Economics and Usage of Digital Library Collections: Conference Description

Background

Scholarly communication is poised at a crossroads as electronic resources and tools redefine the established norms. Digital production and distribution changes the cost structure of the industry, and also opens up new product and service possibilities. Digitization also creates challenges and opportunities for publishers and libraries. Development costs are high, and new management problems arise (such as separation between current delivery and archival collection preservation). Traditional pricing schemes and product forms often do not fit this new environment.

In the past few years, there have been several discussions and predictions about the future of scholarly communication in a digital age. Some predict the disappearance of for-profit publishers, but others see a trend towards growth and increased market power of publishers. Some expect new patterns of usage and communication to change the role of the refereed journal, and even the way in which tenure is determined. Several new business models have been proposed and some have been attempted: new buying consortia; publishers that undercut traditional aggregators by building and maintaining their own electronic access services; societies and non-profits that try to create cross-publisher access systems; and so forth.

We are hosting this conference to bring together leading thinkers and practitioners in the global scholarly publishing community. The objective is to share recent research on the economics and usage of digital publications. Although our emphasis is on scholarly publishing, many of the important ideas and results on publishing in the digital world may be drawn from, or applicable to, other types of publishing as well.

Conference Topics

Research and management questions we expect to address at the conference include the following:

What are the features and consequences of traditional and novel pricing models for digital information resources? What content will be free? What value-added services will be priced? What types of bundling should be offered?
Who is using digital collections? Is access broader, narrower or otherwise different from usage of collections on paper? Does the ease of electronic access from small institutions open up a previously underserved user population? Does faster, more convenient (desktop) access change usage patterns and the value of collections?
What changes in industry structure should we expect to see? Will there be widespread disintermediation? Re-intermediation? Will publisher consolidation continue? How will these transformations affect the scholarly community?
How does digital production and distribution change the cost structure of publishing? Should we expect to see prices fall? How have the new electronic-only independent publishers fared? Is digital publication likely to change the balance between professional society and for-profit publication?

Participation in the Conference

The conference will take place on March 23 - 24 in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

If you would like to attend, please complete and submit the online registration form. Registration is free.

Additional conference details will be posted as they become available.

E-mail: peak-conference@umich.edu