Dear colleagues,

according to the english Wikipedia,

"Dyscalculia is a lesser known disability, similar and potentially 
related to dyslexia and developmental dyspraxia. Dyscalculia occurs in 
people across the whole IQ range, and sufferers often, but not always, 
also have difficulties with time, measurement, and spatial reasoning." (...)

Potential symptoms include ...
"Inability to comprehend financial planning or budgeting, sometimes even 
at a basic level; for example, estimating the cost of the items in a 
shopping basket or balancing a checkbook."
"Poetic ability. Good visual memory for the printed word."
"May do fairly well in subjects such as science and geometry, which 
require logic rather than formulae, until a higher level requiring 
calculations is obtained."
"Poor long-term memory (retention & retrieval) of concept mastery."
"Difficulty with conceptualizing time and judging the passing of time. 
May be chronically late."
"Lack "big picture/ whole picture" thinking."
"Difficulty with games such as poker with more flexible rules for scoring."
"Difficulty in activities requiring sequential processing, from the 
physical (such as dance steps) to the abstract (reading, writing and 
signaling things in the right order). May have trouble even with a 
calculator due to difficulties in the process of feeding in variables."

I guess all this looks quite familiar to many of us having to deal with 
publishers on a daily / annual basis in acquisitions and budgeting.

Signs of serious (and serial) dyscalculia have also surfaced in recent 
attempts of publishers to answer the International Coalition of Library 
Consortia ICOLC's plea for creating effective pricing and renewal 
options for dealing with the global economic crisis and its impact on 
consortial licenses.

First SAGE Publications tried to sell us a migration to e-only by 
pledging to plant trees and promising considerable savings for 
libraries. When we checked the calculation, the "savings" amounted to a 
price increase by 15%. The publisher apologized and said, they made an 
honest mistake when calculating 2010 list prices. (From our scrapbook on 
How Publishers are (not) Helping Libraries in the Downturn ... this time 
SAGE, http://twtlong.com/itsbyc).

A lapse in logic surfaced with IOP Publishing, who maintained a price 
freeze for e-only compared to 2009 (actually there was no e-only option 
in 2009, and you are now offered to get e-only in 2010 for the same 
money that still brought you print plus online in 2009). Taking into 
account the price differential, we see an increase by 5% on average. IOP 
Publishing also fails to take into account that for their european 
customers a price differential of only 5% will mean a price increase for 
going e-only (due to the higher VAT applicable).

Now comes Oxford Journals.

They tell us "... we are pleased to report that there will be no 
increase in the online only price between 2009 and 2010 for the majority 
of our journals."
Hm ... 79% certainly is the majority, but it looks already suspicious 
that the percentage isn't higher. But if you then examine further and 
find out that another 25%+ of the journals (50+) do not follow the 
stated rule:

"From 2010 onwards the online only price will be the 'base' price for 
all journals we publish (rather than the print-plus-online or combined 
price). The print only price will be 110% and the combined price 120% of 
the online only price.", ...

with actual surcharges for a combined subscription up to 67% (print up 
to 53%) higher than the "base price", you really wonder what's going on 
here. Nota bene, the Oxford Journals webpage, at 
http://www.oxfordjournals.org/access_purchase/2010/pricing_policy_2010.html 
(Pricing Policy and Conditions 2010) lists only 4 exclusions to the 2010 
Institutional Price Policy (Journal of Topology and three Journals of 
the London Mathematical Society).

Turns out that for a large part of Oxford Journals, namely all in the 
Oxford Open program (85 hybrid journals that offer authors an OA option 
on a per article basis), pricing of print is actually decoupled from 
online. In the words of OUP, from footnote 8 to the Oxford Journals - 
Institutional Price List 2010:

"2010 online-only subscription prices for journals offering the optional 
Oxford Open model have been adjusted to reflect the amount of open 
access content published in each journal in 2008 [compared to 2007]*. 
Generally, the more open access content published in a journal, the 
lower the future online-only price. However, this picture is sometimes 
complicated by other factors such as changes in page extent, issue 
frequency, and exchange rate adjustments." [* my amendment, cf. previous 
price lists - this probably hasn't changed, as actual evidence from 
examples I have checked demonstrate.]

