The Race to the Bottom — Short-term Bargains versus Long-term Vitality
Haggling for cheaper content today will certainly have hidden and unpleasant costs — large and small — down the road.
Haggling for cheaper content today will certainly have hidden and unpleasant costs — large and small — down the road.
There are many programs now to create open access monographs, but the business models surrounding these efforts do not appear to be sufficiently robust to make the OA monograph sustainable. The problem is that the monograph is something that many people want, but few are willing to pay for.
Revisiting a holiday classic: ‘Twas the month before Christmas, and by listening hard, you can hear Joe Esposito yearn for a library card. The reasons are simple, yet give publishers pause. No wonder Joe’s only hope is with Santa Claus.
We breeze by the statement that “scholarly publishing economics are unsustainable,” without contemplating what it actually means, how deep it goes, and why it has been allowed to get this way.
The details of PeerJ’s business model raise many questions, some of which may pertain to inherent Silicon Valley ways of doing business, others to efforts to create a community of required activity.
Book publishing is evolving in stages, and when we get to Stage Five, where books are sold on a subscription basis, the fortunes of scholarly publishers will improve dramatically.
Experimentation and choice are key to finding long-term sustainability.
‘Twas the month before Christmas, and by listening hard, you can hear Joe Esposito yearn for a library card. The reasons are simple, yet give publishers pause. No wonder Joe’s only hope is with Santa Claus.