From: Rick Anderson <[log in to unmask]> Date: Wed, 18 Jan 2012 22:37:24 +0000 >While I have long thought that different, at least partially usage-based, >charging models (perhaps along the lines of utilities, phones etc) could >be fairer, they are not overall likely to save librarians and readers any >money, unless publishers are able and willing to settle for less income. >Is that the case? 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. 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. 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). --- Rick Anderson Assoc. Dean for Scholarly Resources & Collections J. Willard Marriott Library University of Utah [log in to unmask]