Such a policy has been in effect since at least 2006(07), but why on 
earth is this footnote only attached to two journals (JNCI and 
Schizophrenia) instead of all ... in the program? And why does OUP not 
highlight that their new policy - online only price as the base price 
for 'all journals we publish' - does not hold for this large group of 
titles? As the discrepancy can be massive, decisions based on the 
"general rule" (should we ask our faculty to dispense with print, based 
on potential savings?) can be utterly wrong. By the way, if the OA 
uptake for these journals increases, OUP lowers just the online only 
price, not the online surcharge for combined print+online subscriptions. 
This could be a welcome incentive to move away from print but it should 
be properly communicated. OUP should clearly lay open how prices for 
these titles were actually set, depending on the development of OA 
uptake, increases in size (output) if any and other factors. (To be 
fair, spot tests have convinced me that the adjustments made accurately 
reflect the OA uptake of the journals in question; the formula used for 
2010 was: combined rate (2010) = combined rate (2009)*0,95*1,2, print 
rate (2010) = combined rate (2009)*0,95*1,1, online only rate (2010) = 
combined rate (2009)*0,95*(1 - OA uptake), plus possible adjustments for 
occasional other factors, applied to all three rates. The OA uptake 
rates for 2008 varied between 0% and 30%. This is a slight improvement 
over 2007 where top OA uptake rate was 24% (for "Bioinformatics", same 
as 2008), while the average uptake in life sciences was 11% (SSH 2%, 
Med, Math 5%, avg 7%) (after Claire Bird: Case Study: Oxford Journals' 
adventures in open access, in: Learned Publishing 21 No. 3 (July 2008), 
200-208).)

The passing reference, that the picture is sometimes complicated by 
"exchange rate adjustments" also aroused our suspicion. We indeed found 
three Oxford Open titles published in the US with apparent "exchange 
rate adjustments": The online only price for "Nicotine and Tobacco 
Research [US]" increases 15% in EUR / GBP, while USD price remains 
equal. Same with the Gerontologist package [US] that increases by 33% in 
EUR and GBP. The "adjusted exchange rates" are 1.0 for USD/EUR, and 1.5 
for both EUR/GBP and USD/GBP. These are apparently the standard "company 
rates" used by OUP. For comparison, the current real exchange rate for 
EUR/GBP is around 1.2, for USD/GBP around 1.65, and 1,4 for USD/EUR. For 
titles published in GB and SG, the "company rates" used are 2 USD/GBP 
and 1.5 EUR/GBP. This amounts to "exchange rate profiteering" (to use 
the clear language of my friend Dana Roth from Caltech) of 10% in GBP 
and 40% in EUR for US based titles, and 20% in USD and 30% in EUR for 
titles published in GB and SG. So if anything, we would have expected 
"exchange rate adjustments" in the opposite direction.

There is another case among Oxfords OA experiments that leads you to 
doubt whether they calculated correctly, or made an "honest mistake", or 
are just trying to experiment with pricing and see what happens. This is 
"Evidence-based Complementary and Alternative Medicine (eCAM)". Launched 
2004, Publication costs were to be covered by a 10 year sponsorship 
grant from Ishikawa Natural Medicine Products Research Center (INMPRC). 
In 2007 OUP announced a change in eCAM Open Access Policy: "Oxford 
Journals has been providing all eCAM papers “Open Access” without any 
charge to authors for the first four volumes since its launch. This has 
attracted much enthusiasm, and now the journal is established as one of 
the most exciting in the field. Due to great success in experimenting 
with the open access system, it has been decided for original articles 
to remain “open access” without charge to authors after 2008. However, 
all other manuscripts will be subscription based." eCAM has about ca. 
55% original research and 45% other articles (reviews, editorials, 
commentaries). For the letter, access is subscription based, but eCAM 
also joined the Oxford Open program. In 2009 OUP charged academic 
libraries GBP 200 for a combined subscription, GBP for Print and GBP 90 
for e-only (45%), consistent with a 55% reduction due to the OA content 
(this could grow larger, if authors opted in to pay Oxford open charges 
for making reviews etc. open access). However, what happened instead? 
For 2010 OUP charges GBP 209 for a combined subscription and GBP 190 for 
online only - the proportional reduction in online only price due to the 
part covered by OA subsidies has mysteriously disappeared. Ups! Nota 
bene, size (and output) has actually decreased by 13% since 2005. Now, 
as de facto all of eCAM is still open access, libraries could simply 
cancel, if anyone really bothered to subscribe so far. (Very likely, 
most got it via consortia or other package deals, e.g., in all of 
Germany, I found only one regular subscription to this title at academic 
medical libraries, at the central library for medicine in Cologne.)

