Date: Tue, 9 Jul 2002 09:36:55 +0100
From: Rollo Turner <rollo.turner@onet.co.uk>
Subject: Re: E-Journal admin costs

 Counting the cost of e-journal admin
Has anyone out there stopped to measure the costs of administering
e-journals?  By this I mean the cost of subscription management and
access provision. It seems to me that as the process of acquiring
journals changes a great deal of simplicity is being lost with consequent
and often quite substantial impacts on cost.

As a result the ASA is interested in how we can ease this process, and
would welcome feedback on the following (and will be happy to share any
results with the list):

 1. Have your costs for e-Journal admin risen over the last year &
roughly by  how much?
 2. Do you see this increasing/decreasing over the next year?
 3. In which areas does your agent help most/least currently?
 4. If there were additional resources available from your agent where
these would be best targeted?

 The background on this is that libraries now buy their electronic
journals in a number of different ways - from the normal subscription
process through an agent to consortium deals no two of which ever seem to
be similar let alone the same! In some cases however the journals
publishers request that the journals must be ordered directly - even when
the library may have preferred to use an agent. Others are acquired
through consortia but may be paid for by the individual members through
an agent, directly or through the consortium. The so-called Big Deal with
deep discount prices has also greatly increased the administrative
complexity for everyone concerned, they tie in funds for lengthy periods
of time and may, if budgets are suddenly reduced, force libraries to
cancel titles from smaller and high quality society publishers to keep
some of these Big Deals going.

 These different means of acquiring content mean that each individual
library has had to assume more control over the management and reporting
on the electronic journals taken. This is a role that is generally
performed by subscription agents who have the necessary infrastructure
available to provide value-added services such as special billing
arrangements, interfacing to library ILS services and management
reporting. Instead if each library is now doing more not less
subscription administration the overall costs are likely to rise in terms
of staff time and resources especially if libraries have to set up their
own systems.

 Agents costs will also rise if more and more electronic titles are
handled direct at the insistence of the publishers (generally the larger
publishers) leaving agents to handle the specialist, more varied and
widely scattered smaller publishers. According to the UK Competition
Commission, the big six publishers account for about 66% of all
expenditure on STM journals for UK libraries. If their titles are removed
from the agency list, the average cost per subscription will increase
very significantly and, obviously, additional costs will eventually be
reflected in their bills to libraries.

 With this trend and pricing models requiring a variety of different
means of handling electronic journals, the complexity and cost of
handling subscriptions may well be increasing much faster than we
currently know.  Agents of course were put on this earth to help reduce
the libraries costs and administration enabling them to reduce the amount
of unproductive administration performed by skilled individuals. It seems
this sensible approach has gone into reverse!

 Isn't it time we thought about simplifying the system, so that once
again it can be handled by properly qualified intermediaries to the
benefit of all?  This may require agents having to learn new and
sometimes costly skills, publishers agreeing to work with them on
electronic journals as they do with paper, and agents and consortia
agreeing to cooperate more closely in the future.

 If the customers want this to happen, the suppliers will eventually
provide it. And it would be good for publishers since it would make it
simpler for them to sell their journals individually or in packages to
their clients in a well managed supply chain, thus reducing their
administration costs also (publishers subscription management costs may
also have increased by between 5 and 15% according to Sally Morris). In
short, such a move would be worth it financially to everyone.

 Rollo Turner
 Secretary General
 Association of Subscription Agents and Intermediaries
 <rollo.turner@onet.co.uk>

PS apologies for cross posting