Electronic Information:
Debates in Ownership and Access

Society for Scholarly Publishing
1996 Top Management Roundtable
Philadelphia, PA
September 25-27, 1996

IP News (Internet Edition) Fall 1996
Chairs:
Kathleen Case, Vice President for Publishing, American College of Physicians
Robert Bovenschulte, Vice President for Publishing, Massachusetts Medical Society

This Copy Courtesy of RCP Consultants Ltd., producers of RMTS and RPTS Publishing Software.

Welcome

Kathleen (Kathy) Case greeted the participants by sharing a recent experience of finding openly available on another website full-text of ACP serial publications. This was unauthorized. When contacted, the owner of the site said that Kathy was interfering with public access to information by her claiming ownership of ACP intellectual property. She found it easy to respond to this as it was clear in her mind that ACP was in the right.

A second instance of an ownership issue was not so easy for Kathy to resolve. She received a request from an author to put several chapters of her book on another non-ACP website. While Kathy thought this was an infringement of ACP's copyright because of the amount of material, the author appealed to a "higher court" (ACP governance) and Kathy's refusal of permission was overturned.

Session 1: Authors, Researchers and Users of Information

Moderator: Robert (Bob) Bovenschulte

Panelists: James O'Donnell, Professor of Classical Studies and Interim Vice Provost for Information Systems and Computing, University of Pennsylvania and Martin Pring, Associate Professor of Physiology and Director of Computing Facilities, School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania

James (Jim) O'Donnell is Editor and Publisher of an electronic journal, *Bryn Mawr Classical Review* which is available free on the Internet. Jim hopes to resist the need to charge any monies for the publication until fees are trivial and transparent to users.

In his remarks, Jim stated that he feels that we are dealing not with a clash of culture OR technology but that the situation is cross-cutting and is a clash of cultures AND technology. Electronic information allows for repackaging and the ability to speak to many audiences. The technology empowers us but the license agreement often allows us to do less in the electronic form than what we could do in print. The CONFU guidelines have shown that it is not yet time for new descriptions. The definition of fair use is tantalizing at the moment, but there is a reluctance on both sides to create an electronic CONFU guideline. Copyright case law to date has had a commercial (versus academic) basis and emphasis.

Jim feels that the best label for the current situation is "inopportunism" which is a low-tech concept, but appropriate for the times. We need good copyright policies on campuses in all areas including creation and not just regarding use. We need to provide financial support for innovative publishing models. Print grew up based on a "new" technology, but did so very slowly and structures (culture) evolved even more slowly. It is not true to say that information is free, but people with information-manipulating tools want to use those tools as freely as possible. It is in the interest of information providers to recognize that tension and allow people to do as much as possible with published information.

In his closing remarks, Jim posed a key question to publishers: How small a slice of money can you take from each individual person and maintain a viable operation?

Martin Pring took a biological scientist's approach to the "quantum leap" that has occurred in technology by contrasting it to what happens to a system of organisms when they are faced with a quantum leap change. Initially, there is a proliferation of bizarre forms that take advantage of diversity and disappear quickly upon selection based on fitness. Then a new steady state or equilibrium arrives based on that selection and is maintained until reaching a new break point and the cycle starts again.

To what extent could this model be used to predict the future? According to Martin, it can organize our thinking, but it can not predict what will happen as events are "random." One can predict what will be selected based on fitness, but this gives no time scale for change (i.e., how rapid change will be). We have the option of being a fruit fly or a 17-year locust -- each has its own advantages.

Martin asked: What is added value? What gives extra fitness to scholarly knowledge? It is its context, that is, how information is manipulated and moves from one idea to another. Technology is enabling in this regard. Martin believes that the people at the TMR (mainly scholarly publishers) are not the right ones to predict the future as they all grew up in the world of the book. You need to watch a three- or four-year old as the child is introduced to a computer but has yet to thumb through a book and perhaps never will.

