Re: ejournals and ILL

[Bernd-Christoph Kaemper <bernd-christoph.kaemper@ub.uni-stuttgart.de>]

Joseph Esposito wrote:

>For this reason, ILL for digital products will eventually 
>disappear, replaced by open access, restricted access (no ILL 
>rights), or consortial access.  ILL, in other words, is an 
>artifact of the print era and has no place in digital
publishing.

I would add: (... or consortial access), pay-per-view or licensed 
document delivery.

The article economy is taking over. Depending on ILL regulations, 
agreements with rights holders organisations like CCC (in US) or 
VG Wort (in Germany), and individual license agreements for 
document delivery of publishers with library consortia within a 
framework agreement (like that of STM with SUBITO in Germany), 
there is a whole continuum today from classic ILL to classic 
pay-per-view, where different segments of the market (of 
differing ability and willingness to pay) are served in a 
multitude of ways. Important parameters are the speed of 
delivery, the utility of the copy in the digital world (cut and 
paste, reference linking) and connected with that, the hassles of 
DRM (which, as implemented now in most cases, is a real nuisance, 
and will be a major driver towards open access). In a sense, open 
access is the universal customer.

Bernd-Christoph
Universitatsbibliothek
Universitat Stuttgart
Holzgartenstrasse 16
70550 Stuttgart
Tel. +49-(0)711-685-64731
      +49-(0)711-685-64731


Joseph J. Esposito schrieb:
> I'm afraid Ms. Fletcher does not see that the point of ILL policies is
> precisely NOT to "reduce the burden on library staff and the waste of
> paper, ink, time, and electricity."  It is by making ILL inefficient
> that publishers avoid the Universal Customer Problem.
>
> The Universal Customer Problem, which is hinted at in Daviess
> Menefee's earlier post, refers to a situation where a single digital
> copy of a document, sold to a single customer (the Universal
> Customer), is then copied and recopied and made available to other
> users, eliminating the requirement that anyone but the first, the
> Universal, customer pays for the document. Thus a publisher faces the
> prospect that ILL or any other means of file-sharing will result in a
> marketplace that consists of precisely one customer and no more.
>
> There are ways to work around this.  For one, a publisher could charge
> a huge amount for the first and only copy and essentially delegate the
> task of serial dissemination to the Universal Customer.  This is
> unlikely, as it would be hard to get an institution to volunteer to be
> the one paying customer.  Another possibility is to authorize a
> certain number of copies for ILL, but then there is the pesky problem
> of enforcement.  Or a publisher could arrange consortium licensing,
> whereby ILL is restricted to a declared set of institutions.  No doubt
> there are other variants, but they all have as their basis the need to
> keep the Universal Customer out of the marketplace.
>
> For this reason, ILL for digital products will eventually disappear,
> replaced by open access, restricted access (no ILL rights), or
> consortial access.  ILL, in other words, is an artifact of the print
> era and has no place in digital publishing.  Joe Esposito