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 | Together Again: Springer, Max Planck Agree To New "Experimental" Deal
After a highly-publicized split last October, Springer announced this week that it has won back a key subscriber, Germany's prestigious Max Planck Institute (MPS), with an innovative two-year deal that features Springer's open access (OA) option. The new agreement, signed last week, was billed as a "mix" of open access and subscription models under which Max Planck researchers will have access to all 1200 Springer journals in SpringerLink as well as having author charges waived for researchers choosing to publish in journals under Springer' OA option, Open Choice. Financial details, however, were not disclosed.
Though billed as "a two-year experiment," the new deal represents a significant reconnection for Springer, a leading STM publisher, and the well-funded Max Planck, one of the world's most prestigious research institutions with more than 12,000 staff members, 9000 Ph.D. students, post-docs, guest scientists and researchers, and student assistants working in over 80 affiliated research institutes. The agreement, however, was billed as "a two-year experiment." Over the duration of the deal, noted Peter Hendriks, Springer's president of STM publishing, both sides will "evaluate the effects of open access on both authors and users."
Springer spokesman Eric Merkel-Sobotta told the LJ Academic Newswire the deal was along the lines of two other recent "experimental" deals Springer has struck, one with UKB, a consortium of the Universities and the Royal Library of the Netherlands, and one with the Georg-August University of Göttingen, both of which also waive author fees for those institutional researchers choosing to submit to Springer journals using Open Choice. The standard Open Choice author fee is $3000.
Springer's Jan Velterop, an OA pioneer during his years at BioMed Central wrote on his blog that the new deal "could quite conceivably yield an increase in article submissions to Springer journals by authors from Max Planck Institutes…in fact, such an increase is expected, over time." On his blog, OA advocate Peter Suber noted that this kind of deal "helps create a new body of OA content articles by faculty at participating institutions for about the same price that institutions currently pay for subscriptions." Velterop added that such deals could reconcile "the desire for universal and immediate open access to peer-reviewed scientific journal articles with the need to ensure the economic sustainability of peer-reviewed journals."
In October, 2007, after negotiations had broken down, MPS VP Kurt Mehlhorn said Springer was intent on charging "approximately double the price" the organization regarded as "reasonable." In a statement, MPS officials suggested the breakdown in negotiations with Springer was representative of "extreme price developments in the supply of information, as well as usage restrictions," and suggested scientific organizations throughout the world should "rethink" their information policies.
Chalk it up to all's fair in negotiation. Merkel-Sobotta said Springer has always been open to open access, so long as any such system recognizes the value added by journal publishers and said that despite the public perception of acrimony, the two sides continued to talk and that Springer was "very pleased" with the eventual, innovative deal—and also interested to see what the next two years will look like. "If researchers really want open access," he noted, "we'll see."
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Michigan Hits Scanning Milestone
Much has been said (good and bad) about Google's library scanning project, but one can't deny that the program is making astounding progress. Last week the University of Michigan (UM) Library celebrated putting its millionth book online. Just 6.5 million more to go.
Thanks to the partnership with Google, UM librarians say they are on track to have their entire book collection scanned by "early in the next decade." By contrast, under Michigan's own pre-Google scanning program, one of the nation's most aggressive, then Associate Provost James Hilton told the LJ Academic Newswire in fall 2005 that scanning the library's contents would have taken "1000 years…at a cost that was staggering."
"As far as I know Michigan is the first library to have one million books from its own collections digitized and available for search, and, when in the public domain, available for viewing," noted UM librarian Paul Courant on his blog. "We all eagerly await (and it won't be long) the next million, and the millions after that." Indeed, one million books is a major milestone. To place it in perspective, UM library officials put together a slide show on what it means:
What does one million books mean?
- One million books = 361,441,145 pages
- One million books = 42 terabytes
- One million books = 750 tons
- One million books = 146 miles...
Digitized books at UM, are made available publicly via the library's MBooks program. Materials that are currently in copyright are available for searching online, while public domain books are fully accessible.
Of course, for all their potential benefit Google's library scanning efforts have also yielded significant criticism, from those claiming copyright concerns and from those who say the partnerships lack sufficient planning, selection, and quality control. In 2007, the American Historical Association's Robert Townsend raised concerns about the quality of the scans. And this week, in a fascinating article in Campus Technology magazine University of California officials, also Google partners, frankly conceded there was a "real balance point between volume and selection" in scanning materials, suggesting that in order to meet the ambitious Google contract terms the library has to perform some "bulk selection."
Courant acknowledged the effort that goes into such a massive project. "A lot of books have to be barcoded, moved, and moved again in order for a project like this to work, " he blogged. "To the enormous credit of our library, there has been tremendous enthusiasm for both the work and its purposes."
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| Microsoft Says Proposed Yahoo Acquisition Will Be Good for Competition
Microsoft officials told analysts last week that its massive $44 billion bid for Yahoo! would be good for the Internet, creating more competition. In a stinging commentary, however, Google, Microsoft's competition, said that Microsoft's own history of anticompetitive practices should raise doubts about the hostile takeover bid and its effect on the open development of the Internet. "This is about more than simply a financial transaction, one company taking over another," David Drummond, senior VP of corporate development and chief legal officer at Google, wrote in a post to Google's blog. "It's about preserving the underlying principles of the Internet: openness and innovation."
This week Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer told analysts that the blockbuster Microsoft/Yahoo! deal would enhance rather than harm the Internet, citing Google's "75 percent share" of the paid search market, by creating a "strong number two competitor," to Google. Google officials, however, scoffed at that idea. "Could the acquisition of Yahoo! allow Microsoft—despite its legacy of serious legal and regulatory offenses—to extend unfair practices from browsers and operating systems to the Internet?" Drummond asked, alluding to Microsoft's much maligned "bundling" strategy, a practice that steers consumers to services embedded in Microsoft computers. "Policymakers around the world need to ask these questions—and consumers deserve satisfying answers."
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| Bookstore Owner Leaves Surprise Gift to U. of Washington Libraries
University of Washington (UW) librarians knew their friend David Bell, owner of a used bookstore near the university had left them a gift in his will. But two years since Bell's death, librarians were surprised to learn that he in fact had left half his estate to the libraries, nearly $700,000. According to the Seattle Post Intelligencer, Bell specified that the endowment be for preservation efforts in UW's special collections.
"This endowment was kind of a surprise to us," UW Libraries rare book curator Sandra Kroupa told reporters. "I think this is just one of those situations where you can never tell how much of an impact you make on someone's life." University officials said Bell's endowment is one of the largest in the history of the UW Libraries' special collections. Friends described Bell as a private, generous man who had to add space to his home to house his own 37,000-plus book collection, and enjoyed visiting UW's rare book room. Charles Leibst, a friend and executor of Bell's will, told reporters Bell was "troubled because he felt the university didn't have the means to care for some of their books."
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Library Journal Academic Newswire
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