Linkages are key. Bibliographies in scholarly papers are too big and don't provide a level of quality desired by scientists. Martin wants to know more than the binary decisions (accept or reject) to publish a scholarly paper. Scientists want to know what caused the decision; what were the quality measures? He wants to base linkages from one work to another based on those measures and be able to link from one paper to another based on a roster of criteria including personal evaluation of an author's reputation. Quality measures involving human knowledge (intelligence) and interaction should be the basis for linkage construction.

According to Martin, scholars don't recognize individual publishers. Publishers are all one island to scholars, not a cluster of individual islands.

In Martin's future, every scholarly work will have different colored hooks attached to it for the purposes of retrieval and linkages to other works. The different colored hooks can be based on subject matter, the same experimental approach, or at the level of reporting (exploratory or detailed investigation). These are "new" added values to confer fitness and lead to selection. Somebody is going to find doing this marketable. Will it be publishers? Or an interloper who comes in and capitalizes on the opportunity? Martin feels that moving into this new added-value role should be attractive to publishers.

Discussion

Jim noted that five years ago his e-journal was new. In 1995, he became co-moderator of the NewJour list on the Internet and there were 300 electronic titles listed. In September 1996, there are 2500.

Martin believes that there has always be gamesmanship in the way author's get published and that there will be new and more complex games in electronic publishing to continue to curry the favor of reviewers.

Mikael (Mike) Engebretson, Director of Multimedia Publishing at Mosby-Year Book, noted from the audience that the life cycle to maturity time frame surrounding the Gutenberg press was 500 years while it is 3 months for the World Wide Web. At those proportions, it will take us 75 years to get this electronic technology right. Can we wait that long? Henry Ford did not invent the electric horse. He came up with a radical new mode of transportation. That is happening now in information.

Martin added that we haven't evolved a culture to work in this new environment in order to know what the norms are. We need to be ready to jump in and impose values that are not tied to any particular technology ... after all, this is scholarly publishing.

Bob Bovenschulte queried Jim and Martin about whether they thought that universities should publish (not just as university presses but in stead of other publishers). Jim responded that universities with limited financial resources are not leaping to take advantage of that, but it is appropriate for non-profits (universities, university presses, and scholarly societies) to be aggressive in moving in this area as they had in print and offer everyone in this field encouragement. Martin believes that we already have and the role of the university is as a laboratory and if publishers don't move in the necessary direction, universities will.

Jim looked at what was first published with the Gutenberg printing press and labeled it "Renaissance Shovelware." Now the shoveling is intense and the challenge is to use technology to create new ways to capitalize on the strength of the technology rather than just emulate the older paradigm. Print homogenized a lot of product. Electronic publication dehomogenizes product (one might even create a database of footnotes).

A.F. (Fred) Spilhaus, Executive Director, American Geophysical Union, declared that we need to take the core competence of the human and the computer and integrate them because there can be a degradation of skills (example: the calculator's impact on basic arithmetic skills). Jim commented on Fred's example suggesting that while there is a loss in the detail of knowledge, there is a gain in control.

Session 2: Librarians

Moderator: Czeslaw (Chet) Grycz, President of "Santa Fe Ventures ... Online!" Panelists: Julia (Julie) Gammon, Head, Acquisitions Department, University of Akron, and Marketing Manager, University of Akron Press, and Julia Gelfand, Applied Sciences Librarian, University of California, Irvine

Chet set the stage by asserting that libraries have to perform two functions in order to cope with the future: look outward towards publishers and producers of information and look inward at their patron community and their use of information.

Julia Gelfand spoke from the perspective of a large research library environment about three topics:

  1. current trends by discipline for books, journals, reference works, and other information products;
  2. trends and concerns in the distribution of library budgets; and,
  3. concerns of librarians regarding their relationships with publishers.

Julia remarked that print is not dead and it will not die. There is a large emphasis on reconfiguring current library space versus erecting new facilities, but they are finding that this reconfiguration sometimes costs more than new buildings.

If you are not connected today, then the campus is not the place to be and librarians are finding that this has become an expensive challenge. There has been a downward spiraling of library staffs. Among the 104 ARL libraries, budgets range from $8-16 million. Network administrators do not come cheap and libraries must compete for this talent with all other industry sectors.

