RE: Price discrimination for academic subscriptions (discussion)

[Phil Davis <pmd8@cornell.edu>]

Heather Morrison provided an excellent response and discussion to my
original post regarding price discrimination.  Without diverting into
arguing over specific details, I would like to resubmit for discussion
that any institutional classification (FTE, Carnegie Class, number of
biologists, etc), are merely estimates of real (or potential) use.  Are
the consequences for paying for what you use any different than paying for
what you *may be likely to use*.  In other words, what would be the
economic effects of moving to an economic pricing model whereby an
institutions's price is at least partly based on that institution's usage
pattern?

--Phil Davis

At 10:42 AM 9/3/2003 -0400, you wrote:
> > On the other hand, pricing based on a library's budget or materials budget
> > is not entirely fair, as it puts institutions that choose to under-fund
> > libraries at an advantage.
>
> Are any publishers out there currently setting prices based on library
> budget?  What I see much more commonly is a pricing approach that takes FTE
> into account, but these are by no means the same thing.
>
> -------------
> Rick Anderson
> rickand@unr.edu