'Bundled' E-Journal Subscriptions and Academic Libraries
Thursday, September 19, at 1 p.m. U.S. Eastern timeAre academic libraries being well served by the deals they are signing for packages of electronic journals?
Many academic libraries signed deals in the late 1990s to purchase "bundles" of electronic journals or a mix of print and electronic journals from publishing giants like Elsevier Science. As those deals are expiring, many colleges are having second thoughts about the arrangements, which they fear force them to spend too much money on journals they don't want, and which make it difficult to pay for journals that are not part of the packages.
» Second Thoughts on 'Bundled' E-Journals (9/20/2002)
Kenneth L. Frazier, a leading critic of the package deals for journals, is director of the library system at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. He is a past president of the board of the Association of Research Libraries, and he is a founding member and past chairman of the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition. Mr. Frazier will respond to questions and comments on Thursday, September 19, at 1 p.m., U.S. Eastern time. Advance questions are encouraged and may be posted now.
Andrea Foster (Moderator):
Good Afternoon
I'm Andrea Foster, a reporter for the Chronicle.
Joining us today is Ken Frazier, director of the library system at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. He will be discussing the bundling of electronic journals.
Welcome, Ken.
Kenneth L. Frazier:
I'm pleased to join this discussion, not so much to answer questions, as to get commentary from the members of the academic community. The issue of journal-bundling is particularly important given that many academic institutions are facing cuts. One of the outcomes we can hope for is that participants will identify strategies for making the most of our limited resources. Please feel free to comment even if you don't have a question.
Question from Jonathan Nabe, U. of Connecticut:
Since the cost of "Big Deals" will always inflate above academic library collection budget increases, is there any way to prevent a larger share of said collection budgets from going to the few purveyors of these "Big Deals" (at the expense of all other information producers) - besides not signing on?
Kenneth L. Frazier:
This is why the "big deal" was such a brilliant move by publishers. Many academic libraries are finding that the commercial big deals consume a larger share of the acquisitions budget with every passing year.
Question from Curt Holleman, Southern Methodist University:
Most people thought that the Academic Press "big deal" was a good deal. Medium-sized schools tripled and smaller schools greatly multiplied their title access at very little cost. Many titles gained were ones that had been reluctantly canceled earlier. Unfortunately, I must admit that Elsevier's purchase of Academic is certain to ruin this good deal. Q. Are you willing to concede that this "big deal" was indeed a good deal for many of us, though perhaps not for the very biggest schools, who paid more and gained far less? Should those of us who benefitted from it have anticipated that all good things must end?
Kenneth L. Frazier:
I am more than willing to say that the "big deal" was nearly irresistible for many academic libraries, especially when additional government funding was provided to academic libraries to launch these new contracts. I think we can all understand why the "big deal" was so attractive to faculty at medium-sized universities who were continually frustrated by poor access to specialty journals.
However, I would argue that undergraduate students are baffled by huge databases of content from highly-specialized research articles. Very often the big deals were purchased (ostensibly) for the benefit of students. With steadily increasing prices, the "big deal" has become a bad deal for smaller educational institutions. I expect to see many state university libraries looking for a way out as budgets tighten.
Question from Brenda T., small liberal-arts college:
In reference to the confidential contractual arrangements between vendor and library, Foster's article quotes Menefee from Elsevier as saying it, "would generate more confusion and possibly consternation among customers who might not understand why there could be a discrepancy." (p. 3, paragraph 7) My question, what would cause such a discrepancy? Are we to assume that production and distribution costs vary based on the subscribing library or is this a way to adjust pricing based on the depth of the library's budget? Are there valid arguments for these discrepancies?
Kenneth L. Frazier:
I can't understand the need for confidentiality in contractual arrangements with publishers. It is unacceptable to the academic culture of my university and probably illegal under Wisconsin state law.
Question from Dana Roth - Caltech:
Are librarians generally aware that Elsevier has a pricing policy that gives the appearance of foreign exchange rate profiteering? While prices for books are currently the same in EURO and US$, journal subscribers, outside of Europe, must pay a 14% premium (calculated on the EURO/US$ exchange rate on 9/9/02). If the calculation is done on the basis of Elsevier's pricing policy prior to 2000, the premium is 25%. The assumption is that Elsevier is able to enforce this because they apparently will not allow non-European libraries to order journal subscriptions through European subscription agents and be billed in EUROs.
