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^ Baltic Journal of Economic Studies Vol. 8 No. 5, 2022 ---
DOI: https://doi.org/10.30525/2256-0742/2022-8-5-165-169
STATE REGULATION OF PUBLISHING: PROSPECTS FOR DEVELOPMENT*
Yuriy Safonov1, Andrey Shtangret2, Alexander Melnikov3
Abstract. The experience of most countries confirms that the development of modern information technologies does not reduce people's interest in books. The demand for publishing products remains stable, and in the context of the dynamic development of the digital economy and the priority of information as a resource for sustainable development, it is even growing. Thus, in the EU countries, 6 to 8 books are published per capita per year. In Ukraine, there are significantly different trends, because in 2020 the annual circulation of books in Ukraine amounted to 20.2 million copies, that is, 0.48 copies of books and brochures per one inhabitant of Ukraine. Under such conditions, the development of publishing entities requires strategic and conceptual organizational and financial support from the state in the context of more efficient use of limited financial resources. Since 2005, Ukraine has been implementing the "Ukrainian Book" program, which along with providing tax benefits to publishers and book distributors is a form of state support for publishing. The results of the audit of the effectiveness of the use of funds proved that the effectiveness of the use of state budget funds is not high enough, in particular due to the imperfection of the criteria for selecting publications. Based on the results of the study, a list of such criteria was formed. The methodological principles of expert evaluation of book publications declared by the subject of publishing business in accordance with the established criteria for the selection of book products using points have been formed. An evaluation scale based on the selection criteria was developed. Additional characteristics that specify the main criteria for selecting publications included in the program and financed from the budget are proposed. The number of the expert group (7-15 persons) is substantiated, which ensures the reliability of the examination. The developed methodological and practical principles are intended to partially solve the existing problems by establishing scientifically based criteria for more efficient use of state budget funds and satisfying the reading interest of Ukrainian citizens.
Key words: publishing, state support, selection criteria, publication, expert, expert evaluation.
JEL Classification: H70, H75
1. Introduction
The experience of most countries confirms that the development of modern information technologies does not lead to a decrease in people's interest in books. The demand for publishing products remains stable, and in the context of the dynamic development of the digital economy and the priority of information as a resource for sustainable development, it is even growing (Afonin, Senchenko, 2009; Durnyak, Shtangret, Melnikov, 2006; Melnikov,
Semenyuk, 2014). In transition countries there is a need to regulate the media industry. It is clear that certain trends only intensify in case of socio-economic disasters. Regulation of the media industry and its components (in particular, publishing) is a set of measures of state influence (forms, methods and means) on the activities of relevant business entities in order to create normal conditions for their functioning and weakening the effect of constraining factors of development. Regulation should be carried
For the implementation of a scientific topic (state registration number 0122U002363).
1 State Scientific Institution "Institute of Education Content Modernization", Ukraine (corresponding author) E-mail: sum1971@ukr.net ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5623-1965 ResearcherlD : GPK-4326-2022
2 Ukrainian Academy of Printing, Ukraine E-mail: shtangret.am@ukr.net ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5179-4996
3 IT STEP University, Ukraine
E-mail: e research@ukr.net This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms
ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9741-9726 of the Creative Commons Attribution CC BY 4.0
out in order to protect the rights of media industry entities. In this regard, the most difficult is the problem of determining the permissible limits of state interference in the economic freedom of publishing houses and printing enterprises producing media products due to the sometimes too broad interpretation of the state's interests in this area by the subjects of the relevant policy to the detriment of public and individual interests.
One of the types of regulation of the media industry is state support for book publishing. The Ukrainian Book Program is an important tool for implementing state support for book publishing. In 2005-2016, the State Committee for Television and Radio Broadcasting of Ukraine (State Committee for Television and Radio Broadcasting of Ukraine) was the main administrator of budget funds and the responsible executor of this budget program, and since 2017 - the Ukrainian Book Institute, which belongs to the sphere of management of the Ministry of Culture and Information Policy of Ukraine (Ministry of Culture and Information Policy of Ukraine).
Analyzing the effectiveness of the use of the state budget funds allocated by the State Committee for Television and Radio for the production of books under the program "Ukrainian Book", the Accounting Chamber of Ukraine in its conclusion noted that the allocation of funds from the state budget for the production of books and their use was often carried out subjectively (Decision of the Accounting Chamber). It should be noted that after 2017, the situation regarding proper calculations and justifications of the need, the regulatory definition of the relevant criteria for allocation and expenditure of funds, if anything, has changed for the better, but not significantly. Despite the fact that funding for the Ukrainian Book program in 2022 is not provided (Activity report of the Ukrainian Book Institute for six months of the war), the problem of reasonable use of budget funds remains relevant.