1) Current Trends

Pricing is at the forefront for STM publishing. For libraries, there is a ratio problem between journals and books. Twenty years ago, serials did not exceed 60% of the materials budgets. Today, the ratio is focused by discipline and then librarians look at their overall balance. In some case, serials are as high as 85%. People want access to articles at the time of preprints and demand for the printed issue has declined based on librarians' tracking of usage. Social science scholars use everything and the ratio is about 60-75% serials. In the Humanities, history for example, there is a move to more electronic products as they become increasingly computer literate. The area of reference works is changing the most and is moving toward electronic access via the Web (versus CD-ROM with lower use) and there is the need to serve many people at a time via site licenses.

2) Definition of Budgets

There hasn't been any growth in materials budgets. Instead, additional special monies are found for electronic budgets and these are a one-time only support. Electronic initiatives as we know them today is about how to deal with print and focusing on better access through electronic products. The function of collection development is being distributed among many people in the library and coordinated rather than residing in a single person or group.

3) Trends in New Products in Network Environments

There is great potential here. There is a migration from microform to CD-ROM and the Web. One good example is how Chadwyck Healy products have been developed. Libraries are providing access to electronic products for their patrons through external providers, thus there is the need for standards for the preservation of electronic text. Collection development must differentiate between works added to the collection versus those excluded. The simpler the electronic product and the more journals that can be bundled into a single product the better. There is a new spirit of cooperation among libraries as they like to lend what they have and borrow what they need.

Julie Gammon comes from the North Coast of Ohio (normally known as Lake Erie). Her library has a $2.5 million budget to serve 26,000 students. They believe that if you can't have a winning football team, you can have a winning library.

Julie shared some figures about their periodical collection. In the 1970s, the periodicals accounted for 34% of the collection's budget with 4,467 subscriptions costing a total of roughly $257,000. In the 1990s, with 600 fewer journals, 3,815 serials cost $1.2 million representing 63% of the budget. However, their usage figures found that only the top 10% get any real use by patrons.

OhioLink, which is the Ohio Library and Information Network, was described by Julie as a model for the future. OhioLink is Internet-based with 50 member institutions and growing. The consortium is partnering with Academic Press on an initiative to receive all 174 AP titles by all OhioLink libraries for $6,000 representing only a 10% increase in price over subscribing to every journal individually by every library. In the past, libraries moved from ownership to access in a big way, this initiative is an example of libraries putting that aside and concentrating on ownership AND access.

Librarians have three current concerns: connectivity, copyright, and cost. Under costs, there are a variety of additional concerns:

Regarding site licenses, publishers need to take into account the need for:

Libraries are moving from a customer service orientation to that of mass response and putting the onus on the user. They are worried when the user needs an intermediary because of the complexity of a product that they may not be able to sustain the product. People are not using print sources when they have a choice. Even if the print is the better choice, they will struggle with the complex electronic product instead; hence, libraries are maintaining the print product anyway in order to handle reference queries.

Session 3: Technologists

Moderator: Mary Grace Smith, Principal, Northeast Consulting Resources, Inc.

Panelists: Julia Binder, Manager, Sales and Marketing, IBM infoMarket Service and David Van Wie, Senior Vice President, Research, InterTrust

Mary Grace Smith introduced the session by posing the question: How are emerging technologies enabling and requiring information providers to develop business models?

What does this mean for scholarly publishing?

There are counter indications of change in that the volume of information on the 'Net is still relatively disappointing and chaotic. Mary Grace shared information that is about 3-6 months old in this regard:

Julia Binder addressed the issue of protecting intellectual property in the digital domain. The Web content is doubling every three months. There is a proliferation of search engines and "metasearches." Most information retrieval yields overload. Most content on the Web has little business value. Few people are making any significant money on the Web.

