Emerging Pricing Models for E-Journals Consortia and Indian Initiatives

The print journals continue to dominate both from users point of view and publishers revenue. The advent of e-publishing has brought a revolution in journal publication, subscription, access and delivery mechanism. Print journals publishing costs include high article processing costs, high production and marketing costs. E-journal production and access costs are increased further due to infrastructure, customer support, IT savvy human resources, etc. While these costs form the base, other pricing factors include number of nodes, multiple campuses, access mode, training, perpetual access, etc. A study indicates that one of the US University Science Library spends 76 % of its journals budget on titles of 10 major publishers like Elsevier, Springer, Wiley, Harcourt, Kluwer, Plenum, Blackwell, AIP, Marcel Dekker and Taylor Francis. This holds good for most of STM institutions too. The dwindling library budgets and growing number of journals force libraries to form consortia for accessing e-journals. The old concept x2018;consortiax2019; means a strategic alliance of institutions having common interests. Neither libraries nor the publishers have sufficient experience or data to determine the appropriate unit cost of information, the effective return on investment, or the most appropriate economic model for charging or paying for electronic information. There are no universally acceptable e-journals pricing and licensing models. Current pricing models for e-information, which are developing during a period of experimentation, are not sustainable. Although it can not be generalized the learned society publishers are increasingly prepared to make all their non-subscribed journals available to consortia in return for a relatively small extra payment. Many libraries especially in developing countries are not geared up for accessing e-Journals due to various reasons including user ignorance, infrastructure and funds. While there is an urgent need for changing the mindset of librarians, users and the administrators for subscribing to e-journals in India, a satisfying note is that few forward looking libraries have made a modest beginning in forming consortia. Some initiatives include x2013; Indian Institutes of Management for accessing bibliographic databases, CSIR Laboratories for Science Direct, FORSA for accessing Astronomy and Astrophysics journals, Hyderabad Knowledge Park members for J-Gate, INFLIBNET initiative for providing access to six universities for J-Gate and INDEST for Science Direct , IEEE Journals, few bibliographic databases for the benefit IITs and IISc. Some of the pricing and payment constraints specific to Indian libraries include - inadequate funds, single point payment, rigid administrative, financial and auditing rules, problems of defining asset against payment and pay-per-view not yet acceptable