Speakers: Tina Feick (HARRASSOWTIZ) & Anne McKee (GWLA)
Getting pricing is like a round-up. “Don’t try to understand ’em. Just rope, throw, and grab ’em.”
The journal pricing season timeline:
May-June: agents send letters to publishers asking for pricing; agents get ready to send out renewal lists to libraries with either last year’s price or an estimated price
June-Jan: price lists received from STM and university presses (often on paper, not digitally), trade publications send pricing updates year-round; libraries submit renewal lists
Oct-Feb: agents pay publishers
Pricing options are complex now, and depend on format options, library types or size or usage, and whether or not archival content is included.
You really need to read the fine print on digital content. Some of the “digital” content comes in the format of PDFs that must be downloaded and archived locally. Some come with a user name and password that is hard to distribute across the institution. Think about your requirements and other deals before asking your agent for a quote.
Look at your agent’s reports: format options, price comparisons over time with predictions, price increase notifications based on a percentage minimum, etc. Agents often have tools to manage your e-deals with pricing caps or package pricing and title swaps. ICEDIS is working on ONIX-PC (price catalog) with Springer, Wiley, Taylor & Francis, Elsevier, and agents.
Not all consortia are alike. They are created with different goals and groupings. There are as many consortia types as there are world religions. Shared focus, institutional context, tiers, multi-type, buying clubs (almost a bad word among consortia), geographic, overlapping (most libraries are in more than one), funding agencies, annual dues versus retaining percentage, etc.
Consortial pricing:
The list price might not be the same from member to member, depending on historical spends, previous licenses, and the size of the institution. Price caps impact list prices institution to institution, and can either be for the entire collection or title by title. FTE pricing is preferable, but only when it’s based on the faculty/students within that discipline. Otherwise, Carnegie is good as long it’s the current model. She hates the ARL pricing, because it isn’t fair to the smaller schools.
Partnerships are very important. Work with the vendors.
GWLA has three approaches to new content: a member library approaches them, publishers approach them, or the consortium office comes across interesting products. They use Basecamp to coordinate all of this, and every proposal is loaded in there.
Pricing from the vendors/publishers: Give a ballpark figure, don’t ask for how many are interested. No hard copy — email or attachment. Give 90 days for the consortium to respond so that all the member libraries have time to consider it within their own workflows. Prefer to get offers in March or August, and have access on a calendar year for the contract. If the contract is ready to go earlier than that, she expects free access until it officially begins. She looks a the license first, and if the publisher won’t work with them on unacceptable, she doesn’t even send the offer to the members. GWLA doesn’t have a central pool, so everything is opt-in, and 20% have to be interested in it to move forward as a GWLA deal, but they have eased up on that a little with the recession. All of the discounts go to the members, as all administrative costs are covered by the membership fee.
Things to consider: Timing of offer and decision deadline is crucial — a 30 day special is unrealistic. Understand that the library and consortia work on a different fiscal year than you. Is it a fair offer? It’s okay to make a profit, but it needs to consider the library’s position. Once you have some kind of deal, libraries need to make sure their subscription agents know it.
What does GWLA purchase? Content is paramount. Multiple modes of discoverability. Financial issues (publisher stability) and the impact on library budget. Library friendly, realistic licenses that aren’t dated or need to be kept up as technology and practices evolve: fair use (not just CONTU), ILL (prevailing technology of the day), walk-ins, distance learners, alumni, etc. SERU is even better. An abundance of invoicing options. We are partners, not outlaws!
Working in consortia is like herding cats, but it’s better than being a skull out in the desert.
Agent service charges: they get a discount from the publisher, but not always, and the rest of their income is from library service charges. It is rare that they get more than 5% discounts, but back in the day it was much more, and they have to make up that difference with the fees. The pricing is based on the ease of obtaining the material, the average cost of the subscription list, the average publisher discount for the list, service requirements, total volume of subscriptions, length of the contract, operational costs, and competition from other agents.
Questions:
Why isn’t SERU widely used yet? Last year, they added ebooks, which may be one reason why it wasn’t used. Legal counsels at institutions are reluctant to allow us to spend that much money on a one-page contract.
Where is the GWLA model license? www.gwla.org — agreements and licenses tab
Pricing season timeline — sometimes these processes can take longer than expected. Would like to see a longer grace period than Feb 1, especially if negotiations are pending. Publisher asks if we would be okay with letters of understanding? Yes. Another publisher says that packages have longer grace periods.
Has there ever been any push-back on transparency on service fees, particularly those built-in to the prices? They can’t develop a standard for this because it could be consider collusion. Libraries can ask agents to detail it out.
Librarians want access immediately. How to mediate their expectations to better fit the timeline above?
