Pricing and other means of charging for scholarly journals: a literature review and commentary
(source: Learned Publishing, Volume 21, Number 4, October 2008 , pp. 248-272(25))

"There has been a clear upward trend over the past 50 years in traditional listed print subscription prices. The more recent trend towards electronic publishing has made possible new ways of charging for journals, such as differential pricing structures and bundling of journals which are purchased through license fees/charges (both of which enable libraries to buy significantly more journals, but at the same time make it more difficult to analyze prices). We are now also seeing a new emphasis on the 'author-side payment' model. This article analyzes pricing and charging policies and trends, illustrating how these are affected by the complexities of the evolving journal system."

SERU (Shared Electronic Resource Understanding), la fin des licences ?
(source: Couperin, France)

Un résumé en français de cette recommandation NISO publiée début de cette année, qui "ne se substitue pas à une licence, mais peut donner des éléments sur ce qui est généralement acquis en termes d’abonnement aux ressources électroniques."

Demystifying Batchload Analysis

A l'attention des collègues en charge des relations avec les éditeurs/fournisseurs de données bibliographiques.

Via Cataloging Futures

Lonsdale, Ray and Armstrong, Chris (2008), Aggre-culture: What do e-book aggegators offer?, Library & Information Update 7(4):pp. 28-33.

The market for e-books has taken off, particularly in the world of education. Aggregators provide easy access to large collections of titles from many publishers through a single interface. The article is a comparative review of ten aggregators with collections available in the UK, and points to emerging trends.

(Déposé sur E-LIS)

Galyani Moghaddam, Golnessa and Moballeghi, Mostafa (2007), The Importance of Aggregators for Libraries in the Digital Era. Interlending & Document Supply 35(4):pp. 222-225.

Aggregators are one of the important content providers for libraries. Libraries have been working with publishers and aggregators for many years; however, the issues related to aggregators are not well documented. Aggregators have been helping libraries to facilitate their services to users but they have some disadvantages for libraries such as the lack of library influence in selecting individual titles; the lack of control over the contents of aggregator packages and the confusion of library users when accessing different packages. This paper defines different types of aggregators and discusses their importance for libraries in the digital era. The paper provides a useful overview to researchers in any field, enabling them quickly to achieve a clear picture of aggregators in the electronic environment.

Déposé sur E-LIS (06/04/08)

Le JISC a publié une étude intitulée:

Scoping Study for a Registry of Electronic Journals That Indicates Where They Are Archived (pdf)

A propos de la nécessité d'un "registre", d'un outil où centraliser les informations relatives aux périodiques électroniques: où sont-ils archivés? quels sont les accès possibles? comment "tracer" les mouvements entre éditeurs, entre plateformes (agrégateurs et autres fournisseurs)? L'objectif serait bien évidemment de disposer d'une sorte de support d'aide à la décision (choix des types d'abonnements, choix des packages, etc.). L'étude passe en revue notamment une série d'initiatives qui se sont penchées ou se penchent sur cette question.

Via DigitalKoans

SERU: A Shared Electronic Resource Understanding (pdf)

Ce document "est une tentative de codification des bonnes pratiques en matière de vente de ressources électroniques sans licences."

Extrait du communiqué de presse:
SERU offers publishers and librarians the opportunity to save both the time and the costs associated with a negotiated and signed license agreement by agreeing to operate within a framework of shared understanding and good faith.
Publication of SERU follows a trial-use period of June through December 2007, during which time librarians and publishers reported—all positively—on their experiences using the draft document.
The SERU Working Group was launched in late 2006 following the recommendation of participants in a meeting exploring opportunities to reduce the use of licensing agreements. The 2006 meeting was sponsored by ARL, NISO, the Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers (ALPSP), the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC), and the Society for Scholarly Publishing (SSP). More information about the SERU Working Group, including FAQs and an electronic mailing list, can be found here.

Via DigitalKoans

Pour mes collègues ERM / BICfB:

PRG (Primary Research Group) va publier une enquête (payante) sur les pratiques des bibliothèques en matière de licences concernant les ressources électroniques.

