Re: A good future for society journals?

["Sally Morris \(ALPSP\)" <sally.morris@alpsp.org>]

The trouble with Fred's recommendation is that, as studies such 
as that by Mary Waltham have shown, the OA model will not work 
for all journals.  Where it will, fine - personally, I would not 
be at all surprised to see an increasing migration towards it by 
all kinds of publishers.  But where the economics simply don't 
work, we must keep looking for a better model - and increasingly 
innovative licensing solutions may well be part of the answer

Sally Morris, Chief Executive
Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers
Email:  sally.morris@alpsp.org

----- Original Message -----
From: ""FrederickFriend"" <ucylfjf@ucl.ac.uk>
To: <liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu>
Sent: Thursday, June 15, 2006 12:56 AM
Subject: A good future for society journals?

> The SSP Conference in Arlington last week left me both 
> optimistic and pessimistic about the future for society 
> journals. The Conference presentations and discussions 
> demonstrated the strength of society journals in respect of the 
> service they provide to their communities. The value of that 
> service is pure academic gold and in my optimistic moments I 
> feel that the journals will not be allowed to disappear. 
> However, I worry that the strategies adopted by the publishing 
> community are increasing the risk to the society journals 
> rather than reducing the risk. The fear seems to be of 
> declining library subscriptions caused by readers' use of 
> Google to access repository content, and the response to that 
> risk seems to be either to attract more readers to the 
> publisher's site, or to ally a society's journals with those of 
> one of the major publishers. My view is that neither of these 
> strategies provides long-term security for a society's journals 
> and does not use the strength of the societies' value to their 
> communities.
>
> Libraries may or may not cancel subscriptions because of 
> repository content, but readers will go to whichever site 
> provides them with the information they need with the least 
> expenditure of time or money. Most readers are unlikely to be 
> influenced by the promise of the "official" version with added 
> features. I am sorry to be brutal but publishers' use of this 
> strategy to avoid cancellations does not have a high chance of 
> success. Likewise a society's decision to place their journal 
> within the stable of a larger publisher may provide a few 
> years' security, but as the major publishers increase their 
> institutional prices to reflect the growing number of journals 
> in their bundle, the greater the risk that those bundles 
> themselves will be cancelled, leaving a society's journals 
> exposed. There is no safety in numbers.
>
> The reason that all of this is so important to society 
> publishers is that their current business model depends upon 
> library subscriptions. The advantage to societies of the open 
> access business model is that it can re-focus their priorities 
> away from selling content towards providing services to the 
> community to which they belong and where their strength lies. 
> The author community and the funding agency community are the 
> best guarantee for the future of society journals, which would 
> provide good value under a publication-charge OA business 
> model. I would regain confidence in the future of society 
> journals if I saw more evidence of strategies which use society 
> journals' strength in their own community rather than their 
> weakness in the community of Google users.
>
> Fred Friend
> JISC Scholarly Communication Consultant
> Honorary Director Scholarly Communication UCL
> E-mail ucylfjf@ucl.ac.uk