From: Joseph Esposito <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Fri, 12 Apr 2013 08:58:22 -0400

Fred,

I have no quarrel with your point that the metrics used by publishers
may not be useful for all concerned in scholarly communications, but I
would like to know what to make of this sentence:

"For the librarian value is measured by the contribution the content
purchased makes to the teaching and research within their institution.
"

Fair enough, but what is that measure?  Is it quantified?  Is it
reported and, if so, to whom?

My sense is that sophisticated publishers would jump on those measure
and adjust their programs in order to get good scores.  This is what
they do all the time.  Librarians care about the number of downloads?
Okay, we will design our systems to generate more downloads.  Whatever
the metric, people will work to meet the mark.

So if publishers are measuring the wrong thing, what is the right thing?

Joe Esposito


On Thu, Apr 11, 2013 at 7:07 PM, LIBLICENSE <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> 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