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Bryan Alexander

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Oct 8, 2019, 8:42:27 AM10/8/19
to The Open Scholarship Initiative

Glenn Hampson

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Oct 11, 2019, 4:07:19 PM10/11/19
to Bryan Alexander, The Open Scholarship Initiative

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?

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Mel DeSart

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Oct 11, 2019, 4:39:50 PM10/11/19
to Glenn Hampson, Bryan Alexander, The Open Scholarship Initiative

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

Glenn Hampson

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Oct 11, 2019, 5:00:41 PM10/11/19
to Mel DeSart, Bryan Alexander, The Open Scholarship Initiative

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.

Mel DeSart

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Oct 11, 2019, 7:27:56 PM10/11/19
to Glenn Hampson, Bryan Alexander, The Open Scholarship Initiative

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

Glenn Hampson

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Oct 11, 2019, 8:24:10 PM10/11/19
to Mel DeSart, The Open Scholarship Initiative

This all sounds like a curious lack of competition that is ill suited for a marketplace with 45,000 journals from hundreds of publishers. The model probably worked just fine when there were just a handful of major publishers---but I don’t know---maybe 90+% of the titles you need still come from just the big six?

 

In the book industry---back when it was still functional anyway (pre-Amazon)---distributors were the main point of contact for most bookstores (the big publishers still ruled the roost when it came to table placement at Borders and B&N because they could shell out the big bucks, but most smaller stores just dealt with distributors). Publishers did their product development, created compelling content and marketed it---reviews, tours, etc.---and sold directly to distributors at about 50% off list (distributors were their main clients---they needed to be convinced that a title was going to fly off the shelves). Distributors then marketed/sold to bookstores, who sold to the public. (Nowadays, the smaller publishers sell direct to Amazon at 50% off--plus cover the cost of shipping---which leaves a ton of profit for the seller.) Anyway, my point here is that maybe there’s both a need for and a space for “distributors” in the journal marketplace. A more robust presence/role for distributors would take a bite out of publisher profits, but this bite might be smaller than losing customers to SciHub and ill will/discord, and might even create a healthier, more competitive marketplace with less bloat, more variety, and more choice.

 

My utterly uninformed $0.02 making comparisons based on analogies that may or may not be suitable….

 

Best,

 

Glenn

Simon Linacre

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Oct 12, 2019, 2:24:55 AM10/12/19
to Glenn Hampson, Mel DeSart, The Open Scholarship Initiative
It's important to point out that aggregators complement as well as compete with primary publishers - if a publisher chooses to make its content available through EBSCO or ProQuest, it has to decide whether they can make more revenues from the licensing deals than if it were to try and sell the content itself. The quid pro quo is that there is usually an embargo of 12 months, so if they do license the content to an aggregator, only the primary publisher can sell access to the newest (and most valuable) content. 

I think a better analogy perhaps is the pre-iTunes music industry, where a handful of major labels had the best content and were sold in profitable units (albums=journals), but were facing a crisis with piracy (Napster=SciHub) where the unit was being broken down into tracks being made available (downloadable songs=articles). If an iTunes-like platform came along to scholarly publishing, it would have to somehow persuade major publishers to cede their control, and it would probably have to do it by making articles available for free - OA breaks the analogy as nothing like that exists in music or any other industry I can think of. I can't see researchers or institutions paying for content on this basis, especially if Gold OA increases at the rate shown by the Future of OA article discussed here earlier this week.

From: osi20...@googlegroups.com <osi20...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Glenn Hampson <gham...@nationalscience.org>
Sent: 12 October 2019 01:24
To: 'Mel DeSart' <des...@uw.edu>; 'The Open Scholarship Initiative' <osi20...@googlegroups.com>

Mel DeSart

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Oct 14, 2019, 1:08:05 PM10/14/19
to Glenn Hampson, The Open Scholarship Initiative

Couple things. 

 

Re: your speculation below about 90% of the titles we still need coming from the big six, it’s not anywhere close to that high.  And the numbers vary hugely depending on whether you’re talking about the number of titles or the number of dollars.  I run an engineering library – I might as well close up shop if I’m not providing access to the titles from the major engineering societies (IEEE, ASCE, ASME, AIAA, SAE, ACM, etc.) plus smaller sets of journals from two dozen or more smaller engineering societies.  But the amount we pay for all of that society content pales in comparison to what we pay for engineering journals from the “big six” you refer to.

 

And any comparison between the book industry and the serial industry is somewhat like comparing apples and oranges.  Some publishers have little need to market new journals (AAAS/Science, Nature, Cell Press) – mostly they just need to _announce_ those titles and they will have an automatic audience once they start publishing content because of the strong reputation of their existing pantheon of titles (and services like Web of Science will automatically index those titles starting with volume 1, where most other titles have to show some life and uptake by their community before WoS will start indexing them).  With many society publishers, when they start up a new title it often gets rolled into an “all-journals” package, and if you’re buying that package you automatically start receiving that new title.  But in those cases (and with the majority of new titles from the big six) they still need to market those titles because there are lots of smaller places out there that still “buy by the title” and for whom that new title might be of interest.

