After waiting patiently after the Master Journal Bundle 2.1+ came out - not a lot has happened.
Where was the frequent release programme we were expecting.
Shalom
The tagging/guide access is an OK plus, but honestly, I don't heavily use them with the journals. I've gotten to the point where I run my own custom searches against the journals using the stock Logos search operators (since I was doing that before you offered the tagging/guide access), and I can personally just as easily find what I need using those searches than I can with the guides or special tagging (in some instances, I can find what I need faster using this approach anyway). Hey Nathan, I have questions about this. By "tagging" does that mean if I do a Search in "All Resources" or "Journal Collection", if it is not "tagged", I wont get search results?
The tagging/guide access is an OK plus, but honestly, I don't heavily use them with the journals. I've gotten to the point where I run my own custom searches against the journals using the stock Logos search operators (since I was doing that before you offered the tagging/guide access), and I can personally just as easily find what I need using those searches than I can with the guides or special tagging (in some instances, I can find what I need faster using this approach anyway).
Hey Nathan, I have questions about this. By "tagging" does that mean if I do a Search in "All Resources" or "Journal Collection", if it is not "tagged", I wont get search results?
On the specific tagging, this allowed the journals to appear in the Journals section in the guides, as well as use the {Label: Journal Article} search operators in Logos.
Since I jumped on the Galaxie TJL in Logos bandwagon before the new journal bundles came along (I have the latest bundles as well), I already setup my own "workflow" with working with journals before the specific tagging came along. I honestly seldom use the Journals section of the guides or the {Label: Journal Article} tag, since I can generally find what I need with the existing search syntax and features in Logos.
Here's how I work with journals in Logos:
1. I generally run a heading:searchtermhere OR largetext:searchtermhere when I need to locate a major subject.
Example: heading:"spiritual death" OR largetext:"spiritual death"
2. I generally run a <Bible = Verse Reference> or a <Bible ~ Verse Reference> to locate a Bible passage, although I generally combine either <Bible = Verse Reference> or <Bible ~ Verse Reference> with NEAR searchtermhere. If NEAR doesn't work well, I can use WITHIN x WORDS to be more precise.
Example: <Bible = Genesis 2:17> NEAR death
3. I also created a collection of all my journals (everything in my library with type:Journal. If there are some resources you want that contain articles but aren't using the type:Journal, you can tag them as Journal and include AND mytag:Journal). I added the ability for this collection to be searched in the guides, so it still allows me to search journals from the guides, even without the additional tagging.
Thank you, Phil, for your response. We don't have a dedicated team for journals. The team who handles journals is the same team that managing our Community Pricing, Pre-Publication, and Pre-Order programs. This is just one small area that fits into the Logos line of business. This is an interesting response According to this forum thread, on August 15, 2017 at 3:21 PM, Ben wrote the following:We are still working on this project. I'm sorry it keeps getting pushed back. However, we now have one person who will own the project going forward, which means it won't have to fight for the attention of multiple stakeholders. This would seem to indicate that someone has been assigned by you and Ben to own the project. I guess from your post, that is no longer the case? Everything that has been written seems to indicate that this project is dead and FL does not have any interest in it unless it receives pre-pub funds to move forward. My last question which I think has been alluded to already by others...why does this project have to be part of the pre-pub process? Not everything passes through the pre-pub process. Why is this project going that route?
Thank you, Phil, for your response.
We don't have a dedicated team for journals. The team who handles journals is the same team that managing our Community Pricing, Pre-Publication, and Pre-Order programs. This is just one small area that fits into the Logos line of business.
This is an interesting response
According to this forum thread, on August 15, 2017 at 3:21 PM, Ben wrote the following:
We are still working on this project. I'm sorry it keeps getting pushed back. However, we now have one person who will own the project going forward, which means it won't have to fight for the attention of multiple stakeholders.
This would seem to indicate that someone has been assigned by you and Ben to own the project. I guess from your post, that is no longer the case?
Everything that has been written seems to indicate that this project is dead and FL does not have any interest in it unless it receives pre-pub funds to move forward.
My last question which I think has been alluded to already by others...why does this project have to be part of the pre-pub process? Not everything passes through the pre-pub process. Why is this project going that route?
This concerns me as well.
Hey Faithlife,
Take a straw poll with your customers on what grade of journals they want - fully tagged (the works) or semi-tagged (good o'l Galaxie quest days), or no special tagging (Ebook standard), or no tagging at all. What do each of the categories mean really?
