From: Rick Anderson <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Wed, 25 Jan 2012 04:48:16 +0000

Hi, Sean --

> I ran into you at the ALA and you gave me a brief elaboration
> of this theory (adding that you know full well there was a lot
> to unpack -- and you didn't mean to suggest all academic work
> was fungible).

For the Good of the Order, I'm going to <snip> right there so as not to
create a ten-foot-long email string. And hopefully I can respond
effectively by simply saying that I think you're trying to fit too much
cargo into the very small boat of my argument. To (hopefully) clarify:


1. While I did suggest that researchers might settle for cheaper articles
on their topics of interest if they had to pay for the articles
themselves, you're right that I didn't intend to suggest that any two
articles on the same topic are perfectly fungible. I'm saying only that a
researcher might well settle for the good fit rather than the perfect fit
if the cost of the perfect fit were a) significantly higher and b) borne
by the researcher. I'm not saying this would be a good thing, only that it
would be a likely thing.

2. While I did suggest that researchers who bear the cost of articles they
use might also, in some cases, end up simply changing the focus of their
research, I did not intend to suggest that this would be a good thing
either. I only wanted to point out that what we call "faculty demand" is
distorted by the fact that the faculty feel no cost pressure. You suggest
that "making scholars aware of the costs associated with their preferences
would increase the awareness of this fundamental structural problem - a
necessity for political rather than purely economic reasons." That's a
very reasonable suggestion; unfortunately (in my experience anyway)
faculty generally have little if any interest in being made aware of the
costs associated with their preferences, and in fact very often resent any
attempt to make them aware. Common responses tend to be along the lines of
"Figure out how to make it work; that's your job" or "You subscribe to too
many of That Other Department's journals; cancel some of those" or simply
"It doesn't matter how much it costs; that's the core journal in my
discipline and we simply must have it."

3. I'm not suggesting that if the library were to "make faculty aware of
the price of their preferences," this would effect any change at all in
the structure of the scholarly information economy. I'm suggesting that if
faculty had to pay for the articles themselves, it would effect a change
in their research behavior.

4. Rationing is not punishment. Rationing is the inevitable result
whenever high demand meets low supply. It has always happened in
libraries, it happens now, and it will continue to happen for as long as
our budgets remain limited.

I hope that helps, or at least makes sense -- and I think I came in under
ten feet (barely)!

---
Rick Anderson
Assoc. Dean for Scholarly Resources & Collections
J. Willard Marriott Library
University of Utah
[log in to unmask]

On 1/24/12 5:33 PM, "LIBLICENSE" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

