RE: Raym Crow on publishing cooperatives

["Margaret Landesman" <margaret.landesman@utah.edu>]

Joe, Peter,

Further to David's point, many acquistions budgets have been flat 
for some years.  Ours anyway may well start going down. On-going 
expenses to the largest publshers go up - raises low in 
percentage but high in dollars.  This leaves fewer dollars for 
other purchases.  Unfunded technology infrastructure and staff 
costs also eat away at budgets.

Any responsible publisher must surely be putting together a plan 
that anticipates a very substantial drop in library 
subscriptions.

Why not experiment with hybrid OA?  Commercial ones are. Or move 
to the ALPSP or university presses. There are the offers from 
publishers promising, as they are on my campus, to double the 
price and triple the number of subscriptions - one assumes with 
bundled subscriptions.  We can't afford this scenario. ( Not to 
mention how mad it makes us.)

Campuses are getting serious about Institutional Repositories and 
beginning to incorporate contract language on IR rights, as well 
as passing faculty resolutions encouraging or requiring this.

We are tying up the resources of both libraries and scholarly 
publishers in delaying tactics - they make it hard for us to put 
our articles in and we make it hard for them to say no.

What a waste of effort on the part of two groups, both under 
great financial stress, which share the same mission.

On an Open Access model, I can still send you the money - I just 
send it up front when the article is accepted.  This saves the 
library a great deal of staff and technology costs in 
authentication and linking.  And surely might save publisher 
costs in the same way.

Best,
Margaret Landesman
Collection Development
University of Utah