"The study presents data from 90 libraries – corporate, legal, college, public, state, and non-profit libraries – about their database licensing practices. More than half of the participating libraries are from the USA, and the rest are from Canada, Australia, the UK, and other countries. Data is broken out by type and size of library, we well as for overall level of database expenditure. The 100+ page study, with more than 400 tables and charts, presents benchmarking data enabling librarians to compare their library’s practices to peers in many areas related to licensing. Metrics provided include: percentage of licenses from consortiums, spending on consortium dues, time spent seeking new consortium partners, number of consortium memberships maintained; growth rate in the percentage of licenses obtained through consortiums; expectation for consortium purchases in the future; number of licenses, growth rate in the number of licenses, spending on licenses for directories, electronic journals, e-books, and magazine/newspaper databases; future spending plans on all of the above; price inflation experienced for electronic resources in business, medical, humanities, financial,market research, social sciences and many other information categories; price inflation for e-books, electronic directories, journals, and newspaper/magazine databases; percentage of licenses that require passwords; percentage of licenses that have simultaneous access restrictions; spending on legal services related to licenses, percentage of libraries that have threatened to sue a database vendor; percentage of libraries that have been threatened with suits by database vendors; number of hours spent in reviewing license contracts; percentage of contracts that require contract terms be kept secret; level of awareness of the terms of other libraries contracts; contract terms regarding inter-library loan; success rates in seeking changes in license contracts;percentage of libraries that have paid an article processing fee or received a rebate as compensation for open access; number of articles obtained through digital repositories; planned development of digital repositories; use of journal archives provided for free after an embargo period; use of Google Scholar; percentage that report loss of perpetual access to journal archives; percentage of journal contracts that guarantee perpetual access; use of grants for financing databases; use of charge backs and departmental contributions to finance database licensing; percentage that outsource copyright clearance; plans for the elimination of paper-base course reserves; expectations for renewing current database subscriptions; number of databases tried on a free trial basis; rated reliability of usage statistics obtained from database vendors; staff time spent on service interruption issues."

Quelques tendances:

"• Mean spending by corporate and legal libraries in the sample on
Ebook licenses was $48,000.

• The mean number of independent licenses for electronic content
held by the libraries in the sample tripled from 2000 to 2007.

• 19.42% of the licenses held by the libraries in the sample
restricted the number of simultaneous users.

• Consortium purchases accounted for a mean of 30% of the database
licenses by the libraries in the sample.

• College/university libraries’ single largest consortium partner
accounted for a mean of just over 41% of contracts, twice as much as for
public or government and non-profit libraries.

• Participants reported spending an average of $7,300 on dues and
fees to consortiums.

• Libraries reported mean price increases for full text and
newspaper and magazine databases of 9.43% in the past year.

• The mean reported annual increase in the price of medical and
biochemical information was 8.13.

• Participants estimated spending an average of 290.49 hours of
library staff time reviewing contract terms from vendors of all kinds of
licenses for content in the past year.

• A shade more than 7% of the libraries in the sample had ever been
threatened by a publisher or information vendor with any form of legal
action for contract abrogation.

• Nineteen percent of libraries with expenditures below $35,000
believed they had “a good idea of what others were paying” fo rtheir
licenses, nearly four times the rate of libraries with database
expenditures exceeding $500,000.

• Twenty-three percent of the libraries in the sample currently had
institutional digital repositories.

• Just over 14% of all libraries surveyed indicated that they
extensively used free access to back issues of some journals that have
an “embargo” period before articles become available without charge."

Via ResourcesShelf

Toujours bien triste de devoir faire de la pub pour nos amis hollandais gloutons. Mais bon. Vous le savez, l'éditeur publie une newsletter (gratuite, tiens), LibraryConnect. Dans le dernier numéro, il est question de services/outils 2.0. Et, sans rire, ce qui tient lieu d'édito stipule:

"Web 2.0, Library 2.0, Office 2.0, Health 2.0, Government 2.0, Education 2.0. We just can’t get enough of 2.0! There is some hype around 2.0 somewhat reminiscent of the dot com bubble period, but for our organizations there are and will be real impacts of 2.0 concepts and technologies."

Ben oui. Au sommaire, donc:

- CrossCheck helps verify originality of publications
- Library 2.0: The new e-world order
- Scopus podcast: Using a popular device to reach users
- Using RSS to connect with your users
- Elsevier strategically invests in Web 2.0 technologies
- Elsevier & Web 2.0: A sampling
- 2collab, new collaboration tool, debuts in November on ScienceDirect and Scopus [ 2collab est le de.icio.us d'Elsevier ]
- Web 2.0 and scholarly publishing

Via Prosper

L'Academic Database Assessment Tool (ADAT) du JISC est un outil qui permet de comparer - dans le cadre de négociations - des agrégateurs de revues, des plateformes de bases de données ou de e-books. Voir la méthodologie ici.