[:P]
I think a big part of the problem here is that Faithlife have gone for quantity over quality. A large number of the journals offered are not especially valuable academically — but the weaker journals cost the same to produce as the good ones. The solution to a slow pre-pub is therefore not to reduce the quality even further (by automating the tagging) but to reduce the quantity by eliminating the journals that few have heard of and are rarely cited.
Bravo, Mark! That is such a crucial point! I totally agree!
Thanks to all of you for your feedback and passion for Logos and journals. We're far from giving up on journals. Costs are our biggest obstacle, and we're exploring some ways to make them more manageable. Journals are especially challenging, because they're dense, long, technical, and require special tagging. Yet they're also the lowest priced category of resource we sell, by a long shot. The average journal resource (which is often 3 or 4 journal issues) can be 800–1,000 pages. Yet the average price per journal resource is $.50/$1 (depending on which bundle you buy)! As you can see, these factors add up to make producing journals a challenge:
The easiest way to make things work is through volume, and right now we're not driving enough volume for the numbers to pencil out. So we need to get creative and experiment with pulling some different levers.
We definitely want to keep working, in conversation with you all, to find the right solutions that offer
Many of these ideals are in tension with each other, so we'll have to continue to experiment to find the right set of compromises that work for the most people.
What I'd like to ask is that you give us at least few weeks to engage more fully in this conversation. We're in an exceptionally busy season right now, and several of us will be out of the office soon for ETS/SBL and then be out for Thanksgiving. So the soonest we could give this issue any serious consideration would be the final week of November.
I'm open to hosting a video chat with those who wish you participate in late November or early December. Can we agree on that as a good next step?
Thanks, Phil. I think it is a step in the right direction, since something has to be done. We appreciate you listening, and look forward to the "hopefully soon" solution. May the Lord bless you in your work and give you all strength, especially in the next few weeks, as it is so busy.
Ben's point is that when we're actively working on researching, posting, shipping journal bundles, there's a single person who takes the lead and is the expert. But that person works on many other things between posting and shipping the journal bundles.
My point is that we don't have a dedicated team (or even person) whose full-time job is to manage our journal products. It's one of his many responsibilities, and there are often periods of inactivity while we wait for pre-orders or production or acquisition.
why does this project have to be part of the pre-pub process? Not everything passes through the pre-pub process. Why is this project going that route?
Pre-Pub was designed to help us stay profitable, and staying profitable is how we stay in business and serve you all. It eliminates most of the risks with the traditional publishing model of publishing, marketing, and hoping for the best.
We're doing more projects outside of the Pre-Pub system these days. Our original content from Lexham and Mobile Ed doesn't secure funding before the content is commissioned, created, and produced. But this is more predictable and lower risk, since most of these projects are fairly similar in audience, size, and cost. We're also doing more through our Pre-Order program, where we're not waiting for funding. But in each of these cases, we move ahead because we're relatively confident in our ability to project a return on investment in the near future, which is easier to do since each of these projects is significantly smaller than our journal bundles.
We were hoping to be able to take this same approach with journals. In fact, the last journal bundles we shipped we did treat as pre-orders and put them into production before they were funded. But the gap between our costs and the total funding was significant enough to where we didn't consider it wise to repeat that.
Hi Phil,
Better understanding between Faithlife and customers would be a great next step. If you ask us in isolation we’re likely to say that we want it all, now, and preferably for free! But if that’s not realistic, talking to us about what our priorities really are could be s big help (though obviously you’ll get lots of different answers to that question).
Hi Phil, thanks for your feedback which helps us understand the situation better.
Mark's suggestion of providing a subset of the most cited journals would gather sufficient financial backing to quickly make it through the pre-pub process. Other journals could also be offered for pre-pub in groups depending on how often they are cited. That would result in the most popular journals making it through they system more quickly and make most people mostly happy.
But for those journals that don't make it through the pre-pub process, either in a timely manner (or not at all over time), it seems undesirable for them to never be made available. To address that, how about a two-tier process? That is, have all journals released without tagging (or a bare minimum of tagging) at a reduced cost, as soon as they are available, possibly on a subscription basis? At the same time, put them into the pre-pub process for full tagging, prioritised as Mark has suggested? That would provide the basic content of journals quickly, while allowing time for the pre-pub process to run its normal course for the more expensive full tagging.
