[CNI-COPYRIGHT] Re: "Do not sell to schools" and copyright

At 05:30 PM 4/3/2003 -0500, you wrote:

>Date: Sat, 29 Mar 2003 15:06:54 -0600
>Subject: [CNI-COPYRIGHT] Re: "Do not sell to schools" and copyright
>From: "Belvadi, Melissa" <mbelvadi[_at_]maryville.edu>
>
><snip>
>I thought that in theory and in the absence of an explicit publisher
>restriction, libraries could, if they were willing to do all that extra work
>title by title, get individual subscriptions in the names of, for instance,
>individual librarians, and pay just the individual price. With prices so
>high in the last few years, this might finally have become a cost-effective
>option for some titles.
>
>Am I wrong? Is there actually a serious legal ground (rather than
>administrative cost one) behind why libraries do NOT just pay for their
>subscriptions individually to their librarians?
>
>Thanks for any advice, even IANAL advice!
>
>Melissa Belvadi

     Contracts for individual subscribers and for libraries are, in fact, expressly written to forbid individual subscriptions to be used to supply libraries or other institutions with copies in lieu of a library subscription. As long as a library has a subscription, however, it is OK to replace a worn or torn library copy of a journal with one from an individual's collection. It is also OK to replace missing copies with donations from individuals.

     Recently a company began purchasing journals at individual subscriber prices and then reselling these journals to libraries at institutional prices. This was quickly stopped by publishers and the company went out of business. They could have faced criminal charges, but I don't believe publishers pushed for this.

     The rationale for the difference between individual and institutional prices is that an institutional subscription may erode the journal's individual subscriber base. This is an even more threatening possibility when subscriptions of journals published in digital format are distributed campus-wide since this makes the journal more conveniently available than simply having one paper copy in the library.

     It is true that many publishers price institutional subscriptions unfairly high relative to prices offered to individual subscribers, but with virtually all scientific, technical and medical journals switching to digital formats, this issue is only going to become more important to publishers over the next few years. Unless publishers can come up with some reasonable solutions to this quandary, it is quite possible that the age of the academic individual subscriber might be at an end. Of course, some journals are not marketed to individuals at all (e.g. Brain Research at $18,000+ per annum) but journals like Cell, Science and Nature are facing a serious dilemma about how to protect their subscriber base, upon which their advertising revenue depends.

Lloyd Received on Fri Apr 04 2003 - 09:42:35 GMT