A presentation to the International Coalition of Library Consortia. The presentation summarizes how certain library policies lead to consolidation among publishers and has served to marginalized small publishers.

1. Putting Publishers’ Views of
Libraries into Context
Joseph J. Esposito
ICOLC
Albany, NY
April 2015

2. Topics
• The situation of a society publisher
• The ecosystem for scholarly communications
and how it is evolving
• Navigating that ecosystem (by a small
publisher)
• Who wins, who loses
• Options and red herrings

3. Thesis:
Certain library practices have made it
difficult for independent publishers to
sell journals to academic libraries,
driving these publishers into the arms
of large commercial publishers. These
publishers in turn press libraries for
higher prices—a vicious circle.

4. Typical Situation for a Society
Publisher
• Mostly for STM, but some in humanities
• Mostly for journals; occasionally books
• The Board of the society may have little or no
knowledge of the publishing industry except
as authors
• A small industry in advising these clients
(bringing business experience to not-for-
profits)

5. The Publisher Says . . .
• We are small and independent
• Individual subscriptions have been in decline
for many years
• Now institutional subs are dropping fast
• Surplus formerly used to fund multiple
activities (e.g., support for grad students at
conferences)
• With current trends, the program will soon be
losing money

6. What Happened to Individual
Subscriptions?
• In print era society members typically got the
journal free as part of membership
• Most people said it was the #1 benefit
• Library subscriptions were incremental
• Digital library subs, coupled with remote
access, led members to cancel subscriptions
• Near-total reliance on library subs
• Challenge to maintain membership levels

7. Digital Library Subscriptions . . .
• Increase value for end-users (remote access,
search, hot links, etc.)
• Make libraries more valuable to users
• Come at publishers’ expense
• Publishers seek to recapture lost revenue with
price increases
• As libraries became more valuable to users,
they paid a heavy price for it

8. For Professional Society . . .
• Benefits of institutional subscriptions were
short-lived
• Widespread acceptance of Internet use led to
consolidation and price increases
• Library budget woes
• The Big Deal absorbed market share
• Small publishers found it harder to get a
library’s attention

9. Societies’ Next Move
• Become a better publisher to recapture library
market share
• Retain consultants; become active in trade
associations
• Seek better vendors—for software hosting
(“the HighWire era”), sales and marketing, and
production
• All good moves, but hollows out the society’s
capabilities

10. If That Doesn’t Work . . .
• Next step: American University Presses
• 200 journals published by presses (not
including Cambridge and OUP)
• Hopkins, Chicago, Duke, MIT, California
• Provide full array of services; perhaps not the
most robust global footprint
• Alas, the example of the American
Anthropological Association

11. Next Option: Very Large Not-for-Profit
Partner
• As a practical matter, this means the presses
at Oxford and Cambridge
• About 600-800 journals between them in all
fields (inc. STM)
• Global footprint
• Outstanding brands
• Highly competitive
• Plays well to many society members

12. The Empire Strikes Back
• Large commercial publishers (Wiley, Elsevier,
Taylor & Francis) have counterattacked
• Very rich offers
• Many societies find these terms hard to resist
• Furthermore, these are excellent publishers
• Example: American Geophysical Union moved
to John Wiley

13. The Story So Far
• A society publisher seeks library sales
• To get these sales, the society explores several
options, ending up in an agreement with a
large commercial publisher
• This supports Big Deals and price increases
• More money for societies; more money and
clout for big publishers; excellent distribution
• Libraries must fund the entire ecosystem

14. Options to Address This Situation
• Create consortia; increase clout
• Support Open Access publishing
• Develop publishing centers within libraries
• Build IRs and an alternate source for materials

15. Consortia
• As you know better than I, consortia provide
multiple services and benefits
• For small publishers, however, consortia are
even harder to sell to than individual libaries
• Consortia thus accelerate trend for small
publishers to seek an arrangement with large
publishers
• Larger publishers as gateways to libraries and
consortia; cooptation

