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Re: Confidentiality clause is back in at Nature

Strongly disagree with Rick's premise. Using his examples

1. Automotive- Not relevant. It's not what you telling me what you paid for the car. It's whether the dealer will tell you what he sold the identical car for, to the last customer. Try to get that number.

2 Bookselling. Not at all easy to know. Yes easy to get the list price. But most publishers' discount schedules, to libraries, to consumers, to consortia, for multi-copy sales, vary all over the place. And let's not forget scamming. Remember when B&T was selling at a short discount, titles that were carrying long discounts from the publisher.

3. Housing. You may be able to get the "official price" that was reported to the govt. But did the seller throw in all the furnishing? Did the buyer offer a private cash element?

4. Higher Education. It's like the airlines. You're flying from NY to Pittsburgh. You paid $150, the guy next to you bought the ticket this morning for $600, and the guy on the window bought his ticket from Priceline or Orbitz for $105. Will the airline tell you about it? Pricing is dependent on competition, minority status, economic status, athletic status, and last but not least, relationship to a family faculty member. Try to get individual tuition info from the bursar's office.

6.Computers. Do you buy your computer from Radio Shack, over the internet, from CompUSA or Sam's Club? Try to get coherent comparative pricing info across a range of vendors.

Dick Gottlieb

----- Original Message -----
From: "Rick Anderson" <rickand@unr.edu>
To: <liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu>
Sent: Friday, September 29, 2006 3:51 PM
Subject: RE: Confidentiality clause is back in at Nature

While I understand the desire for pricing transparency, I can't think of an industry where it is practiced,
You can't? Let me help; here are a few industries that pop immediately to mind. In all five, prices are generally publicly posted, and while special deals may be offered to individual consumers, in none of these industries are clients generally enjoined to keep those deals a secret from others:

* The automotive industry (has anyone ever said to you "I'm not allowed
to tell you what I paid for my Toyota"?)
* Bookselling (how much does a book cost? Easy enough to find out.)
* Housing (how much did you neighbor's house sell for? Any realtor will
tell you if you ask.)
* Higher education
* Home computers

And, of course, pricing transparency is certainly practiced in the scholarly information industry -- widely, if not necessarily universally. Publishers post their prices publicly all the time. My library never agrees to confidentiality clauses, nor do most of the colleagues with whom I've talked or corresponded on this issue. If a database vendor wants to know what we're paying for a competitor's product, we're free (and, given public records laws, probably required) to tell.

or understand the value to the buyer, since it often favors the
seller.
It seems to me that pricing transparency favors no one; on the contrary, it helps keeps things on an even keel and minimizes the likelihood of unfair advantage on either side. When a seller says to me "I can give you this special deal, but only if you keep it secret," I always have to wonder how special the deal really is. Is he offering me a price 50% lower than what he's offered a peer library? Or is it really the same? Or is it 50% higher? If the pricing is secret, then there's no way for me to know. In that situation, the advantage is all on the seller's side. On the other hand, if the price is publicly known, then I probably won't be able to wangle a special deal from the seller (who would run the risk of offending other customers if he gave me that deal) -- but I also run less risk of being taken in on the pretext of a "special secret deal just for you." A price that's publicly known is, I think, more likely to be a price that's reasonable. I'd rather be confident of a reasonable deal than run the risk of being fooled by a spurious "special deal."

----
Rick Anderson
Dir. of Resource Acquisition
University of Nevada, Reno Libraries
rickand@unr.edu