Collection Sales: Good or Bad for Journals?

Abstract

This paper discusses the impact of collection sales (i.e., the bundling of several journals for sale by publishers to libraries) on journals. The advent of electronic journal distribution implies that bundling is an efficient sales strategy, and can act to extend the reach of a journal. Current arrangements are discussed and shown to lead to tensions between commercial publishers and non-profit journals. The paper argues that non-profit journals should not necessarily abandon collection sales programmes. Rather, non-profit journals may benefit from withdrawing from commercial publishers which distribute their own for-profit journals, and joining together to be distributed by less commercial publishers who set relatively low prices for their collections.

Open Access Journals and Academics' Behavior

“…6. On the welfare implications of the Big Deal, see Armstrong (2010). possible forms of collaboration (The Economist 2012).…”

The determinants of product lines

“…It is related somewhat more distantly to recent contributions to a literature that studies product bundling (Armstrong, , ; Armstrong and Vickers, ; Chen and Riordan, ).…”

Open Access as a Crude Solution to a Hold‐Up Problem in the Two‐Sided Market for Academic Journals

“…8 While the present paper makes improvements along some dimensions, the contributions made by these earlier analyses continue to provide the state of the art along other dimensions. The present paper abstracts from article and journal quality, a key element of McCabe and Snyder [2005] Armstrong [2009]) provide theoretical analyses of the market for academic journals using a one-sided-market model, which is not amenable to analyzing open-access questions. The opposite tack is taken by Jeon and Menicucci [2011].…”

“… See McCabe, Snyder, and Fagin [2014] for a survey. Several papers (McCabe [], Jeon and Menicucci [], Armstrong []) provide theoretical analyses of the market for academic journals using a one‐sided‐market model, which is not amenable to analyzing open‐access questions. The opposite tack is taken by Jeon and Menicucci [].…”