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This is the final report of the JISC EI-ASPM Project, which was commissioned by JISC to explore whether there are new opportunities and new models for scholarly publishing that would better serve researchers and better communicate and disseminate research findings." />www.jisc.ac.uk/publications/publications/economicpublishingmodelsfinalreport.aspx

This article was written in 1992, well before electronic journals and resources were common. This study examines the economic pressures on libraries, and embraces the possibility that new methods of electronic distribution of resources will help reduce these cost pressures.

This is the ICOLC Statement of Current Perspective and Preferred Practices for Selection and Purchase of Electronic Information. The statement says, "Preferred Pricing Practices - Reaffirmed A. Non-disclosure language should not be required for any licensing agreement, particularly language that would preclude library consortia from sharing pricing and other significant terms and conditions with other consortia. B. Providers should not expect libraries to pay the entire cost of their research and development to bring new electronic products to market. These costs should be shared by the company shareholders and amortized by the provider so current prices for electronic information are sufficiently affordable to encourage experimentation and ultimately widespread use. This strategy will offer providers a better long-term revenue stream from which to recover their research and development costs. C. Libraries should have the option to purchase the electronic product without the paper subscription, and the electronic product should cost substantially less than the printed subscription price. See Section A. below for more detail. D. Bundling electronic and print subscriptions in non-flexible multi-year packages must not be the sole pricing option for purchasing electronic information. For example, licenses and purchase agreements for electronic journals, after the initial pricing year, cannot remain on an unchangeable fixed economic course." (paragraphs 12 - 16 of the URL)

Audio. "Panelists Helen Tartar, Editorial Director at Fordham University Press; Sanford Thatcher, Director of Penn State University Press and past President of the Association of American University Presses; and Ree DeDonato, Director of Humanities and History and Acting Director of Union Theological Seminary's Burke Library of Columbia University Libraries/Information Services discuss the economics and process of scholarly publishing and the future of the monograph. Columbia's Deputy University Librarian and Associate Vice President for Digital Programs and Technology Services Patricia Renfro introduces the panel, which is followed by a question-and-answer session."

Video: "...discuss the economics and process of scholarly publishing and the future of the monograph. Columbia's Deputy University Librarian and Associate Vice President for Digital Programs and Technology Services Patricia Renfro introduces the panel, which is followed by a question-and-answer session." (quoted from webpage.)

info on economics of digital info

"The prospect of ubiquitous digitization will not change the fundamental relationships among scholarship, academic libraries, and publication. Collaboration across time and space, which is a principal mechanism of scholarship, ought to be enhanced. Reforms in copyright law will be required if the promise of digitization is to be realized; absent such reform, there is a serious risk that much academically valuable material will become invisible and unused. Ubiquitous digitization will change radically the economics that have supported university-based collections of published material. Scholars and scholarly institutions (including libraries and university presses) must assert vigorously claims of fair use and openness."

Open Content Alliance website. The home page today features "economics of book digitization"

This is a statement issued by the Consortia at Yale University regarding the ethical implementation of licensing fees during the current economic crisis. They urge a halt on new, expensive innovation and request that database vendors work with libraries regarding their pricing strategies.

As digital libraries move from demonstration projects to the real world of working libraries, it is critical to assess and to document the impact of the shift. This paper reports the methodology and initial results of an Institute for Library and Information Studies (IMLS) funded research study of the operational and economic impact of an academic library's migration to an all-electronic journal collection. Drexel Library's entire print and electronic journal collections and associated staff are the test bed to study three key research questions: (1) What is the impact on library staffing needs? (2) How have library costs been reduced, increased and/or re-allocated? (3) What other library resources have been affected? We are using quantitative and qualitative methods to answer the research questions operationalized in the following tasks: (1) Measure the staff time, subscriptions costs and other costs related to each activity required to acquire and maintain print and electronic journals. (2) Compute the per-volume, per-title, and per-use costs of acquiring and maintaining print and electronic subscriptions. (3) Study all impacted library services, including changes in reference service, document delivery, and instructional programs. Initial results of measuring staff time indicate Information Services and Systems Operation departments constitute the majority of personnel costs for electronic journals. Technical Services and Circulation account for the majority of staff costs for print journals. Per title subscription costs appear to be substantially lower for electronic titles obtained through aggregator collections.

The Economics of Publishing and eBooks by Ron Boehm, Chairman and CEO, ABC-CLIO Publishing

A lot of headlines and blogs to the contrary, publishing isn't dying. But it is evolving, and so radically that we may hardly recognize it when it's done. Literature interprets the world, but it's also shaped by that world, and we're living through one of the greatest economic and technological transformations since--well, since the early 18th century. The novel won't stay the same: it has always been exquisitely sensitive to newness, hence the name. It's about to renew itself again, into something cheaper, wilder, trashier, more democratic and more deliriously fertile than ever.

"Oxford Scholarship Online is a vast and rapidly expanding cross-searchable library which now offers quick and easy access to the full text of 2,557 Oxford books. In addition to Economics and Finance, Philosophy, Political Science, and Religion, Oxford Scholarship Online now provides access to new Oxford books in Biology, Business and Management, Classical Studies, History, Law, Linguistics, Literature, Mathematics, Music, Physics, and Psychology and Social Work."

economics of ebooks

A recent study by Jason Price and John McDonald of Claremont Colleges investigates whether a research library could pursue "paperless acquisition" for newly published books. Price and McDonald compared purchases of print books made by 5 research libraries in 2006 and 2007 to the catalogs 4 of major aggregators of ebooks for libraries (EBrary, NetLibrary, EBookLibrary, and MyILibrary). They found that around 70% of the libraries' print acquisitions are not available through the leading ebook aggregators. According to their preliminary analysis, there is a mismatch between the content that some publishers (such as Routledge and Oxford UP) make available through ebook aggregators and what libraries purchase; also, some university presses do not yet appear to be making their publications available as ebooks. In some disciplines (art, music, romance literatures), over 80% of library purchases are not available electronically, while in other disciplines (economics) only 53% are not available as ebooks.