FW: Price Increase of the EMBO Journal for 2004 (A reply to the open letter from SPARC Europe)

[kaemper _at__ ub.uni-stuttgart.de]

[Die folgende e-mail von David Prosser, Director SPARC Europe, leite 
ich hiermit weiter an erwerb-l, mit cc an inetbib, medibib-l, ezb. 
Mehrfachempfang bitte ich zu entschuldigen. MfG, B.-C. Kaemper, UB
Stuttgart]

-----Original Message-----
Date: Fri, 23 Jan 2004 11:20:01 -0000
From: "David Prosser" <david.prosser _at__ bodley.ox.ac.uk>

Dear All

Please find attached the response that SPARC Europe has received from
Professor Frank Gannon to the open letter we sent regarding the bundling
together of The EMBO Journal and EMBO Reports, and the subsequent price
increase (which for many institutions has been around 100%).

Best wishes

David

David C Prosser PhD
Director
SPARC Europe

E-mail:  david.prosser _at__ bodley.ox.ac.uk
Tel:       +44 (0) 1865 284 451
Mobile:  +44 (0) 7974 673 888
http://www.sparceurope.org

-- Attachment (copy and paste from original 
Winword File, SPARC_LetFG04.01.14.doc) --

Subject:  A reply to the open letter from SPARC Europe 

I read with interest and concern your open letter related to The EMBO
Journal and EMBOreports. I would like to take this opportunity to
balance some elements of your message.  The open letter refers to:
 
  (a) the increase in the price of The EMBO Journal 
  (b) the coupling of the sales of The EMBO Journal and EMBO reports
  (c) the desirability of a move to open access publishing.

The increases in price that you refer to arises from a shift to a site
licence model that provides access to the electronic version of the
journals to all on a site.  EMBO has been one of the last groups to move
to this particular pricing structure but the logic of doing so has
become inescapable.   The reality is that at individual institutions,
multiple subscriptions for The EMBO Journal have been (not surprisingly)
dropped by libraries because complete institutional electronic access
has been available for the price of a single subscription.   Most of the
smallest institutions will pay less than 5% more for their site licence
than they did under the subscription model.     However, if a larger
institution previously reduced the number of its subscriptions, and now
falls into a higher size/price bracket, then the price will obviously
increase.  For very large institutions, this price change may indeed be
a dramatic one.   In fact, just as dramatic as the price reduction at an
earlier stage.  However, I think that a fairer situation has been
reached through the change to the site licence.  I can affirm that, 
apart from corrections for inflation rate, the increase in 2004 is not
planned to be repeated in the future years. I trust that once this
realignment has taken place, then the widely accepted good value of The
EMBO Journal will be again the predominant message which will be sent by
librarians to each other.  I should also point out that EMBO continues
to make its journals available freely to all after 1 year and that they
are immediately freely available to scientists in the poorest countries
of the world.  

The obligatory coupling of the purchase of The EMBO Journal and
EMBOreports is more problematic, I accept.  The reality is that
EMBOreports is a top class publication as evidenced not least by the
fact that its initial impact factor was 6.0 and now is 7.7.  You will
recognise that achieving such a high impact factor immediately shows the
quality of EMBOreports.  Those who have not yet looked at EMBOreports
perhaps should do so to see that this is not just a journal that
publishes focussed scientific papers, but also one that contains much
background information about science and society and topics of very
general interest to not only the molecular biology community but all
scientists.  The combination of The EMBO Journal and EMBOreports is
complementary with comments, reviews and short papers in one journal and
full papers in the other.  This warrants their sale as a combination.  
We also monitor the visits to the EMBOreports site and the traffic there
is extremely high.    Indeed the increase in traffic on all sections of
the EMBOreports site in the last year has been remarkable.  Many parts
of EMBOreports were freely accessible following its launch.  The
subscription uptake for EMBOreports on the other hand, has remained
resolutely disappointing despite all the other indicators of success.  
Our analysis is that the scientific community would be well served by
having greater physical and electronic access to EMBOreports.  As the
standard "sales procedures" had not been sufficient, we have attempted
to increase availability by selling it in combination with The EMBO
Journal at a price that, for most  institutions on the lowest price
tier, is less than 5% more than  for the two journals combined last
year.   All librarians will be provided with information on the use by
their institution of EMBOreports during 2004 and again we are confident
that this will show that the community is indeed very pleased to have
much more ready access to EMBOreports than has been the case in the
past. 

The final point in your message relates to open access.   As you are
well aware, the economic aspects of open access publication are complex,
and EMBO's position is currently completely open on how best to serve
the scientific community on this question.   We have recently
established a working party to look into all aspects of open access,
including the feasibility of launching a new open access journal, since
any transition from a traditional to an open access business model is
likely to require both careful analysis of alternative models and time
to test them.   Even the start of a not-for-profit new open access
journal with a model in which the author pays for publication carries
with it a large number of unknowns in terms of both the economic
sustainability of such a journal and the real costs to authors and their
institutions.   Hence, although we are very sympathetic and supportive
of open access, we have not yet completed the analysis that we feel such
a step into uncertainty requires.   When we have done so (in the next
few months) we will be happy to let you know of our plans.

I hope that the above paragraphs help to clarify the position of EMBO
and I remain open to further dialogue on this matter as is needed.

Yours sincerely,





Prof. Frank Gannon,
Executive Director, EMBO
Secretary General, EMBC