From the American Association of University Professors 2010-11 Report on the Economic Status of the Profession:

“The overall increase in salary level, reported on the left side of survey report table 1 and the upper half of table A, was 1.4 percent between 2009–10 and 2010–11. This is barely higher than the overall change reported last year, when we described it as “the lowest year-to-year change recorded in the fifty years of this comprehensive survey.” It seems that this year has been just as tough as the previous one on full-time faculty salaries. … For the second consecutive year, real salary levels fell, and for the fifth time in the last seven years, overall faculty salaries declined in purchasing power. This means that the cumulative change in real salaries for faculty members during the last seven years was 1.8 percent, less than the 2.1 percent increase in real salaries for the median American worker over the same period.”

Available online: http://www.aaup.org/AAUP/comm/rep/Z/ecstatreport10-11/

Also, in response to Judy’s comments, I have spoken to many editors over the years. All the editors I have spoken with have expressed a concern about negative findings not being submitted for publication. In fact, the point of both the ICMJE and CONSORT requirements for registration of trials was to try to prevent researchers from hiding negative data. That is not to say that editors don’t prefer positive to negative results – but certainly editors are aware of the positive bias and have implemented mechanisms to ensure that negative results are reported.

At the press I once headed, we often did WorldCat searches for information about specific titles sold to libraries, but this source was not used in any systematic way by the AAUP or groups of presses as far as I’m aware. Joe’s suggestion to use it in this way sounds promising.

As for presses looking to cooperate more with libraries, the reasons for doing so are not related to sales but rather to staffing and other synergies. E.g., few smaller presses can afford to have any dedicated IT staff, but allying with a library can gain a press access to a great deal of assistance in this area, which is crucial for smaller presses trying to make the transition from print to electronic. On their side, libraries do not have much expertise in marketing and sales, and to the extent they have ambitions to generate revenue streams, allying with presses can gain them valuable assistance in doing so.

Also, regarding the oft repeated phrase that most or a substantial number of books in library collections don’t circulate — your non-librarian readers would benefit from knowing that there are two types of academic libraries: undergraduate libraries and research libraries. Since undergraduate libraries support the teaching of undergraduates, circulation statistics are a valid measure of that collection’s effectiveness. A research collection, on the other hand, seeks to collect broadly and in depth in a particular subject area, not only for present, but also future use. Great research collections still attract scholars to work in particular universities through the depth of their collections in particular subject areas. While PDA may be appropriate for undergraduate libraries, it would be clearly be inappropriate for research collections. Among other things a research library that buys a 2012 imprint today pays the 2012 price — a library using a PDA plan that buys that same 2012 imprint in 2015 (when it is actually used) will be paying the 2015 price (that is, the extra cost of inflation over three years).

Last thing, when it comes to ebook sales to academic libraries, I think some background on the way that publishers are charging libraries would clear up some misconceptions. The overwhelming majority of academic publishers sell ebooks to academic libraries based on a “concurrent use” model. That is, the number of users simultaneously reading the same ebook. In this way, the larger the university, the larger the amount the publishers can charge the library. If you talk to librarians with large ebook collections though, you’ll discover that the number of ebooks that ever attract more than one concurrent user are few and far between. This price model then, has allowed the big academic publishers to reap profits via ebooks that are substantially higher than they did in the print world (where large research libraries would rarely purchase more than one copy of a print book).

My apologies for the length of this. I think this is an excellent blog, but the discussion around academic libraries is sometimes lacking in context.

Dan