Hi Bernd-Christoph and others,
We haven't yet had any formal communication from NPG about this change in
pricing policy, I only discovered it by accident a few weeks ago when
looking at the NESLI2 OUP deal for 2004, and finding that EMBO Journal was
no longer listed. The timing is also bad, as presumably most institutions
will already have done their renewals for 2004 unaware that either the
publisher or the pricing policy had changed. The spreadsheet from our agent
still has this title listed as OUP, not NPG, so we wouldn't have found out
about this change from that source. I understand that NPG is now busy trying
to contact subscribers to explain these changes, but it's a bit late now!
Like others we are unhappy about the increase in price that we are going to
have to pay for EMBO Journal in 2004. Preliminary indications are that we
are going to have to pay 64% more than we paid in 2004, for what up to now
has always been a reasonably priced journal, and that was only after
negotiating the number of FTEs that were going to used to work out the
pricing.
We are also concerned as to why we have no choice but to take the bundled
EMBO Journal/EMBO Reports, presumably this is contributing to the increased
costs for 2004.
Our usage statistics for this EMBO Journal over the last 5 year suggest that
the new pricing will make it difficult for us to justify continuing to
subscribe to this title, although I am not at liberty to release these
figures, which is a real shame.
I spent a bit of time looking at the European Molecular Biology Organisation
at: http://www.embo.org/ and came across a document on Planning Document on
the future of the EMBC/EMBO at:
http://www.embo.org/publications/organization/embc_plan.pdf. In that
document it says "the expansion of EMBO was possible because of the success
of The EMBO Journal, whose profits are reinvested in a variety of new EMBO
activities". In other words EMBO was already generating considerable profits
for EMBO under the old pricing regime, so why the need to get even more from
their subscribers?
Since one of the stated aims of EMBO is to promote biosciences in Europe,
one must question whether this massive price hike for 2004 contradicts those
aims, as Terry Bucknell stated.
The crude method that Nature Publishing Group (this applies to Nature
Monthlies/Nature Reviews) is using to band institutions purely on the basis
of the number of FTEs for all Science Faculties (excluding Mathematics,
Engineering and Computer Science) will discrimate against many institutions
which have large numbers of undergraduate students, but not necessarily
large numbers of active researchers using these titles. The net result will
be do reduce the number of subscribers to these titles as more and more of
us are priced out of the market for these titles. It sometimes seems that
NPG wants to reduce its subscribers to an elite set, rather than to increase
the number of subscribers to its titles.
It would be nice if NPG might respond to the questions raised on this list,
I know they keeping a close watch on everything that's being said!
Cheers
Lesley
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Lesley Crawshaw, Faculty Information Consultant,
Learning and Information Services,
University of Hertfordshire, Hatfield, AL10 9AB UK
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
e-mail: [log in to unmask]
phone: 01707 284662 fax: 01707 284666
web: http://www.herts.ac.uk/lis/subjects/natsci/ejournal/
list owner: [log in to unmask]
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
-----Original Message-----
From: An informal open list set up by the UK Serials Group
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of
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Sent: 05 November 2003 12:14
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: EMBO Journal & Reports -- Price Increases for 2004
[Distributed via lis-e-journals and liblicense-l, please excuse duplicate
posting]
Dear list members,
In 2004, EMBO Journal will be transferred from Oxford University Press
to Nature Publishing Group, joining its sister publication EMBO reports
which was transferred in 2003, cf. Nature Publishing Group's press
release of August 2003,
http://www.nature.com/embojournal/EMBO_press.pdf
Several new services like Advance Online Publication will also be
introduced, cf. http://www.nature.com/embojournal/aims_scope.html
Dual platform hosting - both on HighWire and nature.com - is a welcome
feature maximising the services and the choices available to the community.
>From 2004 on, a subscription to EMBO journal (24 issues/year) will by
default include 12 issues of EMBO reports. While EMBO members will actually
see no price increase or even a price reduction for the
combined product (2004 price: GBP 160 for Print+Online, GBP 90 for
Online only), institutions and their libraries will see a price increase
between
30% and 220%
depending on the institution's size (as measured by FTE for all science
faculties excluding Mathematics, Engineering and Computer Science). The
typical increase for institutions around +/- 5000 Sciences FTE will be 110%
or 140%. (Prices for Online only are 10% less than prices for
Print+Online, if I got correct information from NPG.)
Bundling EMBO reports with the highly cited EMBO journal, of course, is
a classical way to increase the profitability. In fact, there were many
subscribers of EMBO journal which did not consider EMBO Reports to be
an absolute "must". So in fact many of us will see an even higher price
increase of 80% to 340%.
What I find disturbing here is that no one at EMBO or NPG seems to find it
necessary to write a letter to subscribers explaining those price increases.
Is there any justification for such excessive price increases
other than the assumption that the market will bear it? My belief is
that the moving force behind the price increase is EMBO as much as the
publisher. While some societies actually exert a restraining influence
on publisher's pricing policies, it is well known that other societies
are driving library prices up as a result of competitive negotiations
with publishers.
I fear that underfinanced central libraries of universities with two-tiered
library systems will be increasingly forced or tempted to
leave it to departments or institutes to buy EMBO publications
themselves if they get so expensive. Many already do, but the existing
institute's subscriptions often are based on a membership or will be
converted to such given this price increase. Of course, this is not an
optimal solution as more print issues will get distributed than
necessary and there will be no possibility to get a site license.
Hopefully, more and more EMBO authors will self-archive their
publications on institutional servers in order to bridge the 12 months
gap between publishing date and free availability at the publishers website
or discipline-based repositories like E-BioSci or Pubmed Central
so that articles become openly accessible to as many scientists and as early
as possible.
Several other questions come to mind:
1. What will happen to the free back issues policy readers of both
journals enjoyed at the HighWire site (EMBO Journals: free 12 months
after publication, EMBO Reports: free after 1 year every January)?
Hopefully this policy will be maintained as it has been decided to establish
dual platform hosting for both journals.
2. Will EMBO Journal continue to be included in Pubmed Central as a PMC
PubLink Journal, an option that requires full submission of published
material to PMC, but allows redirects for actual viewing of full-text
to the publisher's site? PMC Policies and Guidelines also require that
primary research articles must be made available with open access
within one year from publication date. (Note that the PMC National Advisory
Committee has recently suggested to eliminate the PubLink
option for new participating publishers, returning to the original PMC
model. Current PubLink journals will be asked to consider allowing all
content to be viewable within PMC, cf. the Minutes of the June 25, 2003
meeting.
3. In which form will content of EMBO publications become available to
scientists on the future E-BioSci platform? What about open access
policy at this site?
4. As open access is an article property (cf. the Bethesda Principles), will
authors of EMBO journal be offered the choice to pay for open
access to their article (through their funding bodies)?
Bernd-Christoph Kaemper, Stuttgart University Library
--
Bernd-Christoph Kaemper, Dipl.-Physiker, Bibl.-Rat Fachreferent für
Physik und Koordination elektronischer Ressourcen
Universitätsbibliothek Stuttgart, Postfach 104941, 70043 Stuttgart
Tel +49 711 685-4780, Fax +49 711 685-3502, [log in to unmask]
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