Ukraine has conducted studies of the state support of business entities at various levels of detail. For example, they were studied quite thoroughly within the framework of the EU project "Harmonization of the public procurement system in Ukraine with EU standards". The conclusions of the work were published in the "Report on the results of the study of state support of business entities in Ukraine" (Holzler, and oth., 2015).
O.V Afonin and M.I. Senchenko, G.I. Glotova and Yu.O. Barnych, A.M. Ivashina, K.I. Indutna dealt with issues of state support for publishing. Ya.V. Kotlyarevskyi et al., A.L. Murakhovskyi. Paying tribute to the achievements of these scientists, it should be noted that not enough attention is paid
to the development of a methodology for using funds to support publishing.
The purpose of the study is the need to improve approaches to the regulation of publishing in terms of determining the criteria for selecting publications published at the expense of the state budget.
2. Presentation of the main material
One of the main claims based on the results of audits of the effectiveness of the use of state budget funds, which were put forward by the Accounting Chamber (Decision of the Accounting Chamber) and the State Audit Service of Ukraine (Report on the results of the work of the State Financial Inspection bodies in 2012) to the implementation of the "Ukrainian Book" program, was the need to improve the selection criteria for publications included in the program and financed from the budget. Therefore, in order to conduct further analysis and to be able to make proposals for improving the procedure of rational use of funds, it is necessary to determine what are the selection criteria in our case. A publication selection criterion is a certain property or characteristic of a book publication established to assess the overall suitability of the publication for the program.
Since the evaluation and selection of publications is carried out by an expert council, the requirements for such criteria should be considered in more detail. The type of these criteria depends on the class of systems being evaluated. If to try to summarize the requirements for the system of criteria for expert evaluations, the set of criteria should be complete, cover all the main aspects, tasks, the addition of new criteria should not affect the results of the selection of options. In addition: the meaning of each criterion should be clear and unambiguous for the decision maker and the expert evaluating the options; the system of criteria should be independent, i.e., the score assigned to each option by this criterion should remain unchanged when evaluating this option by another criterion; criteria should be critical to the parameters, with relatively small changes in the parameter, the criterion reflecting it should change significantly; criteria should have a physical content and be quantified, all dimensional criteria should be reduced to dimensionless indicators.
According to the above, the authors have formed the following list of criteria (Table 1).
The next step is to determine the scale of evaluation of the publication. In this case, an expert is a person included in the expert council for the formation of the draft list of publications, who, due to his knowledge and experience, is competent enough to evaluate and select books for inclusion in the draft
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Table 1
List of selection criteria for publications included in the program and financed from the budget
№ Criterion
1 The author (author team, compiler) of the publication has applied for inclusion in the program
2 Relevance of the declared edition
3 Social significance of the publication
4 Thematic orientation of the publication
5 Satisfaction of reader demand
6 The price of the edition declared for inclusion in the program
7 Availability of equipment and material and technical base of the publishing entity that has applied for the publication under the program
8 Availability of employees with appropriate qualifications at the publishing entity that has applied for the publication under the program
Source: supplemented on the basis of data: https://www.ukrstat.gov.ua/
list of publications in accordance with the established selection criteria. Accordingly, expert evaluation is a method of evaluation by experts of book publications declared by the subject of publishing in accordance with the established criteria for selecting book products using points.
The process of expert assessments makes it possible to quantitatively compare the claimed publications, increase the efficiency of decision-making and reduce the risk of this process. Rational use of information received from experts is possible if it is transformed into a form convenient for further analysis aimed at preparing and making decisions.
Depending on the peculiarities of the expert survey, the object of research and the method used to process expert data, expert assessments may have different measurement scales (Melnikov, Senkivskyi, Shtangret, Ratushnyak, 2017). For the purposes of this study, the ordinal scale is the most acceptable.
The results of expert evaluation are usually expressed in points. The point ordinal scale is necessary for assigning quantitative characteristics to the evaluated objects, which is a measure of the severity of a certain characteristic. The number of scale gradations is determined by the possibility of qualitative characterization of quantitative gradations. To ensure the possibility of distinguishing the gradations of the evaluation scale of any characteristic, it is necessary to provide experts with a description, which indicates the characteristic features of the gradation, which make it possible to clearly distinguish the gradation from those bordering it and those
characterizing the degree of severity of the characteristic being evaluated.
