Letters

From: Janice Mears
E-Mail: jmears@cas.org
Affiliation:Manager, Marketing Communication, Chemical Abstracts Service
Regarding: The Chemical Abstracts Centennial: Whither CAS? (Winter 2007)

We read with great interest your article "The Chemical Abstracts Centennial: Whither CAS?" (Viewpoints, Winter 2007). We appreciate the evident level of research involved in preparing this paper; it is also clear that we share an interest in high quality and comprehensive chemical information.

Of course, we don't agree with some of the points you make, including relative to CAS' history. (For example, SciFinder development began in 1992, well before the web was influencing the information industry. The SciFinder development project was initiated by CAS management as a service to individual chemists, during the end of the more traditional online era. It was not conceived as a commercial opportunity, and was not in response to the web.)

However, our greatest concern lies with the statements about SciFinder Scholar access and affordability for small schools and academic institutions.

• CAS Scholar list prices for BS and MS schools have not increased for years. We believe that we are unique in this regard among our peers.
• There has been no price increase for SciFinder Scholar for MS and BS programs since 2003.
• 2007 will be the fourth consecutive year without a price increase of any kind.
• New pricing programs have been introduced every year since 2000 which have effectively lowered prices for BS, MS and "small PhD schools" who participate.
• The most recent 2006 iteration of the MS and BS "Universal Share" programs further reduced the price of access to as low as $6,995 for MS and $2,990 for BS schools per year.
• Acceptance of Scholar at BS and MS schools is very high, and well beyond the availability of CAS information in the print era. For example, prior to the introduction of SciFinder Scholar in 1998, 136 MS and BS programs had access to CA print and/or CD products. At the end of 2006, 600 MS and BS programs had access to Scholar.
• Effective March 5, 2007, CAS has announced it will increase the number of concurrent users for each of the PhD packages at no additional charge.
• We meet regularly with our {Academic Advisory Committee} to hear their advice and suggestions and report on actions CAS has taken to better serve the academic community. The last meeting of this group was November 13-14, 2006.

We believe that the collective weight of these facts should be considered in terms of your conclusions about SciFinder Scholar availability in academic markets.

We appreciate your perspective and advice on how to serve the academic market and will continue to consider new ways of pricing and marketing our services. At CAS, we look forward to another century of serving the scientific information needs of higher education.