RE: Bundling
Manfredi La Manna
Hello there. I am new to this list and hence very hesitant to suggest a reference to such a well informed set of people. As an economist I am obviously biased in favour of a colleague of the stature of Ted Bergstrom, but I think that his piece in the PNAS (Bergstrom et al. “Evaluating big deal journal bundles”, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 111(26), 16 June 2014, https://www.pnas.org/content/pnas/111/26/9425.full.pdf is very informative. In a nutshell, bundling (as in “The Big Bundle”) is a very informative signal for imperfect competition and (some) commercial publishers exploit this pricing policy in a textbook manner, charging different prices to different customers, etc.
Just a thought …
Kind regards,
Manfredi La Manna
Dr Manfredi M.A. La Manna
Reader in Economics
School of Economics and Finance
Castlecliffe
The Scores
St Andrews KY16 9AR
+44 (0)1334 46 2434
From: osi20...@googlegroups.com <osi20...@googlegroups.com>
On Behalf Of Mel DeSart
Sent: 12 October 2019 00:26
To: Glenn Hampson <gham...@nationalscience.org>; 'Bryan Alexander' <bryan.a...@gmail.com>; 'The Open Scholarship Initiative' <osi20...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: RE: University Press Library
AGGREGATOR bundles might end up being an endangered species (although I think not – more below), because they’re the closest counterpart to cable bundles – as in, they pull together _other_ providers’ content into a package and sell that package at a rate that’s lower than what it would cost if you could pay to access all of that content from all the individual providers (which you can’t). Publishers’ bundles pull together their _own_ content, which is not analogous to the cable/aggregator situation. Publishers’ bundles are probably closest to something like CBS All Access, CBS’s new steaming service, where they both own all of the content AND the distribution/access mechanism. Netflix is kind of a hybrid – they aggregate content from others AND also create their own content. Networks like CBS are offering all of their broadcast content AND MORE on their streaming services to try to draw people to it. One other commonality relates to why networks are starting up their own streaming services and offering content there that isn’t available anywhere else (just like publishers offer little pieces of content to aggregators, but keep most of it to where only they can offer access to it). Short answer - control. They control the content, the pricing, the packaging, the messaging - everything.
The reason I question whether aggregator bundles will become an endangered species is because some libraries are starting to look long and hard at their big publisher bundles and are breaking out of those kinds of deals, since many of those are by far more costly than an aggregator bundle. If you break out of a publisher big deal, then invest half of what you were paying previously for the big deal in subscribing to individual titles, if at least SOME of the titles you dropped when you let go of the big deal are available in an aggregator package (along with lots of other content from lots of other publishers), then keeping that aggregator package looks a bit more attractive, since its less expensive than a publisher big deal and the aggregator packages gets you back access to some of the titles lost access to when you dropped the big deal.
Mel
From: Glenn Hampson <gham...@nationalscience.org>
Sent: Friday, October 11, 2019 2:01 PM
To: Mel DeSart <des...@uw.edu>; 'Bryan Alexander' <bryan.a...@gmail.com>; 'The Open Scholarship Initiative' <osi20...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: RE: University Press Library
So, continuing with the TV bundle analogy then, are then any emerging Netflix’s in this marketplace? HD antennas? Streaming services (like DirectTV)? The parallels in market dynamics may not be apt, but in TV anyway (according to Consumer Reports), the industry’s peak was in 2012 “and since then the top traditional pay-TV companies have lost about 10 million subscribers, and cable-style streaming services have picked up about 4 million subscribers.” So if the writing is on the wall for journal big-deal bundles, is the only evolution in library subscriptions happening around open (PARs, etc.) or are viable cord-cutting options also appearing?
Again, sorry for my ignorance here---this is probably common knowledge to some of the folks on this list.
From:
osi20...@googlegroups.com <osi20...@googlegroups.com>
On Behalf Of Mel DeSart
Sent: Friday, October 11, 2019 1:40 PM
To: Glenn Hampson <gham...@nationalscience.org>; 'Bryan Alexander' <bryan.a...@gmail.com>; 'The Open Scholarship Initiative' <osi20...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: RE: University Press Library
Because many publishers are already aggregating their OWN titles into bundles of various sizes/shapes/descriptions and selling them, generally at some kind of discount. There are also aggregators (like Ebsco and Proquest) that are offering prepackaged aggregations of journal content, often containing some scattering of content from many different publishers. Some of those aggregations are general and some have subject themes, but ALL are determined by the aggregator, not by the customer. If you want a particular package, you buy it as is. Lots of those aggregator packages contain journals from smaller publishers, like small societies or trade publishers, many of whom don’t have the budget to market to hundreds of libraries and thousands of librarians.
Current cable TV bundles are actually a lot like journal aggregator bundles. And by that I mean there are some pre-packaged options that you can choose from, at various price points, but almost nobody allows a customer to pick and choose which networks they want to include in their own custom-designed cable TV bundle, just like aggregators don’t allow you to pick specific titles you might want and drop those into your customized cross-publisher journal content bundle. There are some publishers that offer “pick ‘em” bundles, but only _within_ that single publisher, not ACROSS publishers.
Mel
From:
osi20...@googlegroups.com <osi20...@googlegroups.com>
On Behalf Of Glenn Hampson
Sent: Friday, October 11, 2019 1:07 PM
To: 'Bryan Alexander' <bryan.a...@gmail.com>; 'The Open Scholarship Initiative' <osi20...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: RE: University Press Library
Um, pardon my ignorance here, but why can’t universities do this for journals as well?---i.e., why isn’t there a “big deal” (like a cable TV bundle) where universities can pick frontlist journal titles from several publishers?
From:
osi20...@googlegroups.com <osi20...@googlegroups.com>
On Behalf Of Bryan Alexander
Sent: Tuesday, October 8, 2019 5:42 AM
To: The Open Scholarship Initiative <osi20...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: University Press Library
Interesting idea for a paid, DRM-less, multi-university-press collection:
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JJE Esposito
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David Wojick
David
Um, no. The pricing of many large packages are historical. They are based on historical spending. If a publisher had a $50,000 contract with a library for 500 journals prior to a "big deal" being introduced, the Big Deal might add 1,000 journals for an additional charge of 15%, or $7,500. Another library may have had a $100,000 contract for 800 journals, and the Big Deal then added hundreds more, for an additional 15%. Over time the difference from library to library grows. I am not defending this pricing structure (I have no dog in this hunt), but it's wrong to call this discriminatory pricing. Different publishers introduced different programs. There is no one explanation for pricing and no "system" or standard.Joe Esposito
On Mon, Oct 14, 2019 at 4:26 PM Manfredi La Manna <m...@st-andrews.ac.uk> wrote:
Hello there. I am new to this list and hence very hesitant to suggest a reference to such a well informed set of people. As an economist I am obviously biased in favour of a colleague of the stature of Ted Bergstrom, but I think that his piece in the PNAS (Bergstrom et al. “Evaluating big deal journal bundles”, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 111(26), 16 June 2014, https://www.pnas.org/content/pnas/111/26/9425.full.pdf is very informative. In a nutshell, bundling (as in “The Big Bundle”) is a very informative signal for imperfect competition and (some) commercial publishers exploit this pricing policy in a textbook manner, charging different prices to different customers, etc.
Just a thought …
Kind regards,
Manfredi La Manna
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