5 shifted to BMR, 1 to BMCR, mistake) (4+1)
question unaffiliated faculty librarian student other
not relevant 8 6+2 1 2 2
too much mail 2 7 - 2 -
no time 4 +2 - - 1
total 14 13+4 1 4 3
Conclusions
If we return to our two questions: progress and cost recovery, we can see that our progress is satisfactory but cost-recovery is still uncertain.
BMCR is growing at the rate of 30% a year.[11] The major American Classics organization (The American Philological Association) has a membership of about 3,000 members and so one may estimate the total world population of Classicists as somewhere between 7,000 and 10,000. If half of them have access to computers, BMCR presently reaches somewhere between 22% and 32% of its total market. At its present rate of growth, it will saturate its market in five years. It is much more difficult to estimate the total world market for BMMR, but it is certainly greater than that for BMCR, so with its present growth rate of perhaps 30%[12] it will take somewhat longer to reach saturation.
BMCR costs are about $4,000/year for over 700 pages of reviews. About half the cost goes for producing the paper version and we anticipate costs of between $1,500 and $2,000 per year for preparing reviews for the Web.[13] Uncompensated editorial time averages 34 hours/month. So, total out-of-pocket expenses could be as high as $6,000 if the paper version continues and if mark-up continues to be done by hand. A third possible reduction in costs besides elimination of the paper version and automatic mark-up is a "fast-track" system whereby the review never leaves the net: it is e-mailed to the editor who sends it to a member of the editorial board and when the two have made changes it is sent back to the reviewer for approval and then published on the net. The great advantage for the reviewer is that this cuts publication time by a month; the disadvantage is that the reviewer is asked to do some simple mark-up on the text before sending it.
Possible revenue sources include: advertising, subscriptions and institutional support. As we have seen, our subscribers much prefer receiving advertising to paying for a subscription, but we have no idea how successful we will be in attracting advertising.[14] At the Conference, Hal Varian suggested we try to arrange something with Amazon Books, and we will. We will not consider charging for subscriptions until BMCR is on the Web; at that point we could charge for timely delivery of the review, perhaps several months before universal access. We also want to wait for wide acceptance of a simple electronic cash transfer system. Institutional support seems to us the most obvious way to cover costs since the College gets considerable exposure for what seems to us a small cost.
BMCR/BMMR total gopher users
96/1 96/2 96/3 96/4 96/5 96/6 96/7 96/8 96/9 96/10 95 total 96 total
Total 3622 3809 3778 3510 2887 2600 2687 2893 3436 3662 29,233 32,884
# 1015 1216 1235 1123 944 819 843 873 999 1135 8684 10,202
ae 1 1 1 1 1 4
ai 1 - 1
am 1 - 1
ar 5 2 3 1 2 1 2 3 8 16 27
arpa 4 3 1 6 2 2 2 1 2 3 21 26
at 14 9 13 10 10 10 8 11 7 9 101 101
au 67 52 72 71 72 61 51 82 77 79 542 684
aw 1 - 1
bb - -
be 12 15 11 8 6 7 14 10 11 10 93 102
bg 1 1 - 2
bh 1 1 - 2
bm 1 1 1 2 3
bn 1 1 - 2
br 13 10 17 10 17 18 17 25 18 20 64 165
ca 165 154 153 144 101 90 82 100 123 144 1214 1256
ch 13 7 5 8 10 7 11 12 14 13 104 100
cl 3 2 2 1 2 4 1 3 2 22 20
cn 1 1 1 1 2 2 1 6 9
co 1 1 2 1 13 5
com 503 466 453 362 322 316 329 356 379 377 3516 3863
cr 2 1 1 1 1 2 1 4 9
cs - -
cy 1 1 - 2
cz 3 4 3 2 1 1 2 1 4 2 25 23
de 84 65 71 60 58 61 56 60 53 43 615 611
dk 11 17 8 7 7 4 8 13 13 14 80 102
do 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 6
dz - -
ec 1 1 1
edu 684 742 650 716 503 430 460 461 632 684 7073 5962
ee 3 2 2 1 4 2 1 3 7 18
eg 2 1 1 1
es 13 13 22 22 22 15 19 23 25 23 107 197
fi 27 23 23 18 13 9 23 14 16 18 184 184
fj 36 1 1 1
fr 31 34 32 26 27 28 23 25 37 265 299
gb 1 1 1 2 3
ge 1 1 - 2
gi - -
gov 52 60 52 49 43 29 29 29 31 35 819 409
gr 11 12 6 5 7 8 7 7 5 12 41 80
gt 1 1 - 2
gu 1 -
hk 1 4 2 2 1 1 2 2 14 15
hr 2 1 2 1 3 3 2 2 2 16 18
hu 6 1 3 1 2 5 6 4 4 35 32
id 2 1 2 2 4 7
ie 7 9 6 8 9 4 4 3 9 10 50 69
