From: Sandy Thatcher <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Fri, 12 Apr 2013 08:20:09 -0500

One of those "different ways" has to do with the revised dissertation,
Many librarians have ceased including these titles in their approval
plans because they subscribe to ProQuest's dissertation database.
Editors know this, so are less eager to publish books based on
dissertations because they won't sell as well as other monographs.
Tenure committees, especially in the humanities, continue to expect
junior scholars to publish one or two books to qualify for career
advancement.  Each of these actors is making a decision that is
rational relative to the goals of the particular actor--librarian,
editor, committee--but as a whole the decisions add up to systemic
dysfunctionality, or what Fred calls a "tragedy of the commons."

Sandy Thatcher


> From: "Friend, Fred" <[log in to unmask]>
> Date: Wed, 10 Apr 2013 22:00:33 +0000
>
> Rick is absolutely right. And another aspect of the different
> perspectives of librarians and publishers lies in way value for money
> is measured. In promoting "big deals", multi-volume purchases, or
> number of hits on databases publishers assume that librarians equate
> quantity with value for money. For the librarian value is measured by
> the contribution the content purchased makes to the teaching and
> research within their institution. Likewise a measure such as a
> journal impact factor is of importance to a publisher but of little
> importance to a librarian - and arguably only of importance to an
> author for research assessment procedures. There is indeed a "tragedy
> of the commons" resulting from different ways of looking at the world
> of scholarly communication, some of the different ways being of
> long-standing while others have grown up as universities and
> publishing businesses have changed over the years.
>
> Fred Friend
> Honorary Director Scholarly Communication UCL
> http://www.friendofopenaccess.org.uk