The set of qualitative descriptions of the scale must meet the following requirements: general use - prevalence, familiarity for the expert; unam-biguity - close interpretation by different experts; discriminativity - the ability to distinguish between features in all gradations; adequacy - the number of scale gradations provides the necessary accuracy of the result.
For expert assessments of qualitative attributes, it is advisable to use scales with an odd number of gradations, in which, in addition to the lower and upper levels, there is an average (satisfactory).
Five and seven gradations are widely used for comprehensive assessment.
In accordance with the above conditions, an evaluation scale was compiled based on the selection criteria for published publications (Table 2).
For greater clarity of the properties of the evaluated criteria (Table 1) for each of the selected gradations listed in Table 2, experts can be offered additional characteristics that illustrate the degree of manifestation of this criterion (Table 3).
How many experts are needed to evaluate and select publications? The required number of them is selected taking into account the following considerations. The size of the group should not be small, as in this case the sense of forming expert assessments determined by a group of specialists is lost. In addition, group expert assessments will be strongly influenced by the rating of each expert.
Table 2
The evaluation scale based on the selection criteria
of the published publications included in the program and financed by budget funds
Gradation Points Quality assessment of the publication
5 5 highly desirable for inclusion in the program
4 4 desirable for inclusion in the program
3 3 it is difficult to determine what is desirable or undesirable for inclusion in the program
2 2 undesirable for inclusion in the program
1 1 extremely undesirable for inclusion in the program
Source: supplemented on the basis of data: https://www.ukrstat.gov.ua/
Table 3
The degree of manifestation of the selection criteria
for publications included in the program and financed from the budget
Points Quality assessment of the publication Publication selection criteria
author topicality social significance thematic orientation satisfaction of reader demand edition price availability of equipment and material and technical base availability of employees with appropriate qualifications
5 Highly desirable for inclusion in the Program widely known extremely relevant domestic and foreign readers the content fully corresponds to the program badly substantiated and confirmed are sufficient are sufficient
4 Desirable for inclusion in the Program known probably relevant every reader of the state the content corresponds to the program unsatisfactorily justified own resources own resources
3 It is difficult to determine what is desirable and what is undesirable for inclusion in the Program popular currently relevant a reader of a certain profession the content does not fully correspond satisfactorily calculated, but unfounded within the usual possibilities within the usual possibilities
2 Not desirable for inclusion in the Program known to the target audience less relevant reader of a particular region the name corresponds to the program fine calculations are incomplete do not fully satisfy the needs of the people do not fully meet the needs
1 Extremely undesirable for inclusion in the Program beginner no longer relevant reader of part of a separate region cannot be included in the program fully the calculations were made carelessly insufficient insufficient
Source: developed by the authors
With the increase of the group of experts, although these shortcomings are eliminated, there is a danger of new ones. Thus, in the conditions of a very large number of experts, the assessment of each of them separately almost does not affect the group assessment. However, an increase in the number of expert groups does not always entail an increase in the reliability of assessments. Often, the expansion of the group of experts is possible only at the expense of insufficiently qualified specialists, which can lead to a decrease in the reliability of group assessments. At the same time, with the increase in the number of experts, the difficulties associated with the processing of assessment results are growing.
The analysis of the practical activities of expert groups allows us to recommend the inclusion of 7-15 experts in the expert group. The upper limit of the number of experts depends on the time and money invested in the expertise, the number of potential experts, the possibility of involving them in the work, etc.
In addition, when selecting experts, restrictions on the compatibility of the goals of experts with the goals of the expert assessment should be taken into account. That is, it is necessary to establish whether there is a tendency to biased assessment of certain events and phenomena in the work of individual experts. To do this, it is desirable to identify possible potential goals of experts that may contradict the goals of obtaining objective results. Analyzing the previous activities of the experts, it is necessary to find out the reasons that lead to the desire to overestimate or underestimate the estimates in order to influence the group in the desired direction for themselves or for other people.
3. Conclusions
Today, the system of state support for book publishing is characterized by an insufficient level of planning, monitoring and achievement of targets: for example, in 2020, the annual circulation of books in Ukraine was 20.2 million, i.e., 0.48 copies
of books and brochures per capita, while in the EU countries, 6 to 8 books are published per capita per year (Murakhovsky, 2008; Horobets, 2019; Buryak, 2021).
The publication of books under the Ukrainian Book Program is one of the forms of state support for publishing, along with the provision of tax benefits to publishers and book distributors. The practice shows insufficient efficiency of the use
References:
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Received on: 10th of October, 2022 Accepted on: 27th of November, 2022 Published on: 30th of December, 2022