The challenges as Julia sees them:

Users = finding anything of value on the 'Net and paying for it

Publishers = how do you get found; get paid; protect your intellectual property from piracy (need for comprehensive security and copyright management)

Web-based commerce could grow to $30 billion by the year 2000. Change is measured in weeks and months, not years. Publishers need to learn a new vocabulary:

GQL = Generalized Query Language = simultaneous search on databases distributed all over the world to return a unified, ranked result.

End-to-End System = covers all functions from authentication to event logging to billing (in foreign currency for differential pricing) with diverse pricing formats (viewing versus downloading versus printing).

Clearinghouses = handle all the transactions between publishers and their customers.

There will be super distribution via cryptolopes (encrypted envelopes). If registered, the user can opt to open and buy the information passed on via e-mail which produces an incremental revenue stream for publishers with copyright compliance by the user.

What will be the future role of content aggregators? The building up of archives will prove to be important commodities which aggregators have done over the years and can do in the future for small publishers.

David Van Wie looked at fair use in electronic information markets first by noting that the InterTrust Commerce Architecture enables secure electronic commerce and digital rights management, thus serving as a core technology for information providers (publishers) not end users.

David contrasted the US and German models of copyright.

With digital rights management in place, it is a quantum leap to have mechanisms of transactions and payments routinized and economical.

Electronic Rights Management (*preferred by David)

David explained digibox technology which is a software structure that allows rules to be input to protect control and usage. There is no business model that they can't control.

Discussion

Julia described infoMarket Services which provides all customer information to publishers (customer name, organization, e-mail address, product purchased, and at what price), thus allowing for micromarketing. The price range of products vended through infoMarket Services is $0.25 - $150 (the high end covers pieces of Consultant Reports). The information provider can have time-sensitive pricing as well so this allows for a granular approach to pricing through the technology.

David noted that applications programmers will create templates of business models for publishers to use by inputting prices then modifying them as time goes by.

Julia says they are starting to see "on-the-fly" partnerships between publishers and between publishers and technology providers = channel partners.

Mary Grace inserted that the big opportunities will be business-to-business in the near term before there is a massive adoption by end users of the Internet.

Mike Engebretson asked the audience to consider how we can get together as publishers to get to standards rather than standards being set de facto by the fleet of foot.

Session 4: Lawyers and Copyright Experts

Moderator: Carol Risher, Vice President, Copyright and New Technology, Association of American Publishers

Panelists: David Post, Visiting Associate Professor of Law, Georgetown University Law Center and Jon Baumgarten, Partner, Proskauer, Rose, Goetz, & Mend Law Offices, Washington, DC

David Post began his remarks with the statement: Copyright is dead. He believes that business models are pulling apart the copyright law. By using the 'Net, one individual can effectively destroy copyright protection. Copyright is in a troubled state because of the multijurisdictional problems on the 'Net in terms of information originating in what country under what copyright regime.

A bit of history: the Bern Convention was passed in 1886 and the United States signed on in 1989. Thus, David believes that getting an international copyright law is a chimera.

Hollywood was wrong about the centrality of the copyright law to their product vis a vis the videocassette and perhaps this is happening in the publishing community as well. You can't sell what is not scarce. That is, you can't charge for things where there is no scarcity of product.

Short supply of both time and attention will become the coin of the realm, not information. The search services (Netscape, Alta Vista, Yahoo) are making the money, not the information provider. The next level of filtering will appear on the 'Net by the time we get on the train to go home.

Publishers' value added is still the filtering and the credibility they bring to the product (quality imprint) as people are still concerned with the question: Where's the good stuff? This is a valuable social function to be performed by publishers.

Copyright doesn't add to the business model. Contract law will matter more and contribute more through license agreements. What are your statutory rights versus what have you negotiated or given away via license agreements?

Jon Baumgarten explored the concept that digital is different because of the container characteristics of digital distribution, those being:

Jon believes digital is where you start, not end. The critical point is this technology changes how people do things and changes roles. Case in point in the area of ILL and document delivery where there is a total difference of opinion between librarians and publishers. Libraries believe that there is no difference using digital delivery to libraries whereas publishers do consider it different because it can become systematized and no longer sporadic. The law stepped in between lending the book and making the copy (Kinko's, Texaco), now publishers want the law to step in regarding other means of delivery such as digital.

