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E-textbooks - Jisc Collections Top 50 Reading List Title Licensing Pilot - Will it be seen as a success or a failure?
The document outlines Jisc's strategy for e-textbooks, emphasizing licensing, market understanding, and collaboration with institutions. It discusses the current challenges and strategies for improving e-textbook accessibility and affordability, focusing on developing evidence-based business cases and engaging with publishers and communities. The strategy aims for a three-year plan with ongoing evaluation and adaptation to enhance e-textbook usage in the UK education sector.
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E-textbooks - Jisc Collections Top 50 Reading List Title Licensing Pilot - Will it be seen as a success or a failure?
- 1. E-textbooks – ournew strategy Caroline Mackay, Jisc Collections April 2019
- 2. E-textbooks licensing What havewe done so far? • E-textbook publisher strategy group • Publisher licensing – core textbook pricing • Publisher licensing – collections of subject specific non core titles • A lot of work, to little effect
- 3. Top 50 ReadingList Pilot •New plan 2017-18 •Collaborative licensing •Determining the Top 50 titles •Licensing options •Institutional replies not what we expected…..
- 4. Top 50 ReadingList Pilot 0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100% Sole Licensing Requirement One of many licensing options chosen Total interest Perpetual Annual Library Licence 1:1
- 5. Our new affordablee-textbooks strategy • Understanding the current UK marketplace situation • Research, Influence, provide support to institutions • Not just about licensing • How much does the UK spend on textbooks?
- 6. Do you know…. •How much is spent on e-textbooks across your whole institution? • Where the budget is coming from? • What is being purchased? Courseware? 1:1 access? • What are the licensing terms? • Whether there is any duplication of content/spend? • If there is the opportunity to coordinate or reduce the spend, or negotiate better terms? • Who makes the decisions about changes to budget structures? • What is the business case required by the library to invest in institution wide e-textbook licensing models?
- 7. 1:1 licensing • Buildbusiness cases from evidence base • Create tool kits • Analytics and evaluation • Should Jisc have further involvement?
- 8. Courseware • Who islicensing courseware in the UK? • Background study • How can Jisc get involved?: o Licensing terms o Interoperability standards o Ownership of student data o Usage evaluation, student attainment, return on investment o Ongoing advocacy
- 9. Diverse ecology • Helpingsmaller publishers to enter the marketplace • Discipline specific collections • Agreements available via Jisc or SUPC framework
- 10. Open e-textbooks &OER • UK – limited adoption of open textbooks • Can UK authors create open textbooks? • Cultural challenges • Significant investment • Significant resourcing • Institution as an e-textbook publisher project • 4 institutions, 8 textbooks, tool-kit
- 11. Open e-textbooks &OER • Jisc involvement: • Encouraging and supporting the community • Engaging with OER providers and platforms • Standards – interoperability, discoverability, metadata, accessibility
- 12. Is this strategyright? • 3 year plan • Organic • Reactive to new developments • Community engagement – feedback and interest
- 13. Thank you Caroline Mackay LicensingManager Caroline.mackay@jisc.ac.uk
Editor's Notes
- #3 Relatively new to Jisc when compared to journal and database licensing E-textbook publisher strategy group – three years. E-textbook licensing experts. Some with 1:1 licensing experience, some with library licensing, all with limited budgets Pearson – library licensing entire cohort, number limited. Discounted pricing structure. Didn’t fit market’s needs despite best efforts Lot of publisher interest. Uncertainty on models / pricing. Licensed a few subject specific collections but no uptake. Nice content but no budget
- #4 2017-18 new focus – development with e-textbook publisher strategy group Collectively license key in demand textbooks. High volume, high discounts Top 50 titles determined from a number of sources, suppliers, strategy group member records, sense checked against COPAC 50 reduced down to 33 (removal of print only, “how to” guides) . 10 publishers including those you would expect. Preferred licensing models; Perpetual library purchase – one or more online copies of a textbook for use by a single user, or with a fixed number of access credits which may need to be topped up regularly Annual Library Licence – multiple concurrent access with pricing based on number of students requiring access. Via VLE 1:1 Licence – Personal online copy for each student purchased in perpetuity. To be downloaded onto personal device 1:1 Licence with adaptive learning platform – as above but with additional software for testing the reader’s understanding of a module/chapter. 48 HEIs responded. Big thank you to all who responded but…. Responses weren’t what we expected.
