Libraries and Consortia in the Context of a Publisher’s Strategy | The Scholarly Kitchen

"I wish to describe a situation that I often come across and then try to explain how it came about. What are its implications for scholarly communications and library consortia in particular, and can we project into the future to think about how this situation could evolve? So here is the situation. Please note that throughout this discussion, I am presenting the case as professional societies see it. I frequently am contacted by these societies to help them with their publishing programs. Most of these societies are in the STM area, but humanists occasionally make that phone call, too. Virtually all of these conversations are about journals, not books or databases. I should add that I am not the only person who gets these calls. There is a whole little industry of consultants who work with professional societies. This is because not-for-profit professional societies often lack experienced business people, so the leadership looks outside when problems arise. The typical phone call goes like this: We are a scientific society that has been around for many years. We are the leading society in our area, though most of our members belong to other societies as well. We publish 3 journals, which are among the best in the field (as measured by Impact Factor). These journals used to throw off a healthy profit, but over the past several years the number of subscribers, both individual and institutional, has been dropping. This is problematic for us because we historically used the journals surplus to fund other activities. For example, we use the surplus to provide subsidies to graduate students to attend our annual conference. The journals are still modestly profitable, but when we look at the trends, we can see that in time they will be losing money. We don’t have the resources to subsidize the journals. What should we do? ..."