Thus, Jon believes that copyright is very much alive, but some of the law must change focus.

Discussion

David avers that tampering on the 'Net is a trademark versus a copyright issue that is the publisher cares not if they copy my work, but if someone puts their name on my work or a work that the publisher had not condoned or put their imprint on to begin with.

Carol Risher inserted that copyright doesn't work without an honor system and respect. Fred Spilhaus countered that there is no honor system now. It's the Wild West. David believes that the law won't solve this, the technology will.

Fred and David agreed that we need to develop codes of conduct and need to tell people what they can and can not copy.

David spoke on behalf of Netizens (citizens of the 'Net) who feel like the rights of their community are being totally ignored in copyright law. There is a genuine sense that the law is being modified in ways that are not responsive to the potential of the technology.

Session 5: Database Publishers

Moderator: Deborah (Deb) Hull, Chief Operating Officer, Ovid Technologies, Inc.

Panelists: Dennis (Denny) Auld, Senior Director, PsycINFO and Bonnie Lawlor, Senior Vice President and General Manager of the Academic and Public Division of UMI, Inc.

Deb opened the session with a discussion of secondary database distribution by reviewing the following:

  1. Local systems
    • CD-ROM
    • Magnetic Networks (Novell, Unix, Windows NT)
    • Client/Server Architecture (should be Z39.50 compliant)
    • Web, Windows, DOS, VT-100 (front-ends to users)
    • LANs, WANs, Intranet, Internet
  2. Links
    • To holdings from secondary databases
    • To full-text to secondary databases
    • To references in full text to other full-text databases
    • To multiple vendors' servers
  3. Remote systems
    • Connect to OVID hosts (need to think internationally)
    • Client-Server Architecture
    • Web, Windows, etc.
    • Leased line access or Internet (poorest response time available today)
    • Combination of local & remote systems (evident in many libraries; transparent to the user)
  4. Issues for Primary Publishers
    • Ownership of data
    • Archiving
    • Multi-institutional access (consortia)
    • Terms/conditions of licenses

Denny Auld provided figures on the American Psychological Association's PsycINFO. It covers 1,300 journals, 2,000 books (=10,000 chapters) back to the late 1800s. It has 1 million records total and adds 75,000 records per year. PsycINFO staff write their own abstracts unlike other A&I services.

PsycINFO products are print, optical-CD, and electronic site licenses. Their markets are academic libraries and clinics.

Distribution of PsycINFO products
1919 Print
1970s Online - Third Party
1968 Site License (first time)
1986 CD-ROM
1992 Site License (Big time)
Now Internet (open to APA membership)
Pricing of PsycINFO products
Print Subscription
Online Transactional (pay "by the drink")
CD-ROM Subscription
Site License Variable annual fee (individual negotiation)
Internet ? Subscription (not sure, but probably)
Migration of Revenues of PsycINFO products
Print Electronic
1900 100% 0%
1985 75% 25%
1995 25% 75%
2000 ? ?
PsycINFO Product Life Cycle
Print 70 years to peak
Online 15 years to peak
CD-ROM 10 years to peak
Site License not sure
PsycINFO Product Media Distribution
Print 2900 institutions/subscriptions
CD-ROM 1800 subscriptions
Online 4000 users/month
Site License over 100 licenses covering 400 institutions
PsycINFO Product Prices
Print $1,300
CD-ROM $4-6,000
Online $.35/record (+ vendor charges)
Site License $12,500/year

PsycINFO's experience with product overlap is that 70% of CD-ROM subscribers still hold print subscriptions and 95% of site licenses still hold CD-ROMs.