Kenneth L. Frazier:
I am familiar with Dana Roth's price analysis for Elsevier journals. He is has a great deal of credibility in the science library community. And, I understand that Elsevier has vehemently denied using exchange rate differences to enhance their profits. The easiest way to resolve this issue is to do the math for one's own institution and share that information with other libraries. The price increases announced by publishers don't always match up with the actual impact on library acquisitions budgets.
I do know that in the "bad-old days" of journal hyper-inflation, before Elsevier reinvented itself as the kinder, gentler commercial publisher, they used "fluctuations in the exchange rate" as a reason for double digit price increases. It was ludicrous.
It is amazing to me that publishers can represent a price increase of "less than 10%" as a gift to libraries. What if OCLC [Online Computer Library Center, Inc.] started increasing its price for services at, say, 7% annually?
Question from Subbiah Arunachalam, MSSRF, Chennai, India:
Publisher X may offer a bundle of 1,000 journals and say either take all or none. But the clients of the user library may not find even 100 of them relevant to their current research (and teaching) needs. Is it possible to determine the value of bundled subscriptions by looking at references quoted in research papers written by the clients over a period the past two years? If the researchers do not quote a single paper from more than 900 journals, why buy all 1000?
Kenneth L. Frazier:
It is almost an article of faith among librarians and faculty that it is always better to have 1300 of 1300 journals than to have 300 of those 1300 journals. But, when we look closely at the way journals are used, we sometimes find that owning only 300 can produce nearly the same benefit for our users.
Question from Di Su, York College Library:
Unlike microfilm, which we permanently own the ones we've paid for even if we cancel the title in the future, an electronic journal will be gone entirely when we terminate that database subscription. It is bothersome when one can't find an item which he found before in the same library. How do you overcome this problem? Thank you.
Kenneth L. Frazier:
Di Su is quite correct. Sometimes libraries actually own the electronic content in licensed databases, but in many cases we are just renting it. There's very little incentive for libraries to try to preserve content that they don't own and can't share with others.
Libraries are doing a fairly good job of working out the protocols for preserving digital content. But it appears that many publishers don't see a role for libraries in preserving digital information for future generations.
Question from David McNeil, San Jose State University:
Like others, my campus library is forced to reduce the number of journal subscriptions because of their cost and reduced State funding levels. This has become an annual exercise. At the same time, we are turning to less expensive electronic subscriptions. Faculty are concerned that if these latter subscriptions are ever dropped, we will lose access to the "back issues." How are publishers addressing this concern?
Kenneth L. Frazier:
My impression is that publishers seem less and less inclined to make concessions to the concerns of faculty and librarians. A few publishers are prepared to guarantee perpetual access to the content, but many are not. We are seeing publishers change the terms of the agreement (in their favor) by pulling out backfiles, for example.
But, in my opinion, the options for users and libraries will become even more restrictive when libraries have made the complete transition to electronic only access to journal content.
Question from Joe Kraus, University of Denver:
It seems that some of the large scientific publishers like John Wiley and Elsevier are requiring institutions to lock into a license before providing usage statistics. Is there any way libraries can "force" a publisher to provide usage statistics for Elsevier "Web-Editions" or for John Wiley's Basic Access Licensed (BAL) journals?
Kenneth L. Frazier:
We're encountering this at the University of Wisconsin as well; we're encountering an unwillingness on the part of some commercial publishers to provide usage data. It makes it extremely difficult to evaluate the value of the journals in the database. I have to think that this is intentional on the part of the publishers. In the end, the only alternative we have is to refuse to buy the product, unless they will provide the usage data we need.
Question from Emily Hutton, Colgate:
Clearly bundled subscriptions are an ongoing problem and David Goodman at Princeton has been much more eloquent than I in outlining the disadvantages. I was appalled when Elsevier bought out Academic Press because I knew what was in store for us pricing-wise.
So what can we do to convince publishers that the library world is not all in favor of bundled subscriptions? Why should we be forced in some cases to support lesser quality journals? Why can't we always have the option to purchase single journals if that is what our budget and our conscience dictates?