What I'd like to ask is that you give us at least few weeks to engage more fully in this conversation. We're in an exceptionally busy season right now, and several of us will be out of the office soon for ETS/SBL and then be out for Thanksgiving. So the soonest we could give this issue any serious consideration would be the final week of November. I'm open to hosting a video chat with those who wish you participate in late November or early December. Can we agree on that as a good next step?
Thank you Mr Gons. That works for me. My biggest journal interests are BibSac, JETS, and MSJ (though you don't support MSJ anymore). What I find strange is Logos has such a good relationship with DTS that I would think their journals would be an automatic add. Either way I look forward to figuring this out as I understand you need to make money on these to survive and we need the latest info so we can be up to date... a definite balancing act for sure
Again Phil, I think it is a vicious cycle. I don't think people are going to invest in journals until Logos proves that they can consistently produce them, yet Logos is not going to produce journals until people invest in them. This pretty much means journals will never work the way they should under this model.
To address that, how about a two-tier process? That is, have all journals released without tagging (or a bare minimum of tagging) at a reduced cost, as soon as they are available, possibly on a subscription basis? At the same time, put them into the pre-pub process for full tagging, prioritized as Mark has suggested? That would provide the basic content of journals quickly, while allowing time for the pre-pub process to run its normal course for the more expensive full tagging.
Seems like a messy process and if someone buys tier one so that they don't miss out and the orders tier two in the hope of getting a better tagged journal, do they get dynamic pricing or do they have to pay full price ? And do they end up with two copies of the same journal in their library ?
Tier one would be going back to what we had before and if FL had of stuck with what we had instead of biting off more than they could chew, thinking they could do journals better than others we wouldn't be in this position.
We were hoping to be able to take this same approach with journals. In fact, the last journal bundles we shipped we did treat as pre-orders and put them into production before they were funded. But the gap between our costs and the total funding was significant enough to where we didn't consider it wise to repeat that. Again Phil, I think it is a vicious cycle. I don't think people are going to invest in journals until Logos proves that they can consistently produce them, yet Logos is not going to produce journals until people invest in them. This pretty much means journals will never work the way they should under this model.
Spot on Joseph.
I think it is a vicious cycle. I don't think people are going to invest in journals until Logos proves that they can consistently produce them, yet Logos is not going to produce journals until people invest in them. This pretty much means journals will never work the way they should under this model.
I totally agree with what you are saying.
This sounds like an excellent idea.
So question to the forum- can someone list the Journals that are most cited in scholarly works? Does this mean that buying the Master Journal Bundle is overkill? When I bought the Master bundle 2.1 in December of 2017, that was my first exposure to journals. I have already benefited from articles in Priscilla Papers, The Southern Baptist Theological Journal, and the Christian History Magazine.
Master 4.1 preorder for me is $276
Theological Journal 1-20 preorder is $308
For scholarly/ academic purposes, what should I go for (at the present state of things)?
I'm open to hosting a video chat with those who wish you participate in late November or early December. Can we agree on that as a good next step? This sounds like an excellent idea.
Phil, thanks again for your post. I agree that it would be a good idea to have a video chat with some of us. There are always advantages and disadvantages to doing something like that. But hopefully, a video chat could produce helpful suggestions for moving forward.
I still think there is a way to move forward, but that would be for FL to decide. Some good suggestions have already been given in this thread by several people. You all at FL know the realities of the market and can make decisions accordingly.
But what I am going to encourage is that a decision be reached and explained to us on this thread, and I dont think it is unreasonable to ask for that decision to come by the end of the year.
Meanwhile, as I mentioned before, this project is at the moment, dead. I do not think any of us believe we will see any updated journals in the near future, and need to go elsewhere to get what is needed.
Thank you, Phil. I think it is a good idea and will try to participate. I hope this can get fixed.
If Faithlife cannot figure this out then maybe it's time to return the stuff to Galaxie. I remember all too well when Faithlife took over the journals and the issues with customers from the very beginning. Journals are the sole reason of some users using Logos Bible Software.
Journals are the sole reason of some users using Logos Bible Software.
It was my introduction to Logos. I first bought journals in L3 days. Then, started getting interested in the software.
From my humble perspective, Logos did indeed do the journals better than they had been done in the past. The only major problem that has been from the very beginning is the cost. Users balked and did not support the cost increase for "better tagging" during the prepub process. Because Logos did not get enough prepub orders, journals were not produced in a timely manner, hence the current problem of timely delivery of journals.