Side Effect of Migration on PsycINFO Revenue
Prior to site license $X
After site license w/retention of CD-ROM $2.6X
After complete migration to site license $2X

Issues for Primary Publishers

  1. Consortium
    • reason for existence = to share resources
    • technological infrastructure = want to leverage this
    • deal direct in large volumes
    • expect savings
    • evolving and complex
    • institutions belong to more than one
  2. Subscription Agents
    • library consortia are bypassing for now
    • viewed as aggregators
    • may be transitional because of technology changes
    • authentication problems
  3. Models
    • no print equivalent to look at
    • print = X; electronic = .9X; both = 1.2X
    • consortia can not deal with just individual titles
    • subscriptions
    • cash flow
    • increased utilization with secondary files, local holdings
  4. Technology
    • user interface = libraries don't want to train users on different search engines
    • local versus remote access
    • size of data = critical; huge
    • transactional = software underneath subscription charge
    • integration
    • demand on marketplace
  5. Licensing
    • copyright
    • consortium level
    • standardization = need for unique article identifier
    • sticky points = user ID and Fair Use
    • predictability
    • no one-offs
    • archiving
    • perpetual license
    • ease of negotiation
    • free trials/demonstrations
    • layered = consortia dealing with a whole series of products and providers
  6. User patterns
    • little data
    • Tulip Final Report (good example of data gathering project)
    • consortium information
    • secondary files

Publishers Need To:

  1. Develop internal information systems
  2. Develop models
    • business plan
    • pricing model
    • license learning curve
    • distribution
    • editorial/production plans
  3. Integrate
    • understand relationships
    • develop complementary distribution
    • understand journal subscription versus article transaction

Bonnie Lawlor gave a brief history of UMI to start her presentation.

Traditional Requests from Database Producers to Primary Publishers:

Number of Electronic Publications on the Internet [Source: ARL Directory]

1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996
Journals/Newsletters 110 133 240 443 675 1689
% Increase 21 80 85 52 150

Academic Libraries [1994 data]

Bonnie explained that ownership rights are the concern of authors while usage rights are the concern of libraries. Who owns the "published" literature and does it change in the electronic environment? License versus copyright is the issue. License balances rights, obligations, and needs of content owners, distributors, and users. Copyright gives protection to the producer.

Potential Issues for Agreements

Session 6: Scholarly Publishing Panel

Moderator: Bob Bovenschulte

Panelists: Janet Bailey, Director, Marketing and Sales, Elsevier Science Inc.; Isabel Czech, Director, Publisher Relations, ISI; Mikael (Mike) Engebretson, Publisher, Multimedia Division, Mosby-Year Book Inc.; Robert (Bob) Marks, Director, Publications Division, American Chemical Society; and Sanford (Sandy) Thatcher, Director, Penn State Press

Bob Bovenschulte asked the panel to answer the following multiple choice question:

Investing in electronic initiatives right now is:
a) crucial
b) prudent
c) premature

Isabel Czech responded that it is critical for secondary publishers. She continued by noting that the one thing she kept thinking about throughout the TMR was how damn expensive all this is and the investment required on everyone's part is not just in terms of money, but in staffing and technical training as well. Second, there is the question of value-added. Do users really want all this stuff and will they pay for it?

Janet Bailey's answer was d) all of the above. She noted that it is a scary thing to be prepared for whatever way the market will take us. She agreed with Isabel that the investment is not just in dollars, but in people and work processes.

Mike Engebretson believed the answer to be a) crucial because 1) the World Wide Web has changed everything faster than anything in the history of commerce, 2) there is a low barrier to entry for new upstarts, so if you are not protecting your territory you will lose your territory, and 3) is copyright dead or not? that question really perks up a publisher's ears!

Bob Marks declared the urgency to take advantage of technology and related the ACS history of inserting the computer into the publishing process in the early 1970s. It was done because it was efficient and cost effective, even if it was proved to be ahead of the market.

Sandy Thatcher stated that investing in electronic initiatives is crucial for university presses as publishers of scholarly monographs. He is concerned about the future of scholarly monographs and the need to go electronic with the creature if it is to exist into the future.

Bob Bovenshulte then queried the panel as to their crucial issues for the future.

Isabel believed the crucial future issues will be finances and the need for continued collaboration between primary and secondary publishers and libraries to learn what do end users really want. We all need to know this to develop truly useful technological advances.