Kenneth L. Frazier:
Bundling is a problem when it forces consumers to buy things they don't want in order to get what they absolutely need. But product bundling can also be useful, and add value and convenience for students and faculty. It doesn't necessarily follow that all product bundling is a strategy for entrapping consumers. The decision to increase prices, for example, seems to be independent of bundling.
Question from Andrew Gordon-Brown, JP Morgan, publishing analyst:
Will publishers be able to make money exploiting the electronic archives or will one of the initiatives to make all scholarly work freely available be successful?
Kenneth L. Frazier:
With regard to the retrospective archives, publishers are already able to make money by packaging and reselling backfiles of their journals. Luckily for the academic community, JSTOR has provided a nonprofit economic model through which it sells the backfiles of many important academic journals at a reasonable price. I don't believe that academic publishing can be free for retrospective holdings or for new publications. There are costs and someone has to pay them. But it may be that we'll be able to make some information free to users by paying the costs on the front-end.
Question from Chen, mid-size university in the Midwest:
Why some poorly-serviced "big deals" such as Project MUSE so popular?
I could not agree more with Mr. Frazier on "big deals." But I just do not understand why they are popular. Both my previous library and current library have MUSE subscription, and here were the problems I had at my previous job:
1. Customized subscription hard. You have to have big packages including titles you do not need.
2. No customized service. If you only have one package from the whole deal, your users still see the whole deal, and the denial to access is at the article level.
3. Special E ISSN makes it impossible to link holdings on library catalog unless you have both print and online.
4. Some expensive titles taken away from package and require extra payment. eg, not all Johns Hopkins titles are on Johns Hopkins package.
Kenneth L. Frazier:
The non-profit players, in developing new models of scholarly communication, are not immune from criticism. This applies to Project MUSE and SPARC and the American Chemical Society and BioOne. But in my opinion they ARE different. Non-profit academic publishers sell their products for one-third to one-forth the price of commercial publishers. The publications of university presses are really cheap compared to commercial journals.
The non-profit publishers and university presses did not cause the crisis in scholarly communication. Ironically, the university presses are the victims of the biggest "big deals." Libraries caught in the squeeze of big price increases for the "big deal" are forced to cut everything else, including low-cost publications and databases from the university presses.
Question from Linda Carruth, Florida State University:
What provisions have been made in any of the existing or upcoming contracts to provide for access to previously subscribed materials in the event a subscription is not renewed?
Kenneth L. Frazier:
I don't honestly know which licenses assure perpetual access to content, but I know that there are such licenses. As Ms. Carruth points out, however, libraries are agreeing to licences that provide no guarantee of continued access to the content if the subscription is cancelled. What this means, of course, is that universities are only renting this information, not buying it.
Question from Philip Davis, Cornell University:
What is implicit in those arguments that support the "big deal" is that quantity is more important to quality. Studies over the last three decades have confirmed over and over again that society and association publishers in the sciences produce higher value journals at a lower cost than their commercial competitors. Thirty years of research on the stratification in the journal marketplace indicates that a small number of journals represent the majority of both what is authored and what is cited. Understanding that the journal market is far from homogenous, can we come up with a methodology for building a high-value collection without having to resort to purchasing a high-quantity collection?
Kenneth L. Frazier:
It may not be known to readers of this colloquy that Phil Davis has done an interesting and revealing analysis of the usage patterns of electronic journal packages. I think that we already have fairly good evidence of the value of selection by librarians. Any librarian who regularly works with students can see it. They are often overwhelmed by the quantity of information available to them. They need help, advice, and instruction in learning how to gather and evaluate information much more than they need access to large databases of research articles.
But don't stop analyzing, Phil, we need to know more about what library users really need from us.
Comment from Tom Murray, U. of Wisconsin-Madison:
A comment on the topic of "big deals:" Last fall the campuses across the University of Wisconsin System, including Madison, cancelled a total of $500,000 in Elsevier subscriptions, about 30 percent of our expenditures with Elsevier at that time. We have reinstated very few of those, and to my knowledge we have received very few complaints from faculty members or students. Certainly that is true at Madison, where we cancelled $275,000 last fall, following several other significant cancellation exercises in recent years.
Over 5 years, if Elsevier prices average a 6 percent increase every year, the savings from last year's actions alone will total more than $2.8 million.
We continue to evaluate the way we spend our limited (most often flat) collection budgets every year. We expect to cancel additional journals from Elsevier and other commercial publishers.
