Frances Pinter_The future of the academic monograph

The Future of the Academic Monograph
DrFrances Pinter
Publisher, Bloomsbury Academic
bloomsburyacademic.com

The Challenge:
How to fund
sustainable
open access
for scholarly books in the Social Sciences and Humanities
‘the Long Form Publication’

NOT talking about:
Journals
Textbooks
Reference works
Hard Sciences

Expanding Academic Ecosystem

Pressure on Academic
Community

Shrinking library Budgets

Pressure on Academic
Publishers

Technology driven changes =
$$$$$$$$$

Responses to this pressure

What Now?
Avoid mirroring the print world in the
digital realm
Reduce the old gate-keeping function
of publishers
Design open access models that use the
best of professional publishing services
Experiment with new types of value
chains and partnership

Funding Bodies
Libraries
Academics
Publishers

Branding
and
visibility

Independent verificationof quality

Editing and typesetting
Availability
in a variety of formats

MarketingandSelling

Curation

UC Berkeley Study:
Assessing the Future Landscape of Scholarly Communication

Bloomsbury Academic
London

Bloomsbury Publishing plc
London
New York
Berlin
Doha
Sydney

Bloomsbury Academic Experiment
ThinkaboutIce Cream

Plain
Vanilla
Ice Cream

Ice Cream
Cone

Ice Cream
Sundae

Will this scale up?
Still dependent on sales of
individual units
Still relies on library expenditure to be
the same per book

Change Drivers
Technological change
User expectations
Funding

Change Inhibitors
Old mindsets
Redundant skill sets
Outdated business models
Poor risk support

What is to be done now?
Where do we look for sustainable solutions?

STM journal open access model?
Getting to ‘first copy’ costs are too high
HSS research budgets are too small

Central university funds?
NOtoo many other demands

OAPEN CHANGE
List 6-7 partners form lower down page make close up of page

Paying for the Cost of Open Access Publishing – so far . . .
Relying on:
Print sales
E-sales
Cost savings
Subsidies, grants

Where are the funds that pay for the ‘long form publication’ now?

Library budgets?
YES!

Aggregate Demand & Aggregate Budgets
Create an
International Library Consortium
to pay for publishing costs of the digital file and open access

The Model
Publishers submit titles to the
consortium
Consortium decides what to
‘purchase’ (think about Groupon)
Publishers prepare first digital file
Publish as open access
Publishers sell content in print, various e-formats etc

OLD Print Model
A typical monograph:
400 copies sold to libraries
@ $80 per book

OLD Print Model
$
First copy costs 10,000
Print/bind, marketing/selling
distribution, royalties, library suppliers 22,000
Total cost to libraries 32,000

OLD Print Model
Getting to first copy cost represents 31% of price paid by the library

Consortium Model
If 400 libraries join cost of getting to digital file = $25 each
($10,000 divided by 400)
69% reduction on a print copy per institution

Consortium Model
If 1000 libraries join they pay $10 per title
87.5% reduction per print copy per institution

The Structure
InternationalLibrary Consortium
Tiered charges based on size of
library/wealth of country

The Process
Publishers submit titles to Consortium
Consortium members decide what to purchase (each library with its own decision making process)
Publishers produce digital file
contd

The Process
Publish as open access
Consortium aggregates funds from individual libraries and pays publishers
Publishers sell content in print, e-formats for digital devices and enhanced e-books

Why Not?
Free-rider argument
Add extra metadata/pdfs/epubs for members
Erosion of selection control
Consortia already purchase content

Benefits to Libraries
Simple way of purchasing large
volume of quality content
Greater control of selection
Huge contribution to global
scholarly communications

Benefits to Authors
Publishing expertise retained
Full open access
Easy discoverability
Another metric for readership?

Benefits to Readers
Digital access to high quality research to anyone online
Awareness of other formats and added resources

Benefits to Publishers
Can provide academic and library communities with a sought-after and paid for service
Greatly reduced risk
Concentrate on providing added value

Conceptual mind shift
Uncouple
getting to first copy from other publishing functions and income streams

Conceptual mind shift
Move away from gate-keeping and think about service provision

Conclusion
Make better use of funds already available

The CONSORTIUMBUSINESS MODEL
a Way Forward?

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