I see the problem as not enough people see the value of tagged journals. So that leaves us with, what are we willing to pay for? The last batch of journals were shipped to us below cost, and as Phil said, that is not sustainable. Many on this thread are willing to do without the tagging, but that will create confusion for many users not understanding why there new purchase won't show up in the Guides. When Faithlife introduced ebooks, I though they were a great idea, but after have many, titles that have footnotes that link to nothing in the book or my library, it has become a disappointment. I'm still glad I have the book, but the experience is lacking. And so I don't want the same experience in journals if we can help it.
I for one am willing to pay for the tagging, I would want everything to work properly in the guides as well. I don't want to go back to just what Galaxie offered in the past, good as it was in the day.
To address that, how about a two-tier process? That is, have all journals released without tagging (or a bare minimum of tagging) at a reduced cost, as soon as they are available, possibly on a subscription basis? At the same time, put them into the pre-pub process for full tagging, prioritized as Mark has suggested? That would provide the basic content of journals quickly, while allowing time for the pre-pub process to run its normal course for the more expensive full tagging. Seems like a messy process and if someone buys tier one so that they don't miss out and the orders tier two in the hope of getting a better tagged journal, do they get dynamic pricing or do they have to pay full price ? And do they end up with two copies of the same journal in their library ? Tier one would be going back to what we had before and if FL had of stuck with what we had instead of biting off more than they could chew, thinking they could do journals better than others we wouldn't be in this position.
I understand.
But there is a two-tier solution already in place. What if basic journals were offered in Vyrso (providing that footnotes are still included and not dropped in the process), with fully tagged journals offered through the pre-pub process in Logos (grouped by popularity/citation as Mark Barnes suggested)? Not ideal, I agree. But arguably better than at present.
In any case, I think that bundles grouped as Mark has mentioned would be a great way forward, regardless of what else may or may not happen.
Bobby, thanks for your contribution. I think the problems have been well stated on the thread. The question is how to move forward, and it appears that FL is seemingly interested in ideas to resolve the issues. As I have mentioned, some good ideas have already been made on this thread. Some of those ideas:
1. Publish the Journals (or particular journals) with no special tagging...Ebook standard (this can be preferable than getting them from another source that also would not have tagging or as a separate pdf)
2. Publish the journals fully tagged...the works (I think, however, this is why they are languishing in pre pub....there is not enough interest for the price)
3. Publish a subset of journals well-tagged in a timely manner, but not all the journals FL currently offers.
4. If the best you can offer short term is what Galaxie offered with only the functionality they offered in Logos and nothing else, then start with that so we can get the current journals. In other words, you were too ambitious adding so many journals and bundling them together is large packages. Start again with the original journals Galaxie offered and build a base again. Slowly add new small packages of specific journals. But start somewhere with journals that clearly would sell.
5. Better communication is needed. FL needs to commit (if they truly are interested in Journals) to regular updates, whether that is quarterly or something like that. Much of the frustration was and is avoidable if there is regular updated communication. This has been mentioned so many times on this thread.
6. The current pricing is actually affordable for those who have previous editions to the Journals. But for newbies, the current pricing is not realistic in these bundles. Much better to break up the bundles, find out what the majority of people actually want and sell those journals at market prices.
These are some of the suggestions I have seen on this thread.
The two-tier solution is separated. A resource in Logos is either and e-book or an full Logos book, what you were suggesting was to have everything as an e-book and then offer upgraded journals to those that wanted to pay for them. And if the two sets of Journals were keep separate with no overlap between the two formats then there would be complaints about not all journals being equal and questions why does this journal show up in my passage guide, but not that journal. I think for journals they all need to be kept equal. But that's just my thought.
Master 4.1 preorder for me is $276 Theological Journal 1-20 preorder is $308 For scholarly/ academic purposes, what should I go for (at the present state of things)?
That's not an easy answer to craft. Both have resources with high-volume citations. I can't make your decision for you, but to me it seems that the decision would depend on either a) overall volume of scholarly journals, or b) whichever bundle has the journals you believe have the most utility. The easiest decision is c) BOTH.
As an example of what FL might do to determine how to bundle at least some journals here are the results of a partial search of the Master Journal contents based on my library of about 10,000 volumes. Obviously, a search of the full FL library would be of greater value.
Where I owned a journal, I eliminated it from my search to eliminate self references.
I only did a sample - choosing journals that would seem to be of academic interest, that were more-or-less current, and that had more than a few years of journals in the bundle. I obviously left a lot of them out. In some cases I used a well-accepted abbreviation of the journal as well as the journal title. This made significant differences in a few case, although it undoubtedly allowed double counting of at least some references.