If we had agreed to a "big deal" with Elsevier, we would not have the ability to critically review and revise our collection spending every year, and we would unnecessarily spend millions of scarce collection dollars.
Tom Murray
Director, Wendt Engineering Library
University of Wisconsin-Madison
Comment from Dave Goodman:
How many of these were unique subscriptions? How many were even unique subscriptions at their campuses? In the past, many of Wisconsin's cancellations in science have been titles held by two or more libraries at Madison. Even for a school as large as Madison, these duplications have become redundant in the electronic journal era. (Thus, naturally, the insistence of some publishers in counting the past duplicates in the base price.)
But even Madison can not be able to continue along that road indefinitely. By now, I suspect essentially all of their expensive duplicates have been cancelled. Smaller universities, without a separate medical library, let alone an agricultural library, have reached that point some years back.
In general the advantages of the "big deal" are greater for small institutions than for those large and diverse enough to get most of the titles anyway. But such contracts will not have advantages for any of us much longer. Since journal price increases will be proportionately larger than budget increases, the eventual result for all is the same.
Comment from Alfred Kraemer, Medical Coll. of Wisconsin Libraries:
David,
I agree with your observation that the likelihood for a viable "big deal" -aka the complete option in Elsevier terms- is probably greater for smaller institutions because of there would be few if any duplicates and choices for substitutions e.g. cancel an Elsevier journal and add another Elsevier, Acad. Press, Mosby, Saunders journal are more 'workable'. However, an important factor in the decision-making for us was the fact that we had made very extensive cuts in the mid 1990s based on use data gathered for all journals. It was a process with some flaws but in retrospect we had to re-instate very few <3% of the 200+ subscriptions cut in 1995/96. We clearly did not make the cuts in those years to prepare for a "big deal" but rather because of the financial realities in those years. Since 1994 we have monitored use of our print collection and evaluated the indicators of need for new subscriptions (Ill data, user feedback).
Throughout the process of reviewing the Elsevier deal I asked myself the following questions:
1. What are our options 'down the road' if we need an exit from the contract. While we could switch to the 'pick and choose titles' option, the disincentive of having to pay twice as much for the electronic access for each subscription would -up to a point- keep us in a situation with limited choices, i.e. having to substitute among Elsevier titles if we discontinue an Elsevier subscription. This is a risk that is greater if a library has more duplicates, no good use data, and fewer good substitution choices to make cuts under the terms of the big deal.
2. What happens to the complete option if the 'pool' of Elsevier journals changes - either shrinks or grows? I feel that at this point our current set of Elsevier journals is a good base for the 'big deal' - despite some qualms. (For example, such deals favor Elsevier: only large publishers can offer such deals with terms that guarantee them predictable sales volume and increases, and if we are agreeing to one "big deal" with our largest publisher there is less of a chance we will be able to accept additional 'big deals' from other publishers - after all we have to be able to able to respond to changes in funding levels and in demand for journals)
Again, because we have a set of journal subscriptions for which we have monitored the use data for a number of years, it was easier for us to accept it as a viable base for a big deal.
Alfred Kraemer
Head, Tech. Services
Medical College of Wisconsin Libraries
Question from Andrew Gordon-Brown, JP Morgan, publishing analyst:
1. What is it about the STM market where an academic scholar signs away the rights to his/her research for nothing and then the commercial publisher sells it back to the very same institution making a 40% operating margin in the process? 2. Where does the value lie in the journal publishing process? The commercial publishers would have you believe it's in the peer review process and in the value added web-based services. Is this true? 3. Why do research universities not change the way they incentivize their scholars? As long as research grants and career promotion are dependent on getting articles published in expensive journals, nothing will change. 4. Will universities genuinely not renew their contracts with Elsevier Science or is this just hot air? Which universities believe they can make savings and how much?
