Re: Seven ARL Libraries Face Major Planned or Potential Budget Cuts

[richards1000@comcast.net]

Sandy:

Thanks for the great questions.  Here are some thoughts:

*The revenues from monograph sales will likely get even worse, if 
the preliminary evidence from the trade market is any indication: 
see NYT: http://bit.ly/A1mV2 ; Idealog: http://bit.ly/XmcMc ; PW: 
http://bit.ly/YxhLP .  That suggests that the scholarly monograph 
won't survive, because it can't garner the volume that will 
likely enable some trade monographs to eke it out at $9.99 or 
less.

*I think that the scholarly-monograph-in-the-form-of-an-article 
collection is going be disaggregated and sold as individual 
digital articles, in conjunction with periodical articles, on 
demand, and in whatever configuration replaces The Deal;

*I think that the genuine, full-length scholarly monograph, 
respecting which each chapter constitutes part of an organic 
whole, will die for the most part, with the exception of 
OA-author-pays titles, respecting which the author's department 
or grant funds 100% of the production cost.  Mellon and other 
foundations may decide to continue to fund genuine scholarly 
monographs, but these will likely be very few in number.

It's over.  Our beloved, high-quality, traditional scholarly 
publishing regime is completely collapsing.

Robert Richards
richards1000@comcast.net

----- Original Message -----
From: "Sandy Thatcher" <sgt3@psu.edu>
To: liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
Sent: Monday, May 18, 2009 7:59:28 PM GMT -05:00 US/Canada Eastern
Subject: Re: Seven ARL Libraries Face Major Planned or Potential Budget Cuts

But will OA be of any help to monographs? If funds are diverted
to pay the costs of OA journals, what will be left to pay for
publishing monographs? If library serials budgets do not have to
be as large to pay for subscriptions, will the money saved there
be used to purchase more monographs, or will the savings just be
used by the universities for other purposes, with library budgets
reduced in proportion to what they save in journal subscriptions,
leaving the purchase of monographs at the same dismal level where
it is now. Who knows the answers to these questions, or will they
be decided differently on each campus? Anybody care to speculate?

Sandy Thatcher
Penn State University Press

>In reply to Rajia and to Shirley in her earlier post, it is
>clear that users in small to medium-sized libraries have been
>gaining access to a broad range of titles through Big Deals, and
>this has been a plus-point for that business model. However, the
>benefit has been obtained at great cost to the academic
>community, not only financial cost but also academic cost in not
>having access to the research monographs and smaller journals
>which have had to be sacrificed in order to pay for the Big
>Deals. Moreover the new open access models hold out the promise
>of unrestricted access to all journals, not only those contained
>in Big Deals, with a better benefit to cost ratio than the Big
>Deals. I do not under-estimate the magnitude of the change in
>business models, but bigger changes in business models are
>already happening in the music industry without the industry
>collapsing.
>
>Fred Friend
>JISC Scholarly Communication Consultant
>Honorary Director Scholarly Communication UCL