OPEN ACCESS BOOKS
An Argument for Academic Scholarship in Law to be Open and How it Might be Achieved
Over the past decade, academic publishing houses have been experimenting with a number of new business models for books for the digital format age and have been making books available in both digital and print formats. The pricing of the new digital has essentially followed the print even though the composition of input costs may differ to some extent and e-books carry VAT in some jurisdictions while print books often do not.
Frances Pinter
Nicholas Bown
Following on from the drive to make journals available on Open Access a few publishers have begun to experiment with Open Access books. One model involves scholarly content being displayed online in sub-optimal formats such as HTML, carrying an open content licence (such as a Creative Commons non-commercial licence), while also being available to buy in print and various e-book formats. While the initial periods of implementation and sample sizes have been too short to be absolutely conclusive, it is fair to say that making particular titles available free online in a digital format has been shown to increase sales.Footnote 1 One explanation posited for this counter-intuitive success is that the increased discoverability of making the content available free online has stimulated the creation of a larger market, mostly from search engine activity.Footnote 2
The significance of this publishing model for law librarians is that it presents an opportunity, in that titles can be browsed in their entirety online prior to purchasing a better digital version, or even a print copy. This is something like a Patron Driven Acquisition (PDA) approach but without the automatic trigger of a purchase. However, this model fails to solve the pressing issue of price. Publishers sell digital content as if each copy represented a print copy and costs are typically amortised over a few hundred units.Footnote 3 Print on demand has helped contain warehousing costs, but not much else. This model solves more of a problem for publishers than for librarians as it does not bring down the price per unit for libraries, leaving academic institutions with their budgets still stretched. If applied to the entire academic publishing industry then the situation would simply be the same except scaled up.
At the same time, the academic ecosystem is increasing. Since the year 2000 there has been a proliferation of graduates in the populations of OECD countries and therefore an increase in the number of individuals eligible to go on to postgraduate education and into professional academia.Footnote 4 Equally there has been an explosion of graduates in developing countries. Consequently there has been an increase in demand for access to scholarly knowledge as well as an intensification of the competition between academics to be published by the most prestigious publishing houses to further their careers. There needs to be a shift in the academic publishing marketplace to facilitate the conditions required for optimal scholarly communication beyond reliance on the few wealthy institutions that can afford a comprehensive collection of monographs. How is this to happen? Clearly it is unlikely that library budgets will grow, but equally publishers cannot bring down their prices unilaterally because they need to cover their costs. Libraries need to pay less per book, publishers need to find ways of covering their costs, authors want to see increasing discoverability and readers want access to knowledge.
This article outlines Knowledge Unlatched's unique concept for a not-for-profit organisation to solve the problem of prohibitively high prices for full-length scholarly publications in scholarly monographs, including legal studies. It sets out to do so in a way that benefits all stakeholders in the academic publishing ecosystem and enable Open Access to the end user. In the context of this article the stakeholders in this ecosystem are taken to be authors, publishers, libraries, and readers. Based on in-depth research, we discuss the nature of the crisis in the marketplace, briefly outline an open access approach using open content licensing, and then we outline the business concept for Knowledge Unlatched.
CRISIS IN THE MONGRAPH MARKET
For the purposes of this article the term monograph is used to denote the specialist work produced by one scholar (or a collection of scholars) to report on a specialist piece of research or intellectual development. Monographs are particularly important to legal libraries associated with academic institutions where there are undergraduates and postgraduates who require access to in-depth scholarly material. They are also important in the legal profession where practitioners specialise in litigating on detailed points of law. Staple legal information such as up-to-date case and statute law is available through large online databases; there are many textbooks about specific areas of law; and journals also serve academic legal studies. Monographs, however, remain a highly significant part of the ecosystem for the transmission of in-depth research.
There is a crisis in the academic monograph market which affects legal libraries' budgets as it does all academic libraries. Between 1980 and 2004 a monograph's average library sales in the United States fell 90% from 2,000 to 200 copies.Footnote 5 Robert Darnton, Director of the Harvard University Library, has stated that in 1999 sales figures were “not enough in any case to cover costs.”Footnote 6 This fall in sales has not coincided with a proportionate reduction in the costs of production, so prices rose by up to 78% between 1986 and 2006.Footnote 7 The combined effects of a low number of units and a strong UK pound have in extreme instances resulted in very surprising page number to price ratios for books sold by British publishers, especially into certain Commonwealth countries. “Numerous examples occur where monographs in the social sciences and humanities are priced at over [£130], yet the content is less than 150 pages.”Footnote 8 While some say this reflects what the market can bear, others call this approach market skimming – i.e. only selling to the wealthy sector and pricing accordingly.
