Re: universities experiment with paying OA fees

[Adam Hodgkin <adam.hodgkin@gmail.com>]

Why should the advantages of scale always accrue to the big 
battalions? The big publisher's, big aggregator's, model for 
selling subscriptions is increasingly inefficient. There have 
been problems in making 'big deals' stick recently. One suspects 
that the consortia negotiated sizable price reductions. The value 
and quality of individual copyrights is lost within these bulk 
transactions and ultimately that makes for slack and inefficient 
decisions by publishers and editors (and librarians).

The Exact Editions platform allows publishers to create their own 
lists of licensable digital editions on a very modest upfront 
investment (our costs are largely covered by a low commission on 
sales). We started this digital licensing to institutions 
(educational and other institutions are subscribing) with some of 
our consumer magazine partners. And it works:

http://www.exacteditions.com/exact/login.do?username=shop.en.inst

We have just launched e-commerce services for two small publishers:

http://www.exacteditions.com/sawdays
http://www.exacteditions.com/debretts

.... add "/library" to those urls and you will find the prices 
that those publishers are charging for institutional access.

And would be keen to help small/medium academic publishers to get 
their books on-line digital resources, in a framework in which 
each book is licensable on its own to individuals or 
institutions.

If you are not familiar with the exacteditions platform, some 
free Lessig titles to sample:

https://www.exacteditions.com/exact/login.do?username=trial.lessig

Of course, we hope/expect that our platform will become a big and 
influential network through which small publishers can gain some 
of the advantages of scale which accrue to the big aggregators. 
But the emphasis with our system is on buliding the brand and the 
commercial identity of the individual publisher, small though she 
may be. The publishers should control and manage their own 
pricing and subscription decisions and data. There is no reason 
why this has to be abdicated to intermediaries. The future of 
publishing lies with small, innovative, fashion conscious, 
quirky, quality-minde publishers and it always has done. Some of 
them will become big!

Adam Hodgkin
adam.hodgkin@exacteditions.com
http://exacteditions.blogspot.com/


On 18 Jun 2008, at 00:24, David Prosser wrote:

> Sandy
>
> I did say that I wasn't going to convince you!  OK, so what's 
> the answer? The current subscription-based models won't work 
> long-term for small and society publishers as all the comments 
> you make about consolidation and the power of the large players 
> definitely apply here (they can tie-in budgets in big, 
> multi-year deals and they have massive sales forces).  So, if 
> OA does not offer a survival strategy, then what?  Too often in 
> the debate we here about why OA won't work, but little about 
> what the alternative is.  Let's have the model that will allow 
> small and society publisher to thrive in the world market.
>
> I'm not suggesting that the OA route is going to be easy for 
> small and society publishers, but I still argue that for some 
> it will be the best strategy for long-term survival.  It allows 
> them to compete on what they do best, it scales with increases 
> in research funding, and it doesn't require large-scale sales 
> infrastructures.  Transition will be difficult, but nothing 
> compared to the difficulties of not transitioning! 
> Subscription budgets are not going to suddenly increase and I 
> don't think that we can expect a world-wide ban on commercial 
> journal publishers. More of the same means a slow (if they're 
> lucky!) squeezing-out of the smaller publishers.
>
> (A quick word on comparisons to brick-and-mortar businesses - 
> the barriers to entry in the scholarly communications market 
> have never been so low. Intellectual capital is much more 
> important than financial capital in launching a journal.  This 
> makes scholarly publishing very different from bookshops, 
> restaurants, and supermarkets.)
>
> By the way, I would love to have a look around Princeton - is 
> that an invitation?
>
> David