Even if the price for 2004 is ONLY £800 as Lesley wrote in her later
message I must refute the publisher's claim that they had not increased
the price of the print version for several years. We paid £800 for a
print subscription this year and assume that our agent had charged us
the correct amount in previous years.
2000 £340
2001 £370
2002 £545
2003 £590
2004 £800
A 135% increase in 4 years. Is this not a substantial increase?
Lesley explains why her library still subscribes to the print version.
Our users would love to have access to the online version but if we are
to subscribe to the online and print versions it would cost us over
£4,600 and we cannot afford the price for a single journal.
The price of the online version is based on our FTE students plus
lecturers and researchers for the whole university since NPG "only uses
the full FTE in the case of Nature since it is considered a publication
of general interest". Our academics in the Humanities are already
suspicious that so much of the library budget is spent on electronic
journals which they think benefit the scientists. Somehow I don't feel
brave enough to sell them the argument put forward by NPG.
It seems a shame that NPG was not mentioned when librarians had an
opportunity to name names of "difficult" publishers in the Science and
Technology Committee of the House of Commons, especially given the
furore about EMBO Journal. But perhaps NPG is not "difficult". They
are just unreasonably expensive.
Mieko
Lesley Crawshaw wrote:
>
> Hi,
>
> Following on from what James said about NPG e-journals being previously
> under priced in comparison with the print. It's not only the electronic
> version of Nature that has increased in price.
>
> We still take a print version of Nature (as well as a subscription to the
> e-version) and were shocked to find that whereas last year we paid just
> under £590 for the print version this year we paid £927 for the print
> version. That's a whopping 57% increase in price!! I was told by NPG that
> this large increase was because they hadn't increased the price of the print
> version for several years now. How is one expected to budget for such large
> and unexpected price increases?
>
> Cheers
> Lesley
>
--
Mieko Yamaguchi | [log in to unmask]
Tech Services Manager/System Coordinator | Phone: +44 (0)1248 382970
University of Wales Bangor | Fax: +44 (0)1248 382979
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