Models for Increasing Access

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Models for Increasing Access

• Leo Walford

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Remember 1997?

• As a librarian, you
• Bought print journals via subscription agents
• Were beginning to think about electronic
  journals
• Worried about pricing
• As a Publisher, you
• Sold individual print subscriptions via agents
  to libraries
• Thought about pricing
• Worried about electronic journals

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Since then

• What have publishers been doing to improve access
  and availability?

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Models for Increasing Access

• Big Deals
• Licensing
• Donation Schemes
• Pay per view
• New pricing/access models
• Open Access

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1. Big Deals

• Libraries want to
• facilitate the widest access to the most
  appropriate resources for their user community
• Business Models for Journal Content, Rightscom
  for JISC, April 2005

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Big Deals

• Publishers want to
• Build reputation and brand
• Build or at least maintain - revenue
• Build or at least maintain - profits

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Big Deals what are they?

• A library (or group of libraries) pays a sum to
  gain electronic access to all (or a substantial
  chunk) of a publishers list of titles.
• Pricing usually is based on the amount that the
  customer is currently paying for the titles it
  subscribes to, plus an extra amount to cover the
  additional titles
• The package is usually fixed titles, or the
  amount paid cannot be changed (ie no
  cancellations)
• Pricing is usually fixed any changes in price
  for subsequent years form part of the agreement
• Deals often (but not always) three years
• Some deals are opt-in

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Big Deals Pros and Cons for Libraries

• Pros
• Much greater access to content
• Predictability of costs
• Cons
• Lack of flexibility
• Some titles may not be used and cant be
  cancelled
• (Perceptions of) licence terms
• Budget tied-up
• VAT

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Big Deals Pros and Cons for Publishers

• Pros
• Much greater exposure for content
• Much greater usage
• Tie-in of revenue
• Cons
• Limited growth potential
• Requires sales team
• Much greater administration
• Higher demand on customer service teams

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Big Deals The Effects
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Big Deals The Effects
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Big Deals The Effects
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2. Licensing to Aggregators

• Bundles of content
• May be publisher-specific, discipline-specific or
  both
• Protagonists Ebsco, ProQuest, Ovid, etc.,
• Aggregators generally licence in content from
  publishers and pay them a royalty based on volume
  of content and/or usage

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Aggregators Pros and Cons for Libraries

• Pros
• Big bundles of content at (relatively) low
  prices
• One negotiation
• Students like them
• Cons
• Content may disappear from the package
• Limited (if any) rights to permanent access
• Embargo periods mean content not the most
  current

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Aggregators Pros and Cons for Publishers

• Pros
• Exposure
• New Markets
• Revenue
• Cons
• Brand dilution
• Subscription cancellations

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3. Donation Schemes

• Developed by publishers often in conjunction with
  other bodies, to improve access in (largely) the
  developing world
• Benefit users who would otherwise not be able to
  access the journals
• Provide good publicity for publishers, at
  marginal (direct) cost or loss of revenue

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Donation Schemes

• HINARI, AGORA, OARE in conjunction with WHO
• INASP International Network for the
  Availability of Scientific Publications
• Journal Donation Project (Soros Foundation)

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Donation Schemes

• Example HINARI
• Offers over 3,800 journals
• 2,500 institutions in 117 countries
• Institutions in countries with lt1,000 gdp pay
  nothing
• Institutions in countries with 1-3,000 gdp pay
  1,000 for access to everything

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Donation Schemes

• Romania "If you think you are excited about
  this, I can tell you that everyone here,
  academics, students and staff are absolutely
  thrilled.
• Gambia It has been a very popular initiative
  here. Intellectual isolation is considered one of
  the factors (that mean that) African Research
  centres cannot develop world class researchers.
  This can go some way to changing that.

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4. Pay per view

• User only pays for what they use
• Publishers charge a fee per article
• Fee may be different for different publishers,
  different content, different markets or different
  conditions
• Some variants on this, e.g. pay for fixed time
  period

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Pay per view

• Appears to provide an additional revenue stream
  for publishers
• Libraries generally unhappy about blanket use of
  PPV because it is unpredictable
• Libraries concerned that PPV isnt used for
  material that is already owned by the library

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5. New Pricing/Access Models

• Libraries, funders and (maybe) publishers are on
  the look-out for new models which will
• Bridge real or imagined information gaps
• Provide greater value for money
• Provide flexibility
• Provide more accountability
• Be simpler
• In short, cheaper and better

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New Pricing/Access Models

• National licence
• PPV converting to subscription
• Core peripheral PPV
• Value-based pricing
• Open Access

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New Pricing/Access Models

• National licence
• A single national payment to publishers for
  limited access to all their content
• Has worked in certain clearly-defined
  circumstances, e.g. JISC purchase of OUP
  backfiles
• Works as a mechanism for standardising opt-in
  consortial deals
• Hard to see it working on a larger scale

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New Pricing/Access Models

• PPV converting to subscription
• Once a certain level of PPV expenditure on a
  title is reached, it automatically becomes a
  subscription title
• Although simple in principle, this is difficult
  to model, and is unattractive to publishers and
  librarians
• Not currently used?

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New Pricing/Access Models

• Core peripheral
• Discipline-specific package of journals, with an
  add-on chunk of free PPV from non-subscribed
  titles
• Pricing can be varied according to how much
  access is allowed (ie PPV can kick in early if
  the library pays a smaller up-front subscription
  payment)
• Vulnerable to disagreement on selection of
  core titles, movements of titles between
  publishers
• Administratively difficult
• Not used?

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New Pricing/Access Models

• Value-based pricing
• Being launched in 2008 by American Chemical
  Society
• Appears not to apply to consortial customers
• These new subscription models de-couple the
  prices of the print and electronic versions of
  each journal and utilize value-based metrics such
  as number of articles published, ISI impact
  factor, and total downloads to establish prices
  for each ACS Journal.

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6. Open Access

• Publishers already offer a lot of open access
  material
• Free Access periods
• Hybrid Journals offering Open Choice options
  (several thousand titles)
• Full Author-Pays OA journals (a few)
• Freely available content on publishers platforms
• e.g. HighWire has 1.7M open access articles

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Conclusions

• The big deal is here to stay (at least for a
  while) it offers too many benefits for libraries
  and publishers to be discarded lightly
• Aggregated databases have an important role to
  play
• Donation schemes have made great strides, but
  there is more to be done
• PPV is a useful adjunct, but is unlikely to
  displace anything
• While new pricing models will emerge, it is
  unlikely there will be any major shift in the
  ways libraries pay for journal content
• Theres lots of OA content out there much of it
  compatible with publisher existing business
  models

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Back to 2007

• Compared with ten years ago, this is a golden age
  for content availability
• What more can be done?

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Thank you