 

Where book publishing often relies on the success of _new_ titles to keep them making money, a lot of journal publishing relies on the success of _existing_ titles to make them money – new _content_ in both cases, but with books that means new containers, which need to be marketed, while the vast majority of new content from serial publishers goes into _existing_ containers.  And there are pretty much zero brick and mortal stores for serials, while there ARE still many of those for books, even in the age of Amazon.  Lots of other differences beyond the ones I’ve listed above.

Glenn Hampson

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Oct 14, 2019, 1:33:54 PM10/14/19
to Mel DeSart, The Open Scholarship Initiative

Thanks Mel---this is all very interesting. Is there a guide somewhere we can reference for more info?---some white paper, report, study, etc. that shows all scholcomm expenditure data across all publishers and libraries (the devil is in the details, of course, but it would be interesting to know how much money is being spent by whom and for what)?

 

Also---and this may or may not be worth exploring---in the book industry it is actually the existing stuff that keep everything afloat, not the new stuff. Except here, when I say “stuff” I mean “authors” in addition to “titles.” The revenue generated (both from frontlist work and new work) by authors like Steven King make possible the publishing of hundreds (at minimum) of less popular authors, most of whom fail to sell enough books to allow publishers to recoup their investments (in design, printing, marketing, author advance, etc.). And this situation continues today with the typical new book (especially from university presses) selling only a few hundred copies. So, I don’t know if each journal title in Wiley’s catalog (let’s pick on Wiley today instead of Elsevier) is priced to be self-sustaining, or if the major titles subsidize the “minor” ones. I think this might be important to understand. Anyone?

JJE Esposito

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Oct 14, 2019, 2:32:49 PM10/14/19
to Glenn Hampson, Mel DeSart, The Open Scholarship Initiative
It's infinitely more complicated than this. First, books are MUCH bigger as an industry than journals, probably 9 times larger, depending on whose stats you use. Second, there are books on every topic (not to mention fiction), whereas journals are narrowly focused on academic topics. Third, books are mostly purchased by individuals, whereas journals are mostly purchased by institutions. I could go on and on with this, but I don't think bringing books into a journals discussion moves the ball down the field.

Joe Esposito

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/osi2016-25/001b01d582b5%248ad34250%24a079c6f0%24%40nationalscience.org.


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Glenn Hampson

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Oct 14, 2019, 5:35:19 PM10/14/19
to JJE Esposito, Mel DeSart, The Open Scholarship Initiative

Thank you Manfredi---very helpful article. I wonder if this data has been updated somewhere?

 

Joe---I’m sure you’re correct about avoiding the temptation to oversimplify this. Still, I think it’s important to look for patterns, lessons and insights from other markets---books, music, healthcare, and elsewhere---not that you haven’t but I think there’s a lot more we can learn as a group on this topic. Any other info like this would be most welcome---just email it to me off-list if you prefer. (Rick, for instance, wrote two articles for TSK early last year on the parallels between the journal and music industries: https://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2018/01/03/napster-vs-record-labels-sci-hub-vs-publishers-part-1-parallels/)

 

Regarding whether books and journals can be compared because of differences in their market size and diversity, I kinda think the situation might be the reverse of what you describe---i.e., that books are narrow and monolithic compared to journals, not the other way around. Yes, the book market is larger than the journal market, but not by much---schools and institutions account for just north of 40% of all book purchases, which in dollar terms is just a tad larger than the journal market (see https://publishingperspectives.com/2018/07/us-statshot-publisher-survey-2017-estimates-revenue/). And the diversity of both of these markets is vast----there are around one million new books published per year (of which maybe about half are self-published) and three million journal articles (of which I would challenge you to find any two which are alike, unlike the book market where 10 books can be published every year on exactly the same topic; also, there are probably just as many subject categories in a library as there are fields of specialization at an R1 university—1100+ Dewey decimal sections and 180 different majors at the University of Washington, each with many different branches). And the industry consolidation is similar in both the book and journal publishing industry. And so on.

 

Anyway….just rooting around for insights, info and data….send ‘em if you’ve got ‘em.

 

Thanks and best regards,

 

Glenn

 

 

Glenn Hampson
Executive Director
Science Communication Institute (SCI)
Program Director
Open Scholarship Initiative (OSI)

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T Scott Plutchak

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Oct 18, 2019, 6:21:50 PM10/18/19
to Glenn Hampson, Mel DeSart, The Open Scholarship Initiative

