Agents, Publishers, & Added Value:

How Librarians View the Performance of Subscription Agents & Journal Publishers

Why We Surveyed

• At a national American library conference publishers challenged the worth of subscription agents

• Librarians challenged back

Swamp Fox Gang: Who We Are

• Rick Anderson- Assoc. Dir. for Scholarly Resources & Collections, University of Utah

• Jill Emery-Head of Acquisitions, University of Texas @ Austin

• Gary Ives-Electronic Resource Acquisitions Librarian, Texas A&M University

• Dana Walker-Head of Acquisitions, University of Georgia Libraries

Structure of the Survey• Librarian Demographic

Information (6)• Publisher and

Subscription Agent (2)• Satisfaction with

Publishers (9)• Satisfaction with

Subscription Agents (9)• Rating of Publishers and

Subscription Agents (9)• Open ended “Final

Comments”

Areas of Service Satisfaction1. Customer service2. Management of

subscription list3. Accuracy of renewal and

invoicing4. Timeliness of renewal

and invoicing5. Providing administrative

metadata6. Providing technological

services7. Accurate price

calculation under contract

8. Correct initial access activation

9. Resolution of access problems

Administration of Survey• Administered thru

SurveyMonkey• Survey approved by the

Institutional Review Board – Human Subjects in Research, Texas A&M University.

• Potential participants were invited by:– Direct email to individuals

at ARL libraries– General calls for

participation to relevant discussion lists

• “Test” version of survey provided.

Analysis

• Total of 179 responses

• Filtered for librarians working at university libraries who serve as liaisons to both publishers and subscription agents

• 77 filtered responses used in this analysis

Breakdown of Package Deals

Percent of respondents with package deals:

– Blackwell: 67%– Elsevier: 90%– Sage:

49%– Springer: 77%– T & F:

44%– Wiley:

83%

Unsurprising Results• Overall subscription agents

were rated as providing better service

• Specifically, subscription agents did better on title list management & renewals

• Subscription agents also did much better on technological services such as EDI invoicing

• Publishers not in control of needed administrative metadata (order numbers, fund codes)

• Publishers good at resolution of access problems

Surprising Results• Narrow margins between

publishers & subscription agents on overall service

• Margins narrow between Sage, Wiley & subscription agents on renewal processing

• Publishers significantly slower on renewals

• Subscription agents ranked high on accuracy of pricing/invoicing under special license conditions

• Subscription agents ranked fairly high in resolution of access problems

18

Comments from Respondents“The annual renewal for packages has been an ongoing nightmare. Clearly publishers cannot handle this task efficiently and should move to a non-reconciliation model or let our subscription agents handle this. The number of hours spent on reconciliation is unbelievable!”

“Publishers need to understand what libraries need for maintenance AND they should be committed to working with subscription vendors who provide these necessary services for us. I am up to my eyeballs in problems because of the publishers' lack of management of these packages!”

“Every year, it takes many e-mails to straighten out our list of active and cancelled titles. We use an agent for their titles, but when it comes to getting the title list correct, we end up communicating with [publisher name] directly, since going through our agent for that matter would add more delay. Using the agent is convenient for invoicing in our case, since almost 1,000 titles are paid on different subject budgets. Our invoices are loaded electronically (EDI invoicing).”

More Comments

“Our agents have been ahead of the curve all along and continue to lead the way.”

“In general we experience far more problems with our subscription agent than with our publishers. However, our subscription agent is very proficient at dealing with access issues...it's just that some of the access issues were the direct result of our subscription agent not paying a publisher even though that package was on our invoice and renewal.”

“You needed to have either a three point or a five point rating scale. Choosing between Good or Poor just wasn't granular enough. How about Satisfactory?”

Reactions from the Charleston Conference

• Surprisingly vocal discontent with subscription agents

• Grudging acknowledgment that publishers do a better job than expected

• Still see room for improvement from both parties

Concluding Thought#1

• In terms of Big Deals, things won’t get much worse for agents

• However, if agents improve their handling of Big Deals, things could gradually get worse for publishers

Serviceshave never been

better!

Services have never been

better!

Concluding Thought #2

Subscription-list findings should be a wake-up call for publishers

We are confident in our title list

management!

We are confident in our title list management!

Concluding Thought #3

• Findings on back-office effectiveness should also be a wake-up call for publishers

• There may be a role in the marketplace for an agency specialising in subscription management for publishers

I don’t like that idea Rick!

Interesting.

Concluding Thought #4

Or, perhaps publishers could start outsourcing those tasks to subscription agents themselves

We can discuss it.

We can discuss it.

Survey results can be found here:

http://tinyurl.com/3x9g5u

Questions?

Rick Anderson, University of Utahrick.anderson@utah.edu

Jill Emery, University of Texas at Austinj.emery@austin.utexas.edu