RE: University of California Libraries Announce Pursuit of Value-based Journal Prices

["Ivy Anderson" <Ivy.Anderson@ucop.edu>]

Ann, You asked:

>how would such "value-based pricing" work for smaller journals 
>and particularly journals in the non-sciences, such as many 
>social sciences, humanities, area studies, and the like? Or is 
>the aim of the document to assist in negotiations with the 
>larger STM package suppliers?

In principle our aims are the same for all publishers:  identify 
value metrics that can help us to evaluate the prices we pay for 
scholarly journals, and do this in a way that a) is objective and 
quantifiable, b) is based on both cost and value (given as well 
as received), and c) that can lead to more sustainable prices 
overall.

To the extent that the Bergstrom-McAfee value indices that we 
used to test our ideas explicitly benchmark commercial publishers 
against non-profits in the same discipline, the methodology 
itself assumes (and appears to validate) that non-profits in 
general represent a better balancing of pricing and value that 
can be used as a yardstick against which to measure other 
publishers. We realize that this is just the beginning of a 
process; value metrics that rely on ISI citation data clearly 
won't help us with journals that aren't indexed by ISI, for 
example. But institutional contributions in the form of 
authorship and editorship can be identified for any journal, and 
cost-based price caps such as PPI are universally applicable as 
well.  As we tried to suggest in the framing of our paper, we 
would like to engage the fuller community in identifying and 
applying appropriate value-based quantitative measures to the 
dilemma of journal pricing and price increases across the board. 
As one colleague has put it, our paper is an invitation to the 
academic community to pursue and strengthen the tie between 
value, quality, and price for scholarly materials.

We have performed analyses on a range of publishers, including 
university presses as well as large commercial publishers, and 
publishers with varying concentrations of STM titles. From a 
practical perspective, there may be an incentive to concentrate 
on applying these analyses to larger packages where we can gain 
the most 'bang for the buck' if value and price are not well 
aligned. But we see that as more of a practical matter than a 
matter of principle or intellectual approach.  Whether the 
approach itself (as it evolves) proves useful for a full range of 
publishers in all disciplines large and small is something we 
hope to learn as we go forward.

Others among my fellow UC authors may wish to comment here as 
well.

- Ivy

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
[mailto:owner-liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu] On Behalf Of Ann Okerson
Sent: Wednesday, January 24, 2007 1:38 PM
To: liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
Subject: Re: University of California Libraries Announce Pursuit of
Value-based Journal Prices

Ivy, how would such "value-based pricing" work for smaller 
journals and particularly journals in the non-sciences, such as 
many social sciences, humanities, area studies, and the like? Or 
is the aim of the document to assist in negotiations with the 
larger STM package suppliers?

Thank you, Ann Okerson/Yale Library


On Thu, 18 Jan 2007, Ivy Anderson wrote:

> The University of California Libraries are pleased to share a
> press release describing our work on "value-based" prices of
> scholarly journals.  Please see the complete release (attached
> and below) for fuller information.
>
> Best,
>
> Ivy Anderson
> Director of Collections
> California Digital Library
> ivy.anderson@ucop.edu
> http://www.cdlib.org