RE: Interview with Springer's Derk Haank

["Ivy Anderson" <Ivy.Anderson@ucop.edu>]

Anthony,

I don't think that adjustments to publisher packages are 
incompatible with stability in licensing arrangements.  The 
following scenario is to my mind perfectly reasonable:  Customer 
X and Publisher Y are in renewal negotiations for a multi-year 
agreement.  For budget or other reasons, the customer wishes to 
scale back its holdings;  this could be based on usage (as 
described in Tom Sanville's 2004 article, "An Orderly Retreat 
from the Big Deal" 
<http://www.dlib.org/dlib/october04/gatten/10gatten.html>)

or on some other criterion (e.g. cancelling specific titles with 
a clearly-understood licensed value).  Once scaled back, another 
multi-year agreement is entered into, assuring both parties of 
revenue stability for the duration of the renewal.  This is 
exactly what libraries need to be able to do in order to plan 
ahead in the face of double-digit budget declines.  This is not 
the absence of planning, but its opposite:  the responsible 
exercise of planning.

The points I wished to make were two-fold:  1)  libraries must be 
able to reduce the amount of money that is locked up in these big 
deals today or they will choke to death on agreements they can no 
longer afford;  2) in adjusting these large publisher deals, the 
'unit price' of the deal (however calculated) should be 
considered the actual unit price for the purpose of scaling back 
the agreement, not a special discount that is forfeited if the 
license is re-negotiated.

I make this point in order to advance the view that the unit 
price gains of the big deal - which Derk Haank rightly noted as 
representing a correction to the pricing excesses of an earlier 
era - constitute a new normal, and not some special pricing that 
only obtains if the deal remains intact.  Otherwise - switching 
to a metaphor more appropriate to the wintry season perhaps - 
we'll go down like the Titanic, smashing among the icebergs.

- Ivy


-----Original Message-----
From: owner-liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
[mailto:owner-liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu] On Behalf Of Anthony
Watkinson
Sent: Monday, January 31, 2011 3:26 PM
To: liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
Subject: RE: Interview with Springer's Derk Haank

It seems to me that Ivy Anderson makes some very reasonable 
points but I would suggest that it is the "funding ebbs and 
flows" that will represent a problem for any publisher. It was my 
understanding that one of the advantages of the Big Deal for both 
libraries and publishers was that it enabled planning ahead for 
both parties. Those who invest in publishing whether they are 
learned societies or commercial entities demand this sort of 
planning ahead if they are to invest in the constant new 
developments which the user population demands.

Can libraries really not plan ahead and if not why not? Surely 
universities are planning ahead? Is it possible that libraries 
have failed to convince the people in higher education who hold 
the purse strings that there is more research being funded and 
that this is likely (and does) lead to more published articles 
and that they have to be paid for? I have a suspicion that, if 
ARL graphs are anything to go by with their failure to relate 
increase prices to increased number of articles, that ARL as an 
organisation and many librarians have had their heads in the 
sand.

Note - I am not suggesting that the Big Deal does not need to be 
restructured. Who does not? Publishers respond to pressure from 
authors who want to publish. The numbers of authors wanting to 
publish goes up. I am of course assuming (but I would believe 
rightly assuming) that these increased number of authors are 
producing much the same percentage of good papers.

Anthony

Anthony Watkinson
University College London

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
[mailto:owner-liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu] On Behalf Of Ivy Anderson
Sent: 26 January 2011 03:38
To: liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
Subject: RE: Interview with Springer's Derk Haank

Apologies for weighing in a bit late on this thread, but I do
think that some additional perspective is warranted on the
questions that Sandy posed.  While I appreciate the views of my
good colleagues Warren and Syun, as well as those of Mr. Haank,
there is more to this story.

The large publisher deals have indeed expanded access and lowered
the unit cost of journals for many libraries.  ARL charts clearly
show these effects beginning in around 2000, and it would be
disingenuous to claim otherwise.  In this sense, Mr. Haank is
right when he says that the big deals ameliorated the serials
crisis of an earlier era.  What is less salubrious about these
arrangements however, is the way in which they have locked up
library budgets in large, single-block expenditures. If the great
invention of sliced bread is the slices, then these deals do not
qualify because the loaves are frozen and typically unsliceable.

On top of that, unfortunately many structural problems remain in
this market.  The problems can be illustrated by juxtaposing two
other well-known charts, one from ARL documenting the long
decline in the proportion of research university funding
allocated toward libraries, and another reproduced by STM
documenting the equally steady increase in journal publication
over time.  These trends have long been on a collision course,
one that's being hastened by the current economic downturn.  And
as Sandy points out, the increasing budget share consumed by
journal packages has squeezed university presses and other small
market players to near-extinction and reduced the breadth and
diversity of library collections, despite concomitant increases
in book publishing.  Large packages of books, while arguably
offering similar value to the journal big deal, are nonetheless
no easier for libraries to fund than their individual
counterparts when the aggregate spend is sufficiently large.  As
more and more purchasing becomes locked in large block
expenditures, it is becoming impossible for libraries to
maneuver. And with double-digit declines still looming on the
horizon for many libraries, maneuver we must.

What to do?  Of course, there are many efforts afoot aimed at
producing authentic transformation in the form of dramatically
lower production costs and barrier-free access, as well as
important initiatives to re-introduce more non-library sources of
funding to sustain the academic publishing enterprise.  But on a
more incremental scale, and within the market as it exists today,
there is at least one key adjustment to these deals that can
help.  We can collectively weather the current economic crisis by
recognizing that the unit costs inherent in the 'big deal' are
the new norm and making it possible to scale these deals up and
down in proportional ways as funding ebbs and flows, without
reverting to the truly unsustainable pricing of an earlier era.

The unit-cost gains of the big deal that Mr. Haank rightly notes
- redressing an old and egregious imbalance - need to be
preserved in the face of current economic challenges.  It will
have proven to be no gain at all if these arrangements cannot be
proportionately dialed back to accommodate new funding realities.
Unless we can find a way to do that, our frozen bread with the
slices stuck firmly together will become inedible indeed.

Ivy Anderson
Director of Collections
California Digital Library
University of California, Office of the President