By the way, the announced general change in the price structure from 
last year (combined price 100%, print/online 95%) actually means that 
print prices for Oxford Journals will increase by 10% for 2010 and 
combined print + online prices by 14%. And if you switch to e-only, in 
order to save money, as a european customer you still will see a price 
increase from 2009 to 2010 of typically 6% (due to the higher VAT 
applicable). (The exception are again the Oxford Open titles where real 
savings for libraries may be realized if you now switch from a combined 
subscription to e-only.) From the publisher's perspective, it certainly 
looks a lot better: 5% less from libraries switching from a combined 
subscription to e-only is more than offset by the savings in 
distribution and printing costs. And 14% more from libraries that still 
need print plus online in order to satisfy their clients or are required 
to fulfill basic archival roles that are based on maintaining print 
collections is a real bonus in these times where most publishers are 
pressed to keep increases in the lower single digit regime. In the case 
of Oxford Open titles, libraries that continue to subscribe to print 
despite the 14% price increase and can afford this, are effectively 
subsidizing the open access publishing side of these hybrid journals 
because they realize no savings at all from the gradual uptake of OA by 
authors.

But back to the statement on the changes in the Oxford Journals 
institutional price policy and the communication of such complex 
changes, that have far reaching consequences for the budgeting of 
libraries. Is it really too much asked to provide more transparency to 
customers, to correctly annotate price lists duly noting all exceptions 
to a stated policy, and to avoid broad sweeping statements that leave 
customers and agencies in the dark to find out what it really means, 
when they discover that a large part of the titles does not fit the 
description of a revised pricing policy?

Ironically, Oxford Journals just announced on 10 June 2009 that it has 
become one of the first STM publishers to achieve ISO 9001:2008 
certification for the operations side of its business. The press release 
said: "We hope our ISO 9001 certification will demonstrate to our 
authors, readers, and purchasers of our content that we have the proper 
mechanisms in place to provide a high quality of service to them. 
Through ISO 9001:2008 certification Oxford Journals proves that key 
working practices undertaken by staff working in its Operations Group 
(which includes the Production, IT, and Customer Services departments) 
are effective in providing a consistent quality of service." Oh, well 
... Is Dyscalculia on the radar of ISO 9001 auditors? Let's hope for the 
best.

Is there any hope for a cure? Sage advice? (hm...) ... Ex oriente lux?
Wikipedia closes with the following paragraph:

"Treatment
Dyscalculia has no cure per se, but various treatment options have been 
explored including electro-shock therapy. Counselling can help, but not 
necessarily to a large degree. No therapy has been properly verified and 
proved to be effective. Some anecdotal evidence suggests, however, that 
a certain amount of mathematical proficiency can be acquired by 
alternative systems of mathematical calculation such as Eastern 
mathematics. Anecdotal evidence also suggests, in fact, that dyscalculic 
individuals might themselves pursue such systems out of need or 
interest. The condition need not be seen as a disability, there is 
nothing preventing people who suffer from dyscalculia from succeeding in 
other academic fields such as history, geography and other social 
sciences, or in artistic fields such as music or drama."

Bernd-Christoph Kaemper, Stuttgart University Library

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