RE: Librarians, Publishing Behavior, & Open Access

["Rick Anderson" <rickand@unr.edu>]

> There is a superstition among most librarians and most publishers that
> lower journal prices will mean lower income to the publishers, whether
> this is brought about by fewer subscription or fewer titles. This will
> only be the case if the libraries are weak enough to let the money be
> taken from them.

This strikes me as a remarkably naive statement, David.  If I understand
it (and the amplification that follows in your original message)
correctly, you're suggesting that journal publishers safeguard their
revenue streams not by maintaining prices and subscriptions at a certain
level, but by branching out into book or index publishing.  I've never
worked as a publisher, but my impression is that a change like that would
be traumatic even for established and well-funded commercial journal
publishers; you're talking about moving from one business model to a
completely different one that requires different kinds of staff with
different skills, not to mention different patterns of cash flow. For
small, nonprofit society publishers, I'd imagine the possibility of a
shift like that doesn't really exist at all in practical terms.

Maybe I'm the one who's naive, and those barriers aren't as high as I
think they are.  But I'm pretty confident that they're a matter of
objective economic reality, not superstition.

----
Rick Anderson
Dir. of Resource Acquisition
University of Nevada, Reno Libraries
(775) 784-6500 x273
rickand@unr.edu