il 11 11 18 15 7 7 8 10 12 9 89 108
in 1 1 1 1 9 4
int 1 5 1
is 6 4 2 2 1 1 1 1 22 8
it 37 32 34 35 33 23 34 41 43 47 257 359
jm 1 1 5 2
jo 1 - 1
jp 31 31 23 24 16 25 20 16 32 23 167 241
kr 2 3 5 7 4 3 4 1 4 7 26 40
kw 1 1 5 2
lb 1 - 1
lt 2 1 1 1 1 1 6
lu 2 3 1 1 7 7
lv 1 2 1 1 - 5
ma 1 1 - 2
md 1 - 1
mil 24 27 20 20 18 14 20 9 18 16 310 186
mo 1 1 1
mt 1 2 2 1 - 6
mx 7 6 10 3 6 7 3 4 8 2 68 56
my 2 3 2 5 2 1 2 1 1 2 30 21
na 1 - 1
net 381 439 480 397 319 316 326 406 531 523 1570 4118
nl 43 38 23 37 28 24 33 30 34 25 273 315
no 24 18 22 16 15 9 10 12 15 18 139 159
nz 10 9 14 16 10 9 10 18 16 9 110 122
org 40 34 42 42 43 37 33 28 34 48 380 381
pa 3 -
pe 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 2 2 9
ph 2 1 1 2 3 5 4 14
pk 1 1 - 2
pl 5 4 3 3 7 3 1 6 7 38 39
pt 3 2 2 2 3 1 2 3 4 4 16 26
ro 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 2 1 - 10
ru 1 1 2 3 1 3 3 4 6 3 9 27
se 40 31 20 23 21 17 21 25 27 25 307 250
sg 5 4 2 4 4 4 2 2 5 6 36 38
si 3 3 1 1 2 3 2 1 16 16
sk 2 1 1 9 4
su 3 1 2 3 2 2 2 1 4 13 20
sz 1 1 - 2
th 1 1 1 1 1 3 2 2 8 12
tr 7 2 4 2 1 1 1 3 2 1 21 24
tw 2 1 3 1 3 2 1 1 24 14
ua 1 1 1 1 1 4
uk 100 83 90 82 82 92 82 88 75 96 891 870
us 60 72 81 68 61 42 39 43 67 72 519 605
uy 2 1 1 1 1 1 1 - 8
ve 1 1 1 1 1 5 5
ws - -
wst 1 - 1
za 9 8 7 13 8 6 9 8 9 11 63 88
Footnotes:
1 It has as of May 7 become The Medieval
Review (TMR).
2 The output by month (4/95-3/97) is:
bmmr 10 17 5 8 4 3 5 11 6 7 4 6 1 4 1 6 6 9 8 11 16 6 16 12
bmcr 15 14 19 13 11 29 26 17 27 12 14 15 37 7 12 19 17 28 14 8 13 7 30 40
3 Since May 7, BMMR (=TMR) has been on the Web, and this will eventually provide valuable data to compare with the BMCR gopher data.
4 Naturally, new reviews are visited often; we are trying to isolate those of enduring value.
5 Likewise, mil(itary) dropped from 310 to 186; gov(ernment) from 819 to 409.
6 The explosive growth in 9/95 and 10/95 was only temporary.
7 The difference would be even more pronounced had I not excluded books that appeared on the list only once. In 1996 the gap virtually disappears: 31 medieval titles (total number of titles 53) made the list 126 times (avg. 4.1) while 93 classical titles (total number of titles 169) made the list 360 times (avg. 3.9).
8 As is our response rate is only in the 30-40% range.
9 Unfortunately the survey was worded as if only for BMCR subscribers, but even so the response rate was about 35%.
10 We found similar differences in a pilot comparison of qualitative differences in the two journals done by two advanced graduate students (one a Classicist one a Medievalist ) in the summer of 1995. They concluded that the major differences stem from the scholarly orientation of either discipline not from their media (i.e., Classicists criticize at a microscopic level, assume in-depth acquaintance with a given text). The reviews are longer and the number of typographical errors is much greater in BMMR but other differences seemed to be personal (tone of the review, footnotes and additional bibliography, organization, amount of direct quotation).
11 Combined BMCR and joint figures= 912 for 1993, 1342 for 1994 (+47%), 1734 for 1995 (+29%) and 2264 for 1996 (+30%).
12 Combined BMMR and joint figures= 518 for 1993, 958 for 1994 (+85%), 1464 for 1995 (+53%) and 1765 for 1996 (+21%). We have already seen an
increase since BMMR relocated (3/97 = 1985, c.30% annually) and we may expect a considerable bump after official unveiling of TMR at the annual conference in May (and the introduction of the website).
13 BMMR has found it takes 35 minutes on average to SGML a review.
14 So far only Princeton University Press (of the eight contacted) has signed up for e-advertising.
Copyright © of the papers on this site are held by the individual authors or The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Permission is granted to reproduce and distribute copies of these works for nonprofit educational or library purposes, provided that the author, source, and copyright notice are included on each copy. For commercial use, please contact Richard Ekman at the The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
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