It's easy to see that if I were interested in chasing down citations, I'd want the most frequently cited journals. Only about eight of those I searched seem to be 'highly' cited and might make a separate, small collection.
Obviously, people use journals in different ways so this is just one way to look at them.
They are listed in order of the number of hits:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
Thanks to all of you for your feedback and passion for Logos and journals. We're far from giving up on journals. Costs are our biggest obstacle, and we're exploring some ways to make them more manageable. Journals are especially challenging, because they're dense, long, technical, and require special tagging. Yet they're also the lowest priced category of resource we sell, by a long shot. The average journal resource (which is often 3 or 4 journal issues) can be 800–1,000 pages. Yet the average price per journal resource is $.50/$1 (depending on which bundle you buy)! As you can see, these factors add up to make producing journals a challenge: a massive category with a nearly limitless number of journals significant diversity of needs and desires from customers one of our most expensive categories of resources to produce among the longest, densest, and most technical resources we produce the lowest price per resource and per page of any resources we produce a smaller niche audience compared to other categories The easiest way to make things work is through volume, and right now we're not driving enough volume for the numbers to pencil out. So we need to get creative and experiment with pulling some different levers. We definitely want to keep working, in conversation with you all, to find the right solutions that offer the right set of journals in the right configurations with the right level of tagging and functionality at the right price points available via the right options (purchase vs. ownership subscription vs. access subscription) at the right frequency in a timely manner at a cost that's manageable with financial backing that's sustainable Many of these ideals are in tension with each other, so we'll have to continue to experiment to find the right set of compromises that work for the most people. What I'd like to ask is that you give us at least few weeks to engage more fully in this conversation. We're in an exceptionally busy season right now, and several of us will be out of the office soon for ETS/SBL and then be out for Thanksgiving. So the soonest we could give this issue any serious consideration would be the final week of November. I'm open to hosting a video chat with those who wish you participate in late November or early December. Can we agree on that as a good next step?
I'd definitely like to participate in the video chat when you offer it. My email address is on file if you need to directly message me or send the video chat invite when the time comes.
So question to the forum- can someone list the Journals that are most cited in scholarly works? Does this mean that buying the Master Journal Bundle is overkill? When I bought the Master bundle 2.1 in December of 2017, that was my first exposure to journals. I have already benefited from articles in Priscilla Papers, The Southern Baptist Theological Journal, and the Christian History Magazine. Master 4.1 preorder for me is $276 Theological Journal 1-20 preorder is $308 For scholarly/ academic purposes, what should I go for (at the present state of things)?
Not sure about everyone here, but the journals that were available from Galaxie TJL in Logos and are available at Galaxie.com were the minimum requirement for me in Bible college and seminary. My professors told me: you need to buy Galaxie TJL in Logos and use the content extensively in your research.
Now that I'm in a PhD program, there's some journals I have to read outside of TJL, but for those, I can easily get the content from my seminary's library if need be. As long as I have Galaxie TJL in Logos (annual updates would work), I'd be more than happy.
As long as I have Galaxie TJL in Logos (annual updates would work), I'd be more than happy.
As a devotional researcher my interests are more than adequately served by the aforementioned resource set. Can we at the very least get timely affordable delivery of these journals please.[Y]
What about including more journals as part of base packages? With the presumed impending release of 8, it is likely too late to tweak those to include more Journals, but perhaps for 9, that could be a solution. OR perhaps you've already thought of this and are including the important journals in the relevant base packages to the extent you could.
If engagement in this thread is a proxy for interest in journal resources, it may illustrate one of the challenges we face.
About 80 people have participated in the discussion over the last two years, spanning 582 posts and 30 pages. About 20 people have posted more than 5 times.
I'm not suggesting there isn't interest beyond this group (I know there is; our Pre-Pub numbers demonstrate that). But I was a little surprised to learn that there's a relatively small group of folks who are really engaged in the journals conversation.
I don't think we should conclude too much from this, but I thought it was an interesting observation worth passing along.
If engagement in this thread is a proxy for interest in journal resources
Until now I haven't "engaged" with this thread (I have followed it), yet over 2700 of the resources in my library are journals (~35%).
If engagement in this thread is a proxy for interest in journal resources, it may illustrate one of the challenges we face. About 80 people have participated in the discussion over the last two years, spanning 582 posts and 30 pages. About 20 people have posted more than 5 times. ... I don't think we should conclude too much from this, but I thought it was an interesting observation worth passing along.
...
