UK STM Inquiry Hears Library Concerns Over Bundling

-- Library Journal, 5/12/2004

In its third oral evidence session, the UK Parliament's Science and Technology committee heard librarians' concerns about what is perhaps the most controversial aspect of the current STM marketplace: bundling. While the topic was raised in earlier sessions with publishers, it was only barely explored. According to the uncorrected transcripts of the April 22nd session, MP Brian Iddon kicked off a more probing look at the practice by asking witnesses why bundling is so unpopular with librarians. "Bundling requires us to buy journals that we do not necessarily want in order to acquire things that we do want, and is pushing more and more of our budgets into the pockets of a smaller and smaller number of publishers," replied Peter Fox, the university librarian at Cambridge. After a brief, rather polite give-and-take about the general vagaries of bundling, Chairman Ian Gibson, in what has become his trademark style, pressed the witnesses to name names. "You're being very diplomatic," Gibson offered, "but that is not quite the spirit I like to engender in these hearings." Gibson asked for a direct answer: who are the best and worst companies were to negotiate with?

Frederick Friend, chair of the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC), responded that members of the Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers (ALPSP) were among the best and counted STM giant Elsevier among the worst. Friend said JISC last year spent six months in negotiation with Elsevier and another four months "sorting out the details." Friend also criticized out the American Chemical Society for its position on long-term access--and pressed a key point to the committee. "You will understand that in the electronic environment we are not allowed to purchase the content outright," Friend explained. "It is licensed to us." Iddon inquired whether society publishers were being squeezed out by bundling practices of large publishers. Friend responded that they were.

MP Evan Harris then asked why librarians were struggling with the current market practice and why, as buyers, they couldn't use their muscle. "There are two basic problems," Friend responded. "One is the lack of competition, the other is that the people that are paying for the journals, i.e., the libraries are not the people taking the decision [to purchase], whether or not they are the purchasers." Friend said there was a gulf between the academic side--those researchers who need access to specific content--and the library side, those responsible for paying and acquiring the content. The discussion then turned to open access. "Do you believe that open access is going to make bundling a non-issue very quickly," MP Spink asked, "or do you believe bundling will remain a major issue for years to come?" Friend replied that how quickly open access takes off is up to the academic community. "But personally," he added, "I do believe that [open access] is the future."