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Re: Homer Simpson at the NIH (renaissance?)



I am keenly interested in Chris Armbruster's work, much of which I agree with, but I wish to point out that in no way are his comments apposite mine. And that's fine, but let's not assume there is a debate going on when we are in fact talking about two entirely different things. In terms of market maturity, I would suggest this mind experiment: imagine the journals world five years from now. Is the market share of the 5 largest players, as measured in dollars, larger or smaller than it is today? (And, yes, we can allow for the current 5 to have become 2 or 3.) Furthermore, the absolute growth of the 5, putting acquisitions to the side, will be in the single digits. That's maturity.

There may of course be new markets emerging, such as a market for a new kind of certification service. But those revenues will be on top of what the 5 largest publishers earn. You would have to look beyond a 5-year horizon to see the 5 diminish in scope and influence.

Armbruster is addressing a big idea: the restructuring of the information economy. I am addressing a small one: how the current economy for research publishing works. Let's hear it for the big ideas, but even the small ones cry out from time to time.

Joe Esposito

----- Original Message -----
From: "Armbruster, Chris" <Chris.Armbruster@EUI.eu>
To: <liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu>
Sent: Thursday, August 23, 2007 11:23 AM
Subject: RE: Homer Simpson at the NIH (renaissance?)

The idea that the publishing is a no-growth market is based on the now faulty perception that the Oldenbourg model of conjoining peer review with dissemination in a final archival publication may be transposed to the internet era. True enough, this kind of publishing is a no-growth market. I would go even further and say that in the medium term it has no future at all. My argument would be that digital technology and economics strongly favour the severance of certification from dissemination. In that scenario, the functions of registration, dissemination and archiving will lie with (digital) libraries-cum-repositories, wheras certification and new kinds of value-adding navigation services will be a growth market.

I therefore suggest that we will witness the renaissance of society publishers and the return of the library for scientific and scholarly publishing. In this segment I would be more afraid for the big commercial publishers that, because of their size and inflexibility, might find themselves in a big squeeze quite soon.

For more details on this argument, please consult http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=997819

Armbruster, Chris, "Society Publishing, the Internet and Open Access: Shifting Mission-Orientation from Content Holding to Certification and Navigation Services?" (July 2007). Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=997819

or, for an overview, go to http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/cf_dev/AbsByAuth.cfm?per_id=434782

Joe Esposito wrote:

If there is less money in the system, the bigger players are better positioned to survive; if there is more money in the system, the bigger players are better positioned to survive. The issue is not the size of the market; it is the maturity of the market. Publishing is close to a no-growth business. In no-growth markets, consolidation is a likely, if not inevitable, strategy.

The only reason that academic journals are published by such a huge number of publishers--unlike, say, college texts (6 players in the U.S. have 85% of the market)--is that the not-for-profit status of many of the players makes them resistant to some aspects of the marketplace. That is neither good nor bad; it is what it is. If all journals publishers were publicly traded and thus subject to Wall Street's stern review, consolidation would come quickly; we would be down to three publishers in 5 years.