Getting Control of Your Online Content Dissemination
1. Getting Control of
Your Content
It’s Ten O'clock: Do You Know Where Your Content Is?
SSP Annual Meeting June 7, 2007
Liz Brown, Project MUSE
http://muse.jhu.edu
2. Project MUSE
• An online collection of over 300 humanities
and social sciences electronic journals from
over 60 non-profit publishers.
http://muse.jhu.edu
3. Strategies for Online Dissemination
• The first of AAP’s mission agenda items:
“To expand the market for American books
and other published works in all media.”
• What is the best approach to disseminating
online journal content?
• Is there such a thing as too much
dissemination?
• Are there important issues to consider with
duplication of content?
http://muse.jhu.edu
5. Getting control……
• Duplication of content in print and online
versions.
• Duplication of online versions
• Regaining control after duplication mania
• Completeness
• Version of record???
http://muse.jhu.edu
6. From One Extreme…
• Some humanities and social sciences
journals still not available anywhere online
• Worries about print subscription revenues
• Smaller titles, but also widely-held core
titles
http://muse.jhu.edu
7. To Another….
• Journals present in many databases from many
vendors + multiple electronic platforms.
• Trying different approaches, see what works best.
• May reap high financial rewards.
• Some deals may turn out to be more trouble than
worth.
• Also risk losing control of content.
http://muse.jhu.edu
8. When to Scale Back?
• Sticking with the more lucrative agreements
• Regaining control over content
• Unexpected third and fourth party deals,
content showing up in interesting places
• Sorting through agreements for newly
acquired titles
• It’s now, figuratively, the “10 o’clock” of
this session’s title!
http://muse.jhu.edu
9. “Saturating” the Market
• Problematic to put content in multiple
products purchased by the same market
• Duplication causes problems for libraries
• Dilution of usage and usage data
– A problem for both publishers and subscribers
• Choose products which target specific
markets
http://muse.jhu.edu
10. Competing Versions
• Which is the best, and most complete version
available?
• Web-only content:
– Scholarly articles but also supplements, data,
multimedia enhancements
• All content present in all online versions?
• Fun with DOI multiple resolution
• Version of record declaration needed for whole
journal?
http://muse.jhu.edu
11. Example: Project MUSE
• BTW, MUSE treats the print version as VOR
• MUSE article versions cannot get updated or corrected
• Project MUSE’s new title selection policy
• Takes into account presence of prospective titles
elsewhere
• Aims to help high-quality scholarly journals go online
for the first time
• New program for start-up titles: price-neutral addition
to Premium Collection, individual title orders, content
generally exclusively in MUSE.
http://muse.jhu.edu
I think we probably can all feel somewhat reassured by John and Ammy’s presentations. It sounds like author versions may not be as scary as publishers might fear, and at any rate, John and company are making sure we will gain and keep control over all the different versions of journal articles. Some great work is being done!! So, with those issues resolved, we can rest easy, and I’m going to turn from the article level to the journal level, and issues surrounding publishers’ efforts to place print journals online. I’m not talking about different versions of the same content (rough drafts, pre-prints, author versus publisher versions, and so on), but the presence, or duplication, online of the same journal content in several venues. For the sake of this session, I’m talking about producing online issue reproductions on a platform (JSTOR, MUSE, BioOne, HighWire) or placing some or all of an issue’s content in an article database produced by aggregators (EbscoHost, Gale, Wilson).
To give some context for my remarks: I work for Project MUSE, an online collection of humanities and social sciences electronic journals from non-profit publishers, including the Johns Hopkins University Press which operates Project MUSE. I manage the process for collection development and title selection for MUSE; in fact, I’ve just been working with title selections for 2008 this past month! I work pretty closely with our publishers, both prior to their joining MUSE and after they are on board. And, a major thing I’ve just worked on this past year is the revamping of our collection development, or title selection, policy, both with input from our publishers as well as from library subscribers. So, my outlook will include, and maybe even emphasize, e-journal content in the humanities. So, please, STM publishers, if I say something that seems, outrageous or something, please just say to yourself, oh, yeah, there she goes again talking just about the humanities, she’s not completely crazy (even if it’s not true, and I am actually saying something outrageous).
The mission of the publisher is to disseminate content and expand their market. They have an obligation to their journal editors and other constituents to get the content out to the appropriate audiences, and they want to be able to get their content into the hands of (or on the desktops of) as many readers as possible. What is the best approach to getting online journal content to as many readers as possible? When is an approach not enough? Or, when is an approach….too much? Is duplication of e-journal content that big a deal, even a subject to discuss here at SSP? Or does it have serious issues that publishers should think carefully about. Well, I think I can answer that last question: yes.
But I will probably end up not answering the other questions but posing many more. And, when we have time for comments and questions, perhaps publishers in the audience might be willing to share opinions or experiences.
Into the short allotted time, I will try to cram the following: Duplication of content in print and online versions. Duplication of online versions Regaining control after duplication mania Version of record?
On one extreme, many print journals in the humanities and the social sciences still have not ventured online, and the publishers of some of these journals are actually still quite resistant to going online (much to my dismay). These publishers depend on the subscriptions or the society membership dues for the print issues, and don’t wish to jeopardize that. I am not just talking about really small titles, but mega successful, core titles. So, in this scenario, not only is there NO duplication of online content in different products, there’s no online duplication of print content at all! And, that’s a bad thing for users who want easy access to both the big, famous titles and the smaller titles. And, of course, in this “if it’s not online” it doesn’t exist world many people operate in, remaining offline can be very dangerous for the smaller titles. I have noticed some of these publishers have ventured their titles onto JSTOR with nice big protective moving walls, so that’s encouraging for libraries and users; it’s the current content that remains unavailable, or duplicated, online.
