RE: NIH Public Access Mandate Passes Senate

[<Toby.GREEN@oecd.org>]

Possibly, but I think you underestimate the professionalism of 
the publishing staff in IGOs. I think the key reason is that 
IGOs, as social science institutions, tend to produce lengthy 
reports which lend themselves to book, rather than journal, 
publishing models. As is well known, the margins on scholarly 
book publishing are somewhat slimmer than for journals and the 
risk of losing money is higher. As a consequence, the deals 
offered usually require a subsidy (usually hidden as a clause 
requiring a minimum number of copies to be purchased by the IGO). 
However, now that more publishers are publishing books online in 
journal-like subscription collections, I'm expecting a renewed 
interest in the acquisition of book content which should lead to 
better terms being offered. This might be a boon for the smaller 
IGOs who can't afford to run their own publishing operations.

Toby

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
[mailto:owner-liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu] On Behalf Of Tony McSean
Sent: 07 November, 2007 12:16 AM
To: liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
Subject: RE: NIH Public Access Mandate Passes Senate

Toby Green wrote:  (snip)

>You don't understand how IGOs can contract out and lose money at
>the same time? This is because they don't contract out
>everything they publish. This is because not everything they
>publish is attractive to commercial publishers.

--------------------------

It might also be because they strike a poor deal with their contractor. It's
one of the reason why contracting out and the private finance initiative has
been so fraught for the UK public sector in general.

Tony

Tony McSean
+44  7946 291780