- #5 For each title, institutions could select licensing option/s preferred Only 7 institutions required 1:1 licensing – of those only 16 instances of 1:1 being sole licence requirement – shown in yellow First column - Sole licensing requirement Green shows perpetual purchase – just under 80% Red shows library licence 20% 60% of responses were for one licensing requirement. Perpetual library purchase is still preferred by a long way. Middle column – one or many licensing requirements Green (perpetual) reduced to just under 50%, similar number to annual library licence in red 1:1 yellow still low – under 10% Where multiple licensing choices identified, perpetual library purchase was in all cases one of the models required Final Column shows total interest 60% total interest still perpetual purchase. 5% 1:1, 35% library licence Problem – anticipated much more interest in 1:1, far less interest in perpetual. Down to negotiating pricing for 10s or 100s of copies rather than the 1,000s. Publisher interest low Fail fast – but good evidence/data Not a waste of time. Funding for 1:1 and library licensing is not in place at vast majority of institutions Most institutions have to rely on perpetual purchases with access credits Most institutions have no policy on licensing e-textbooks and have no idea how to go about it Little library involvement, left to departments How can Jisc best help institutions now?
- #6 Rather than churning out more agreements that are unsuitable for current marketplace, lets help institutions by conducting research into e-textbooks, influencing direction and standards. We need to understand requirements, barriers. Stress – open to feedback. Want to spend next 3 years working to really help institutions. 4 strands; 1:1 licensing, Courseware, Diverse Ecology and Open and OER Organic Three year plan with regular deliverables, short, medium and long term goals Sense checked against overseas consortia Should not rush into committing new / more spend with publishers. Investigate alternatives Developed with e-textbooks publisher strategy group. Open to feedback. UK spend - Disclaimers - Only a partial view Different periods covered in the data Still working on getting the full set of figures Sources: SCONUL data SUPC Jisc Collections SCONUL stats show 16/17 spend on e-books at: £17-21m £14m (6months) via the framework of which £4.5m is categorised as ‘e-textbooks’. £700k + via Jisc Collections agreements £6.5m/yr average going direct to Pearson, Cengage, OUP, CUP and McGrawHill excluding all the others….outside framework and possibly (likely) outside library £x unknown – Amazon? PA digital home sales was £142 million in 2016 Sounds a lot, but compare to Outsell forecast figures for 2019 Global HE $3.1 billion on e-textbooks and a further $4.2 billion on whole course solutions US HE $2.5 billion on e-textbooks and a further $1.4 billion on whole course solutions.
- #7 Underpinning the strategy is the need to build an evidence base. The deep dive project aims to answer questions such as: How much is being spent across the institution with textbook publishers, where that spend is coming from and for what – is any being spent on courseware, 1:1 access. The business and licensing models attached to the spend If there is any duplication of content / spend If there is opportunity to coordinate that spend, reduce the spend, or negotiate better terms for the spend Who makes the decisions about a changes to budget structures? What evidence is needed to do this? What about procurement? What is the business case required by the library to invest in new models that are across the institution? Very difficult for an institution to decide whether there is appetite for or indeed potential budget for, investing in 1:1 access, courseware or open and affordable textbooks. Jisc pilot alongside financial x-ray service. 2 – 4 pilot institutions. Work closely with finance and academic departments and library staff Identify and locate payments for textbooks Analyse – titles, licensing terms, costs. Opportunity to coordinate, remove duplication, streamline purchasing, increase library visibility Work with library to develop business cases specific to that institution. With a view to business case being accepted and implemented. Results widened to provide other institutions with templates and methodologies for how the data and conversations may best take place
- #8 Once the financial pilot is establish we have a solid base to build on. 1:1 licensing – define. Personal copy in perpetuity, download to own device. Or Library licensing sufficient numbers for all relevant students via VLE. NOT US inclusive licensing – will be paid for by institution Create business plans for evidence base Work with institutions towards implementation – (with experts) undertake research, data gathering, collation and development of business case. Implementation plans alongside partners and experts. Creation of tool kits and licences to provide other institutions with a guide for development Longer term, look at analytics and evaluation, benchmarking Bespoke Jisc service? Create the toolkits and allow market to develop?
