Price-gouging: it’s not just for gasoline anymore

Citation

Latham, B. (2010), "Price-gouging: it’s not just for gasoline anymore", Reference Reviews, Vol. 24 No. 5. https://doi.org/10.1108/rr.2010.09924eaa.002

Price-gouging: it’s not just for gasoline anymore

Article Type: Viewpoint From: Reference Reviews, Volume 24, Issue 5

If I was to allow myself to indulge in simile, I could say that acquisitions in the academic library sphere is like a little old lady on Social Security – prices for the things you really need keep going up, but your income is fixed. Given the current state of affairs in many academic libraries, mine included, calling that income “fixed” is generous; the cuts keep rolling in. Many journal and database vendors are taking this into consideration and have been charitably curtailing their usual yearly price hikes to a lower percentage; some of the truly philanthropic have even allowed prices to remain the same. All big-hearted benevolence aside, it simply makes fiscal sense – if vendors are not willing to work within budgetary constraints, those who have academic institutions as their primary customer base will be pricing themselves out of business.

There is, of course, a night to every day, a yang to every yin, a Khan to every Kirk. And while many vendors are generously taking budget cuts into consideration, there are also those who are implementing less than transparent methods to increase their profit margins. Examining the minutia of licensing agreements and contracts is difficult enough, and now there are some additional trends to look for in all the legalese.

The package deal is a staple of consumerism – great things that go better together! – but it is also lesson one in caveat emptor class. It is very easy to end up paying for things one does not need in order to get that “great deal” on the things one has to have. This has always been the case with the purchase of journals in electronic format, and has given rise to a new trend in this area: the indie title takeover. Say your library has a subscription to a “base package” (a current subscriber level of individual titles) from…let us be discreet and call them vendor Misanthrope. Your licensing agreement states that you pay for this base package, plus a “content fee” which allows you electronic access to everything else in Misanthrope’s database, a veritable smorgasbord of electronic journal goodness. So far, so standard. But there is also a little sentence or so that says you agree to maintain your current subscription level as your base package, including subscriptions to any “takeover” titles. No problem – in your blissful ignorance, you have no plans to drop any of Misanthrope’s titles at this point. Money is tight though, so you start dropping some other, independent titles which you find are being duplicated in other databases or whose expense has far outstripped their usage stats. Misanthrope notices that more and more libraries are dropping this title, so…Misanthrope buys it. They take it over. They love it, kiss it, and call it their own. They hike the price up. Then they add it to their content, which means it becomes a part of your base package, since you had been a previous subscriber. Now, because of the agreement already in place, you cannot get rid of it; you are required to maintain a subscription to it. Despite your best efforts at coagulation, you are hemorrhaging funding. Again.

Then there is also another perennial favorite – getting the shaft from vendors that have a corner on the market. Let us call this one Vendor ScienceSociety. Their package deals are expensive. Very expensive. One might almost say obscenely expensive. They also contain a variety of titles that are too technical or too high-level to fit your student base – your university is not a research institution, does not offer doctoral degrees in these sciences, and has no need to support them at that level. But you know that ScienceSociety owns exclusive access to the publications you do have to have. And what is worse, ScienceSociety knows it as well. In fact, some of these vendors even manage to make subscription to their publications required for the accreditation process of a particular discipline, so you really have to have it. It is the equivalent of professors who author an ungodly expensive textbook and then require it for class, guaranteeing their dirt-poor students live off ramen noodles to buy it. We have all been there, and I kind of like ramen noodles. But the point is, they are sticking it to you. You complain eloquently to ScienceSociety about the expense and the titles you do not need. They smile compassionately – they only want to help. So they offer you the option to purchase the titles you want individually. It is a la carte day, and everyone is happy! Or not. You then learn that they make the prices for the individual titles so exorbitant, you will pay as much for three titles individually as you did for thirty with the base package. It makes no sense. They have got you. And they know it.

What can you do about this? Not much. There are aggregators who have expansive reference packages that provide academic libraries with a significant amount of bang for their buck: EBSCOhost’s Academic Search packages (tiered for Premier, Elite, etc.) Gale’s Academic OneFile, and HW Wilson’s OmniFile (one of the philanthropists who gave us level pricing this year!). There is also the unknown entity of Open Access – not a viable option now, but perhaps a future alternative if certain issues (e.g. quality control) can be resolved. Do these alternatives provide an all-inclusive solution to the problem? No. But it does help with e-journal management to be aware of the trends being implemented by less than transparent vendors and publishers, and keep these and other increasingly indirect costs in mind during the fiscal planning process. You might also want to give your acquisitions librarian some chocolate. Or a hug. If he/she is into that kind of thing. Otherwise, there is a danger of it falling under your HR Department’s definition of “harassment”. And believe me, acquisitions librarians already have enough to deal with.

Acknowledgements

Special thanks to Mary Bevis, Professor, Acquisitions/Serials Librarian, Houston Cole Library, for her assistance with this column.

Bethany LathamInternet Editor, Reference Reviews , Assistant Professor and Electronic Resources/Documents Librarian, Jacksonville State University, Jacksonville, Alabama, USA