In the United States, university library monograph acquisitions have increased by only 1% over the 24-year period from 1980 to 2004, whereas journal acquisitions have increased by 180%.Footnote 9 A recent study from the United Kingdom Library & Information Statistics Unit found that book expenditure within certain categories has not remained in step with other information sources, resulting in a decline of over 30% from 1995 to 2005.Footnote 10 The academic ecosystem has expanded, but at the same time library budgets have contracted. Because journals are usually available on a subscription basis, there is more pressure on libraries to continue paying for the subscription, than for monographs which can be acquired individually. Prices of journal subscriptions have increased at a rate greater than inflation, so keeping subscriptions current has accounted for an increasingly greater proportion of libraries' budgets, reducing the amount available to purchase monographs. Another issue is that companies in journal publishing have consolidated, leading to the top six in the sciences, for example, having enormous leverage in the marketplace.
At the same time there has been a growth in the number of scholars aspiring to be published from the new universities being created around the world, often with comparatively small budgets in developing countries. This situation is disadvantageous for many scholars, who increasingly resort to paying for the privilege of being published so they can advance their careers.Footnote 11 The current state of affairs has had a negative effect on access to knowledge, just as it has had a negative financial effect on libraries' budgets.
OPEN ACCESS BUSINESS MODELS AND CREATIVE COMMONS LICENSING
Setting the Scene for Knowledge Unlatched
Open Access models of publishing have been explored by over 70 companies as a way of attempting to ameliorate the situation. The model that Bloomsbury Academic has adopted, for example, for some titles involves the content being made available free at the point of use to the reader on the Internet in a sub-optimal digital format such as HTML. The publisher makes money out of sales of print and e-book copies.Footnote 12
The past few years have also seen the emergence of a movement promoting new approaches to copyright content throughout all areas of the creative industries that have gone digital, such as music and film as well as print. Legal scholar Lawrence Lessig, has been at the forefront of this. In a recent book, he proposes a model for conceptualising the combination of a traditional commercial economy with the ‘sharing’ economy of websites such as Wikipedia and YouTube in a ‘hybrid’ economy.Footnote 13 One of his concerns is that the use of content that prevails on the internet among the youngest generation of users be legitimised: i.e. freely, but respecting copyright law. In view of this, he argues that current copyright law is increasingly anachronistic and argues for its modification. Academic publishing is not facing such a systematic violation of copyright as other industries such as music and film, but the notion of a ‘hybrid’ economy is surely relevant to any business model that proposes to have content paid for but also available free online (a central feature of Open Access model proposed below).
A suite of six licences was developed by the organisation Creative Commons (CC), which provide a legal framework appropriate for the variety of ways that content is used, modified and re-organised on the internet in the 21st century.Footnote 14 Creative Commons was founded in 2001 and by 2009 there were an estimated 350 million works tagged with CC licences,Footnote 15 and now over half a billion. The licences range widely in the degree of restriction they define as the legitimate usage of online content. ‘Attribution’ (CC BY) is the least restrictive, which, dependent on clear attribution of the content's origination, allows even commercial usage. ‘Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives’ (CC BY-NC-ND) is the most restrictive, only allowing others to download works and share them if attribution is given, but not permitting alteration or commercial usage. These licences were conceived globally but versions have been created for different national jurisdictions. Knowledge Unlatched will primarily be advocating ‘Attribution-NonCommercial’ (CC BY-NC), which occupies a middle ground among the suite of Creative Commons licences, although publishers may opt for any type of open licence where content can be accesses by the end user free of charge.
Business models involving Open Access have been experimented with by a number of book publishers. According to one source, as of February 2012, seventy seven companies have tried Open Access book publishing.Footnote 16 There is also a growing body of evidence to support the notion that Open Access models of publishing increase sales. One case study on scholarly publishing in the social sciences reports that book sales turnover rose by 300% after monographs were made openly available online.Footnote 17 It is hoped that the research programme associated with Knowledge Unlatched will help furnish arguments for Open Access business models with a larger body of strong, positive evidence.
