Death of Publishing video

The fictional "millennial" narrating this video tells us that we must listen to her values. But this video doesn't state what the producers think those values are. It just shows us that we can see the glass as half full or half empty. View it as half full and the publishing industry has a future in its current form. View it as half empty and book publishers are fighting a losing battle. Neither are true are they? Publishers of all content -- textual, musical, visual, and other, have major challenges in front of them due in part to the plethora of formats in which that content is accessible. What publishers of all media are scrambling to do is to monetize every form of access. Publishers would have you (or your library) pay twice or thrice or per use for the content of a book or CD or DVD depending on whether you buy the paper, stream the digital video or download it as a proprietary audio format. Publishing is dying? Hardly. The question is really about how many times the consumer can be charged for something they presumably already paid for.

UIC Library budget cuts: books, journals, electronics, EVERYTHING

Everyone on campus received this email today from the Library Dean Mary M. Case.
It contains a short description of current issues in journal costs.

Dear Colleagues,

I write to advise you that the budget reductions for which UIC is
preparing for FY2011 will diminish the Library’s collections budget
and consequently impact the resources the Library provides for your
teaching and research.  Because we do not know the extent of the
reductions, the Library is preparing for a range between minimal to
quite serious cuts to the collections.

In general, we expect to purchase fewer books and cancel selected
subscriptions for journals and databases.  As we proceed, we will be
in contact with your departments to talk about how library resources
in your disciplines will be affected by the cuts.  You will be
hearing by mid-March from XXXX XXXXXXXX, Principal Bibliographer,
about a process that the subject bibliographers will use to identify
potential candidates for cancellation and to confer with you about
your priorities.  The Library would like to make its cancellation
decisions in consultation with the faculty.  In the meantime, if you
have questions, please contact her at XXXX .

UIC is not alone in addressing budget issues, nor is the Library
alone in struggling to sustain research collections in this economic
environment.  While limited funding is a part of the problem, there
are other systemic factors, and I would like to take this
opportunity to explain them and how they affect our current
situation.

The Journals Market
Many of the research journals we subscribe to, especially those in
science, technology, and medicine, are very expensive and are
bundled in large electronic packages that are licensed for several
years at a time.  The journals are owned to a large extent by a
small number of firms that have continued to merge over the past
decade to create a highly concentrated industry.  Many scholarly
societies have sold their journals to these companies or have
entered into distribution agreements that keep prices high.  The
benefit of gaining access to rich collections across disciplines
with predictable annual increases that the bundled packages offer is
offset by the restriction on our ability to cancel even the least
used titles for any but a minimal net gain.  This means, in the
current environment, that a number of strategies for how we build
and manage our collections in the future will need to be considered.

Changes in the Scholarly Publishing Model
While we are currently forced to cut subscriptions, publishing is in
transition and we are optimistic about the future.  Many in the
academy, including here at UIC, are making efforts to change this
system and improve accessibility to up-to-date research created
around the globe.  Efforts, such as the CIC Author’s Addendum,
approved by the UIC Faculty Senate in 2006, provides authors with a
tool to retain rights to their work.  This addendum allows authors
to post their work on a publicly accessible website increasing
access to quality content on the web and helping to break the
monopoly control over articles that most publishers have had.

For reasons of both enhancing access and facilitating research, the
NIH’s Public Access Policy requires grant recipients to submit the
results of their research to the ever-growing PubMed Central (PMC)
repository within 12 months of publication.  The NIH policy is
driven by the belief that results from research funded by taxpayer
dollars should be available to the public and not only to those
institutions that can afford the high subscription costs.  More
importantly, the content in PMC can be computationally manipulated
to find potentially productive relationships that may lead more
quickly to new discoveries, a benefit not possible in the print
world or with the proprietary silos of electronic journals.
Legislation has been introduced in Congress to require similar
public access policies in all other federal agencies.

There are many other initiatives within both the publishing
community and universities to build infrastructure and find models
to sustain a more economically viable scholarly publishing system.
To see more about these and what UIC is doing, I invite you to start
at
http://library.uic.edu/home/services/publishing-and-scholarly-communication
Regarding our current situation, you will be hearing more soon
about how we will work collaboratively with faculty to manage
necessary collections reductions.

Sincerely,

Mary M. Case
University Librarian