Entire books, as well as individual book chapters, journal articles, and so on are all being marketed online by publishers. An academic publishing contract which stipulates that an author collects no share of the sales in each form (e.g., print or digital) until at least 300 copies of that form are sold annually does not give the author a fair share of the profit. There is no extra cost to the publisher annually; once produced, the sale of a digital product is almost entirely profit; similarly for print copies if print on demand is well-established.

Second, for purposes of dissemination, authors may be poorly served by a standard restrictive publishing agreement which grants publication and distribution rights exclusively to the publisher. If a publisher decides to not distribute or “print” the work, the author may have little or no avenue for having her or his work distributed.

Third, the digital world creates new issues for universities and libraries as far as reuse fees are concerned, and none of the existing contracts — nearly all of which assign to the publisher exclusively licensing rights carte blanche — really address different ways of doing this. This issue also affects authors who may want to use their own work in particular contexts (e.g., teaching) and who may have to pay, or their university may have to pay to do so.

Not to beat a dead horse (since I’ve mentioned the piece in previous posts), but for the interested reader, I discuss these issues in my essay, “Marketing Ideas: Reshaping Academic Publishing in a Digital World” at http://www.scienceprogress.org/2008/04/marketing-ideas/

Moreover, even with only modest royalties at stake, it is not the case that “no monetary incentive currently exists for the vast majority of academic writing.” Faculty’s tenure and promotion—hence salaries—rely heavily on their publishing. They have a lot at stake in the stability of the publishing system. Despite the possibility of starting new journals with open-source software, and to post work freely on the internet, the vast majority of faculty authors continue to turn to established publishers because their own careers depend, at least in part, upon those publishers’ reputations for quality. (In addition, of course, most faculty members prefer to do their work and not the work of publishers.)

I am not interested in defending the current business models of any particular publisher. My point is that existing publishers do have a stake in protecting their business models, and that faculty members rely on those in ways that are not necessarily helpful for their own libraries and universities. If we don’t understand their business models we’re unlikely to respond effectively to their challenges.

I respectfully suggest that “a little bit of attention to the economics of scholarly publishing” is not enough. As the recent study from the University of California points out, it is not fair to expect individual faculty members to buck this system by making adventurous publishing choices. We as a university community (of librarians, publishers, and administrators, as well as faculty) must find a better way. I agree that authors need to become savvier about their publishing agreements (even to read them, which many authors admit they do not do.) But it’s a big, complex problem that will require a complex solution.