On the other extreme, there are journals which appear in every article database put out by every major vendor, in addition to having an online version on a hosting platform, or maybe two!! I think that in the nineties, some publishers realized that going online was going to be very important, but they didn’t necessarily know which avenues would end up being the solution to their needs, or even which venues would even survive. So, they put their journal content everywhere!! Kind of like, throw your content out there, and see what sticks. That may sound more out of control than it really is, but I think control has become a major issue for these publishers. -some publishers may reap high financial rewards and don’t think it’s a bad thing to have their content everywhere. In the university press community, for instance, there is a lot of pressure on journals departments. -many publishers, both large commercial and small university presses, have begun to scale back this online duplication, however. Especially when the more financially rewarding avenues are now apparent. I think we’ve all noticed announcements coming out from different publishers over the last couple of years noting pulling content from certain vendors in order to push users to a preferred venue to get the content.
And, as I mentioned, scaling back has been a matter of not just eliminating deals that aren’t paying off, but also a matter of regaining control over one’s content. A very extreme, and probably well-known, example of this---and I am not going to name names or point any fingers---was when, a couple of years ago, many authors discovered their articles for sale on Amazon.com. Indeed, many journal publishers I know of were in this situation and were literally not able to tell (much less explain to the authors) how this content had wound up where it had, not to mention at a price over which the publisher had had no input. Publishers have been signing agreements to include their content in different vendor’s products, and some of these vendors then have placed the content with third and fourth parties. Now, to be fair, I don’t know the circumstances and am not pointing fingers at this vendor, but there was genuine surprise and mystery on the publishers’ sides about what was going on. At some point, one wants to know exactly where one’s content really is! The lesson learned for publishers is to make sure you’re aware of third party agreements a vendor may have, and that you can opt out of them if desired. When a publisher acquires or agrees to publish a journal, generally the information on any existing vendor full-text agreements are made known during the transition to the new publisher. Or, are they? It’s been known to happen that editors who are faculty members and publishing on their own may not necessarily keep good track of this kind of information, especially if there is regular turnover of the editors. It pays to do a little look-up in Ulrich’s or on the vendors’ journal lists in these cases! I’ve known of publishers who have, to their horror, discovered a whole free online run of a recent acquisition somewhere!
I think another problem is too much duplication in products which sell to the same markets. Academic libraries have long had to deal with such issues as the need to buy one big set of journal content along with another big set of content, just to get all the journals needed, then have to deal with “paying twice” for a substantial overlap (among other concerns). I think another lesson learned is to try to retain the control over where specifically your content goes. For instance, if your title is in say, BioOne, to try to use a non-Project MUSE example, you might not want to put this title’s content in a product BioOne core customers are also likely to buy. If possible, opt to work with an aggregator which will allow you to choose specific products that target the different markets you want to reach. This way, you can avoid lessening the value of the online products in question and diluting your usage, especially if your title participates in any products which pay usage-based royalties. In the end, you can also keep better track of how many readers your content has and other important information about how your content is used.
Another issue with duplicating journal content among products is “equity” of versions. Publishers often take advantage of the online platform to publish material that is Web-only. Perhaps the table of contents in the print version lists the online-only articles hosted on the publisher’s platform. Does the publisher also deposit this full-text in other products or platforms which include this journal. Hopefully! There are all sorts of interesting wrinkles with print versus electronic content. Besides adding multimedia components, scholarly articles and supplementary materials to online versions, maybe a journal maintains a forum online to discuss articles, then publishes the summary of the online discussion in the next print issue. There may be cases where a publisher innocently decides to produce a special product based on one of the recurring journal issues---not thinking that libraries receiving the print version of those issues are going to question where is the online version and may be a bit confused at having to buy a whole new online product to get to that content online!
We’ve wrestled with these kinds of issues at Project MUSE and, while the print version is the version of record for all our titles (we are faithful to the print version, warts and all, although we do include links in articles to errata from following issues), we continue to discuss at what point the electronic version may become the “version of record.” Another example from Project MUSE of the issues with duplication of content: I mentioned in the beginning that MUSE has just revamped its collection development policy. As a secondary publisher of online journals, MUSE is non-exclusive, and obviously would never try to tell our participating publishers what else to do with their content. If our publishers ask us for advice on where else they should put their content, we can certainly share what we have been told by the academic library market. We developed our collection development policy to ensure our collection grows slowly and responsibly, in a coherent, balanced way that meets the needs of our library subscribers’ curricula (in other words, ensuring that we have a marketable product) while still serving the need of our member publishers have to disseminate their content. In order to serve our markets, we do need to be aware and take into consideration where else a title is online when we select what to add. Of course, we don’t exclude titles based on being online elsewhere, especially in aggregator article databases which may have short-term contracts and no archiving. We do strive to help excellent, high-quality scholarly journals establish an online version for the first time and to be their provider of choice. A good percentage of our selections for title additions are in that category.
I’m sure I’m out of time, at this point, there are definitely a lot of issues in addition, I’m sure! Thank you for the opportunity to address everyone today.
