Hi,

Like many others we were outraged by the massive increase when we got our
quotes from NPG for the Nature Monthlies and Reviews, especially since there
was no information attached to the quote indicating that a change in pricing
had taken place and the reasons for it. We were left to work it all out for
ourselves. We did send an official letter of protest regarding these
increases to Global Head, Site License Business Unit in New York. Although
we did finally receive a reply from Geoff Worton, it failed to address any
of the concerns we had raised in our initial letter. Instead it talked about
investment in their online platform and the need to comply with COUNTER. In
the meantime (i.e. whilst we were waiting for a reply) I was able to get NPG
to use a much lower FTE figure and get into a lower pricing bracket, which
did reduce our initial price increase of 74% to an increase of about 30%,
based on what we paid last year.

However, we feel that even an increase of 30% is unwarranted. Instead, we
have just made a decision here at the University of Hertfordshire not to
renew our subscription to these titles and have today informed NPG of this
decision. As part of this process we have consulted academic staff and
researchers on this issue, and whilst there have been several expressions of
regret and concern at losing these important resources, our academics and
researchers are giving us their support in this matter. We thank them for
this.

Instead we are going to throw our weight behind the national NESLI2
negotiations taking place with NPG, thereby supporting one of the
Conclusions and Recommendations - No. 39 from the House of Commons
Scientific and Technology Committee - Scientific Publications: Free for All?
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200304/cmselect/cmsctech/399/399.
pdf.

We have had a subscription to these publications for several years now, but
tomorrow we lose all access to these titles, as the license still has no
provision for access to the "subscribed" content after termination of the
contract, another aspect that the above committee responded to.

NPG only have themselves to blame. They have only chosen to listen to what
they wanted to hear, and have remained deaf to the criticisms of their FTE
pricing model for many years. Maybe some of us (including myself) gave them
succour when we gave in to their price increases for EMBO Journal/EMBO
Reports for 2004 and took out a site license.

Rather than expanding their customer base by fair and realistic pricing,
they have chosen to alienate many of their customers. I know of a number of
institutions in the UK that had finally got the money together to take on
licenses to some Nature branded journals, then suddenly found the money that
they had spent time and effort gathering together was no longer enough. When
we first got the money together to take our subscriptions to the Nature
Reviews/Monthlies several years ago we felt that these were expensive
products then. Little did we know that NPG considered them undervalued!

NPG talks a lot about working with its customers, what it needs to do is
start to listen and understand the differing needs of all its customers.

What have other institutions decided to do? Comments on list or off list
will be very welcome.

Cheers
Lesley

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Lesley Crawshaw, Faculty Information Consultant,
Learning and Information Services,
University of Hertfordshire, Hatfield, AL10 9AB UK
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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]
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