Counting the cost of e-journal admin
Has anyone out there stopped to measure the costs of administering
e-journals? By this I mean the cost of subscription management and access
provision. It seems to me that as the process of acquiring journals changes
a great deal of simplicity is being lost with consequent and often quite
substantial impacts on cost.
As a result the ASA is interested in how we can ease this process, and would
welcome feedback on the following (and will be happy to share any results
with the list):
1. Have your costs for e-Journal admin risen over the last year & roughly by
how much?
2. Do you see this increasing/decreasing over the next year?
3. In which areas does your agent help most/least currently?
4. If there were additional resources available from your agent where these
would be best targeted?
The background on this is that libraries now buy their electronic journals
in a number of different ways - from the normal subscription process through
an agent to consortium deals no two of which ever seem to be similar let
alone the same! In some cases however the journals publishers request that
the journals must be ordered directly - even when the library may have
preferred to use an agent. Others are acquired through consortia but may be
paid for by the individual members through an agent, directly or through the
consortium. The so-called Big Deal with deep discount prices has also
greatly increased the administrative complexity for everyone concerned, they
tie in funds for lengthy periods of time and may, if budgets are suddenly
reduced, force libraries to cancel titles from smaller and high quality
society publishers to keep some of these Big Deals going.
These different means of acquiring content mean that each individual library
has had to assume more control over the management and reporting on the
electronic journals taken. This is a role that is generally performed by
subscription agents who have the necessary infrastructure available to
provide value-added services such as special billing arrangements,
interfacing to library ILS services and management reporting. Instead if
each library is now doing more not less subscription administration the
overall costs are likely to rise in terms of staff time and resources
especially if libraries have to set up their own systems.
Agents costs will also rise if more and more electronic titles are handled
direct at the insistence of the publishers (generally the larger publishers)
leaving agents to handle the specialist, more varied and widely scattered
smaller publishers. According to the UK Competition Commission, the big six
publishers account for about 66% of all expenditure on STM journals for UK
libraries. If their titles are removed from the agency list, the average
cost per subscription will increase very significantly and, obviously,
additional costs will eventually be reflected in their bills to libraries.
With this trend and pricing models requiring a variety of different means of
handling electronic journals, the complexity and cost of handling
subscriptions may well be increasing much faster than we currently know.
Agents of course were put on this earth to help reduce the libraries costs
and administration enabling them to reduce the amount of unproductive
administration performed by skilled individuals. It seems this sensible
approach has gone into reverse!
Isn't it time we thought about simplifying the system, so that once again it
can be handled by properly qualified intermediaries to the benefit of all?
This may require agents having to learn new and sometimes costly skills,
publishers agreeing to work with them on electronic journals as they do with
paper, and agents and consortia agreeing to cooperate more closely in the
future.
If the customers want this to happen, the suppliers will eventually provide
it. And it would be good for publishers since it would make it simpler for
them to sell their journals individually or in packages to their clients in
a well managed supply chain, thus reducing their administration costs also
(publishers subscription management costs may also have increased by between
5 and 15% according to Sally Morris). In short, such a move would be worth
it financially to everyone.
Rollo Turner
Secretary General
Association of Subscription Agents and Intermediaries
PS apologies for cross posting
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