Very interesting Phil
The thought/phrase comes to mind - 'the silent majority' - who often only make their voices heard in elections. Or in context - in purchasing choices.
Clearly one of the issues here is the complexity of the situation. It isn't just one of simple supply and demand - or value and cost. There is consumer confidence in the regularity and consistency of supply, the purchase contract terms, the size of bundles, whether they only come cumulative or as discrete updates, the right titles (journals), academic or more general in treatment, the list of factors goes on and on.
I do believe that the costs of production (based on the current tagging strategy) are the crucial issue. If this can be resolved someway the remaining factors will be easier to deal with.
Wow! Maybe you can run the same stats for the CARTA resource request. I’m sure not many people are willing to buy, even though it looks like there’s a huge interest, but in reality there’s only a handful who are interested.
DAL
Of course I cannot speak for everyone, but for me, I am fairly new to journals (Dec. 2017)- but I have been amazed at the usefulness they have proven in my academic studies. And it makes sense, as scholars cant be expected to write a book on every subject that is out there, so journals are the best avenue to address topics, and interact with other scholars and ideas that are sweeping the land. With this said, I can see how having the most recent journals available is desirable in order to stay current on those topics. And although I can see it would be nice to have them plugged into my Passage Guide, or whatever other guide... as long as I can run a search on a topic of interest, and it search those journals to populate the findings, I am very happy and satisfied with that- as I guess that is only way I know how to do it anyway. And if you tell me that the journals can be cheaper, and quicker to get by utilizing them in that fashion- I am definitely voting for that option.
And like others have said, I would prefer the top journals in the field, and not have to buy a bunch of tier 2 and 3 journals to get the tier 1s.
If engagement in this thread is a proxy for interest in journal resources Until now I haven't "engaged" with this thread (I have followed it), yet over 2700 of the resources in my library are journals (~35%).
I'm in the same boat. Had I known my engagement mattered more than my money (considering I've purchased every journal offering in Logos over the last several years), I would have been more vocal. That said, I havent disagreed with much of anything the top contributors have said. If there were an "Amen" button to pound, I would have pounded it every time...and likey seen as more active.
If engagement in this thread is a proxy for interest in journal resources Until now I haven't "engaged" with this thread (I have followed it), yet over 2700 of the resources in my library are journals (~35%). I'm in the same boat. Had I known my engagement mattered more than my money (considering I've purchased every journal offering in Logos over the last several years), I would have been more vocal. That said, I havent disagreed with much of anything the top contributors have said. If there were an "Amen" button to pound, I would have pounded it every time...and likey seen as more active.
I think that will be true of a lot of people John. Journals are important, but they have not engaged directly in the conversation because what they would say has already been said. The way the leaders at FL think though, you have to engage, add your votes to uservoice, post on the thread your views even if they mirror others etc. if we as customers are to be heard at all.
Bobby, thanks for your contribution. I think the problems have been well stated on the thread. The question is how to move forward, and it appears that FL is seemingly interested in ideas to resolve the issues. As I have mentioned, some good ideas have already been made on this thread. Some of those ideas: 1. Publish the Journals (or particular journals) with no special tagging...Ebook standard (this can be preferable than getting them from another source that also would not have tagging or as a separate pdf) 2. Publish the journals fully tagged...the works (I think, however, this is why they are languishing in pre pub....there is not enough interest for the price) 3. Publish a subset of journals well-tagged in a timely manner, but not all the journals FL currently offers. 4. If the best you can offer short term is what Galaxie offered with only the functionality they offered in Logos and nothing else, then start with that so we can get the current journals. In other words, you were too ambitious adding so many journals and bundling them together is large packages. Start again with the original journals Galaxie offered and build a base again. Slowly add new small packages of specific journals. But start somewhere with journals that clearly would sell. 5. Better communication is needed. FL needs to commit (if they truly are interested in Journals) to regular updates, whether that is quarterly or something like that. Much of the frustration was and is avoidable if there is regular updated communication. This has been mentioned so many times on this thread. 6. The current pricing is actually affordable for those who have previous editions to the Journals. But for newbies, the current pricing is not realistic in these bundles. Much better to break up the bundles, find out what the majority of people actually want and sell those journals at market prices. These are some of the suggestions I have seen on this thread.
Mark,
I have not posted very much on this issue, but I assure you that Journals are very important to me. Of the options you have listed, I really only want the second option. My hope was that if we could get "all" the back issues updated and tagged, especially JETS, that the future volumes fully tagged would be more affordable since they would not be such a big chunk at one time.
