Conclusions
¶ 1 Leave a comment on paragraph 1 0 The dominant business model for scholarly publishing over the past several decades—sales of print books and journals to institutional, retail, and text markets, supplemented by modest amounts of institutional support—is no longer sustainable. The reasons are complex, but include shrinking markets and the accelerating shift from print to digital formats. The need for new business models is unassailable, but exactly what those models are and how they will interact with the traditional model remain unclear. Journal publishing has made a successful transition from print to digital formats while maintaining the long-established primary business model of selling subscriptions, primarily to institutions, although continued consolidation in the STM publishing industry and escalating prices, combined with economic pressures on libraries, has put enormous strain on the standard model. In book publishing, the situation is more complex for a variety of reasons, including the broader range of market channels and the slower pace of transition from print to digital.
¶ 2 Leave a comment on paragraph 2 0 Many experiments are underway among scholarly publishers: publishing digital editions of books in various formats; distributing digital books on an open access basis, usually combined with sales of print editions; and digital-only publications that go beyond the standard book and journal formats. Publishers are employing a variety of strategies to fund these experiments, including print sales as a means of supporting open access digital publications; subscription sales for digital book collections and digital-only projects; foundation support, usually as investment capital for new projects; and parent institution support. Other strategies are under discussion but with little actual experience yet, including publication fees (common in STM publishing but not HSS), online advertising, and institutional or corporate sponsorships. Some of these strategies seem likely to be transitional and not sustainable in the long run, such as start-up funding from foundations and relying on print sales to support open access online publication.
¶ 3 Leave a comment on paragraph 3 0 The one evident conclusion that emerges from the various reports on the current state of scholarly publishing, as well as in the research undertaken for this report, is that no single new business model will replace the traditional print-based model. Rather, a mix of revenue sources will be required to sustain scholarly publishing in the future, and that mix is likely to vary for different kinds of publications. Perhaps even more important, the new models will co-exist with the traditional print-based model for the foreseeable future. Notwithstanding all the experiments and the widespread conviction within the publishing industry that digital will eventually replace print, scholarly presses now derive most of their income from sales of print (in the case of books) and from subscriptions, whether print or digital (in the case of journals). Thus it is necessary for publishers to maintain and indeed strengthen the standard business practices while at the same time developing new forms of publishing and revenues to sustain those new forms.
¶ 4 Leave a comment on paragraph 4 0 It is important to recognize that these multiple models will include both market-based revenues and institutional support. Revenue will come from both consumers and producers of content. At the most fundamental level, this situation does not represent a change from historical experience; scholarly publishing has always been subsidized to some degree, combining market revenues and subsidy support, as university presses and other nonprofit scholarly publishers have long managed a balancing act between mission and business necessity, managing multiple product lines with varying markets (trade books, scholarly monographs, textbooks, journals). Presses have become adept at managing varied business models and adjusting the mix as market conditions change. Looking to the future, however, it seems likely that the mix of revenues, once derived primarily from the marketplace, will shift such that a greater share of revenue will come from the producers of content, whether in the form of publication fees or institutional support of other kinds.
¶ 5 Leave a comment on paragraph 5 0 The need for multiple revenue sources is especially evident in open access publishing, which seems certain to become a significantly larger component of scholarly publishing. Recent discussions of open access publishing have begun to acknowledge the costs involved, recognizing that open access is not “free,” despite the potential cost savings of digital-only publication. Recent work analyzing business models for open access publishing suggest that a mix of revenue sources will be essential if open access is to be sustainable over the long term.
¶ 6 Leave a comment on paragraph 6 0 The need for collaboration among scholarly publishers is more evident than ever. Most university presses and other nonprofit scholarly publishers are small, by comparison with commercial publishers, whereas many of the new forms of publishing require considerable scale to work well. Even more importantly, most university presses lack investment capital and are unable to undertake the kind of investments in technology at the scale required by new forms of publishing. Partnerships with libraries; e-book collaborations among university presses and nonprofit organizations; and editorial collaborations such as those recently funded by the Mellon Foundation are critically important, and among the most promising developments in the challenging and ever-changing scholarly publishing community.
Darrin Pratt
Paul
Dean Blobaum
I’m struck by just how focussed on the bottom line this conclusion appears to be. Scholarly publishing seems to be a classic example of the double bottom-line. While a certain amount of revenue is necessary to keep the lights on, the difference between the focus here and (e.g.) the focus in start-ups on the web is striking. Many of them do not know how to monetize either, but they recognize that a vibrant (and large) community of users is in many ways more important. The realities may be starkly financial, but securing funding streams to the exclusion of the “other” bottom line may be dangerous.
It’s not as though university presses have a choice; they are obliged by their parent universities to be largely self-supporting from sales, on average 90% self-supporting. Only a very few universities, like Athabasca, seem willing to break away from this model and go in another direction. Rice tried it too, but the institutional commitment long term proved to be lacking.
That double bottom line concern seems more salient in open content discussions. There reaching out to the world, sharing some content (intellectual products, a certain pedagogical style) is vital.
I think you’re right, it is focused on the financial bottom line. It seems that’s the dual world university presses inhabit–disseminate excellent scholarship in a broad array of narrow specialties, but make it pay for itself. Most do it by pulling together a combination of other streams (and cutting costs) to make that happen. Comparing a UP to a web start-up is very interesting, but I’d put my money on the former over the latter most of the time. You make a good point that there is another bottom line to watch and UPs are figuring that out.
Well, you are right about the double bottom line, of course. The reason this report is so rightly focused on the financial bottom line is that markets, such as the library market, are eroding along with institutional support. As a point of fact institutional support has declined during the past four years at a greater rate than sales, even though sales have been impacted by the recession. Perhaps another way of putting this is that university presses are always concerned about all sorts of other bottom lines (mission, authors, audiences, institutional needs), but circumstances dictate an increasing attention to fiscal bottom lines.