From: Joseph Esposito <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Mon, 5 Dec 2011 17:46:15 -0800
On the other hand, David Prosser has apparently led a negotiation that
forced down some of these prices for aggregations. The participants
appear to be cloaked with an NDA, but it is my impression that
Prosser's highly creative tactic was simply to say no.
Joe Esposito
On Mon, Dec 5, 2011 at 4:22 PM, LIBLICENSE <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> From: "Hamaker, Charles" <[log in to unmask]>
> Date: Sat, 3 Dec 2011 12:04:49 +0000
>
> John Abbott gets it about right. Publishers will and do lie and
> subvert any system, gaming them at their leisure. In the mid-eighties
> Stuart Grinnell and I published research showing that Pergamon over a
> 5 year period had prices invariably going "up" based on who knows
> what, but from their propaganda, because of increased output. ( or the
> funniest, increased postage costs from Europe...Weren't most
> publishers at that time drop shipping from East Asia??) But as we
> tracked the number of journal articles over a period (5 years if I
> remember correctly) we found that the number of articles in their
> journals seemed to increase or decrease without regards to pricing,
> prices which were completely separate, always going up, almost in a
> straight line year over year. Never of course going down when output
> dropped. Similarly with Michael Mabes famous number estimating a year
> over year growth in the journal system of articles correlating with
> number of increaes in scientists, I seem to remember that at about 3%
> a year, a number you couldn't correlate with ISI's measures of journal
> article output. But 10%, 15% and even more price increases un related
> to output measures. Now publisher's have found a new way to subvert
> what was supposed to be a win win situation, the big deal. First of
> all slap an NDA so no one can systematically show what the real price
> increases are then immediately start planning how to get beyond that
> 5% cap in the license. One example, just remove a portion of your
> output where you REALLY want more than 5% a year. Make it must have
> content, (there actually is still some of that) and off to the races.
> The cap, in case anyone cares to remember was to protect library
> budgets. Ha Ha very funny our publisher friends respond. The no
> cancellation clauses were to protect publishers. So a win win. But in
> practice as John implies below, perversion of the clear intentions at
> least in the goals of libraries. I realize this probably needs a whole
> article detailing all the ways in which publishers have subverted the
> intent of these license agreements, but we'd still have publisher
> agents provacateur arguing, but look we produce more so proportionally
> we have to charge more. NO such thing of course as savings based on
> volume, those all go to the publisher side of the equation. You'd
> think 5% a year would be enough for anyone, but no, not at all. I've
> got publishers that are clocking in once again at those 10% to 15% a
> year increases. Anyone else? --Don't tell me their names, they might
> sue you for NDA ....!!!
> Chuck Hamaker
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