Re: Homer Simpson at the NIH (renaissance?)

["adam hodgkin" <adam.hodgkin@gmail.com>]

Joe,

I interpret this as a retreat from your original claim that the 
big publishers are better placed to survive whether there is more 
money in the system or less. And I suspect that there is a 
definitional sleight of hand here. Do you mean by 'the system' in 
which the money circulates, the existing "mostly closed access 
journal publishing/library subscribing system"? If that is what 
you mean, I would agree that the market is highly mature, there 
will surely be more consolidation and the market so interpreted 
will not grow much and may well shrink.

But the key point is that these are no longer closed systems or 
market reservoirs in which cash slops from one pool to another in 
a broadly conservative annual cycle. The needs of science, 
technology and scholarship are growing at a prodigious rate -- 
internationally and within the internal dynamic of each 
discipline. For these reasons a step change in the productivity 
of publishing is to be expected and is almost inevitable since 
the web makes this possible. Part of that step change will be an 
increasing move to more open access, though I wouldnt be 
surprised if it does NOT follow the Green or the Gold paths that 
some proponents of Open Access reckon to be the inevitable way 
forward.

Perhaps you agree that it was quite likely that the rather big 
shifts in the information economy which are already happening 
will have a significant impact on the still relatively 
self-contained world of peer-reviewed journals within the five 
yours that you mentioned.

I think the big publishers will face some big challenges in this 
changing environment. The music majors (4 of them) have not been 
so clever at shifting their business model to meet the same sort 
of challenge....

Adam


On 8/24/07, Joseph J. Esposito <espositoj@gmail.com> wrote:

> I am keenly interested in Chris Armbruster's work, much of 
> which I agree with, but I wish to point out that in no way are 
> his comments apposite mine. And that's fine, but let's not 
> assume there is a debate going on when we are in fact talking 
> about two entirely different things.  In terms of market 
> maturity, I would suggest this mind experiment:  imagine the 
> journals world five years from now.  Is the market share of the 
> 5 largest players, as measured in dollars, larger or smaller 
> than it is today?  (And, yes, we can allow for the current 5 to 
> have become 2 or 3.) Furthermore, the absolute growth of the 5, 
> putting acquisitions to the side, will be in the single digits. 
> That's maturity.
>
> There may of course be new markets emerging, such as a market 
> for a new kind of certification service.  But those revenues 
> will be on top of what the 5 largest publishers earn.  You 
> would have to look beyond a 5-year horizon to see the 5 
> diminish in scope and influence.
>
> Armbruster is addressing a big idea:  the restructuring of the 
> information economy.  I am addressing a small one:  how the 
> current economy for research publishing works.  Let's hear it 
> for the big ideas, but even the small ones cry out from time to 
> time.
>
> Joe Esposito
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Armbruster, Chris" <Chris.Armbruster@EUI.eu>
> To: <liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu>
> Sent: Thursday, August 23, 2007 11:23 AM
> Subject: RE: Homer Simpson at the NIH (renaissance?)
>
>> The idea that the publishing is a no-growth market is based on 
>> the now faulty perception that the Oldenbourg model of 
>> conjoining peer review with dissemination in a final archival 
>> publication may be transposed to the internet era. True 
>> enough, this kind of publishing is a no-growth market. I would 
>> go even further and say that in the medium term it has no 
>> future at all. My argument would be that digital technology 
>> and economics strongly favour the severance of certification 
>> from dissemination. In that scenario, the functions of 
>> registration, dissemination and archiving will lie with 
>> (digital) libraries-cum-repositories, wheras certification and 
>> new kinds of value-adding navigation services will be a growth 
>> market.
>>
>> I therefore suggest that we will witness the renaissance of 
>> society publishers and the return of the library for 
>> scientific and scholarly publishing. In this segment I would 
>> be more afraid for the big commercial publishers that, because 
>> of their size and inflexibility, might find themselves in a 
>> big squeeze quite soon.
>>
>> For more details on this argument, please consult 
>> http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=997819
>>
>> Armbruster, Chris, "Society Publishing, the Internet and Open
>> Access: Shifting Mission-Orientation from Content Holding to
>> Certification and Navigation Services?" (July 2007). Available
>> at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=997819
>>
>> or, for an overview, go to
>> http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/cf_dev/AbsByAuth.cfm?per_id=434782
>>
>> Joe Esposito wrote:
>>
>> If there is less money in the system, the bigger players are
>> better positioned to survive; if there is more money in the
>> system, the bigger players are better positioned to survive.
>> The issue is not the size of the market; it is the maturity of
>> the market.  Publishing is close to a no-growth business.  In
>> no-growth markets, consolidation is a likely, if not
>> inevitable, strategy.
>>
>> The only reason that academic journals are published by such a
>> huge number of publishers--unlike, say, college texts (6
>> players in the U.S. have 85% of the market)--is that the
>> not-for-profit status of many of the players makes them
>> resistant to some aspects of the marketplace.  That is neither
>> good nor bad; it is what it is.  If all journals publishers
>> were publicly traded and thus subject to Wall Street's stern
>> review, consolidation would come quickly; we would be down to
>> three publishers in 5 years.