I’ve been traveling so I’m late getting to this, but I wanted to mention that the distributor model is, in fact, very analogous to the dominant model for libraries to subscribe to journals in the pre-digital age and still accounts for a significant portion of journal acquisitions.  I’m referring to subscription agents.  When I got into libraries in the eighties, the collection development people worked up the list of titles they wanted and contracted with one or more subscription agents (EBSCO, Faxon, Swets, and others) to put the orders in on their behalf.  Libraries developed long-term relationships with their agents who provided a variety of support services in addition to managing the orders.  The agents made money through negotiated discounts with publishers and modest service charges to libraries.  Libraries didn’t need to negotiate with publishers or deal with them directly because prices were set.  This started to change in the digital era when publishers started developing packages and doing individual pricing.  Elsevier, in particular, refused to allow libraries to go through the agents when negotiating for Science Direct.  Some agents tried to develop services that would enable them to negotiate on behalf of libraries, but the variations were too complex to make this efficient.  Most libraries still use agents for a significant portion of their journal acquisitions.  Thus doesn’t get much attention on email discussion lists like the because the direct negotiations occupy so much of the librarian’s attention and budget.  Disclosure: my wife, Lynn Fortney, was EBSCO’s VP and Director of the Biomedical Division until her retirement a few years ago, so I had perhaps more of a front row seat to the transformation of the subscription agent industry than many librarians.  The big companies (like EBSCO) were able to diversify, but many smaller agents, particularly in Europe, weren’t able to change quickly enough and went out of business.

Scott


JJE Esposito

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Oct 19, 2019, 9:10:38 AM10/19/19
to Glenn Hampson, Mel DeSart, The Open Scholarship Initiative
Glenn,

Apples and oranges. The report you cite is for U.S. sales. The figure most people use for journals comes from Outsell, which puts *global* journal sales at $10 billion. I repeat: books are infinitely more complicated than journals. I have been working with . books all my life, and when I started poking around journals, it was like miniature golf.

Joe Esposito

Glenn Hampson

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Oct 19, 2019, 12:19:37 PM10/19/19
to JJE Esposito, Mel DeSart, The Open Scholarship Initiative
Thanks Joe. Isn’t there anything at all we can learn from the retail book and music industries and the transformations they’ve already gone through? After all, apples and oranges are both fruits, they’re both edible, they both have peels, they’re both picked by hand, etc. 🤔

Sent from my iPhone

Richard Gedye

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Oct 19, 2019, 3:13:42 PM10/19/19
to osi20...@googlegroups.com

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> 

Isn’t there anything at all we can learn from the retail book and music industries and the transformations they’ve already gone through?

<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<< 

 

One might infer that the STM Association believe so. Their recently appointed new CEO currently serves as Director of Public Affairs for the British Phonographic Industry (BPI) and will take up his position with STM in December.

 

https://www.stm-assoc.org/2019_09_23_News_Release_STM_announces_new_CEO.pdf

 

Richard

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Joyce Ogburn

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Oct 19, 2019, 3:51:08 PM10/19/19
to Richard Gedye, The Open Scholarship Initiative
I agree with Joe that the book publishing industry is markedly different from journal publishing. Of course we can learn from other areas and business models, but they aren't necessarily analogous. The book markets, both scholarly and commercial, behave differently from scholarly journals. In the interest of examining all aspects of scholarship, not just science and not just journals, a concerted look at scholarly monograph publishing is warranted on its own merits. 

Joyce

Joyce L. Ogburn
Principal, Farview Insights
@libjoyce

Lifelong learning requires lifelong access 


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JJE Esposito

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Oct 19, 2019, 6:06:14 PM10/19/19
to Joyce Ogburn, Richard Gedye, The Open Scholarship Initiative
We can and should learn from everything: books, music, ice skating, General Motors, Verizon, the Chinese Communist Party. The problem with starting out with music and books is that asking the question in this way is a self-fulfilling prophecy. So we would really like all scholarship available to us for $10/month, so let's study Spotify to see how they did it. This squeezes out much of the complexity and unique aspects of certain businesses. For example, what would the music business make of peer review? Do you have to win a Grammy before you can put your music on the market? 

Pursuing the Spotify/music industry example for a minute, I recommend Allen Krueger's recent book "Rockonomics." It's excellent. Among its many findings concerning the music industry is that almost all the revenue that artists derive from the business come from concerts. The *record* business, in other words, is no more, and Spotify isn't helping. How would that finding translate to scholarly publishing? Would the author of an article on gender during the time of Sulla (ancient Rome) give a reading, with drums and vibes, at Madison Square Garden? Do we imagine the faculty of the Harvard Medical School moonlighting as buskers on the NY city subway? The analogies break down as soon as you push at them a little bit.

In my consulting activity I regularly invoke the movie business in conversations with the publishers of scholarly material. The reason for this is that movies represent the biggest investments in all media--heck, one movie costs more than the worldwide total revenue of all books and journals combined. So the people in movies are very smart about the numbers. What you find is that few movies are created as stand-alone items. The planning is for theatrical release, TV, streaming services, merchandise rights, perhaps a reverse book deal. Every underlying copyright is exploited in every market. I call this "franchise publishing." This happens in modest ways in academic publishing, as when (for example) Oxford publishes little reference books for the trade and then rolls them up into reference encyclopedias for library markets. 

Open Access, whether of journals or books, presents a different set of issues. OA is essentially content marketing. That is not a bad thing, but let's call it what it is. It is content created to assert a brand: an author/researcher, a funding organization, etc. This is the opposite of the demand-driven economy of subscriptions (where you can only sell what is deemed to be worth the money). So-called predatory publishing is a structural flaw, or exploits a structural flaw, in content marketing for academic work. It will be with us as long as there is OA.

Joe Esposito

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