Re: ALPSP Maximising your Secondary Rights, London 12/7/11

[Joseph Esposito <espositoj@gmail.com>]

Fred,

As you well know, there is no likelihood that prices will be 
lowered unless (a) a lower price would bring in a new class of 
customer, thus increasing overall profit or (b) a lower price is 
the only alternative open to a publisher who otherwise faces a 
cancellation.

I remain perplexed by the thrust of this discussion.  I maintain 
that every member of this list would be making the very same 
decisions that the publishers they love to hate are making, with 
allowances for differing opinions about the best brand 
management.  It's hard for me to say that Elsevier or Wiley is 
"immoral" when I would be doing pretty much the same things as 
they are if I sat there and had their acumen.    We really have 
to get beyond talking about good guys and bad guys and think 
about different institutions acting in their own interests, which 
are often hostile to one another.

Joe Esposito

On Tue, Nov 8, 2011 at 3:48 PM, FrederickFriend 
<ucylfjf@ucl.ac.uk> wrote:

> My thanks to Joe and to Pippa for their clarifications of the
> term "secondary rights". Joe's last two examples do in fact go
> into territory which can cause not only librarians but also
> teachers and researchers some concern. Many in the academic
> community do not feel that they should have to pay publishers for
> use in teaching of articles they and their colleagues have
> written. It is a basic feature of teaching that you introduce
> your students to the latest research, and it goes against the
> grain to have to pay for such re-use.
>
> Also, I can understand payment being justified if a
> computer-indexed database of articles is sold for profit, but
> there are many such possible re-uses which help to improve
> research productivity and which do not involve anybody making a
> profit from the re-use of research reports, for example using
> techniques such as text-mining. I still feel that this is
> sensitive territory. Maybe if librarians, researchers and
> teachers could see the price increases being reduced because of
> the income from secondary rights we would not be as suspicious,
> but there is no visible relationship at present, so it just looks
> like more exploitation of the academic community.
>
> Fred Friend
>