(This is distributed over liblicense-l and lis-e-resources. Please 
excuse duplicate posting and forward this to interested colleagues at 
serials and e-resources departments.)

It's renewal time again. While tout le monde is eagerly awaiting the 
final release of the Wiley-Blackwell price list 2009, I'd like to alert 
you to some nasty, little known features lurking around the corner, 
things you should certainly be aware of before renewing your 
subscriptions or when you next talk to your Wiley-Blackwell Representative.

The last update on the less than optimal transition of Blackwell 
Journals from the Synergy platform to Wiley Interscience was given by 
Emily Gillingham on July 24 (see this list). Most license terms and 
access rights had by then been migrated from Synergy and (hopefully) set 
up correctly on the new system. For many subscribers, access to part of 
their collection had been curtailed a full week. OpenURL linking and 
linking from SwetsWise and Google Scholar to Blackwell content that had 
been disfunct for nearly two weeks was finally working again. It was 
announced that more information about the availability of usage data, 
the merging of the subscription systems and models, and the development 
of the new platform would follow in due course. For the transition, 
Wiley-Blackwell rightly earned the pan among Peter's Picks & Pans in 
Information Today's Online Magazine vol. 32, no. 4, July/August 2008 
[1]. Right after the transition, 180,000 articles were reported as 
missing; on August 1, one month later, still 48,000 articles (= 3%) were 
reported as missing, no update has been provided since then [2].

Some time in July Wiley-Blackwell first informed agencies about 
impending changes for the journal sales models of both the former Wiley 
and Blackwell brands. Some agencies passed on these infos to their 
customers, with a request to make decisions how to renew the no longer 
available standard subscriptions to former Blackwell titles that 
included a print subscription with free online access to the current 
year and the two previous years by the end of September. Cf., e.g., 
Harrassowitz' E-Resources News of July 2008 [3], or the EBSCO info that 
arrived by the end of August 2008, with a comparison table of old and 
new options [4]. Others waited because Wiley-Blackwell had announced 
that prices would not become available before End of August. That was a 
true statement because now we have end of September, and prices are 
still not available. It's a Wiley World!

In addition, on August 26, 2008, Wiley-Blackwell sent out a 2009 Journal 
Sales Model Customer Briefing. I don't know how widely this was 
circulated but it was passed on to Wiley-Blackwell account managers, 
consortia administrators as well as individual libraries known to me, 
with the purpose to allay fears and concerns about the new unified 
journal sales model and to answer a lot of the many questions that might 
be arising in that context. In order that I may refer to and discuss 
this document, I provide a link here to the website for our regional 
consortium where I have saved a copy of that document:

http://www.ub.uni-stuttgart.de/Konsortium-BW/Wiley/Wiley-Blackwell_20080826.doc

The 2009 Journal Sales Models Customer Briefing, probably drafted for 
and finalized some time after Wiley-Blackwell's Global Sales and 
Marketing Conference in June, is a remarkable paper. It is comprehensive 
and clear, and pleasantly different from some other marketing blurbs and 
sales pitches recently offered by publishers that try to market and 
justify new sales models (NPG/Palgrave Macmillan comes to mind as a 
particularly egregious example). Whoever has written it, had a clear 
vision and was committed to help develop and offer sales and access 
models that are designed to preserve some of the better features of the 
present models and to avoid their shortcomings and limitations. The 
author presents a new sales policy whose pillars are fair, flexible 
pricing options and the freedom of choice, without the disfunctional 
restrictions attached to some of the options offered previously (Wiley's 
Basic Access License, Blackwell's Standard Subscription). All that based 
on a uniform Wiley Online License, offering unlimited access with no 
restrictions on concurrent users nor the number of sites. All 
subscribers with online access are entitled to access usage data, gain 
access to content dating back to 1997 (where available) and benefit from 
perpetual access to paid for years.

The paper is excellently written and an exemplar of good customer 
communications. And Wiley-Blackwell is clearly in need of a good 
external presentation after months of chaos.

Unfortunately, there are indications that Wiley-Blackwell does not want 
to stick to its promises. There are hidden agendas that slap into the 
face of what is clearly written in this paper, and attempt to 
re-introduce restrictions that we long thought to be history.

For example, we suddenly hear that the old restriction to class C IP 
address ranges or subnets will be revived. It will apply to all pick and 
choose title by title subscriptions. Campus wide access without such 
arbitrary restrictions will only be available for "managed accounts" 
that come with Core titles / Core Collection, Custom Collection / shared 
access or Fixed Collections deals that introduce additional costs, 
protect the publisher's revenue and restrict the library's flexibility 
to cancel subscriptions if necessary.

