Executive Council members who take due diligence seriously need to vet the University of Chicago Press’s Journals Program.  As part of this, the journals manager at the University of Chicago Press should be engaged in a face-to-face meeting before the board.  This is a no-brainer for an organization that has been independently publishing its own journal for just more than a century.  Ending one’s independence in publishing sends ASALH on a new trajectory that could result in our never publishing our journal again–if this proposal succeeds or the executed contract fails.  (Getting back into a business would be neither simple nor cheap and hence not probable.)  Chicago itself has made a decision that changes their much out their journals operation.  The move was not obvious to anyone.  Choosing to build its own platform to service fewer than a hundred journals in the humanities and social sciences seems on the face of it a losing proposition in a world where economy to scale is measured in the thousands.   JSTOR and Project Muse entered this business a generation earlier with massive funding from the foundations, and now Chicago, along with the University of Chicago Press, has left JSTOR’s New Scholarship Program in 2015.  Few would recommend this course of action unless a new revolutionary business model is being pursued.  This, however is not likely, and so the question is whether there is a viable business model.  Though Chicago has published journals for nearly a century and a half, they are new to publishing on their own digital platform. Success is far from a given.  Because of this, ASALH needs to put hard questions to them.

And of the things that have stunned me in this process is the candid admission that ASALH has not spoken to JSTOR about how they could retain our business, but rather have allowed our prospective business partner speak to them in lieu of us for the purposes of undoing our generation-long relationship!

1. Were you experiencing declining institutional subscriptions and revenue when you left JSTOR’s New Scholarship Program?
   1. If yes, what was your perception of the problem?  Have you rectified it in your own program?
   2. If not, was there any economic factors involved with leaving?
   3. What role did back file revenue have in your decision to leave JSTOR?
2. Why are you competing with JSTOR Archive in selling your back files?   Did you plan on doing this originally?
3. Your publishing house is now in the second year of having its own journal platform thru Atypon and you have the bulk of two cycles of subscription sales and revenue in hand.  How goes your revenue?
   1. Compared with the last year that you were with the University of Chicago’s New Scholarship Program, please share with us the data on the number of institutional subscribers for your journals.   What was the increase or decrease on average per title?
   2. What was the revenue increase or decrease on average per title?
   3. Based on two year’s experience what are the changes you are considering for your program?
4. How does your overseas sales program differ from that JSTOR had?
   1. How many overseas sales representatives does Chicago have?
   2. What success have your overseas sales people have?
5. Atypon has recently been purchased by John Wiley & Sons, which is a major commercial publisher of journals with over 9,000 titles.  When JSTOR elected to create its own platform, Chicago opted to stay and get its own relationship with Atypon, and so now it in on the platform of a major commercial competitor that is more than a hundred times larger than it is.  This could adversely affect the long-term prospect of ASALH’s business.
   1. What changes have taken place under Wiley?
   2. How has these changes affected your bottom line?
   3. If increases incur in your platform fees, how will these be absorbed?  Will they be passed along as cost?
6. What is your business model for increasing the revenue of the Journal of African American History that allows you to more than double the total revenue of the journal.  $200,000 more than doubles our current revenue and we do not split it 50% with anyone.
   1. Our journals are priced competitively already among history journals, so do you plan to increase those prices significantly?  If so, how much?
   2. Do you expect to double the number of institutional subscribers?  If so, this would go against the trend for humanities and social science journals, so
   3. Does Chicago have its own sales representatives, and if so, how will you do better than JSTOR has been doing.  If not, how do you plan to outdo the overseas sales that JSTOR experiences in the New Scholarship Program?
   4. Given your pricing of back files, it appears to be the major way you mean to increase the revenue stream.
      1. Yet, since our back files will remain on the platforms of Cengage, EBSCO Host, ProQuest, and JSTOR platform and they sell a bundle of over 2000 journals, how do you plan to compete with these firms for back file sales?
      2. What percentage of the $200,000 plus in annual revenue do you anticipate coming from back file sales?
      3. Given that the century of back files were published by us, it stands to reason that we would get 100 of the sales by others named above.  Do you agree?
      4. Given that the back file sales that you were also published by us, it does not seem reasonable that you ask for a 50% share of those sales.   How much do you think you would increase back file that come only from your sales effort?  Would you be willing to waive all revenue from back files that others raise from pre-existing contracts with ASALH?
      5. Would you be willing to accept 25% on the sales of back files you sale to new customers?
7. I am to understand that you have been talking to JSTOR on behalf of ASALH.  If this is true, what has been the broadest scope of those conversations?
   1. Has it been limited to ascertaining the cost of terminating the existing contract?
   2. Has it included any negotiating the removal of the back files from JSTOR’s platform, which would require amending the existing contract ASALH has with JSTOR?
   3. What has been the substance of all conversations on ASALH’s behalf for both JSTOR’s Archival and New Scholarship Programs?
      1. If you have asked JSTOR to take the back files out of our archive have they agreed?
      2. Would there be any financial consequence for you or ASALH in relationship to either of those two contracts?