Kenneth L. Frazier:
1. The custom of giving away one's articles for publishing, and sometimes even paying for the priviledge of publishing one's journal, is a long standing custom of academe, not just for science, technology, and medicine (STM). From the author's point of view, the value is in being published in a prestigious journal. The extremely high cost of research journals is a relatively new thing. We're just now getting to the point of realizing that academe can't afford this system any long. 2. The value is in the reputation of the journal title, which comes from the peer review process. Journals actually don't provide peer review; the academic colleagues of the author provide that review, often for free. And, publishers aren't the only institutions capable of providing Web-based access to articles. My point is that an alternative model is possible. 3. I agree. those changes are beginning to take place in the academic community. That is, faculty members are being recognized for publishing and disseminating knowledge in new ways. Another hopeful sign is that many university administrators, provosts, and presidents are beginning to call for such change in the academic culture. 4. It's a mystery to me; I just don't know. My guess is that university libraries that have rapidly growing budgets will continue to buy the bundled products. And only those universities facing severe budget challenges will be able to begin moving away from the old publishing model.
Comment from Tom Murray wisconsin-madison:
I have a partial answer to Dave Goodman. These numbers may be imperfect but are very close: At Madison, we cancelled 122 Elsevier subscriptions in fall 01. Only 3 were duplicates. For one of those we cancelled both copies. We long ago cancelled nearly all campus journal duplicates. We are succeeding very well in serving our users, as we see by their encouragement to our actions, as we selectively cancel unique subscriptions too.
Comment from Keith Clouten, Andrews University:
We feel comfortable with deals we have signed (via our state consortium)with professional associations such as American Chemical Society and the Institute of Physics, and of course with JSTOR. We believe we are getting value for money. We have not felt that way about some past deals we have had with commercial publishers.
Question from Lori Schwabenbauer, Holy Family College:
I have noticed troubling inconsistencies between dates given in some aggregated journal lists and what is actually available in the databases. Also, journal titles seem to appear and disappear with no warning. Do you have any data or thoughts on this?
Kenneth L. Frazier:
It is one of the most alarming features of the database environment. Many librarians have noticed this with the LexisNexis database, in which very large amounts of information have been added and deleted from the database, sometimes without even notifying libraries of the change. I think this illustrates the market power of publishers in this aggregated electronic environment.
Comment from Kristin Antelman, NC State University:
Although my institution is hard hit by the pernicious effects of "big deal" licenses a couple years in, I am concerned that libraries could too easily say "350 are as good as 1300." I recall an OhioLink study of the usage of their Electronic Journal Center which found that 52% of the usage was from titles not previously subscribed to at the user's campus. (Sanville, Serials, 2001).
Question from Stephen Good, Texas Tech Law School:
My concern is not just with how good or bad current deals are but where we are headed. Students love online journals but with increasing concentration in the publishing world (law is very bad for this, I assume other areas experience the same thing) we could end up with journals only in electronic form being handled by a small number of publishers with de facto monopolies. We pay up or we see our entire electronic library disappear - it's more like information hostage-taking than collection development. My question, which may have no answer, is how do we avoid going down that road?
Kenneth L. Frazier:
Let me attempt a word of optimism: Elseiver still only represents about one percent of the academic publishing market. There are still many responsible publishers creating useful content sold for reasonable prices. If we support the publishers who are working in the interests of the academic community, we have a better chance of having a sustainable scholarly communications system in the long run.
Question from Manfredi La Manna, ELectronic Society for Social Scientists and U of St Andrews (UK):
As organiser of the ELectronic Society for Social Scientists (http://www.elsss.org) specifically aimed at introducing direct competition to high-prices Elsevier journals, I should like to make some remarks on E-journals bundling and to ask Mr Frazier a couple of questions.
Remark 1: In The Usual Suspects Kevin Staceyās character muses that the Devilās greatest achievement has been to make people believe it did not exist. Elsevierās must have been to have convinced all librarians that their "special" deal is better than anyone elseās and that keeping it secret is the best policy. Of course, neither is true.
I leave to more experienced specialists the task to explain why the very concept of an inflexible "bundle" is bad for consumers. In my own monopoly lectures I teach economics undergraduates that "bundling" is always profit-maximizing for a monopolist and Elsevier provides a wonderful example (perhaps one of the few valuable services they offer to economists). In the same lectures I explain the ideal situation for a monopolist is to charge a profit-maximizing price while at the same time ensuring that a potential newcomer faces as low an entry price as possible. Again Elsevier provides the perfect example: the effect of the "Big Deal" is precisely to charge monopoly prices while ensuring that libraries would save nothing by cancelling individual subscriptions in favor of cheaper (and better!) alternatives. In other words, a potential entrant faces an effective price of zero!
