Comments on: The 2009 STM Frankfurt Conference

By: Michael Clarke

Michael Clarke — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 23:15:58 +0000

Scott – Corrected above with my apologies for the error.

By: T Scott Plutchak

T Scott Plutchak — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 21:17:46 +0000

Good summary of the meeting. One slight (and slightly inconsequential) correction — the “incunabula phase” comment was from my presentation, not Ian’s.

By: Why Hasn’t Scientific Publishing Been Disrupted Already? « The Scholarly Kitchen

Mon, 04 Jan 2010 10:31:32 +0000

[...] pages of the Scholarly Kitchen, for example, we covered John Wilbanks’ presentation at SSP IN and Michael Nielsen’s talk at the 2009 STM Conference. They were both thoughtful presentations and I agree with many of the [...]

By: Philip Davis

Philip Davis — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 15:42:28 +0000

Michael wrote: [James] Mouw noted that online titles were used, on average, 34 times more frequently than print titles. This stunning statistic might lead one to wonder why Chicago is bothering with building a new library to house print books at all. It sounds like Mouw is committing the very frequent error of equating downloads with circulation, or at least equating them both to the flexible notion of use. As Joe Esposito wrote recently on liblicense, there are many bonafide instances of print use that escape capture, and many instances of online use which may not be very meaningful. A 34:1 ratio, a 'stunning' figure reported by Mouw, should have given this right away. While I would agree that print readership has been declining slowly each year, and online readership growing correspondingly, I simply cannot believe that readers have the capacity to consume 34 times more text than they did in the past. I would hope that librarians are both knowledgeable and skeptical of the data they receive from publishers, especially when it comes to making huge policy decisions like canceling all print book purchases or building new libraries.

By: Andrea Powell

Andrea Powell — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 15:00:57 +0000

Thanks for the summary, Mike. There was certainly plenty of food for thought at the meeting. I’m interested if knowing if anyone has yet done any modelling on the finances of an STM book programme as it makes a transition from print to online. The Springer approach of “license everything to the Library electronically and allow students to order individual print-on-demand copies” is interesting, but then what impact does this have on print-runs and profit margins? How do you incorporate the costs of the online platform into the cost of sale calculation? How do you explain it all to the Board when arguing for a strategic investment in e-books? It’s certainly making my head hurt a bit, and I’d be very interested to discuss this further with anyone else in the same boat!