[BOAI] Hybrid Journal pricing (II): when and by how much will we see EMBO prices decrease?

[Peter Suber]

[Forwarding from Bernd-Christoph Kaemper.  --Peter Suber.]


Hybrid Journal pricing (II): when and by how much will we see EMBO prices 
decrease?

Summary: When EMBO moved its flagship EMBO Journal + Reports from OUP to 
NPG in 2003/04, research libraries suffered from an excessive price hike by 
a factor 2 or more. In Dec 2006 EMBO & NPG announced the availability of an 
Open access option for authors (EMBO Open). Also, it was announced that the 
site license pricing model for the EMBO package would move to a mixed 
revenue model if subscription charges and publication fees, with the site 
license price to be adjusted adjusted "in line with the amount of 
subscription content published annually". