Suspended animation?

Science Fiction now has become fact. This is made obvious by the print journal titles that we subscribe to that have appeared to be in deep "suspended animation." I don't know *why* they have been put into this state or at *what point in time* they plan to be readmitted to the land of the living, er, publishing.


At what point is it reasonable for a publisher to give up on a title and be honest with the subscribers that "yes, it *has* actually ceased publication" and stop taking fees each year? I have a list of publications that the vendor lists as "will order when current."


Some of these have been on this list since I started nigh on 10 years ago. Most of these publications are at least 6 years or more behind on their cover chronology. Several have been taken over by new publishers, which promptly raise the price while promising the moon and then...deliver nothing. One of the publications that is on my list of "suspended" titles kept promising to blossom into an online only publication. Three years in, said publication just notified the vendor that they were ceasing publication altogether.


I am not sure that these publishers realize what a mess these "suspended" titles can create or how much time they can consume. Each time I run a claiming report, these pop up. I promptly go to the vendor site and claim them, again, and wait for a response. Then I go into our ILS and do clean up or change them to an inactive control. Oftentimes, we are only aware a title has totally and completely ceased when we wind up with a large credit invoice from our vendor. Fortunately, our vendor lists what title the credit was for and this helps the process along. Then I have to clean up the MARC record...you can see how this snowballs.


Personally, I think there should be some sort of unwritten serials rule -- that if a title is "suspended" more than 2 years, the publication should cease altogether... and never be "reawakened" from "deep suspended animation"!

"Dead" or "Discontinued" titles

Let's think about this sensibly. If I was a publisher with a journal that needed a hiatus -- I would suspend publication. In an ideal world, this would also mean that there would be a target date to resume publication. In the strange world of serials, however, publishers must prefer to discontinue a title and then resurrect it rather than suspending it. I work at a Jesuit University and the Nicene Creed states that we believe "that he [Christ] rose again" but I don't remember this applying to serials....?
Although I try to avoid using titles in my blog posts, I will use a couple here to illustrate my point. Emerge was a serial that was published from the early 90s through 2000. In 2000, it changed its name to Savoy. Under this title it was published, but not on a consistent basis, until mid 2003. At that point the title ended completely. About a year later, in 2004, another publisher picked up the title and restarted it -- and started again at volume 1 -- but only published 2 issues. The website still exists and it looks like the magazine is a going concern, but with no new issues since 2005, I consider it a "dead" title.

Another title that believes in resurrection is American Heritage. It ceased and nearly a year later another publisher picked it up and began publishing again. Again, there have been only 2 new issues and no hint that publishing will continue.
I would like to caution publishers not to torment library workers by "discontinuing" and then resuming publication again and again on certain titles....