Top university presses join e-subscription for libraries

[Hibush]

Sixteen of the top university presses in the US have arranged to sell their entire top line of publications to university libraries as an ebook subscription.

This looks a lot like the "big deal" that gave big publishers monopoly power over libraries, in that any serious university library would have to buy this package.

On the good side, this deal appears to be initially financially viable for both the publishers and libraries. The trajectory in both cases was looking bad financially, and the  rights model they depended on for digital content was not consistent with how people really use that material.

The publishers have teamed up with a broker to handle the transactions and marketing. One librarian quoted was concerned that the company they are paying for this service makes money. Is that concern naive, in that universities regularly pay money-making businesses for services and this is not different. Or does it reveal a fundamental flaw in the model that will give the distributor the same market power that was abused by journal publishers?

There are lots of provocative, but unpursued, statements in the article. I'm keen on interpretations from librarians, UP-book authors and UP-book users!

[traductio]

From a reader's perspective, that's exciting. If I've learned anything about research during the pandemic, it's that e-books make my life easier, even if I've been resistant to reading them.

Although in reading them, I've discovered I interact with the material in a very different way. When the pandemic began, I read Paul Ricoeur's Rule of Metaphor from e-cover to e-cover, so to speak. It's a weighty tome -- 500ish pages of dense philosophy. Because I couldn't keep notes in the margins as I normally would, I kept them in a notebook. I had to read more slowly and do more summary work, but the end result is that I know the book much better than I would have otherwise.

Since then, I've been devouring e-books, mostly  from my library's rather substantial subscriptions -- anything by Routledge or Palgrave I can download as a PDF. It's pretty great. What I can't find through my library, I've also found through archive.org or the Gutenberg Project. (A lot of what I've been reading has been in the public domain, which helps.)

From an author's perspective, I'm mostly encouraged, but still cautious. If my books receive greater circulation, great! If my publishers can stay in business, even better! I'll never make money from my university press books (not directly, at least), and I've gone out of my way with the last two to publish in open-access presses. The coin of the realm for me is circulation.

But I would have preferred that a company not driven by profits take on the role of aggregator. From the article you link to, it seems like, so far, everyone wins. But I'm concerned about the future -- I hope that libraries and publishers can remain an appropriate counterweight to De Gruyter.

[Hibush]

Momentum to open access is building fast.

Today, Cambridge University Press announced contracts with 140 US universities. That is up sharply from the end of December, when it was nine Univ of California campuses and four others.

The story is the same outside the US. "In Europe, many institutions have already adopted the read-and-publish model in response to an open access initiative led by European research funders called Plan S. At European institutions where Cambridge University Press has read-and-publish agreements in place, an average of 70 percent of authors publishing in its journals are now choosing to publish their work openly."

We have a pretty good idea of how quickly the change will happen. "Cambridge University Press has a goal of making all research published in its catalog of 400 journals fully open access by 2025."

Faculty at non-subscribing universities benefit in having access to CUP publications, but will have a larger barrier to publishing in them. The article quotes Jefferson Pooley, professor of media and communication at Muhlenberg College on that point.

The 140 subscribing universities cover about 1/4 of US authors who publish in CUP journals.

[Parasaurolophus]

Although I prefer to read physical copies of things, the reality is that almost all my research uses electronic resources. And I prefer it that way, actually, because they're easier to access (and I can ctrl + f through them!).

That said, OSO truly sucks. And I don't like e-books: just the pdfs, please.

[Sun_Worshiper]

This would vastly increase my likelihood to read or cite a UP book.

just the pdfs, please.

Amen.

[Hibush]

Although I prefer to read physical copies of things, the reality is that almost all my research uses electronic resources. And I prefer it that way, actually, because they're easier to access (and I can ctrl + f through them!).

Searchability is the killer app that makes electronic resources the way to go.