For former Blackwell customers this will mean that their present Premium 
Online or Print plus Online subscriptions which if now renewed for 2009 
will be priced at 100% (up from 90%) resp. 110% (same as 2008) of the 
list price, will no longer provide campuswide access if the library does 
not choose to join one of the above mentioned deals that cover and bind 
all its presently subscribed titles. None of the agencies was informed 
about these restrictions when the new sales models were communicated. 
Wiley Sales would tell it only if questioned explicitely.

I first heard of it from a librarian at another german university 
library. She told me that her account manager at Wiley-Blackwell had 
insisted that they could not selectively renew their mix of Premium and 
Standard Print + Online subscriptions of former Blackwell titles under 
the new sales model as either Print or Print plus Online at 110% of the 
list price and continue to have campuswide access unless they agreed to 
put all Blackwell titles under their existing Wiley EAL (at 15% 
surcharge, even higher than previously), under what is now called the 
core title model and agreed to continue all their present Blackwell 
subscriptions. Otherwise they could get limited access for the 
subscribing university department only for these titles, for a class C 
network only, no longer campuswide access. They could not make this 
commitment, and therefore were forced to make the decision to renew all 
their former Blackwell titles (among them many society journals) print 
only.

I could'nt believe it! In Baden-Württemberg universities had for years 
lived with a BAL for selected titles and print only for others, until we 
were finally able to close a consortial deal in 2007 after we received 
additional central state funding. None of our universities had a problem 
with it while we negotiated towards a consortium, except one which had a 
second campus in another town. However, I knew that other universities 
had been denied campus licenses on BAL basis, e.g., after they had to 
leave a consortium because of budget cuts or just for no apparent reason 
(the promotional material and license wording itself never imposed a 
restriction to Class C networks, but you were told you could not get it 
for campus wide access). So I asked our local account manager for 
Baden-Wuerttemberg what's up. I posed to him this question:

According to the 2009 Journal Sales Models Customer Briefing former 
Wiley BAL and Blackwell Standard Subscriptions will no longer be 
offered, there will be only one unified Wiley Online License. The 
customer briefing states :

"The Basic Access License is now disbanded.  All subscribers to online 
content benefit from the same rights to usage data, unlimited concurrent 
users, access back to 1997 and perpetual access to paid for years 
(previously limited to EAL customers only)."

and affirms:

"The Wiley Online License offers fair terms and conditions.
- Unlimited access with no restrictions on concurrent users nor the
number of sites (...)"

In my view this clearly implies that all previous restrictions of the 
BAL - number of physical sites, arbitrary restriction to 10 class C 
networks at maximum, no provision of usage statistics - are gone with 
it. To be completely clear: my question applies to "pick and choose" 
single title purchases not to consortial licenses or local core title / 
core collection deals. Can you confirm this in writing, as it would 
apply to all our current Blackwell Premium Print + Online subscriptions 
that are not covered by existing Blackwell collection deals and our 
Wiley Consortium.

His answer was astonishing:
"I cannot confirm that restrictions for BAL licenses will no longer 
apply. "Wiley Online License" will in future refer to the present EAL 
[Enhanced access license, that has to cover all existing subscriptions 
whether print or online, the commentator]. Online access to individual 
titles (BALs) will continue to be restricted to a single site and up to 
10 Class C IP Addresses."

I told him that it was a brazen attitude indeed of Wiley to deny 
previous Blackwell customers that will loose free albeit limited online 
access with print now also the possibility to license titles campuswide 
on a title-by-title basis, and this after they had just announced the 
discontinuation of the BAL with all its limitations. In view of a 
circulated policy document that speaks a totally different language, I 
could only regard the whole Wiley-Blackwell information campaign as a 
blatant deception of customers.

Confronted with my outrage, he made sure his answer was correct by 
asking back internally, but could only confirm that his information was 
the current state of plans for 2009. He even had to take back a 
reassuring qualification that it would not really concern us immediately 
as we had ongoing contracts with Blackwell and Wiley that would be 
renewed another year under the present conditions so that these changes 
would not affect us in 2009; the reason that this proviso might not 
apply is that our Blackwell HSS subscriptions are effectively not 
covered by those agreements (we only subscribe to the STM package).

