Economics of electric literature supply -: Selecting an optimal subscription model for scientific journals

How can academic library consortia provide access to literature despite increasing costs and decreasing budgets? In this paper, it is shown that making the fixed subscription rate variable by combining two relevant tariff models (flat-rate licence and pay-per-view) is an advantageous approach for consortia to react to the increasing (subscription) prices. A decision-making model is developed that considers the relevant parameters of pay-per-view costs and user growth. The model is then applied to the Hessian library consortium (HeBIS). The empirical analysis shows that an optimal mix of rates for the publisher's journals portfolio attains savings between 2% and 17% compared to a basic flat-rate licence.