Dear colleagues,

The following press release was posted yesterday in the NPG Press Room,
http://www.nature.com/press_releases/emboopen.html

Please see my comments below.

----------------

Open Access uptake prompts 9% price reduction for The EMBO Journal and 
EMBO reports

PRESS RELEASE FROM NATURE PUBLISHING GROUP
12 November 2009

Contact: Grace Baynes
Corporate Public Relations, Nature Publishing Group
T:+44 (0)20 7014 4063
[log in to unmask]

Prices for site licence access to The EMBO Journal and EMBO reports will 
be reduced by 9% in 2010, reflecting the increased publication of Open 
Access content in 2008. Nature Publishing Group (NPG) and the European 
Molecular Biology Organisation (EMBO) announced the decision today, 
following ratification by the EMBO Council.

We've taken into account all of the relevant data in reaching this 
decision, including the number of Open Access articles published in 
2008," said David Hoole, Head of Content Licensing, NPG. "This change 
reflects the recent growth in the amount of Open Access content in both 
journals and the corresponding partial coverage of publication costs by 
author charges."

For the 2010 subscription year, there will be a 9% reduction on the 2009 
site licence list price. This reduction is net of an annual inflationary 
price increase. Print and personal subscription prices are unaffected.

"We are delighted to be able to offer real savings to our library 
customers, based on the hybrid business model," said David Hoole in a 
letter to customers. "We hope this helps ease some of the pressure on 
library budgets, while increasing access to the academic literature."

For the 2011 subscription year onwards, both the site licence price and 
author fees will be considered in an effort to achieve equitable 
distribution of the costs of publication. This evaluation will involve 
an in-depth review of all factors relevant to the publication process, 
including the proportion of Open Access content and authors' ability to 
pay for Open Access and other publication-related costs.

NPG publishes and EMBO reports on behalf of EMBO. An Open Access option 
on both journals was introduced in January 2007. NPG has implemented 
hybrid models across many of its academic journals, and expects those 
titles to show price reductions in due course, as the volume of open 
access increases.

NPG will be contacting customers individually. Customers who have 
already paid for a 2010 subscription should contact their NPG sales 
representative or subscription agent to claim an adjustment.

-ENDS-

Related links:

European Molecular Biology Organization announces an option for 
author-paid open access articles in The EMBO Journal and EMBO reports 
(December 2006)
http://www.nature.com/press_releases/EMBO_open_CCL.pdf

-----------------

A statement like this will not be enough to keep libraries and funders 
like the Wellcome Trust from asking NPG for more transparency. As I 
wrote in my paper, EMBO and NPG should lay open their cards and make the 
financial basis and rational of their calculations transparent.

The netto price reduction with respect to 2009 is 9%, the brutto 
reduction, with respect to the originally communicated 2010 list price, 
taking into account this year's "annual inflationary price increase" of 
4% (fully applied to the print price), is 12,5%. "Inflation", of course, 
is taken for granted, even if the journal itself doesn't grow but 
reduces its output, as EMBO did.

The price adjustment now announced may reflect "the recent growth in the 
amount of Open Access content in both journals and the corresponding 
partial coverage of publication costs by author charges", but even if we 
buy this logic, the 4% OA uptake in the first year and the corresponding 
partial coverage of publication costs by EMBO authors has been ignored 
and not passed over as a price reduction to subscribers. This was 
clearly "double dipping", and it would have been appropriate to increase 
this year's price reduction correspondingly. So we expect and ask NPG 
and EMBO to take it into account for next year's price reduction.

On the other hand, EMBO & NPG are anyway clearly not living up to their 
promise made upon starting the EMBO Open program in December 2006, when 
they told us that the site license price would be adjusted in line with 
the amount of content published under the subscription model annually. 
(And this is not a mere question of interpretation as NPG is well aware 
that they are departing from their original policy, which by the way is 
the same as that followed by Springer under their Open Choice program.)

Instead, what research libraries have witnessed since the changeover 
from Oxford University Press to NPG, was a price hike by a factor of 2 
or above, immediately after takeover, a decision that greatly diminished 
institutional access to this journal. This was followed later by a 
reduction in published output of about 1/3, in waves, first after 
takeover, and then, following a short recovery in 2006, again starting 
with 2007, when the journal had gone hybrid. In 2007, initial editorial 
rejections went up steeply, rejection rate after peer review was reduced 
correspondingly, increasing efficiency and speed of publication whilst 
reducing cost. In 2008, the submission rate had decreased as well (by 9% 
comp. to 2006). However, instead of passing on part of these substantial 
savings to the research libraries, the cost to them have multiplied 
through the transfer and stay at that level, with only a marginal 
reduction - too late, too little. Articles that are no longer published 
in the EMBO journal, invariably end up in other journals (well over 80% 
at least) and still have to be paid by the scientific community.

