Quantifying the Obvious
I still encounter, with alarming frequency, STM publishing executives who have not yet grasped the implications of the digital revolution. There’s a sensibility that pigeonholes the web as yet another ancillary delivery tool—kinda like CD-ROMs. I am amazed to hear people in positions of serious authority (for now) declare their intentions to move incrementally to develop online businesses. “Let’s take it step by step and see what evolves,” I was recently told by a senior figure at a major scientific society.
Sorry, but it already has evolved, at least from a macro revenue perspective. If you are not persuaded merely by walking into a library at an institution of higher learning that education and research have gone digital, allow me to finish the job by providing some definitive evidence. As these data show, this is not in any way a peripheral phenomenon. It is a fundamental transformation of our industry. These data were culled from statistical reports created by the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) and the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL), and they vividly illustrate the trends that are sweeping the institutional customer base.
The first three tables show the trajectory of expenditures made for print materials and electronic materials in these libraries. (Obviously, in categories of this breadth, these proportions have an inverse relationship.)
Among all libraries surveyed, the proportions equalized in 2008; almost certainly, spending for electronic resources will outstrip print in 2009.
When the list is narrowed to institutions that offer doctoral programs, there is a significant shift toward electronic resources.
And finally, when we narrow it further, to focus exclusively on health science libraries, the contrast is even more stark: by 2007 (the most recent figures available), collection spending was already 2/3 electronic. (What must it be as I write, 2 years on?)
It is common knowledge that serials have been trending electronic since the turn of the last decade. But now, materials of ALL kinds are moving to electronic delivery. Take a look, for example, at the trends specifically for electronic books.
For many of us, this is not news. But the appropriate response is not to treat electronic platforms as peripheral or ancillary. This is obviously the future of the STM business.
Elizabeth
Jake Zarnegar
Pam Harley
Thane Kerner
This trend will snowball as vendors–like Silverchair, but numerous others–crop up enabling publishers to go online more easily. Health sciences led the charge in the academic space (the public library space belongs to ProQuest, Gale, Ebsco, and the other non-STM aggregators) because there was frankly the most money in that segment of that market space, with very large players, sufficiently capitalized, like Wolter Kluwer, Elsevier, etc., able to take large swaths of their content digital.
But now vendors have come online–Atypon, Impelsys, Tirza, Pub2Web–which have enabled smaller publishers to digitally platform their content without having to build their own systems. (Note some of the big publishers originally sought to lease space on their systems to other publishers, but that created obvious conflicts of interest.
Libraries are going electronic because more publishers now have available neutral platforms that not only enable them to go digital at reasonable cost but were specifically designed with library licensing, data access and data linking (to library holdings) concerns addressed.