Re: Pricing/License Translucency: A Proposal for Publishers and Libraries

[Lorraine Busby <lbusby@uwo.ca>]

Hello Rick,

I am one librarian who is not sick of this issue and have similar 
concerns to yours.  I endorse the approach you suggest.  When I 
encounter confidentiality clauses I attempt to have them removed. 
When unsuccessful I ask to specifically word the confidentiality 
clause to allow me to discuss pricing and any other product 
information with the two Canadian consortiums with which my 
library enacts most of our deals.  Most of the time publishers 
have been agreeable to this change but I have received push back 
and a few publishers have said an outright "no" to my request. 
When that happens I then ask the publisher for permission to use 
their "generic" license in the library science class I teach "to 
discuss licensing issues" in a theoretical classroom setting. 
Most of the time they say no again but at least the message get 
sent. In one situation, I knew a Canadian consortium was likely 
to consider the product I was about to acquire as a consortium 
deal so I alerted them ahead of time of the confidentiality 
clause and suggested that they had any questions they might want 
to ask them prior to my signing the deal.

It is important to work with the spirit and intent of these 
agreements. That should be a two way goal and both parties need 
to cooperate.  Once I sign a deal I respect the terms and 
conditions and do not knowingly violate them.  It is important 
that publishers understand our willingness to work with them. In 
return, they should recognize our position and consider 
compromises.  Your suggestion fits this approach, hence my 
support.

Lorraine Busby
Associate University Librarian, Information Resources
University of Western Ontario
London, Ontario    Canada

Rick Anderson wrote:
> Everyone is probably sick to death of this topic by now, but I'm
> going to risk starting a new thread about pricing secrecy and
> pricing transparency.  This message will end with a question for
> my librarian colleagues, so I hope that those who are tired of
> the topic but who may have an opinion on the question will
> soldier through to the end and send a response (either directly
> to me or to the list).
>
> Now that I've had a week or so to reflect on my experience with
> Nature and its demand for total secrecy of pricing and license
> terms, and on my on-list conversation with Peter Banks and Joe
> Esposito and others about the implications of total pricing
> transparency, it's occurred to me that there may be room for a
> compromise on which both publishers and libraries can agree.  It
> seems to me that there is really no reason why we should have to
> choose between Pricing Blackout (the position of Nature and a few
> other publishers on the fringe of this issue) and Pricing
> Transparency (as characterized by Joe's "public posting of
> prices/licenses" scenario).
>
> I'd like to propose a compromise, which we might call Pricing
> Translucency: suppose a license agreement were to contain a
> clause like this: "Subject to applicable law, Licensee shall
> refrain from publicizing or otherwise broadly distributing the
> terms of this License (including pricing) in any public forum."
>
> It seems to me that a term like this should satisfy both the
> desire of publishers not to see public broadcast of the results
> of their individual price and license negotiations, while also
> allowing librarians the desired leeway to talk to each other
> individually about their negotiation experiences.  I don't know
> of any librarian who wants to take out a full-page ad in the New
> York Times saying what price she ended up getting from Nature;
> most of us just want to be able to answer individual colleagues
> who ask us questions.
>
> I was going to ask the publishers who participate or lurk on this
> list to say whether they think a clause like this would be
> acceptable, but I think that question is more or less answered by
> the fact that the vast majority of publishers don't put
> confidentiality clauses in their licenses.  What I do wonder,
> though, is whether librarians would generally find such a clause
> acceptable.  Any thoughts?  (Off-list replies welcome; if there's
> interest, I can summarize for the list without identifying
> respondents.)
>
> ----
> Rick Anderson
> Dir. of Resource Acquisition
> University of Nevada, Reno Libraries
> rickand@unr.edu