Re: Heads up: Nature license and confidentiality

["Joseph Esposito" <espositoj@gmail.com>]

Transparency is great, right?  The catch is, once you post the 
information, you can't negotiate any terms ever again.  Think 
about it:  every term of every license is there for the world to 
see.  One client insists on negotiating one item.  Then all other 
clients insist on renegotiating that item.  The unintended 
consequence of posted terms is that they become inflexible.  I 
doubt many libraries would be happy with publishers posting "take 
it or leave it" terms.  But that's where this is headed.

Joe Esposito

On 8/28/06, Rick Anderson <rickand@unr.edu> wrote:
>
>> I'm slightly suprised that librarians find anything odd in
>> this.
>
> It's not really that we find secret pricing odd; it's that we
> find it unacceptable (or I do, anyway -- I shouldn't presume to
> speak for everyone else).
>
>> In the print world, the price was the price.  In the digital
>> world, as Peggy says herself, 'we don't all pay the price';
>> actual prices paid by individual consortia and even individual
>> libraries tend to be the result of often protracted
>> negotiation. Different factors may have a bearing in each case.
>> So making public the price actually negotiated would be most
>> unfair on the vendor, wouldn't it?
>
> I can see why publishers find transparent pricing undesirable,
> but I really don't see how they can claim that it's unfair.  If
> you're going to sell a product or service to the public, then it
> seems to me that the public has a right to know how much it's
> paying.  (If you're selling to a private institution, then you
> may be able to negotiate terms of secrecy into the deal -- but it
> doesn't seem to me that the institution is under any moral
> obligation to agree.  "Fairness" certainly doesn't enter into it.
> I see no logical connection between the fact that prices and
> license terms vary from institution to institution as a matter of
> negotiation and the proposition that they should be kept secret
> as a matter of fairness.)
>
> ----
> Rick Anderson
> Dir. of Resource Acquisition
> University of Nevada, Reno Libraries
> rickand@unr.edu

Joe Esposito