Re: Anniversary of DC Principles

[Joseph Esposito <espositoj@gmail.com>]

Twelve months is better than six months for publishers that derive revenue
from the sale of back issues or single articles.  By the same token, 24
months is better than 12, 48 better than 24, and in perpetuity better than
perpetuity minus one minute.  Not all publishers, of course, make much
money from single-articles sales, but whatever losses or declines they
experience do not show up in subcription figures, which are a separate
revenue stream.  This does not take into account the opportunity loss for
monetization strategies that have not yet been invented.  Before anybody
sniggers about such speculative future revenue sources, let's not forget
that it was not many years ago that the backfiles of academic journals
were pretty much considered to be worthless by their publishers, who
licensed them to online services for little or no cost.  Ten bucks says we
will never see such a widespread giveaway of this cateogy of intellectual
property again (Limit:  one taker).

Joe Esposito


On Mon, 14 Mar 2005 21:05:46 EST, John Sack <sack@stanford.edu> wrote:
> Fred,
> 
> I can't answer your questions about why twelve months is better than six
> months (or not), but I can answer your question about the changes in
> "embargo period" for journals based on some records that I informally
> keep.  (I can't tell you about considerations that are still going on at
> journals that haven't yet emerged as new policy, since HighWire wouldn't
> necessarily know of those before they become policy.)  There are also some
> changes that might be of interest that don't exactly fit your question;
> I'll get to those at the end of this note.
> 
> As for changes in the "embargo": I send out an announcement about changes
> in the "free back issues" ("FBI") program about once a quarter to
> librarians who have requested to be notified about changes at HighWire
> (new journals, etc.).  I scanned those notices to see what has changed
> (unfortunately, I didn't keep this rigorously, so I might have missed a
> notice).  Here are the stats in the last year:
> 
>  16 journals have started offering FBI that didn't before
>   3 journals have made the delay longer
>  11 journals have made the delay shorter
> 
> Other changes of interest (which unfortunately I can't statistically
> compare to a year ago): we have an increasing number of journals that now
> publish author manuscripts soon after acceptance (this is different from
> those who publish fully redacted papers ahead of print).  About 50
> journals HighWire works with now do this; my impression is that this is a
> significantly higher number than a year ago (but don't ask for the stats,
> I don't have them).  About 10 of these journals make the author mss free
> immediately on publication (a form of "self archiving" that is
> particularly easy for the authors and the readers).
> 
> I hope this is some help in answering your question.
> 
> John
> 
> John Sack, Director
>          HighWire Press, Stanford University
>          Phone: 650-723-0192; fax: 650-725-9335
>          http://highwire.stanford.edu/~sack
>          sack@stanford.edu