RE: selling e-articles

["Ian Russell" <ian.russell@cytherean.co.uk>]

This "pay-per-view" option has been widely offered by journal 
publishers (or at least STM journal publishers) for many years.

ALPSP has commissioned the third Scholarly Publishing Practice 
survey which has been conducted by John and Laura Cox.  This 
research report is in production and will be published later in 
the year and - having been run in 2003, 2005 and now 2008 - 
provides longitudinal data on a number of questions...

According to this survey, 78% of the journal publishers surveyed 
offer pay-per-view or individual article purchase options.  The 
number is increasing but is not seen as a significant source of 
revenue by publishers.

Ian Russell
ALPSP

-----Original Message-----
[mailto:owner-liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu] On Behalf Of Okerson, Ann
Sent: 12 August 2008 01:32
To: liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
Subject: selling e-articles

A colleague would like to hear of examples of publishers of 
journals that have both print and electronic versions who have 
successfully introduced online sale of individual articles 
unbundled from the original volume or issue.  That is, for 
readers who do not have a personal or institutional subscription 
but want access to a small number of recent or older articles, 
are there examples of being able to purchase those articles "by 
the drink"?  Are there issues of permission from authors that 
need to be navigated?  He has an idea that commercial publishers 
have wrestled with this when e.g. the New York Times wants to 
sell articles "by the drink" from its vast archive.  What have 
journals done to make this possible for academic content?  It 
seems self-evident that there would be a market for this part of 
the "long tail" of academic publishing and the cost of offering 
the service would be trivial for a publisher already delivering 
online content.  Please comment to the list.

Ann Okerson
Moderator, Liblicense