Joy Kirchner

ACRL Scholarly Communication 101: Starting with the Basics

Economics:The Not-So-Hidden Costs

Learning Objectives

• Understand some of the basic economic realities of the traditional scholarly publishing system

• Recognize the connection between authors’ copyright management practices and monopolistic pricing in the scholarly journal market

• Consider and reflect on alternative models & funding sources for scholarly publishing

cost

AcademicLibrary

budget

Publisher

Editor

Peer Reviewers

Creation©

DisseminationPublication (Registration and Certification)

Pressure points

peer-reviewed articles per year

24,000peer-reviewed journals

1,500,000

1,800+scholarly publishers (est.)

Who is publishing scholarship?

Journal publisher size guide

Petite (5 or fewer) 54%Small (6-10) 11%Medium (11-25) 16%Large (26-50) 8%X-Large (51-100) 4%XX-Large (100+) 7%

Scholarly publishing practice: academic journal publishers’ policies and practices in online publishing, 3rd survey, ALPSP, 2008

Sch

ola

rly Journ

als

Mark

et

societies & other non-

profits

university presses

commercial publishers

$ 20.3 Brevenue in 2009

STM sector

$ 2.4 BSSH sector

Dat

a f

rom

Sim

ba I

nfor

mat

ion

201

0 p

ublis

hing

indu

stry

rep

orts

Sch

ola

rly P

ub

lishin

g M

ark

et

Profits are high, too

Elsevier consistently reports profit margins for its STM journals of ~ 36%

From an investment analysis by Deutsche Bank:

“We believe the publisher adds relatively little value to the publishing process.  We are not attempting to dismiss what 7,000 people at REL do for a living.  We are simply observing that if the process really were as complex, costly and value-added as the publishers protest that it is, 40% margins wouldn’t be available.”

To maintain these margins, prices must rise

2010 – academic journal prices rose 4.3% (year budgets were, supposedly, worst)

2011 – Average increase was 5.5%

2012 – 6%

2013 – Projected average increase is 6-7%

Steelmakers Auto manufacturers Consumers

Steel

$$

Cars

$

Typical economy

Author Library

JournalArticle

Publisher$$

Gift economy

P&TGrantsReputationPrestige

S

Publisher

©

wholesale transfer of rights

creates scarcity/monopoly

drives prices up(inelastic market)

Libraries challenge pricing power

Publishers try to sustain revenue flow

Tying print to onlineBundling journalsRequiring multi-yr contractsBuying other publishersRaising prices

Subsidizing journal start-ups

Canceling journalsEducating faculty authors

Forming consortiaFighting mergers

Roger Clarke, The cost profiles of alternative approaches to journal publishing, First Monday, 3 December 2007

Cost to produce one journal article

Average journal article

XYZ Commercial Publisher

Amsterdam, London, New York

My Facuty, PhD

Average journal article

ABC Not-for- Profit Publisher

My Facuty, PhD$ 730$ 3,400

9% $

91%dollars

62%citations

38%citations

Economics of quality?C. Bergstroms & T. Bergstromwww.econ.ucsb.edu/~tedb/journals/jpricing.html

The cost of knowledge -- what do others pay

PRICE Per Title:

• Elsevier -- $784

• Wiley -- $665

• Springer -- $1519

• Sage -- $401

So how good a deal is the “Big Deal”?

Bergstrom compared 2009 prices paid by large research universities based on cost per ISI citation and per article:

– Elsevier’s Freedom package– Packages offered by major professional societies

AltMetrics for library collection development?

BUNDLE Per Cite Per Article

Elsevier (U. Mich) $3.60 $15.16

Am. Biochem. Soc. $0.20 $0.95

Am. Physical Soc. $0.45 $1.10

Am. Soc. Microbiology $0.45 $1.20

Oxford U Press (Colorado)

$0.55 $2.15

Am Chemical Soc. (U Mich)

$0.65 $2.85

Am Geophysical Union $0.90 $2.65

IEEE $1.05 $2.25

Am Medical Assoc. $1.05 $5.90

UC Value experiment

UC Value- ‐Based Pricing Strategy: 2007-

“How can we establish, validate and communicate an explicit method for aligning the purchase or license costs of scholarly journals with the value they contribute to the academy and the costs to create and deliver them?”

http://libraries.universityofcalifornia.edu/cdcvaluebasedprices.pdf

New value metrics?

A growing directory of noteworthy altmetrics tools:

http://altmetrics.org/tools/

Total-Impact

Total-Impact is a Web-based application that makes it easy to track the impact of a wide range of research artifacts (such as papers, datasets, slides, research code). The system aggregates impact data from many sources, from Mendeley to GitHub to Twitter and more, and displays it in a single, permalinked report.

ReaderMeter

ReaderMeter is a mashup visualizing author-level and article-level statistics based on the consumption of scientific content by a large population of readers. Readership data is obtained via the Mendeley API. Reports are available both as HTML and in a machine-readable version as JSON and are released under a CC-BY-SA 3.0 license.

http://chronicle.com/article/As-Scholarship-Goes-Digital/130482/

The Cost of Knowledge – the Elsevier boycott

• Over 11,000 signers on May 4; growing daily• Reaction to prices and lobbying to prevent

public access to scholarship• Expression of frustration FROM THE

SUPPLIERS!• Many asking what to do next.

• Harvard Library Advisory Board memo to faculty may offer a path

• Promotion & Tenure system• MLA Guidelines for evaluating Digital

Humanities & Digital Media.

Scholarly communications reform

includes efforts to establish balanced,

sustainable economic models

Long-term solution may include shifting of library funds from collecting to producing or subsidizing

scholarly content

Questions?Comments?

This work was created by Lee Van Orsdel for the ACRL National Conference, Scholarly Communications 101

Most recently updated by Kevin Smith & Joy Kirchner June 11, 2012.

It is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/