On the wide disparity in publisher cost-efficiency

[Heather Morrison <hgmorris@sfu.ca>]

Libraries and librarians are continuing to cope with the impact 
of the global financial crisis, and I understand that some of us 
are beginning to wonder why our libraries are facing deep budget 
cuts and staff furloughs while a few of the largest commercial 
publishers are boasting record profits.

Understandable, some are beginning to look for a better deal, and 
personally I think this is a very good thing.  However, this 
might be a good time to highlight that there is a very wide 
discrepancy in the cost-effectiveness of different types of 
publishers.  It it not fair, IMHO, to treat the mission-oriented 
publisher that has never charged more than they needed to 
survive, as if they were the same as the highly for-profit 
publishers.  By all means, let's look for deals - but let's not 
forget that a 3% increase to a $100 subscription is only $3, 
while a 3% increase to a $1 million subscription is $30,000 - and 
the $3 increase might mean the difference to survival for the 
efficient publisher, while the for-profit would have to give up 
more than $30,000 to even begin to have something resembling a 
revenue cut of a much smaller order of magnitude than what is 
faced by many a library.

One extreme example from our own profession:

As of today, the subscription list price for the for-profit 
Library Management (Emerald) is EUR 11,819 (Ulrich's).   That's 
$14,600 US (Bank of Canada currency conversion service, June 18, 
2010).  Compare this with the MAXIMUM institutional cost for 
ACRL's College and Research Libraries at $80 US for non-member 
institutions outside of the US and Canada.  This is a difference 
of well over a hundred fold in subscription cost for these two 
journals, and I would argue that of the two, it is ACRL's College 
and Research Libraries that is the more prestigious.  I do 
acknowledge that single subscription costs are of limited 
applicability in the world of bundled and largely consortial 
pricing.  Also, this is an extreme example.  Cost differentials 
in the range of 4 to 10-fold appear to be much more common (that 
is, the cost of one journal on a per-article basis can be a four 
to 10 times as much for another journal of similar or every 
higher quality.  Imperfect though this example is,  it is 
illustrative of the wide difference in costs between different 
publishers which does not necessarily correlate in a positive 
manner with quality.

The original analysis for this example is from my book, Scholarly 
Communication for Librarians, Chandos Publishing: Oxford, 2009. 
The cost differential has increased since the time the book was 
written; the ACRL cost is stable, while the Emerald cost has 
risen considerably.

[Disclosure:  I am co-coordinator of the ARL and ACRL Scholarly 
Communication Institute webinar series, Building Strength through 
Collaboration, however this has nothing to do with ACRL 
publications or membership].

Heather Morrison, MLIS
The Imaginary Journal of Poetic Economics