- #9 Definition – quizzes, tests, adaptive learning which re-presents learning material in a different manner depending on student’s learning style. Little known centrally about take up and spend in UK. Consultant – meeting with publishers, academics using courseware, librarians, teaching and learning experts and aggregators Types of institutions using / investing in courseware. Types of courseware, Key subject areas, how embedded into teaching and learning, usage and analysis Value for lecturers, Costs – financial and training etc Build our strategy based on findings Jisc involvement Create model licence – incorporating industry standards for interoperability, to prevent vendor lock in Ensure that institutions own the student data Guidance on how to interpret usage data, evaluate usage, report maximum returns on investment in terms of student attainment Ongoing advocacy as technologies develop
- #10 Explore how we can help smaller textbook publishers with a route to market. Encourage alternatives to the bigger publishers Small independent publishers, discipline specific content. Small stable of textbooks that institution already licenses over 50% of. Perhaps via a procurement exercise. Lighter touch on licensing, like our journals SMP programme Develop a list of publishers, help from SUPC, COPAC, surveying members. Feel free to suggest publishers Supplied via Jisc Collections or via SUPC framework
- #11 Limited take up / adoption of open textbooks. UK open textbooks website lists a few examples Added open textbook publishers to the Jisc Collections website for visibility. Search “Open Textbooks” in the catalogue – BC Campus, OpenStax Heard from one librarian who now checks JSTOR OA books before purchasing e-books now. Small victory! Significant cultural challenges in encouraging authors to write textbooks/monographs let alone in open. 2027 REF will require monographs submitted to be OA. Look out for Graham’s forthcoming article in Against the Grain on author motivation. Publishing in an OA venue might affect career prospects particularly early career researchers . Only a journal article in a high impact journal will get a researcher an interview. Jisc plans additional promotion around the article. Bringing it to the attention of Office for Students. UUK OA Monograph group also building evidence base on challenges, to inform future OA policy on monographs. If anyone has any bright ideas how to challenge current culture, be happy to hear from them Publishing / adapting Open textbooks and OER requires significant investment and resourcing within institutions Jisc can build on experience of Inst as etextbook publisher project. Tool kits. Help insts set up and expand on in house publishing to full NUP.
- #12 Encourage community in taking ownership to build capacity and skill sets. Growing Academic Led Presses and New University Press movement – understand more presses are being launched, planned to be launched Engaging with OER providers and platforms to understand current offerings – shape future development. How easy is it for institutions to use platforms to create their own OER. Can we define an OER champion and use them for best practice study As before Jisc can provide guidance on interoperability standards, metadata, licensing, accessibility Some ideas: OpenStax – these titles can be adapted to be UK relevant. Poland already has. Source academics to adapt text? Quick win Identify key areas (new subjects etc) convene writing sprints with relevant academics, review each others work? Living Textbooks – as per Univ Liverpool Inst as etextbook publisher – publishing on to a website. Quick to publish, easy to add to, update etc Clearing house – matching authors / content with ALPs / NUPs Interested to hear any ideas from you.
- #13 To reiterate 3 year plan Organic – some may fall by wayside, might shoot off in new directions Want to help institutions by getting necessary ground work in place. Any comments, ideas please let us know. Share your plans with us.