After Elsevier’s acquisition of the Social Science Research Network, quite a few commentators discussed the likely possibility that Elsevier’s (and by extension, the toll-access journal publishing industry’s) strategy is to wean itself off the article-licensing teat in favor of alternate business and service models.

The Loon thinks this is true, as far as it goes. She does have one suggestion regarding this strategy she has not seen elsewhere: The key aspect of Elsevier’s business model that it will do its level best to retain in any acquisitions or service launches is the disconnect between service users and service purchasers.

In current toll-access systems, librarians pay for what researchers read. This disconnect, broadly speaking, allows content providers to jack prices however they like, since affiliated researchers either waft along in blissful economic cluelessness or unleash their fury on librarians rather than content providers. Elsevier et alia have made plenty of money from this setup and would doubtless like to continue doing so.

As continued, often utterly vapid, arguments about gold open access demonstrate, those faculty still clueless about scholarly communication costs are quite wedded to that state of being, and will do anything in their power to avoid needing to acquire a clue. The overlap between “disciplinary communities willing to pay article-processing charges” and “disciplinary communities who already cope with per-article page charges, art charges, and similar” is substantial for a reason!

Elsevier, then, needs to acquire or launch businesses that are not only paid for, but paid for in ways other than by individuals. Research-lab or department budgets are better than individual budgets, but still (the Loon would think) rather dicey. All-campus units such as libraries, research offices, or campus IT are preferable; governments and similar large collective entities are the motherlode.

(The Loon is glossing over sale of user data, because it strikes her as a gold rush. Yes, it is being collected and analyzed; it may even be sold. She expects its saleability to decline over time, at least in this sector, as librarians, regulators, and technologists become more serious about curbing abuses.)

The Mendeley acquisition, through this lens, looks like a strike into research-assessment territory; “Pure” certainly is. This fits neatly into the Loon’s hypothesis, because individual researchers barely want assessment when they want it at all, almost none are willing to pay for it (ask ImpactStory), and many are deeply (and not unwisely) hostile to it… but university administrations are all over it. The perfect product!

Among all the open-access plays Elsevier might have made, why SSRN, then? Through this lens, SSRN’s most attractive feature—aside from how it might integrate into Elsevier’s other assessment offerings—is that law schools pony up for branded portals and other perquisites. If Elsevier can expand that feat into more of the social sciences, it has a genuine gold mine on its hands.

The Loon does not have a feathered ear in Elsevier or any other major toll-access publisher, so this is entirely speculation on her part. She welcomes argument in the comments.

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