Cost per page for a site license is now around 90 c/p for a typical 
large research university. For comparison, cost per page for a site 
license to the Journal of Biological Chemistry (ASBMB) is 9 c/p, for 
PNAS 11 c/p, for Molecular Biology of the Cell (ASCB) 14 c/p, for 
Molecular Biology & Evolution (SMBE, Oxford UP) 21 c/p, for Molecular 
and Cellular Biology (ASM) 26 c/p, The Journal of Biochemistry (Oxford 
UP) 28 c/p, for RNA and Genes & Development (Cold Spring Harbour 
Laboratory Press) 46 c/p resp. 58 c/p, for Journal of Cell Biology 
(Rockefeller UP) 60 c/p, for Molecular Cell (Cell Press) a multiple of 
the price / page for the print edition, 39 c/p, typically a factor 6 
(234 c/p), for Molecular and Cellular Biochemistry (Springer) 277 c/p, 
for Nature Cell Biology 311 c/p, for Nature Structural and Molecular 
Biology 355 c/p.

We probably could still not complain if the EMBO journal would now 
provide clearly better value for money and get cited more than before. 
Alas, according to all performance indicators I know of, the EMBO 
journal has so far further fallen behind (most journals brag with any 
recent increases in impact factor, EMBO does not – guess why...). And 
while we wish EMBO all success with its recently implemented changes and 
new initiatives, we clearly feel deceived by the failure of EMBO and NPG 
to keep up to their promises of 2006. If we had data to actually 
calculate revenue per article, we would see that it has risen sharply. I 
doubt whether that will convince funders that we see no "double dipping" 
occur here; pricing of NPG is and has always been opaque.

Authors are also double paying now, through page and colour charges 
*and* EMBO OPEN publication charges on top of that. It is an anachronism 
that the EMBO journal and EMBO reports are still produced in print 
(according to NPG media data, circulation is 2200 for EMBO Journal, 1000 
for EMBO reports), especially that print is subsidized for personal 
subscribers at rather low levels (USD 340 for EMBO journal, USD 156 for 
EMBO reports), partly through advertising, but also through excessively 
priced academic site licenses, while only a few dedicated libraries with 
special archival collection duties can afford to main an archival print 
copy at 3000 USD (or even 3000 EUR for European customers outside UK) in 
addition to a site license. (The add-on cost for an archival print copy 
on top of a site license increased from GBP 157 in 2006 to GBP 1878 in 
2010, due to “decoupling of print and online”, while the price for a 
combined subscription increased by a factor 3 … 5 (or, with the present 
12,5% reduction, now 2,75 … 4,5) since 2003, the year before the 
takeover by NPG was completed.) So please do away with print in order to 
get some real savings that can be passed on to libraries.

Bernd-Christoph Kaemper, Stuttgart University Library

P.S.: The Author Pays Hybrid Model – FAQs for Librarians and 
Subscription Agents (Jan 2009),
URL: http://www.nature.com/libraries/site_licenses/faqs.pdf says:

What will happen to the subscription prices of these journals in 2009?
Print subscription prices will not be affected. Site license prices will be
adjusted in line with the amount of subscription content published annually
and this will be monitored throughout the year.

I just checked what happened to the print prices for 2010.

“Print subscription prices will not be affected“, the NPG press release 
said. At least not in the sense that price increases are moderated. Au 
contraire. Apparently, the publisher hedges against possible losses (?) 
through the hybrid model by starting with a generous extra price 
increase (20%) for print in 2010. This affects 8 NPG owned titles out of 
the 12 journals new in the program: CGT, GENE, IJIR, JESEE, JHH, MP, 
PCAN, TPJ. Only one other NPG Academic Journal not in the program shows 
such a price increase in print for 2010, namely Gene Therapy. Perhaps 
this journal is going to join the program for 2010.

Price increases for Print for the other NPG academic journals for 2010 
are identical to their site license price increases and range from 2% to 
9% (median 4%, average 5%).

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