Please, forgive me to react in English.

For years, publishers have played a "prisoner's dilemma" game by having libraries signing non disclosure clauses on the results of their negotiations in order to keep what was presented as a tailored privilege, i.e. a slight decrease in the total price of a bundle of titles and databases. Without the non-disclosure clause, they lose the discount. This means that publishers are enjoying what could easily be called a "panoptic" advantage over libraries, to use Bentham's concept as re-elaborated by M. Foucault.

It is indeed high time that libraries should react with a symmetrical panoptic device to bring back some degree of balance to the power relationship between publishers and libraries. They could do so  by creating a database of licensing results and costs per publisher with, of course a detailed description of what they got for their money, and make it public. This panoptic device could start on a national basis, for example in Italy, and then, by imitation, spread to the world. This panoptic device should be explicitly designed to avoid having some librarians punished for not obtaining the best deals. This is not a ranking device, but rather a documentation of the arbitrary spread of prices, when they are the results of opaque negotiations.

Speaking of library spending, libraries, on a national basis, could collectively agree that, from now on, their total acquisition budget will be distributed between acquisition and support for open access initiatives (both Green and Gold), and the distributions could gradually shift to the OA side. One could envision that, the first year, libraries will divert 5% of their acquisition budget to supporting OA journals, and then 10% the second year, and so on. The ides would be inexorably to reduce the revenue stream of the big publishers, while putting money in some large national OA initiative, for example an Italian SciELO-like platform or an OA mega-journal in sciences. And if the revenue stream of publishers begins to decrease, and it is known in investment circles, their stock value will fall precipitously...

Collectively, libraries hold a gread deal of clout, but they have not yet found the way to organize themselves to benefit from that clout.

Jean-Claude Guédon



Le lundi 10 juin 2013 à 12:00 +0200, nexa-request@server-nexa.polito.it a écrit : 
Send nexa mailing list submissions to
	nexa@server-nexa.polito.it

To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit
	https://server-nexa.polito.it/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/nexa
or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to
	nexa-request@server-nexa.polito.it

You can reach the person managing the list at
	nexa-owner@server-nexa.polito.it

When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific
than "Re: Contents of nexa digest..."


Today's Topics:

   1. Quanto spendono i sistemi bibliotecari italiani per le
      riviste? (Maria Chiara Pievatolo)


----------------------------------------------------------------------

Message: 1
Date: Sun, 09 Jun 2013 14:57:48 +0200
From: Maria Chiara Pievatolo <pievatolo@dsp.unipi.it>
To: <nexa@server-nexa.polito.it>
Subject: [nexa] Quanto spendono i sistemi bibliotecari italiani per le
	riviste?
Message-ID: <f40ce731865b19a7c0092f1ef9a09c07@webmail.sp.unipi.it>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed

 Sembra una domanda semplice 
 (http://storify.com/btfp1/quanto-spendono-le-biblioteche-universitarie-itali). 
 Non ha per? una risposta semplice in termini di dati, per una serie di 
 motivi che illustro qui:

 http://btfp.sp.unipi.it/?p=3884

 Buona parte dei dati che servirebbero per dare una risposta sono gi? 
 pubblici, ma sepolti in qualche pdf nei meandri dei siti istituzionali.

 I dati dell'universit? di Pisa (2011), che sono riuscita a trovare sul 
 web solo perch? mi avevano detto che c'erano, sono gi? impressionanti 
 per la loro evidente sproporzione

 3.139.670 euro dedicati agli acquisti complessivi
 2.886.027 euro per i periodici e le banche dati
 solo 253.643 euro per i libri

 Se questi dati, per lo pi? pubblici, venissero raccolti e resi 
 disponibili, gli effetti di quello che ai bibliotecari ? noto come 
 serial crisis sarebbero ancora pi? impressionanti.

 A questo scopo, stiamo facendo un piccolo esperimento di crowdsourcing 
 dei dati, nella convinzione che quanto ? ora difficile da trovare e da 
 riutilizzare (essendo sepolto nei pdf) possa diventare pi? maneggevole 
 se raccolto e immediatamente liberato, con il contributo di chi conosce 
 le fonti.

 E' spiegato tutto qui:

 http://btfp.sp.unipi.it/?p=3884

 Se pensate che l'iniziativa sia utile, aiutatemi a diffondere la 
 notizia.

 Grazie,
 MCP

-- 
Jean-Claude Guédon
Professeur titulaire
Littérature comparée
Université de Montréal