RE: Seven ARL Libraries Face Major Planned or Potential Budget

[Mike Rossner <rossner@mail.rockefeller.edu>]

One thing that has not been mentioned in this discussion is the 
excessive price of some of the individual titles from 
megapublishers.  By setting prices for individual titles so high, 
they make the big deal more attractive.

At The Rockefeller University Press, we categorize an institution 
like Loma Linda as a "tier 2" institution.  The average price of 
an online subscription to one of our journals for a tier 2 
institution is $1,685.  If you do the math for the journals that 
are actually read using this price per title, does it still work 
out to be more expensive than your big deal?

To be more accurate with this calculation, use a pay-per view 
formula for those journals that get fewer than 56 hits per year 
(56 x $30 = $1,680), and calculate the cost of those journals 
using a fairly standard pay-per-view price of $30 (number of hits 
x $30).  When I do this calculation for one of the megapublishers 
at the Rockefeller University library (also tier 2), the cost 
comes out to be 70% of what we currently pay.

In addition to a call for unbundling from the megapublishers, we 
need a call for reasonable pricing of individual titles.

Mike Rossner
Rockefeller University Press


At 09:00 PM 5/13/2009, you wrote:

>I have to take issue with this part of Anthony's (or was it
>Pieter Bolman's?) comments on the "Big Deal:"
>
>"No-one is now happy with it but at present the new model eludes
>publishers or at least some publishers."
>
>From a bottom line basis, not a theoretical or philosophical one,
>big deals can be great deals for smaller academic libraries.
>After a major and painful cut in our serials budget in 1995, we
>were nowhere near getting back to our former holdings until we
>started taking advantage of big deals through consortia purchases
>and standalone purchases.
>
>Yes, in our first big deal, we had a large percentage with no
>use, but the number of titles with SIGNIFICANT use went far
>beyond our original subscribed title list.  So why should we be
>bothered by the fact that there still remained many titles with
>little or no use?  They are electronic, they aren't harmful to
>anything!  We're not wasting them by putting them in landfills
>because we don't need them!  In return, we gained access to new
>titles that we demonstrably needed based on their use and which
>we could never have paid for on a title-by-title subscription
>basis either consortially or institutionally.  Our faculty are
>happy and comment all the time that they appreciate the
>restoration of 1995 cancellations and availability of newer
>titles they never had before.  One of our significant researchers
>told me just yesterday that his use of other research libraries=
>and ILL is rare now because of our increased titles through
>electronic packages.
>
>If some of our "Big deals" were to go away because the ARLs and
>others who are vocally against big deals convince publishers and
>others that "No-One" likes them, I think that more than just our
>institution would be negatively affected.  Yes, you would restore
>my ability to control title by title selection.  Thanks to
>Counter, I'd have more reliable usage stats than previously, so I
>could actually select titles based on what our USERS are actually
>using.  But at what cost?
>
>Sure I'd be rid of package titles that weren't being used, but I
>would end up having to cut titles with significant usage because
>I couldn't afford them on a title-by-title basis.  I actually
>started doing this last year with one package.  Based on usage
>and subject matter I determined the titles I should subscribe to
>individually and got about 1/3 through my list and was already up
>to the total package price.  Rather than deciding what I should
>start cutting (remember these are titles that our users selected
>& USED), I stopped there and renewed the package!  Let the unused
>titles linger in an electronic wasteland doing no harm (at least
>from my point of view)!
>
>Opinions are my own--not my institution's!
>
>Shirley Rais, MLS  -  Chair, Serials & Electronic Resources Dept.
>Library Liaison to the School of Public Health
>LOMA LINDA UNIVERSITY | University Libraries
>