16. Open Access Publishing
• Speaks to a library’s mission, but not its
existential situation
• Libraries play a small role; value chain of
funding agency, researcher, and publisher
• Publishers increasingly see Gold OA as an
additive revenue stream; again, cooptation
• Provides no relief for small publishers seeking
libraries as customers
• Continue to seek embrace of large publishers

17. Library Publishing
• May be OA, but broader services than that
• May be journal-based or organized around a
single repository (“mega-journal”)
• Typically works with authors from parent
institution
• Peer review is variable, often nonexistent
• Does not provide certification (critical); hence
does not displace established publishers

18. IRs as New Paradigm
• As summarized by Raym Crow (2002):
http://works.bepress.com/ir_research/7/
• Have not lived up to promise (valuable
nonetheless)
• Opportunity with Green OA—but still requires
primary publisher to maintain certification
• IRs likely to give way to commercial
consolidated services (FigShare, ReadCube)
• No relief from pressure from publishers

19. Weather Forecast:
Is the outlook gloomy or sunny?

20. The Case for Sunshine
• Current arrangement lends itself to scale,
consolidation, and operating efficiencies
• Reduced transaction costs (fewer vendors,
fewer customers); enables bigger investments
in technology
• Plummeting cost per article (even as total cost
rises)
• More material available than ever before

21. Or, A Hard Rain’s a-Gonna Fall
• Publishers exploit their size and drive up
prices
• Large publishers dominate library budgets and
block entrance from new or small publishers
• System lends itself to further consolidation
and greater publisher clout
• Market dominance reduces competition;
suppresses innovation

22. The (Inadvertent) Devil’s Bargain
• Lower administration and transaction costs
• . . . result in dominant marketing gateways
• . . . lead to quasi-monopolistic business practices
• . . . brings about higher pricing and less
innovation
• . . . marginalizes smaller publishers
• . . . who in turn sign deals with larger publishers

23. Contact Information
• Joseph J. Esposito
• espositoj@gmail.com
• http://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org
• @josephjesposito

25. Sharing an Ecosystem
• Publishers and libraries are part of the same
ecosystem of scholarly communications
• Ecosystems are neither stable nor sustainable;
they are dynamic
• The health of the ecosystem overall can hurt
all participants
• But some elements will naturally strive for a
dominant role

26. What Is the Context?
• Tight library budgets
• Mandates from funding agencies
• Properties of technology
• The competition
• The library as customer

27. The Budget Problem
• Obviously not news to anyone here
• Research output is up, but budgets have not
kept pace
• New products vie for budget dollars
• The competition among publishers is furious
• Libraries are the battlefield, but the
belligerents want libraries to thrive

28. When You Think about Publishers’
Strategies Concerning Libraries . . .
• . . . don’t think of the library as the publisher’s foe
• . . . think of other publishers as a publisher’s foe
• . . . think of the library budget as a pie that
everyone wants a slice of
• . . . and each year everyone wants a larger slice
• . . . when the pie runs out, publishers eat each
other

29. A Slice of the Pie = Market Share
• Publishers acquire other publishers
• Publishers create service arrangements with
smaller publishers (a professional society
works with, say, Wiley or Sage)
• The smallest publishers don’t get a slice
• Thus the pie—the library—is seen as an
increasingly challenging market that is not
growing appreciably

30. Meanwhile, Mandated Open Access
• Both Gold and Green varieties (different
implications for publishers)
• Gold OA mostly bypasses libraries (access
provided through publisher’s site; fees paid by
authors or their proxies)
• Growth of Gold OA diminishes importance of
libraries to publishers (because they are not
the paying customers)

31. Green Mandates
• Different strategic issues
• Requires either publisher cooperation (e.g.,
CHORUS) or repositories (hosted by whom?)

32. Caveats and Disclosures
• I am not a librarian—nor a lawyer (I am a
Yankees fan)
• Most clients are not-for-profits
• Help organizations make strategic decisions
• No philosophy of scholarly communications
and skeptical about any such overarching
philosophy