Question 1 to Mr Frazier: Does he think that librarians, possibly through their Associations, ought to set up a "Secrecy-busting Noticeboard" where they post the details of their deals with Elsevier without mentioning the name of their institution? Such anonymous details do not breach the secrecy clause in their contracts and yet allow the librarian community to get an aggregate picture of the situation.
Remark 2: Elsevier's stock reply to academics' complaints about high prices is that they (the academics) fail to "recognize the benefits of desk-top access." Letās the data speak for themselves. In my own discipline, economics, the average library price for the top ten nonprofit journals in 2002 for print and online is $211. The same average for (lower quality) Elsevier titles is $1,506. The average per-page price of top-cited nonprofit journals rose from $0.10 in 1998 to $0.12 in 2002 with an increase of 2¢ per page sufficing to cover the extra cost of online access. The figures for Elsevier economics journals are $0.79 in 1998, $0.89, an increase of 10¢per page, showing that either Elsevier is five times less efficient or five greedier than nonprofit publishers. Indeed, given all Elsevier titles are included in ScienceDirect, one would have expected that Elsevier could pass on the savings due to substantial economies of scale. Elsevier protests that "it would be peculiar for economists to object to firms earning a profit through risk-taking and foresight." True, most of the current top commercial economics journals were founded in the 1970s when inertia and other causes prevented the nonprofit sector from expanding their portfolio of journals. So letās compare the price trajectory of commercial and nonprofit journals founded in the 1970s. In 1985 the cost per page of "new" commercial journals was $0.30 (in 2002 dollars), the same figure for specialist nonprofit "new" journals being $0.09-$0.12. So in 1985 Elsevier was already charging a 200% markup. Most economists would regard this rate of profit as a handsome reward for "risk-taking" and "foresight." Not Elsevier. Since 1985 they have raised their prices per page to almost six times the prices of equivalent nonprofit journals. Any economist would call this profiteering, not profit earning. (All data are taken from an article by Professor Ted Bergstrom forthcoming in The Journal of Economic Perspectives).
Question 2 to Mr Frazier: Why do so many librarians capitulate so readily to such a bad deal as the ScienceDirect E-bundle? If, for example, all leading research Universities in the US were to refuse to pay over-inflated monopoly prices for journals, does Mr Frazier think that the likes of Elsevier could resist the pressure from their own editors and authors who would be deprived by their most significant readership in terms of impact and prestige?
Kenneth L. Frazier:
Question one:
The "secrecy busting noticeboard" sounds wonderfully subversive to me. It worries me that librarians (perhaps university administrators, too) appear to be willing participants in confidential licensing arrangements with publishers-suggesting that librarians may not want to reveal the terms and conditions of their special deal with the publisher.
My instinct is that the practice of secret dealings will not become customary in the library community. It is nave to think that Elsevier will make a special deal just for "you." Very often these secrets are so large that the whole world will share them with or without a noticeboard.
Question two:
As noted in Andrea Foster's CHE article, the market saturation of the "big deal" is already amazingly high. As I commented earlier, it is my belief that many libraries will find that they can't afford to stay in the "big deal" without damaging their ability to buy other essential resources. But I don't expect Elsevier to go away. Libraries that can afford the price increases will keep buying Elsevier's products.
More important, in my opinion, libraries and universities are beginning to support new models of scholarly communication and reward researchers for publishing in these new venues. These initiatives include alternative information communities, open-access publishing initiatives, and institutional repositories of academic information. Commercial publishing for journal content is expensive, slow, and inefficient-making it a sitting duck for faster, more convenient, and more affordable alternatives.
Question from David Stern, Yale Univ:
Are there any plans for analyzing use statistics - in order to re-evaluate when it makes more sense to break the "big deal" and move to selected title subscriptions and other commercial document delivery options for lesser used titles?
Kenneth L. Frazier:
Someone raised the issue of access to usage data earlier in the colloquy. Obviously we can't analyze data unless we have it, but the work of Phil Davis at Cornell University library shows us that such data analysis can be incredibly revealing and useful for the selection process. We're beginning to understand that information users actually benefit if we're more selective in the information that we make conveniently accessible to them. At any rate, we're going to have to insist upon having usage data in order to accomplish this task.
Comment from Jim Stemper, U of Minnesota:
This is a comment, not a question, regarding the availability and value of use statistics.
