The document discusses challenges faced by both primarily non-open access publishers and open access publishers. It also outlines two major intermediary models - the lease model offered by aggregators and the own model offered by agents. The rest of the document provides rules of survival for agents and aggregators in the future, focusing on collaborating with customers, adding value, curating quality sources, and embracing new technologies.

1. 1
Overview, Strategic Direction & Future
for Publishers & Intermediaries
UKSG • 8 April 2019
Sam Brooks
Executive Vice President, EBSCO Information Services

2. 2
Landscape for Academic Journal & Book Provision
PRIMARY PUBLISHERS
• For-profit companies
• Scholarly societies
• University presses
INTERMEDIARIES
• Agents
• Aggregators

3. 3
Primarily Non-OA Publishers Face Challenges
• Competition with open access publishers and each other
for editors, authors and usage
• Direct pressure from some governments (and less directly from
some funders) to move to open access
• Pirated research paper repositories (e.g., Sci-Hub)
siphon usage and can affect renewals & price increases
• Protecting revenue in core markets & expanding into new markets
• Adapting to new technologies

4. 4
OA Publishers Face Challenges
• Attracting authors
−Impact Factor? # of Citations?
−Government incentives? University incentives?
• Generating usage
−Indexed in discovery services with quality metadata?
−Indexed in high-usage aggregated databases?
−Indexed in traditional subject indexes?
−Quality of linking from discovery services & databases?

5. 5
LEASE (via Aggregators)
• Offers customers a large, fixed
subscription collection
• Drawback: Selection is limited to
particular items negotiated for inclusion
• Drawback: The collection does not
provide customers with ownership of
content
• Benefit: The collection greatly
expands the breadth of content
available
OWN (via Agents)
• Offers customers items
one at a time
• Benefit: Selection is much larger
than lease model
• Benefit: Purchases offer perpetual
access for customers
• Drawback: Customers cannot
afford to own everything
Two Major Intermediary Models

6. 6
RULES OF SURVIVAL FOR THE FUTURE
Agents

7. 7
Agents
Collaborate with customers to find out
what they want & need

8. 8
• Circular dependence exists
between users, libraries
and vendors
−Vendors can’t exist without
funding from libraries
−Libraries depend on vendors
to make products / access
good for library users
• Libraries will share what they
want & need if vendors are
willing to listen and respond

9. 9
Agents
Be financially responsible,
as margins are razor thin
Agents

10. 10
Customers of Agents
Before you move packages “direct,”
carefully consider the impact on your library
(and on your agent)

11. 11
Add value not just for purchases of individual
print and electronic books & journals, but also
for publisher e-collections and e-packages
Agents

12. 12
Use new technologies, with the knowledge of
what is purchased, to automatically improve
the accuracy of links to e-journals,
e-packages, e-books and e-collections
(via pre-validated links)
Agents

13. 13
Use cross-publisher knowledge to keep track
of titles moving into and out of packages;
and communicate it to customers
Agents

14. 14
Agents
• Invest in new technologies with open APIs
• Avoid forced bundling
• Allow “best of breed” purchases by customers

15. 15
Aggregators
RULES OF SURVIVAL FOR THE FUTURE

16. 16
Collaborate with customers to find out
what they want & need
Aggregators

17. 17
Avoid playing the “numbers game”
by inflating collection quantities
by including low quality “journals”
corrupting research
Aggregators

18. 18
Evaluating Information:
• The researchers at Stanford's Graduate School of Education
assessed how well students evaluate online sources of information
• 7,804 student responses were reviewed
• The researchers were "shocked" by how many students failed
to effectively evaluate the credibility of that information
• Most Stanford students couldn't identify the difference between
a mainstream and fringe source
The Cornerstone of Civic Online Reasoning
Stanford History Education Group
November 22, 2016

19. 19
Sam Wineburg, a professor of education
and history at Stanford University and the
lead author of the study, said the following to
National Public Radio (NPR):
“The kinds of duties that used to be
the responsibility of editors, of librarians
now fall on the shoulders of anyone who uses
a screen to become informed about the world.”
If Librarians
Don’t Ensure
Students
Are Presented
with Quality
Sources,
No One Will
It’s our
responsibility as
a community to
police this

20. 20
Accept responsibility as curator;
Employ subject bibliographers to take
ownership over what is or isn’t included
Aggregators

21. 21
Cabell’s Scholarly Analytics Blacklist includes the
following criteria (among others):
• Hijacked journal (a fraudulent website created to look like a
legitimate academic journal)
• The journal or publisher claims to be a non-profit when it is
actually a for-profit company
• The owner/Editor of the journal or publisher falsely claims
academic positions or qualifications
• The journal provides a fake ISSN

22. 22
Cabell’s Scholarly Analytics Blacklist includes the
following criteria (among others):
• Insufficient resources are spent on preventing author
misconduct (that may result in repeated cases of plagiarism,
self-plagiarism, image manipulation, etc.)
• Editors do not actually exist or are deceased
• The journal includes scholars on an editorial board
without their knowledge or permission
• The founder of the publishing company is the
editor of all of the journals published by said company

23. 23
Cabell’s Scholarly Analytics Blacklist includes the
following criteria (among others):
• The website gives a fake address
• The journal publishes papers that are not academic at all
(e.g., essays by laypeople or obvious pseudo-science)
• Falsely claims indexing in well-known databases
• Falsely claims universities or other organizations as partners
or sponsors
• Machine-generated papers are accepted

24. 24
You can affect vendor behavior.
Insist on proper curation.
Customers of Aggregators

25. 25
License quality non-open-access
full-text journals, with enough unique titles
to add value to the library’s collection
Aggregators

26. 26
Where to find quality non-OA journals?
• High usage in traditional subject indexes
• Journal ranking studies published in
peer-reviewed journals
• JCR Journal Citation Reports
• SJR Scimago Journal Ranking
• Eigenfactor

27. 27
Embrace open access as an opportunity.
Aggregators

28. 28
Curate and provide high-quality
subject indexing for open access publications
-- with accurate links to full text
Aggregators

29. 29
Search engines matter;
biases for one thing
mean biases against another
Aggregators (& discovery vendors)

30. 30
“Not only does EBSCO support DOAJ with a generous financial donation
every year, their EBSCOhost and EBSCO Discovery Service platforms
generate a lot more referrals to DOAJ than any other online platform.
EBSCO’s strong support of both open access and open source make
them unique among library vendors worldwide.”
Lars Bjørnshauge
Managing Director
DOAJ (Directory of Open Access Journals)

31. 31
• Invest in new technologies with open APIs
• Avoid forced bundling
• Allow “best of breed” purchases by customers
Aggregators (and other vendors)

32. 32
If some library vendors ruled the grocery store
Why is a
toothbrush
$64.99?
Sorry, you can’t just buy
a toothbrush. It is sold
as a product bundle with
baby food, shoelaces,
batteries and light bulbs.
*Cartoon inspired by
Tom Fishburn’s “If Cable TV Providers Ruled the World”

33. 33
Questions?
Thank you.