Examination of Witnesses (Questions 94
- 99)
MONDAY 8 MARCH 2004
DR JULIA
KING, MRS
SALLY MORRIS
AND MR
MARTIN RICHARDSON
Q94 Chairman: Good afternoon, may
I thank you for being patient? We shall have to get an even bigger
room next time if it goes on like this; we will have to get the
Albert Hall or we might take over the chamber as there are more
of us than them. As you know, the public and professional groups
have really been interested in this inquiry; it has generated
a lot of interest and a lot of documentation and this packed session
is indicative of that. Many people phone us up and tell us not
to believe everything we hear. May I, on behalf of the Committee,
say that we are not actually naïve, we do meet a lot of people,
we are used to finding out a lot of facts and we have a reputation
on this Committee to keep up which is not perhaps the most favourite
committee in the world with many professional groups outside but
you can trust us to hear, listen and judge later on. Please do
not bother to phone us, we will phone you; we understand the problems.
Thank you very much, Martin, Julia and Sally, for coming along
to help us with the inquiry. I hope you heard some of the stuff
which was there last week and we will give you opportunities to
reply to some of that of course. The first quick question is about
smaller publishers and the role they play in the STM market. What
do they have to offer that is not available elsewhere?
Mrs Morris: A great many of the
smaller publishers are non-profit publishers, typically the society
publisher only has a handful of journals and even the university
presses have relatively few journals compared with large publishers.
A great many of the small publishers, though by no means all,
are non-profit, which adds an extra feature to what they bring
to the picture. In general, small publishers bring flexibility,
ability to give personal attention to the authors and editors
they work with. Very often they bring very reasonable prices too,
whether they are commercial or not.
Dr King: I would like to support
what Sally said. We get a very good engagement with the community
and particularly publishers who have a very focused community,
as many of the learned society ones do. We know our community
well and we take great pride in trying to ensure we can deliver
the sorts of things they are interested in.
Mr Richardson: I would agree with
that. As part of the academic community, as a university press,
as part of a university, we feel we are very close to the academic
community and can reflect their needs in our publishing.
Q95 Chairman: That is all very nice;
you have all agreed on something. Let us see whether we can split
you apart now. Sally, in your experience, do many societies choose
to have their journals published by a commercial publisher? What
effect do you think such decisions have on the price/availability
of those journals?
Mrs Morris: Quite a lot do. Estimates
vary, but perhaps half as many again as do their own publishing
are published by other publishers on their behalf, not necessarily
commercial publishers, some of them turn to other non-profit publishers,
for instance Martin publishes on behalf of a number of societies.
That is one way in which a small society publisher can gain the
benefits of critical mass. If you are very, very small, it is
quite difficult to compete, particularly in an environment of
big deals. If the smaller publishers want to compete in that environment,
one option is to work with a larger publisher. Another is to work
together in a group of smaller publishers. In many cases societies
which are published by other publishers do retain quite a lot
of control. They normally retain complete control over editorial
policy and very often considerable control over other aspects
of publishing policy, including pricing. You will quite often
find that society journals operate under different licensing or
pricing rules from other journals in a publisher's stable because
the owners, the societies, have insisted on particular terms.
Q96 Chairman: Let me ask all of you
now: how do you view the behaviour and pricing policies of the
large commercial publishers? What impact do their policies have
on you? Do you differentiate yourselves from the pricing policies
of the market leaders?
Dr King: Yes, we do. In a way
we have to say that it is something of an advantage to us because
we have a certain sympathy from the academic community because
we are not Elsevier and we are not as pushy, we do not hike our
prices up as much.
Q97 Chairman: What does "pushy"
mean?
Dr King: As commercial, as acutely
commercial. We do not push the big deals on librarians and we
have our own packages, but they are smaller than theirs.
Q98 Chairman: You say you think they
do.
Dr King: That is what we hear
from talking to the communities.
Q99 Chairman: You could not possibly
confirm that.
Dr King: That is what we hear.
Mr Richardson: On average we have
lower prices than most of our commercial competitors. It is partly
because we are doing a very high proportion of society publishing
and the print runs and distribution of those journals tend to
be much larger and partly that we operate on a lower profit margin
than many commercial publishers.
Mrs Morris: There have been quite
a lot of published studies comparing the prices of commercial
and non-commercial publishers in different subject areas and they
all seem to show that on average non-commercial publishers have
lower prices. It is not to say there are not some very reasonably
priced commercial publishers and vice-versa, but the averages
certainly point that way.
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