I really am concerned that if we do the other options, those second tier journals would never make it back thru the prepub process to get fully tagged at a later time (years).
I am in favor of any option that moves us forward, but already the magazine "Christianity Today" has issues with all pictures included and in prepub production all the other issues will have all images removed. "Christian History" Magazine has the first fifty issues with images and 73 issues with no images. All users lost tremendous value in the lost pictures and Christian art work under the same thinking as we are using for journals.
I appreciated Phil's observation about the number of pages in journals and the cost per page that we have have been paying for them. It would seem that the only viable option to lower cost is to reduce something - quality or quantity. I don't want to turn journals into Faithlife ebooks.
If engagement in this thread is a proxy for interest in journal resources Until now I haven't "engaged" with this thread (I have followed it), yet over 2700 of the resources in my library are journals (~35%). I'm in the same boat. Had I known my engagement mattered more than my money (considering I've purchased every journal offering in Logos over the last several years), I would have been more vocal. That said, I havent disagreed with much of anything the top contributors have said. If there were an "Amen" button to pound, I would have pounded it every time...and likey seen as more active. I think that will be true of a lot of people John. Journals are important, but they have not engaged directly in the conversation because what they would say has already been said. The way the leaders at FL think though, you have to engage, add your votes to uservoice, post on the thread your views even if they mirror others etc. if we as customers are to be heard at all.
I'm not suggesting there isn't interest beyond this group (I know there is; our Pre-Pub numbers demonstrate that). But I was a little surprised to learn that there's a relatively small group of folks who are really engaged in the journals conversation. I don't think we should conclude too much from this, but I thought it was an interesting observation worth passing along.
I am not surprised by this at all.
Phil, surely you can organize a survey of ALL your customers to discern clearly what the interest really is. It would not surprise us on this thread if the interest in high. If it is not, then FL will know what to do. IF it is high (as we all suspect), then FL needs to see how to capitalize on the interest and put together a plan to market Journals that will benefit customers and also turn a profit for FL.
I'm not suggesting there isn't interest beyond this group (I know there is; our Pre-Pub numbers demonstrate that). But I was a little surprised to learn that there's a relatively small group of folks who are really engaged in the journals conversation. I don't think we should conclude too much from this, but I thought it was an interesting observation worth passing along. I am not surprised by this at all. Phil, surely you can organize a survey of ALL your customers to discern clearly what the interest really is. It would not surprise us on this thread if the interest in high. If it is not, then FL will know what to do. IF it is high (as we all suspect), then FL needs to see how to capitalize on the interest and put together a plan to market Journals that will benefit customers and also turn a profit for FL.
This sounds like a great idea . It would give Faithlife direct knowledge of what their customer base really wants :-)
Here's how I work with journals in Logos: 1. I generally run a heading:searchtermhere OR largetext:searchtermhere when I need to locate a major subject. Example: heading:"spiritual death" OR largetext:"spiritual death" 2. I generally run a <Bible = Verse Reference> or a <Bible ~ Verse Reference> to locate a Bible passage, although I generally combine either <Bible = Verse Reference> or <Bible ~ Verse Reference> with NEAR searchtermhere. If NEAR doesn't work well, I can use WITHIN x WORDS to be more precise. Example: <Bible = Genesis 2:17> NEAR death 3. I also created a collection of all my journals (everything in my library with type:Journal. If there are some resources you want that contain articles but aren't using the type:Journal, you can tag them as Journal and include AND mytag:Journal). I added the ability for this collection to be searched in the guides, so it still allows me to search journals from the guides, even without the additional tagging.
Nathan, this was a great help to me. Thanks for posting how you work with Journals
If engagement in this thread is a proxy for interest in journal resources, it may illustrate one of the challenges we face. About 80 people have participated in the discussion over the last two years, spanning 582 posts and 30 pages. About 20 people have posted more than 5 times.
I own 2,154 journals, have been subscribed to this thread from the beginning to receive an email every time someone posts, and have ordered the pre-pubs for MJB 4.1 and the Galaxie TJL. I did not realize that comments on this forum meant as much as these other actions or else I would have commented frequently. As others have said, many posting on this thread have rightly spelled out the situation and possible solutions.
