Re: PDA Sales

[Velterop <velterop@gmail.com>]

Toby Green's comment that if PDA is an alternative to book Big 
Deals, why not for journal Big Deals, is entirely logical.

Having been one of the people who facilitated the birth of the 
first Big Deal (1995, then IDEAL* - for the content, and APPEAL** 
- for the business model), I remember that a move to 
article-by-article PDA was one of the greatest existential 
fears of many publishers (though perhaps not many would have 
put it in that way). IDEAL/APPEAL was in part a way to prevent 
PDA from happening. (The Big Deal, by the way, was also widely 
feared and derided by many publishers - remember the fear of 
monopsony? - though that fear didn't last longer than a few 
years.)

The reason why PDA was feared is clear. A PDA system would 
introduce a completely inappropriate element in the process of 
deciding what should be published and what not. Unlike for books, 
in journals it was, and should be, solely the scientific merit, 
and not the commercial merit, and the decision should be entirely 
the Editor's. (This is one reason why for most journals the 
Editor is not an employee of the publisher, as he or she needs to 
maintain an independent judgment, which might otherwise be 
compromised.)

Apart from the fact that it is very difficult to predict 
commercial success for individual articles, commercial success is 
inevitably a short-term thing, and articles that are worth being 
published from a scientific point of view, even though the 
'market' may not yet be ripe for it, would often simply not be 
published in a PDA system. PDA resembles a popularity contest, 
and science shouldn't be popularity-led.

Article-by-article PDA would of course also be financially 
devastating for publishers. Just bear in mind the articles that 
are hardly read in the current system. How much less readership 
they would have under PDA?

The open access model takes away all (or at least most) of these 
concerns and drawbacks. If the service of publishing an article 
is paid for, then, bluntly speaking, nobody other than the author 
cares a toss if it is being read or not (though the absence of 
access barriers probably means it's likely to be read - or at 
least downloaded - more often than would otherwise have been the 
case).

Jan Velterop

*International Desktop Electronic Access Library
**Academic Press Print and Electronic Access Licence


On 27/01/2011 01:03, Toby.GREEN@oecd.org wrote:

> If patron-driven is the only model, then obviously not. What 
> needs to be considered is the total cost of purchase for what 
> gets used, taking into account with the value-added services 
> that come with the content. This complexity will likely lead to 
> a choice of purchase models - but the key to success is still 
> value whichever model.
>
> While I'm thinking about it, if patron-driven purchasing is an 
> alternative to book 'big deals', then surely the same could be 
> true for journals? Patron-driven purchasing article-by-article 
> (and for that matter, chapter-by-chapter) anyone?
>
> Toby
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: Sandy Thatcher [mailto:sandy.thatcher@alumni.princeton.edu]
> Sent: Wednesday, January 26, 2011 04:40 AM
> To: liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu<liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu>
> Subject: Re: Interview with Springer's Derk Haank
>
> And will they work if Patron-Driven Acquisitions becomes the
> primary model for library monograph acquisitions?
>
> Sandy Thatcher
>
>
> At 12:56 AM -0500 1/25/11,<Toby.GREEN@oecd.org>  wrote:
>
>> Couple of reactions: smaller journal publishers can swim together
>> with the ALPSP Journal Collection - a mini-big (and
>> not-for-profit) deal; secondly, monograph publishers should (and
>> could) have reacted sooner to the realities of the way libraries
>> spend their money. It's no use complaining that libraries chose
>> to switch their spending away from monographs to journals and
>> then electronic information services (which is really what the
>> big deals are), the thing to do is to react and come up with a
>> compelling business model that librarians will respond to. As
>> I've said before, it is possible for monographs to be bundled
>> into big deals that offer as much value as e-journal collections,
>> it's something we've been doing for a decade and librarians have
>> responded - our sales (and dissemination) have grown year-on-year
>> since 2001. Other book publishers have done the same (e.g. OUP,
>> World Bank) - the key is to offer compelling value.  Monograph
>> bundles will work if the value is there -!
>>
>> All it takes is for the smaller publishers to get together, start
>> bundling and offer better value than the big boys!
>>
>> Toby Green
>> Head of Publishing, OECD
>> Chair, ALPSP