We've started counting usage locally (i.e., counting the clicks on journal titles in our catalog and on our web site), like many schools do. So far, after analyzing data from Elsever, Wiley, and IOP, it looks like the vendors' own data is actually less forgiving than the local data, in that it shows a lesser percentage of the titles (a minority) getting the most use. Our local data tends to show more titles contributing to the top 80% of use.
Still, for vendors who don't/won't supply use data, counting use locally is helpful in tracking use patterns.
Question from Larry, midsized state university:
Some smaller institutions have more, reasonably priced, access solely because of consortial deals. Would hate to throw the baby out with the wash.
Kenneth L. Frazier:
Libraries that can grow their budgets at more than six or seven percent per year will have no problem for now keeping up with the "big deal" price increases. However, for institutions that never had any prospect of maintaining budget growth at this high rate, the "big deal" is one ugly baby. In fact, it is a "changeling" that will cause real trouble in the academic family.
Comment from Alphonse Buccino:
Check the page of Lawrence Lessing at Stanford University about the status of current copyright law that gives so much "monopoly" control to publishers, and information about legal and constitutional issues that must be addressed in order to obtain relief. It's complicated and not well understood, which is why the publishing cartel that includes Elsivier can do what it is doing, while taking the world of academe and research by surprise.
Question from Sam Mizer, Brown University:
When we made nearly the whole of Elsevier's title list available to students and faculty, we immediately saw the impact of decades of tight budgets. There was great demand for many, many un-subscribed titles -- journals we couldn't afford when they were launched or journals that supported relatively new areas of research on campus. We also noted quite a few of our subscribed journals that no longer seemed to match our research needs. Maybe the "Big Deal" has a transitional value, giving academic libraries an opportunity to adjust our collections to meet current demands.
Kenneth L. Frazier:
I've heard this before from other colleagues and I would never deny the validity of their direct experience. The important thing is to honestly analyze the information we have about the usage of the "big deal" and for each institution to come to its own conclusion about the benefit, or lack of, to their students and faculty.
Question from Eric Albright, Tufts Univ.:
Can you speak to the idea that journal bundles keep poor quality journals afloat?
Kenneth L. Frazier:
We don't have a lot of detailed information about the subscriber base for low-use journals. But there is plenty of anecdotal evidence that the number of institutional subscribers had, in some cases, shriveled to the point that the journal was becoming irrelevant. I don't think there's any doubt that the "Big Deal" gave new visibility to these journals. But our experience at the University of Wisconsin at Madison is that the readership of low-priority journals remains extremely low in an electronic environment. I also believe that many undergraduate students simply don't understand what they're finding in these large journals aggregations. So even though the journal may get more "hits," it's hard to say whether these hits represent use. In any case, we see very little demand for interlibrary loan and document delivery for the journals we have cancelled.
Comment from David Magier, Columbia Univ.:
As with other customer relations with large vendors (approaching monopolies in some cases), it seems to me that consumer groups (e.g. library consortia of similar-type, similar-interest institutions) will have the best chance of getting what they need at a price they can [almost] afford... This ought to be true of the bundled e-journals "Big Deal" as well.
Comment from David Stern, Yale Univ:
I assume we will break the "big deal" plans once we have real world (SFX-generated) use data and can determine those titles worthy of continued subscriptions ... and those better accessed using other options (document delivery, alternative subscription models, etc).
See http://pantheon.yale.edu/~dstern/nasig.html for one alternative model.
Question from Scott Wicks, Cornell:
Ken: If we buy the bundle from the publisher (and pay for the content directly with the publisher), where is the profit for the agent who serves our print subscriptions (that is, any print subscriptions we still can afford?) In the short-term, academic libraries must be prepared to realize sharp increases in service charges from the agents who serve the remaining print subscriptions. Do you feel library directors are ready to see these additional financial pressures? Do they know that canceling print for these big deals will incur added expenses for the remaining print subscriptions? Thank you.
Kenneth L. Frazier:
I'm very much aware of this, and commented on this "dis-intermediation" in my D-Lib article, "The Librarian's Dilemma." Yes, the changes in the way subscriptions are handled is transferring costs both to libraries and subscription agents, that is to say, subscription agents are losing revenue and libraries are often absorbing new workload. One way or another, these costs will have to be paid, and the result is an indirect benefit to the publishers.