I am a seminary student and the director of a ministry for a large congregation. It seems to me that journals fall into the category of required and necessary for Logos to offer as the leader in serious Bible software, regardless of what has to be done to make it happen. I have been a Logos user since Bible college in 1995-96 when it came on three CD-ROMS. The current issues with Logos seem to revolve around poor/changing/conflicting communication and way too many irons in the fire for your staff to possibly be able to focus on anything with excellence. I feel for you guys brother, I think you're doing the best you possibly can with what you've been asked to do. But at some point someone needs to ask whether FL is going to do 100 things poorly or 10 things better than anyone in the world.
Shalom,
Matthew
But at some point someone needs to ask whether FL is going to do 100 things poorly or 10 things better than anyone in the world.
👆 This. This is exactly my feelings from the begin of this ill conceived plan to move away from Galaxie production to Logos production. We were told things would be better and that Logos could do better on their own. Many of us were pretty sure we would end up here.
When I was doing some graduate work, I utilized my journals collection quite often. Now that I am not actively pursuing further graduate level research, my interest in the journals has diminished considerably.I would favor a yearly update with a "synopsis" of each journal's articles with an option to buy a single issue of that particular journal (or even some division, i.e., quarterly, semi-annual, etc.).
Being part of the
relatively small group of folks who are really engaged in the journals conversation
The current issues with Logos seem to revolve around poor/changing/conflicting communication and way too many irons in the fire for your staff to possibly be able to focus on anything with excellence. I feel for you guys brother, I think you're doing the best you possibly can with what you've been asked to do. But at some point someone needs to ask whether FL is going to do 100 things poorly or 10 things better than anyone in the world.
[Y] [:(]
I typically don't respond to this thread because I don't want to add with meaningless or repetitive chatter, but this was interesting research Phil presented. But if postings can be regarded in any way as votes of any kind, then journals are VERY important to me. Furthermore, top journals are much more important than lots of journals, as others have said. Finally, I understand the issues of rights to certain top journals, but I won't give up hoping.
Lew
This is a regular thread I check (but don't actively engage in), specifically because I completed my undergrad last year and have started my Master's program this year. I subscribe monthly to Galaxie. Currently, of the 7,771 resources I own, 2,181 of them are type:journal. Having access to Master Journal 3.1 was tremendously helpful in my thesis on Family Discipleship and Ministry, in addition to some OT Studies for other papers I wrote. I referenced my Galaxie subscription only rarely, having journals in Logos was just easier.
I am curious to see how things will change in my Master's program. Having access to ATLA places more journal research within reach and only time will tell how much I will utilize my journals in Logos. I have placed a prepub for 4.1 (upgrade is something like $70) and if finances were better, I would go after the Galaxie Bundle and drop my subscription.
It may be helpful to reach out to the Journal Purchasing community that is not on the forums, especially if you are looking for video conferencing input. I remember a survey asking about CARTA was floating around that I completed. The same could be done for Journals. Especially if there is a good quantity of interest beyond the forumites. Maybe even reaching into the Academic partnerships Logos has with different Seminaries that distribute the software to seminary students (I think DTS does this?) and seeing how they use or could use resources like the Journal Bundles. Who knows, maybe giving Institutional Access to Seminarians through a bulk subscription model could work for those institutions/students requiring Logos to be a part of their Seminary Education. Journal Access seems to be most desirable for students and faculty members of Seminaries.
ournals are especially challenging, because they're dense, long, technical, and require special tagging. Yet they're also the lowest priced category of resource we sell, by a long shot. The average journal resource (which is often 3 or 4 journal issues) can be 800–1,000 pages. Yet the average price per journal resource is $.50/$1 (depending on which bundle you buy)! As you can see, these factors add up to make producing journals a challenge
Understanding this is very helpful - Logo's business model has to stay profitable to be sustainable. Maybe quality over quantity and offering things unbundled at a higher price:issue cost may yield better results (IE: selling JETS alone is probably cheaper than jumping into a $1800 Journal Bundle.) Not a revolutionary idea, I know. I dropped the money to buy the Journal for Biblical Counseling as a standalone (had to, it's not part of a bundle) and that cost more than me upgrading to 4.1 for just one set of resources ($120 for JBC vs $70 for numerous sets of Journals in 4.1).
👍🏽 I know it seems that older commetary sets make their way into Base Packages, maybe the same can be done with older Journal Sets, at least (anything older than 1930 or 1940?) Even selling them by time-periods or decades could be more helpful.
I hope my input is helpful, I have not engaged too much simply because I agree with what is already been said and don't want to add redundant thoughts to the conversation.
For me the key journals that I have are good enough. There is no point in me adding a masters collection with a bunch of other journals that I will probably never use. Sometimes less is better if you are selective.