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