From: Joseph Esposito <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Thu, 1 Aug 2013 21:34:49 -0400

I know nothing about the particulars of the situation under discussion
and therefore offer this comment in the abstract.

If the use of published material is indeed showing a decline, is that
because the quality of the publications is declining, because the
research at a particular university has changed direction, because new
discovery systems are changing the rankings, or something else? I
suspect that one item in the "something else" category is the growth
of various forms (shades?) of Green OA, which has a tendency to drain
off some usage from the publisher's primary site. Thus the usage may
actually have increased, but that usage may not be captured by the
library's statistics.

A way to check this (since you can't get figures from every Web site
that hosts an article) is to look at the impact factor.  If it is
stable of rising, then there is a strong case for "usage drain" via
Green OA.

This situation is precisely why many publishers are supporting CHORUS
over SHARE or the acronym of the day:  to capture all usage.

Joe Esposito


On Thu, Aug 1, 2013 at 8:19 PM, LIBLICENSE <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> From: "Friend, Fred" <[log in to unmask]>
> Date: Thu, 1 Aug 2013 10:40:37 +0000
>
> Steve, thank you for your interesting contribution to this thread.
> Clearly PPV will not suit all institutions but it is an example of the
> imaginative approach we should be adopting. Presumably like other
> usage-based models it does incur some risk that too many PPVs will
> outstrip your budget, but my guess is that after the first year you
> would get a feel for the level of demand? And as you point out,
> continuing down the traditional path of expensive bundles is a big
> risk in itself.
>
> Fred Friend
> Honorary Director Scholarly Communication UCL
>
> ________________________________________
>
> From: Steve Oberg <[log in to unmask]>
> Date: Tue, 30 Jul 2013 22:12:16 +0000
>
> > However the case does highlight the way in which bundled pricing no
> > longer reflects the financial or academic situation in universities
> > today.
>
> One reaction I have to this thread is to suggest that collectively, a
> closer examination be given to institutional pay-per-view (PPV) rather
> than subscriptions to bundles. My institution began this process more
> than two years ago in response to the reality that approximately one
> out of every four dollars of our entire acquisitions budget was going
> to three large publishers and their bundles/deals. Admittedly we are a
> small institution and our budget pales in comparison to many others.
> It is very important to judge this option, and others, in the context
> of the local environment. But the basic premise is, no more big deals
> or packages, period. This is a far more radical and, I suggest,
> user-focused demand driven content outlook than most PDA/DDA
> discussions, which focus mainly on e-books or print monographs.
>
> We have institutional PPV set up for three major publishers; for two
> of them, there is literally no visible difference to our users when
> accessing this content vs. journals for which we have subscriptions.
> That's by design. As a result, we have seen very strong usage growth
> among a greatly expanded universe of available journal articles in
> full text than we could ever have afforded to provide previously. Is
> this model risky? Are there specific details to flesh out to
> understand what exactly this entails? Yes, of course. But we faced
> even greater risk by continuing the traditional way. We now have far
> more journal content available for less cost. We are in discussions
> with other journal publishers to explore expansion of this approach.
> The message we convey to publishers is, something is better than
> nothing. If an individual journal or a package subscription at a high
> price is all they will offer, we are not interested and they will get
> nothing. But if they will work with us to enable institutional PPV,
> they will get something, a revenue stream.
>
> Steve
>
> Steve Oberg
> Assistant Professor
> Electronic Resources and Serials
> Buswell Memorial Library
> Wheaton College
> Wheaton, IL  60187