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