Levine-Clark, Michael, “Purchasing Articles on Demand: Implications for Libraries and Publishers,” Invited. Emerging Trends in Scholarly Publishing Seminar, Washington, D.C., April 19, 2012.

1. Purchasing Articles on
Demand: Implications for
Libraries and Publishers
Allen Press Emerging Trends in Scholarly Publishing Seminar
Washington, D.C.
April 19, 2012
Michael Levine-Clark
University of Denver

2. Definitions
 Patron-Driven Acquisition (PDA)
 Faculty Requests/Input
 Use Data
 Demand-Driven Acquisition (DDA)
 Meets immediate need

3. Why DDA is Ideal for Books
 High cost per use (but cheap unit cost)
 Low overall use
 As percentage of collection (40% not
used)
 Per item (most only used 1-2 times)
 High publishing output
 ~1 million titles annually (UNESCO)

4. Books Cataloged 2000-2004
(126,953 Titles)
4+
uses, 18.8%
0
uses, 39.6%
3 uses, 8.2%
2
uses, 12.8%
1 use, 20.6%

5. Books Cataloged 2000-2004
(126,953 Titles)
4+
uses, $1,084,
576
0 3
uses, $2,284, uses, $473,06
532 0
2
1
uses, $738,43
use, $1,188,4
5
18

6. Annual Book Production, 2009
1200000
1000000
800000
600000
400000
200000
0
DU Purchases North All United World
American States (UNESCO)
Scholarly
(YBP)

7. But What About Articles?

8. Journals – Current Landscape
 Big deals
supplemented by
 Single-title subscriptions
supplemented by
 Article-level acquisition
 On the margins
 ILL
 PDF purchase

9. Journal vs. Article
 In electronic environment, the article is
what matters
 The unit most people want
 (Relatively) affordable per item

10. Articles
(Why DDA May Not Be Ideal)
 Low cost per use (but generally
expensive absolutely)
 High overall use
 Smaller publishing universe (but still
impossible to get it all)
 ~350,000 titles (EBSCO)

11. The Big Deal
 Cost effective
 Incredible deals for University of Denver
 Lots of bang for the buck
 Access to many more titles than possible
with title-by-title selection
 Probably not sustainable with current
academic library budgets

12. The Journal Inflation Problem
80.0%
70.0%
60.0%
50.0%
Recurring
40.0%
Non-Recurring
30.0% Services
20.0%
10.0%
0.0%
FY 2007 FY 2008 FY 2009 FY 2010 FY 2011

13. How Do You Replace
the Big Deal?

14. Replacing the Big Deal
 Medium or small deals
 More title-by-title selection
 Article-level purchase

15. Current Options
 Expensive PDF lease
 $30+ per article
 Print/download
 Given to end user
 Nothing for library
 Nothing for next user
 Works well for marginal material – not
enough demand to warrant a subscription

16. Current Options
 Read-only short-term loan
 Cambridge University Press model
 Low cost ($5.99) in line with normal cost
per use
 24-hour access
 No download/print
 Another use = another payment
 Might work for core material – but limited
utility

17. A Goal: Replace Big Deal –
Similar Access Level for
Similar Spend

18. Replace Big Deal
 Benefit libraries
 Access to wider range of journals/articles
 Greater budgetary flexibility
 Benefit publishers
 Maintain most revenue in face of
stagnant/shrinking library budgets
 Maintain viability of journals
 Increase access to journals (beyond core)
 Benefit both
 Move from journal to article

19. Possible Models
 Expensive PDF purchase
 $30+ per article
 Print/download
 Full-text access on publisher site
 Available to next user
 Potentially lower cost per use

20. Possible Models
 Cheaper short-term loan
 $1.99
 Print/download
 Single user with expiration

21. Possible Models -
Requirements
 Need a sustainable price
 Need a cap
 At some point the library owns the article
(or journal)
 Do publishers need a guarantee, or do
we assume that good content will be
acquired?

22. Thank You