>From: Sean Andrews <[log in to unmask]>
>Date: Mon, 23 Jan 2012 12:12:33 -0600
>
>On Thu, Jan 19, 2012 at 5:26 PM, LIBLICENSE <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
>> From: Rick Anderson <[log in to unmask]>
>>  Date: Wed, 18 Jan 2012 22:37:24 +0000
>>
>>> Yes -- to the degree that publishers are able to command very high
>>>per-article prices. Whether they're able to do so will depend on the
>>>degree to which their articles are a) indispensable and b)
>>>non-substitutable. This points up one of the fundamental structural
>>>problems of the scholarly marketplace: the fact that the consumers of
>articles don't directly feel the pain of high prices.
>
>I think
>the more fundamental structural problem is that there is (financial)
>pain involved in accessing articles largely produced by labor paid for
>by the academic community itself.  On the other hand, it would seem
>that making scholars aware of the costs associated with their
>preferences would increase the awareness of this fundamental
>structural problem - a necessity for political rather than purely
>economic reasons.
>
>>> A patron who insists that the library provide access to Article X
>>>might suddenly become willing to settle for a related-and-cheaper
>>>Article Y if he had to pay the price difference himself, or he might
>>>change course and investigate a different topic altogether if Article X
>>>and similar articles from other publishers were unaffordable. But since
>>>the library's end-users have no exposure to the cost of the articles
>>>they use, they have no incentive to consider either the dispensability
>>>or substitutability of their requests.
>
>While I don't think you're really suggesting that academic interests
>be guided by the market price of access to the materials it kind of
>sounds like you are.  As rational as this sounds from a purely
>economic standpoint, if we think of economics as embedded in a larger
>context it is really problematic.  I suppose before the advance of
>digitization it would have been more keenly felt - scholars would not
>study the contents of some archive unless they could get a grant to go
>study them (needing money to subsidize the geographical relocation and
>biological sustenance of the researching organism for the extent of
>the archive exploration, along with any fees associated with access to
>the research materials themselves.)
>
>Now, although many of these physical hindrances are overcome, we have
>the introduction of what Peter Frase calls the "Anti-Star Trek theory
>of posterity." He summarizes it thusly:
>
>>> Given the material abundance made possible by the replicator, how
>>>would it be possible to maintain a system based on money, profit, and
>>>class power?  Economists like to say that capitalist market economies
>>>work optimally when they are used to allocate scarce goods. So how to
>>>maintain capitalism in a world where scarcity can be largely overcome?
>
>Most of the prices in question are not "market" prices per se
>precisely (as you point out) because they are set by the monopoly
>owners of the copyright.  And, just so I'm clear in my assumptions,
>the per article price I see on the website when I go as a
>non-subscriber to a journal is not the same that the University of
>Utah will pay - and more than likely, the price UU will pay is
>different than any number of other large or small universities (though
>because of NDAs we don't know exactly what they are paying per article
>or per subscription.)
>
>This makes talking about the price system in relation to academic
>publishing sort of like using Ptolemaic math for calculating escape
>velocity: it's easier, for the sake of simplicity to assume the earth
>is the center of the universe.  Therefore, from your perspective as a
>library director, the relevant actors in the price system are the
>patrons who cluelessly deplete the library budget because they don't
>feel the effects of their choices.  But the alternative seems to be to
>arbitrarily punish (through direct rationing) scholars who are
>interested in an arbitrarily high-priced journal articles.  And since
>the higher priced articles are likely the most current and relevant
>research (though that's no guarantee) it effectively punishes them for
>attempting to add to that body of current and relevant research.
>
>>> Rationing has always been what libraries do, and we will continue to
>>>do it for as long as we have limited resources with which to provide
>>>access. The question (or one question, anyway) is whether we'll have to
>>>continue rationing in a fundamentally silly way (at the journal title
>>>level) or will be able to figure out a way to do it in a way that makes
>>>sense (at the article level).
>
>I think I see what you're saying - and it has been an enlightening
>line of argument re: the end of subscriptions and especially the Big
>Deal.  But it really seems like changing the system through the price
>system is a really roundabout approach.  All the balls (or almost all)
>are in the court of the people arbitrarily setting the prices so that
>the "fundamentally silly way" remains cheaper overall than the
>apparently more sensible way.  But it's worth noting that even these
>distinctions are a result of the system they have set up: it wouldn't
>be any more or less expensive or troublesome to give access to all
>articles in a journal as opposed to just the most popular one (or the
>only "desired" one) if the prices weren't set that way.  How would
>making faculty aware of the price of their preferences affect this
>change economically?  My sense is that, over a long period of time,
>you argue the publishers might come to their senses and lower their
>price for the article in order to make it more competitive with the
>"substitutable" article that might be priced lower.  This would
>reintroduce the price system so that they might feel its pinch instead
>of libraries.  But as an academic, it is hard to imagine how this
>would work.  For me, article X and Y might be related (though it might
>always be necessary to see article X in some form, if only to be
>familiar with its contents).  But for another scholar, approaching
>article X from a different discipline or with a different problem in
>mind, article X might be more related to article S or article W,
>making the market of substitutable products very wide indeed.
>
>It would take a very aware publisher - one keyed into not only
>effective demand (i.e. those willing to pay) but those who might find
>the article and be unwilling or unable to pay for it.  This is further
>diluted by the fact that there are all kinds of informal economies
>among academics and scholars wherein people ask colleagues at other
>universities to get them copies of articles for which their
>institution is unable or unwilling to provide access.  Because of the
>perverted price system, this is largely felt to be completely ethical,
>even if is likely illegal.  This, too, makes faculty some of the least
>likely candidates to have these incentives change their economic
>behavior.  Their political behavior: perhaps.
>
>Would it not be a more economical use of our energy to focus more of
>it on changing the irrational universe publishers have constructed
>rather than trying to rationalize it through faculty incentives?  I'm
>also perfectly open to the distinctive possibility that I completely
>misunderstand your proposal, in which case I long for your blunt
>correction.
>
>Thanks,
>Sean Andrews