RE: Reed Elsevier results

["Nathaniel M. Gustafson-Sundell" <n-gustafson-sundell@northwestern.edu>]

I wonder why you lobby so hard against OA efforts if they are so 
ineffective?  Anyway, Elsevier's products on strongly established 
legacy products really say nothing about library cost-management 
strategies.  You are probably not talking about the full range of 
cost-management strategies, but just the ones that you are 
predisposed to disagree with, such as OA approaches, both green 
and gold.  I would argue that these strategies, or trials really 
(as they are both fairly young in the history of the business 
they are changing), have so far been surprisingly effective.

If we want an honest discussion on or around the grounds of this 
thread, we should look at Elsevier profits on journals 
established within the past 15 years (I bet there's a loss) and 
we should look at what it would cost libraries to pay commercial 
firms for access to the journal titles that are currently OA 
(those thousands of titles that have been established in the past 
15 years) -- we should also think about where costs in general 
might be without the yardstick of OA journals, given the hokey 
that gets said about what it costs to run peer review and to do 
copy editing.  I know this leaves gold OA aside and there's a lot 
more to be said, but I think there's enough here for a 
discussion.

-Nat


-----Original Message-----
From: owner-liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
[mailto:owner-liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu] On Behalf Of Joseph Esposito
Sent: Tuesday, August 02, 2011 6:31 PM
To: liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
Subject: Re: Reed Elsevier results

Perhaps there is a different lesson to be drawn from this, Ken. 
Perhaps the point is that the strategies libraries have been 
using to reduce their costs are not effective.  One can get in 
high dudgeon because it feels good, but is it effective?  Rather 
than talk about the morality of academic publishing, why not 
focus on the economics and strategy?

Joe Esposito

On Mon, Aug 1, 2011 at 7:45 PM, Ken Masters 
<kmasters@ithealthed.com> wrote:

> Hi All
>
> Increased profits from commercial publishers do not in any way 
> negate a statement that OA has massive growth. There could be 
> many reasons that Reed Elsevier has increased its profits.
>
> Reducing costs is one way to increase profits (This is 20 
> discussed in the article). Increasing prices of publications 
> and big deal contracts is another. This does not appear to be 
> mentioned in the article, but those of you who deal with 
> library budgets can comment on that.
>
> Still it's nice to know that, in the midst of a world financial 
> crisis (where education institutions and libraries are being 
> forced to lay off staff, cut services, reduce operating 
> hours,etc., because of massive financial cuts) companies that 
> supply publications to those same institutions are able to make 
> such impressive profits from those institutions. I'm sure 
> many librarians sleep more easily at night knowing this.
>
> Regards
>
> Ken
>
> Dr. Ken Masters
> Asst. Professor: Medical Informatics
> Medical Education Unit
> College of Medicine & Health Sciences
> Sultan Qaboos University
> Sultanate of Oman