Content Licensing: Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow

A Publisher Perspective

Fiona Bennett

Head, Rights and New Business Development

6 June 2007, SSP Annual Conference, San Francisco

Oxford University Press

• Oxford University Press overview• Content Licensing: Yesterday

•How content was licensed and why?• Content Licensing: Today

• (Direct) Library Sales phenomenon•Perpetual Access/Long-Term Preservation•Strategic implications of shift•Cannibalization?

• Content Licensing: Tomorrow•Threats•Opportunities •Emerging standards

• Wrap-up

Summary of presentation

Oxford University Press

•Oldest university press in the world•Established 1478, department of the university

•Publish more than 4500 books a year

•More than 50 branches worldwide•Australia, New York, Spain, Hong Kong, Pakistan etc

•Employs 3700 people worldwide

•Several divisions•ELT, International, Academic, Educational, Dictionaries

•Oxford Journals – newly established division of the press•Approx 200 journals: dozen new titles in 2008•Society publisher

Oxford Journals

Major OUP Copyrights

Content Licensing: yesterday

Three key ways of selling journal content:

•Traditional subscription sales•Core focus: academic library market in UK, US and

Europe

•Personal, institutional and member subscriptions

• Special Sales•Focus on non-subscription sales to the pharmaceutical and

corporate sector

•Reprints, supplements and advertising

• Licensing content to third parties•The route to all other markets!

Content Licensing: Yesterday

•Last 10+years: heavy reliance on licensing content to third parties

Why?

• Increased dissemination

• Increased Revenue

• Increased traffic to the Oxford Journals

• Consistency with our competitors

Content Licensing: Yesterday

Who we have licensed content to – 3 main areas of activity

•Aggregators or Full-Text Content Providers• ProQuest, EBSCO, Ovid, Project Muse, JSTOR• Maximise reach to the academic market• Reach other ‘non-core’ markets such as the medical,

corporate, public libraries etc

• Document Delivery/Pay-Per-View Providers• British Library, Infotrieve, Highwire

• Abstracting and Indexing• ABC CLIO• SCOPUS• CSA

Licensees of Oxford Journal content

Content Licensing: Today

• (Direct) Library Sales phenomenon• New development in journals sales• Oxford Journals Library Sales team development – 12-15

strong• Multi-site, consortia deals, archive sales

• The Site License: libraries need to know what they can legally do with the content they have paid for

• Who can use it: remote users etc• Inter-library loan provisions• Course-pack provisions• Regulatory submissions

• Perpetual Access (more in a moment)

• What happens when a journal moves publisher (TRANSFER)

Perpetual Access? Long-term preservation?

New issues to consider when licensing content in the digital world

•Not just one issue but two key issues to consider here•Perpetual access: the need to maintain access to content

beyond subscription periods – post-cancellation access

•E-journal Archiving and preservation: the need to ensure continued availability for future users – how to make sure it is accessible

• Never had to worry about this in the print world!

•are concerns for all stakeholders•Libraries, publishers, aggregators, consortia

• ‘deal-breaking’ issues

Perpetual access etc: Oxford Journals approach

• Society consultation process

• Educate/inform societies of the issue and the business need

• Perpetual access• Long term preservation• Archive – right to sell content needed too either directly or

indirectly

• Get written addendum to publishing contracts• Address issue while still publishing journal• What would happen if journal moved publisher:

• Lengthy process• Complicated• Almost complete

Perpetual access etc: Oxford Journals approach

• implementing capability to provide perpetual access and archive content

• Highwire• Third party agreements – Portico, LOCKSS etc

• spread the ‘risk’ approach• Did not want to put all eggs in one basket• Different approaches in the various agreements signed:

distributed archive, central archive, deep archives, controlled deep archives

• Geographically spread approach to issue

• communication of strategy• Press releases, library newsletter, library discussion groups

Strategic Implications of Library Sales growth

• Increased ability to reach all markets directly•Academic market•Corporate and medical markets•New geographical territories

• The Oxford Journals Archive•Can now sell all of our content directly

• Aggregators: do we still need them?• Increased threat of cannibalization•Detailed analysis of impact of licensing on primary sales

• Evolving content licensing strategy

Content Licensing: Tomorrow

Threats, opportunities and emerging standards

Threats

• Continued reliance on aggregators•Oxford Journals approach

• Increased cannibalization concerns

• Open Access•What will be left to sell?

•Where will the revenue come from?

•Self-archiving – the end of the journal?!

• Shift in outlook on copyright•Assignment of © >> exclusive license to publish >> non-

exclusive to ??

•License addenda, Creative Commons…..

•What rights will we have left?

Opportunities

• Continued relationships with aggregators• Journal specific, market-specific, product-specific

•Article level licensing

• Growth in local edition and translation content licensing•Valuable promotion, profile-building

• Important for society partners

•Key tool for future library sales esp in new geographical markets

• Product integration: journals, books, reference content

• Open Access – difficult to see any opportunities here!

• Emerging Standards should present many opportunities

Emerging Standards

• SERU•Emerging ‘standard/best practice’ approach for digital content

licensing•ALPSP, SSP, ARL and SPARC sponsored initiative – NISO

backing

•TRANSFER Guidelines•Tackles thorny issues for when journals move publisher•Not entirely well-received

• COUNTER and SUSHI

• NLM DTD and archiving standards

• Institutional identifiers, versioning identifiers……

Content Licensing: wrap-up

• Process of enormous change and evolution over last 10-15 years

• Digital world has brought many more opportunities BUT also some real threats

• Continuing balancing act: author rights versus protection and growth of our business

• The trend for publishers to sell direct wherever possible will continue to grow – some of emerging trends will help facilitate this process

• Need for a joined-up, coherent sales strategy for your content licensing is more important now than it has ever been!

•Need to know who and where your market is, how to reach it and how to keep it

For further information, please contact

Name of contactHead of Marketing & Communications

Tel: +44 (0) 1865 353388

Fax: +44 (0) 1865 353835