The central problem with the vast majority of existing Open Access models of academic book publishing is that they are not financially sustainable and rely on outside subsidies. Lessig's ‘hybrid economy’ is problematic in the long term if the only truly functional aspect of it is the ‘sharing’ economy.Footnote 18 The commercial economy needs to thrive too. Historically, the ideal in any content-driven industry is for the ultimate consumer to foot the cost of the product. If the market is working efficiently, and there is sufficient demand for their scholarship, then academic authors would be able to have libraries pay for their books and journal articles, rather than having to pay for the privilege themselves or rely on government subsidy. Knowledge Unlatched is a concept designed to make Open Access publishing financially sustainable.
THE CONCEPT FOR A GLOBAL OPEN ACCESS LIBRARY CONSORTIUM
The concept for Knowledge Unlatched, outlined below, is of a two-sided approach by publishers to offer and libraries to pay for Open Access specialist scholarly books. The Knowledge Unlatched concept aims to make the professional publishing of specialist scholarly books more viable and financially sustainable for all parties and at the same time free to the end-user.
Libraries, via a consortium, would aggregate orders and once a minimum number of libraries agreed to purchase the title (or group of titles) the publisher would commit to publish the book online on an open content licence. The price paid by the library consortium would cover the publishers' fixed costs, called the ‘title fee’. This would include the traditional work of publisher selection, peer review, editing, formatting, design and overhead costs.
Works would be published online on an open content licence and publishers would retain the right to sell print versions, bespoke e-books (e.g. for Kindle, Nook etc), enhanced e-books (with additional multimedia, content, functionality etc.) and other formats.
HOW IT WORKS
Publishers offer titles for sale at a number of price tiers called a ‘title fee’.
Participating publishers would include university and commercial presses, and others. Content would include scholarly monographs and specialised academic titles. The title fee would reflect its fully loaded first copy costs (i.e. getting to first digital copy), plus an operating margin. By logical extension, a publisher's operations would be sustainable were it to sell all of its specialist titles under this model.
Libraries select titles individually (or by subject group packages) and place orders to Knowledge Unlatched specifying the titles they wish to purchase (in much the same way as to a library supplier). Library participation would need to be sufficient to yield per-title costs to participating libraries at substantially lower costs than otherwise.
To accelerate and simplify the process, an online ordering system would allow the library buying group (or ‘co-op’) to select the titles they would be willing to purchase at the stipulated price. The library buying group could set the threshold of the minimum number of participating libraries required to trigger the commitment. The individual library review and selection process would provide a market demand mechanism sufficient to ensure that publishers provide books of sufficient quality. There would be no volume discount based on the number of titles selected, as the publishers' costs are not volume driven, although other incentives may be introduced.
Publishers then make the selected titles available Open Access, and provide value-added versions to participating libraries at a discount, thus providing an exclusive benefit of sufficient value to overcome free readership. Preferential discounts on other products may be offered. The open access version would be low grade HTML, or some other suboptimal digital format. Publishers could generate additional revenue from sales of value-added versions (e.g. print and enhanced digital editions) to non-participating libraries, as well as to individuals.
The initiative is designed to scale up and could eventually include a significant proportion of the specialized scholarly monographs currently published.
CONCLUSION
This business model relies on stakeholders understanding, accepting and using a conceptually unfamiliar approach to organising the academic publishing process. Publishers have traditionally spread their costs across single unit sales. Uncoupling the traditionally fixed from variable costs at payment stage may not be conceptually straightforward but we have the technological means to make such transactions relatively simple. Thinking about providing content online as a service operation with the costs paid for via a single body that has aggregated small payments is also not familiar to publishers. However, if we are to enable academics to continue writing ‘long form publications’ and ensure open access to anyone with access to the internet regardless of where they are located then we must create new models that are sustainable.
Through Knowledge Unlatched libraries will be able to make their budgets go further. They will facilitate opening access and help resolve the problems facing academic publishing in the twenty-first century.
Publishers will be assured that no monograph under this scheme makes a loss. They will be able to pursue additional opportunities, offering print and other ebook formats to the market and to build further on the core content, creating enhanced e-books where appropriate and moving with greater security into embedded multimedia publications with their authors.
Authors of scholarly books will be assured that their work connects with the widest possible audiences. discoverability and visibility will be worldwide.
Knowledge Unlatched is ultimately for the benefit of readers and researchers. Having access that is free at point of use with the opportunity to purchase in different formats must be our collective vision of the future.
The aim of Knowledge Unlatched is to keep the best of current practices, jettison the worst of the old and create an environment for innovation and experimentation with the new. The pilot project will begin in 2013. If you would like to be kept informed of developments please let us know at info@knowledgeunlatched.org.