Chet Grycz interjected that users can assess what they like better than they can articulate what they need. As evidenced by activity on the Internet and the WWW, they want universal operability and critical mass. What is missing on the Web is the quality indicators. There is a need for better filtering and access tools and that is where the money will be made.

Julia Gelfand added that the downsizing of corporate America shows the re-emergence of the consultant population and these people are independent users with specific, unique needs which are different from academic researchers.

Denny Auld noted that users can not articulate what they want, but the people running library consortia certainly can and do when they are negotiating license agreements!

Janet's critical issues for the future were speed and managing the transition (the period between short-term and long-term) which she believes could become a survival issue for many.

In relation to the transition of technology from short to long term, Deb Hull asked the question: when do you stop supporting legacy products? Is there a parallel in print?

Arly Allen, President, Sheridan Electronic Systems, then asked what about archiving? How do we go backwards and retrace our steps if we don't support the science and science publishing?

Bob Shirrell, Journals Manager, University of Chicago Press, followed Arly by adding that the archiving issue is far more complicated in electronic publishing. There is no archive. There is only a mirror site. It is not a matter of needing a [physical] place to put all this. Publishers must commit themselves to migrating technologies. We are in a state of constant change, not heading toward a state of equilibrium as posed by Martin Pring. If you think equilibrium will occur then don't throw away your money now, wait until it gets here. Otherwise, you need to spend money constantly as the technology changes. Bob believes that we will only face constant change for the rest of our careers.

Mike agreed noting that there will be a spike in the curve of our R&D costs and our frustrations.

Maureen Kelly of BIOSIS said she couldn't resist a discussion of a biological model. She believes that what may be coming is a state of equilibrium for what the niches may be versus the players. Publishers need to look for players strong in other niches and join up to combine talents with them.

Sandy looked at the future critical issues from the vantage point that different publishers have different stakes in electronic publishing (commercial versus society versus university press). This produces tension between publishers, for example, work by CONFU on electronic reserve guidelines created fissures in the publisher community. A major issue will be access to capital as publishers leverage assets through strategic alliances across companies. This is the strength of commercial publishers. Their weakness is that they exist outside the academic community which is a real vulnerability as they lack the prestige from association with top scholars which is lent by the universities to commercial publishers. How long can universities continue to deal with deal commercial publishers? Private industries cooperate with universities in all sorts of ways, but not in publishing. Commercial publishers have financial capital and universities have moral capital.

Society publishers have the strength of professional affiliation behind them. Their weakness is that the flagship journals in disciplines may be lost in the electronic environment. Sandy recommends that societies reference the electronic publishing plan of the Association of Computing Machinery which is predicated on three revenue streams: guided access to literature; conferences (some on the Internet); and continuing education, based on their database collection and testing. He sees certification and accreditation as a major potential revenue source for societies in the future.

The principal strength of university presses is a moral strength based on links with faculty. Their weakness is a lack of capital as universities are dis-investing in university presses. There is a need to collaborate via consortia among university presses in the electronic environment.

Sandra Whisler, Assistant Director, Electronic Publishing and Journals, University of California Press, noted that it is easier to partner with people with different skills from different sectors versus colleagues in the same industry. She gave the example of the failure of the AAUP project Unbound which was an electronic publishing project supported by seven university presses.

Sandy then provided a lengthy explanation of how the Big Ten universities have come together in a consortium regarding information activities such as computing centers and copyright.

Bob Bovenschulte closed the Top Management Roundtable acknowledging Sandy's impressive reporting of the consortium's activities, but noting that it was a bit out-of-date. He read that morning in the Wall Street Journal that Reed-Elsevier had purchased the Big Ten! ;-)

The End

For more information or discussion about the seminar, contact Barbara Meyers via postal mail, phone, fax, or e-mail. Meyers Consulting Services, 1836 Metzerott Road, Ste. 1003, Adelphi, MD 20783-3448, USA, Voice: 301-434-6249, Fax: 301-434-0126, E-mail: 5526378@mcimail.com

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