From: <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Tue, 17 Jan 2012 14:45:13 +0000

As a publisher I sense librarian dissatisfaction about how publishers
offer their wares to libraries. Traditional single journal
subscriptions are condemned as too expensive; discounted multi-journal
'Big Deals' often entail taking a proportion of unwanted,  unused,
content.

Here, I want to briefly explore an idea which might go some way to
meeting libraries desires for better value from publishers, and
creating a closer relationship between payment and usage.

Take all amounts as purely hypothetical, simply for the purposes of
argument. Suppose, for an annual fee of $1500, a library could access
all my journals and the backfiles - see
http://multi-science.metapress.com Downloads would be charged at $5
each. At year end, if the library had had more than 300 downloads, we
would invoice them for the balance. So that the library is protected
from unlimited liability, we would set a cap, the maximum we could
charge regardless of how many downloads - say $10,000 for a major
institution, $3500 for a smaller one. To further eliminate
uncertainty, agreements could be for 3 years, with fixed price
increases - which could be 0%. 3 years worth of data would then give
an equitable basis for renewing, renegotiating, or cancelling the
contract. The core point is that, through this approach, steadily we
move towards a world where payment is for usage only, which is where
librarians seem to want to be going.

It may be that this model or something like it is common anyway, so I
am merely re-inventing existing practice: it would be useful to be
told. It may be that there are practical reasons in the way libraries
work, perhaps in terms of budget allocations or purchasing cycles,
that make this idea a non-starter, and I would be interested to know
about such constraints. Or it may even be a useful thought.

I would welcome feedback from the library community.

Bill Hughes
Director
Multi-Science Publishing Co Ltd