Comment from Stephen Good, state university:
Publishers may think that they have a cash cow on their hands - bundle more and more journals together, charge as much as they want, but "information wants to be free". When I left library school in 1991 we were basically told "these online vendors charge a lot of money, but they have all the information". And then? The Internet.
Question from Ibironke Lawal, Virginia Commonwealth University:
Shouldn't there be a regulation to make the kind of forced sales that Elsevier does illegal? It seems to me that if all their journals have the same high quality, there will be no need for the package deals. Also, why should there be a penalty for letting go a bad performer from your physical or electronic shelves? There is an irony here. Information should be public good but Elesevier sells it to us with conditions. Isn't there anything we could do?
Kenneth L. Frazier:
Unfortunately, we are living in the great age of deregulation, and there's very little indication that governments will be inclined to intervene in any way to improve the scholarly communication system. Therefore I think it's up to us, the academic community itself. After all, we are talking about something that is truly a product of academe, not of publishing. These works belong to the scientists, scholars, and academic institutions that create the knowledge. We have the power to change this system if we decide we want to.
Comment from Shelley Arlen, University of Florida Libraries:
It seems that more and more serial publishers are pulling the fulltext option for their titles from aggregator databases (like some d-b in First Search and Academic Universe)--perhaps to create and market their own titles in a database they can control. We will probably be seeing the same bundling and pricing-increase problems weāre experiencing with Elsevier come up with these future publisher-owned databases, especially if Elsevier continues its current practices and stipulations and libraries feel the pressure to accept them.
Comment from Michelle Wu, University of Houston Law Lib:
I just wanted to speak to the concern voiced by Stephen Good earlier. Law libraries face some unique challenges resulting from rapid and drastic publisher consolidation. One of these is maintaining an electronic subscription when there is only one provider of the data while ensuring access to the information at a later date.
So, how do you avoid paying the price asked without losing your collection? I'll give a simplified answer. Until such time that access to permanent archival documents are included in contracts for electronic products --- and the most complex part is that they have to be accessible even after a merger or a divestiture --- law libraries will have to subscribe to publications in multiple formats. Print/microform/physical format to ensure future access, and electronic access for user friendly access.
Realistically, this cannot last long. Our budgets are static, and with the inflation rate of law serials increasing at a more rapid rate than most other serials, we will have to find a permanent solution.
Question from Christine, Lehigh University:
We are still waiting for a quote for our contract for our combined ScienceDirect/IDEAL online subscription for 2003. This has been one of the more frustrating aspects, aside from cost and rigidity, of the "big deal" for us. I hear from time to time that other institutions have similar experiences, but do not know whether this delay is, in fact, the norm. Are other institutions in the same boat this year?
Kenneth L. Frazier:
I'm not in a position to know. The University of Wisconsin at Madison libraries have selectively licensed Elseiver and academic press journals. On the whole, our working relationship with Elsevier has been cordial and professional. I'm actually grateful to them for giving us the option of selective licensing. But for us, the licensing of journals with Elsevier just isn't the high-stakes proposition it is for institutions that are buying the full package of Elsevier and academic press journals. I can understand the anxiety that must accompany these negotiations.
Comment from Philip Davis, Cornell University:
Responding to the question of Eric Albright, Tufts Univ. and Ken Frazier's response, there seems to be consensus from the research I have done with 30 institutions that illustrates that low-use journals in the print environment correspond to low-use journals in the electronic environment. At principally undergraduate institutions there is however more variation than with large research institutions.
Andrea Foster (Moderator):
Well, that's all the time we have for today.
Thank you, Ken, for joining us for this lively discussion.
And thanks to our readers for their great questions.
Do you have any closing comments, Ken?
Kenneth L. Frazier:
Whether or not libraries choose to stay in their "Big Deal" licensing agreement is actually much less important than the decisions they make regarding support for new forms of scholarly communication. We can certainly live with, and benefit from, commercial publishing best if there are working alternatives for disseminating knowledge within the academic community. Some of these new forms of publishing are extremely promising.
It remains to be seen, however, if universities will be willing or able to support investment in these new products if they are obliged to devote a large share of their available resources to paying for costly, old forms of research communication.
I'm sorry time ran out before I could answer all the questions. But thanks to everyone who submitted questions.
Copyright © 2008 by The Chronicle of Higher Education