There are other limitations as bad as this that many are not aware of 
and that might likewise continue to be applied by Wiley. From a health 
librarian on the UKSG Lis-E-Resources listserv I learned [5] that Wiley 
denies an EAL license (not just participation in a consortium as I had 
assumed) to any customer that does not meet a certain minimum turnover 
or is not willing to pay that amount on top. What's that supposed to 
mean? We pay for and need access to the scholarly literature, not access 
to an account manager!

I am sure we can get this solved in our case because Wiley-Blackwell 
really cannot afford to alienate its consortial customers and we would 
not accept any pressure to integrate titles into present agreements if 
we see no advantage to it (if there is an advantage and if we could 
handle it in the short time remaining to get a workable transition 
agreement established for 2009, it's another matter). However, we regard 
it as totally unacceptable to impose such restrictions in the first 
place. Bundles and multi-year deals are not optimal for everyone. 
Bundles and bid deals can turn out unfavorable if the base price you 
have to start with is already too high. We all (well: most of us) can 
get into financial difficulties that don't allow us to continue our 
subscriptions, consortial or package deals. We need exit strategies and 
freedom of choice. Wiley-Blackwell should offer (as it does) positive 
incentives to choose more comprehensive deals (consortial or not) in 
form of price caps for multi year deals, shared access and additional 
access such as adding titles from Subject Bundles or other favorite 
collection deals, not use coercive means by continuing to impose 
restrictive and dysfunctional conditions for "pick and choose" licensing 
of individual titles. Why is this needed? It's a shame and an insult to 
customers, nothing else. The many societies that chose Blackwell as a 
trusted business partner and now find themselves in bed with Wiley 
should also ask themselves whether a publisher that apparently treats 
individual title purchasers as inferior second rate customers is really 
acting in their best interest.

Now take into account that as part of the migration of Blackwell titles 
from the Synergy platform to Wiley Interscience, the company already had 
to migrate all Blackwell accounts, Premium or not, to Wiley EAL accounts 
(by functionality if not by name), because the Blackwell license 
agreement that had to be honored, did not impose any restrictions on the 
number of ip addresses or the number of concurrent users, nor did it 
withhold COUNTER usage statistics from paying customers. What sense does 
it make to take that back again? Isn't it pure harrassment? I certainly 
do not envy the people who have to do the job as account managers at 
Wiley-Blackwell and explain all this mess to their customers. It seems 
that we have to defend the forward looking progressive voices at Wiley 
Blackwell against the mules in their own management that have not 
recognized that times have changed and they cannot continue business as 
usual.

Finally, what we witness here, corroborates the concerns that have been 
voiced before the merger of Wiley and Blackwell by the Information 
Access Alliance (ARL with 6 other leading library organizations: AALL, 
ALA, ACRL, MLA, SPARC and SLA) in writing to the Antitrust Division of 
the US Department of Justice in November 2006 [6], and likewise by CURL, 
EBLIDA, LIBER, SCONUL and SPARC Europe in writing to the European 
Commission's Directorate General for Competition in January 2007 [7]. 
The Alliance was concerned that this transaction would "exacerbate 
market dysfunctions and result in further reduction in access to 
critical research information." "Larger publishers", wrote the European 
library advocacy group, "are able, therefore, to exploit their 
monopolistic positions to further bundle their products, increase their 
market share, and squeeze out smaller competitors." Blackwell previously 
offered also 1 year collection deals while Wiley deals were multi-year. 
As predicted, the option to get 1 year deals will now no longer be 
offered. The planned denial of campus-wide access to "pick and choose" 
single-title subscriptions is clear evidence for a company fully 
exploiting its concentration of "must-have content" and the resulting 
market power to impose anticompetitive restrictions on journal sales and 
the ability of libraries to select what they need and cancel journals if 
necessary. In this way compensatory cancellations are directed onto 
other publisher's journals.

