RE: PLOS article metrics

["Nat Gustafson-Sundell" <n-gustafson-sundell@northwestern.edu>]

Universities and libraries must make investment decisions all the 
time and there is nothing mutually exclusive about seeking more 
open scholarly communications/ finding new ways to add value and 
also thinking about how best to invest.  Since there are lots of 
different people working in lots of different departments, in 
both libraries and universities, many goals can be pursued at 
once.  My own view is that you can't do one without the other.

I think Heather is generally right that subscribers should think 
about where their money goes and what they get in return, 
although if a commercial publisher can provide good value and 
make profits, as many do, then that's great so long as the 
formula holds.  Commercial publishers have a big head start on OA 
publishers, so some titles have accrued a lot of value simply 
because they've been around for a long time (these are the titles 
where it is most prestigious to publish and tend to charge the 
most for subs).  That kind of value won't disappear overnight. 
But, as the citation analysis wars of the early 21st century 
showed us, OA publishers have been very competitive on other 
fronts and, in some fields, OA venues have even become as or more 
prestigious than the commercial options.  I'm also aware of many 
OA venues without any marketing (at least, not the kind that 
costs them $), although those titles have managed to build up 
great reputations and usage, so there does seem to be some 
evidence of an efficiency advantage there.

On a nearby listserv, the buzz yesterday was about how the price 
of a certain title has increased, where $40 subs have gone to 
$299 for print or $1000 or more for online simply due to a change 
of publishers.  This kind of increase will trigger many 'little' 
decisions.  Is that title really needed? Does it offer something 
unique, or can the same/ similar be found elsewhere? (As it 
happens, this particular title is basically just a re-packager of 
info - so honestly, a good set of subject-related blogs might do 
the job as well or better.)  And so on.  There will be some 
cancellations, while I'd guess most libraries will retain the sub 
simply due to inertia or, perhaps, the title happens to be more 
popular than other options.  Any money freed up might go to 
something else.

In some cases, outrage might translate to other kinds of action. 
Some savvy reference librarians or electronic resource librarians 
might find ways to make similar content available at less cost or 
for free, say, by seeking out, vetting, and providing links to 
the blogs I mentioned (many of which are 'published' by the same 
people in academia who also write scholarly articles or act as 
peer reviewers for journals on the subjects being re-packed by 
this title).  This might lead to further overhauls of pathfinders 
or web pages, so services get boosted as well (and best practices 
inch up a notch to cascade later).  An OA publisher or student 
group or university/ library dept. might see the opportunity and 
jump in to build a competing venue -- probably not in this 
particular case given the fact that I don't think it would be 
worthwhile, but in other cases, we see competing venues popping 
up all the time.  Next year, more libraries or other subscribers 
might see the sense in cancelling.  The wheel will keep going 
round.  Lots of different people will be playing lots of 
different parts, many of which involve investment decisions.

This is a small/ everyday example, but might be easier to follow 
than the stories of the big initiatives by folks at the 
University of California or Harvard or wherever, although I think 
those initiatives involve many of the same component issues. 
The point is that investment decisions (of money, of time or 
service) by many different players are inextricably linked with 
service improvements and, in some situations, the for-profit 
option is being eliminated (cancelled and replaced), along the 
lines of what Heather says below, as a result of competition. 
Personally, I think the churn is exactly what we need right now.


-----Original Message-----
From: owner-liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
[mailto:owner-liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu] On Behalf Of Steve Hitchcock
Sent: Thursday, September 24, 2009 7:10 PM
To: liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
Subject: Re: PLOS article metrics

Heather, Quite the opposite. The consequence of open access is:
free the data, build the services. This is the mantra of
everything digital. It isn't about running down investment in
publishing services, but about enabling opportunities to provide
value in new forms. Search-based enterprise has been pretty
successful elsewhere.

Investment decisions are for others. Freeing the content is the 
concern of the academy. If we mix up the two, imposing dismal 
economics and minimal prospects of returns, we won't get the 
services that open access inherently ought to motivate. In that 
situation it would not be surprising if potential supporters of 
open access saw better alternatives.

Steve Hitchcock
IAM Group, School of Electronics and Computer Science
University of Southampton
UK Email: sh94r@ecs.soton.ac.uk


On 23 Sep 2009, at 22:33, Heather Morrison wrote:

> On 22-Sep-09, at 7:39 PM, Joseph Esposito wrote:
>
> As authors and publishers become more aware of the value in
> driving up usage statistics, they will engage in more and more
> SEM and often SEO.  Thus the competition for the 'best' article
> becomes entangled with the efforts of aggressive marketing.
> Authors and publishers who are less skilled at this will be left
> behind; the more skillful will invest greater and greater
> resources in SEM, driving up costs.
>
> HM - Two comments:
>
> 1.  This is an excellent argument for eliminating the for-profit
>    sector from scholarly publishing.  As things stand, some of
>    the mega- publishers are already taking in profit margins of
>    30% or higher; once you add in taxes, that's at least 50% of
>    revenue spent without a dime going to anything having to do
>    with scholarship.  That's not even taking into account sales,
>    lobbying, etc.!  Add to this even more money going to
>    aggressive marketing, and the percentage of the academic
>    library budget that actually goes to scholarly aims will be
>    very small indeed.
>
> 2.  If some publishers take this approach and it drives up costs,
>    they won't stand a chance of competing on a per-article basis
>    with more efficient publishers, like PLoS - or almost any
>    society not-for-profit.
>
> Heather Morrison, MLIS
> The Imaginary Journal of Poetic Economics
> http://poeticeconomics.blogspot.com