Wiley has since long stayed in the top quarter of annual serials price 
increases, and there is no reason to assume that they will moderate this 
after the integration of the Blackwell Portfolio. Rumors are already 
heard that Wiley will first install a new EURO price list for site 
licensing their content that will mean higher prices for European 
customers outside UK (but not lower prices for US customers). They 
fulfilled the worst expectations of information specialists like Peter 
Jacso that in order to streamline their operations they would disband 
the superior Synergy platform (based on the excellent Atypon software 
and just relaunched in 2007 with brand new improved design and 
functionality) that was in use for the far larger Blackwell collection 
(900 plus journals compared to 300 plus) in favor of their own 
deficient, poorly performing software on Wiley Interscience. Market 
concentration that lowers competition obviously does not favor 
innovation. Customer relations are strained also: Wiley ignored all 
requests by librarians not to inflict two migrations within short time 
on them, or at least to maintain Synergy and Wiley Interscience in 
parallel for a time, to avoid distress and lost access. Wiley-Blackwell 
has already postponed the introduction of the new platform to mid 2009. 
Peter Jacso writes: "Be ready for similar disappointment and distress 
for a long time as Wiley-Blackwell 'will be launching a next generation 
online service during 2009'. I think they put the cart before the horse. 
Even if this next generation service would ever work nearly as well as 
Synergy, it would have been the minimum of precautions to wait until 
this is proven and tested by independent and competent experts, not just 
declared by the management of Wiley-Blackwell. It should have been done 
the other way around. Wiley has never had the ability to develop a 
sophisticated online platform, nor has it cared about fixing its 
deficiencies (...)" [1] Shibboleth Authentication that had been 
implemented on the Synergy platform already in May 2007, is now also 
gone. Wiley will not offer it again before the launch of the new 
platform in mid 2009.

All this is disappointing and depressing. The barrier to entry will 
probably not be lowered with such a big portfolio and the trend to 
increase bundling, especially with the new pricing models for shared and 
bundled access. The completely revamped pricing structure that will be 
based on paying a proportion of what you get as additional access 
(moderated by FTE based pricing) rather than a surcharge on what you 
currently pay for your own collection, will see winners and loosers, and 
it's getting more complicated, not less. Libraries will have to weigh 
carefully whether they can afford and sustain the new deals. Freedom of 
choice, also as pick and choose of individual titles without arbitrary 
restrictions on functionality, is essential. It's the mantra of the 2009 
Journal Sales Model Customer Briefing, which would be reassuring if it 
were meant honestly. If libraries still cannot be sure with the new 
price list for 2009, what kind of access they buy for their money, the 
renewals for 2009 will be further delayed and it will be distress for 
everyone. The least we can expect from Wiley-Blackwell is that they 
stick to the promises made in that policy paper. If Wiley-Blackwell 
instead choses to continue to pursue hidden agendas that fundamentally 
limit their customers' freedom of choice, it's time for libraries to 
stand together and just say no.

Bernd-Christoph Kaemper, Stuttgart University Library and Consortium 
Baden-Wuerttemberg

[1] http://www.infotoday.com/online/jul08/index.shtml , abstract at 
http://www.accessmylibrary.com/coms2/summary_0286-34826850_ITM, fulltext 
available, courtesy of the author, Dr. Peter Jacso, at 
http://www.jacso.info/PDFs/jacso-oecd-astrophysics-wiley-blackwell-32-4.pdf  
(Read it!, it's hilarious - or depressing, depending on your mood). For 
earlier accounts of the performance of the Wiley Interscience platform, 
cf. Online Magazine vol. 31(4), July/August 2007, p. 49-51 (Picks: 
SpringerLink, Blackwell Synergy, Pan: Wiley Interscience) and vol. 
30(2), March/April 2006, p. 58-60 (pan for Wiley's ASIST Digital 
Library), fulltext available on the author's homepage at 
http://www2.hawaii.edu/~jacso/
[2] cf. the Wiley-Blackwell Online Content Transition News, 
http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/aboutus/wiley-blackwell/transition.html 
(last updated: September 4, 2008, viewed: Sep 21, 2008)
[3] 
http://www.harrassowitz.de/subscription_services/Wiley_Blackwell_2009.html 
(dated: July 2008, viewed: Sep 21, 2008)
[4] posted on Criss Library Focus on Online, 
http://focusononline.blogspot.com/2008/08/wiley-blackwell-2009-subscription.html
[5] posting archived at 
http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?A2=ind0807&L=LIS-E-RESOURCES&P=R6733
[6] The IAA letter to the Department of Justice is available at 
http://www.informationaccess.org/bm~doc/doj_wiley_blackwell.pdf , the 
Issue Brief: John Wiley and Sons' Acquisition of Blackwell Publishing at 
http://www.arl.org/bm~doc/issue_brief_wiley_blackwell.pdf . For 
background information cf. also the FAQ at 
http://www.informationaccess.org/faq/index.shtml
[7] available for download at http://www2.kb.dk/liber/news/PhlipLowe.pdf 
, posted on liblicense-l on Jan 18, 2007, 
http://www.library.yale.edu/~llicense/ListArchives/0701/msg00049.html

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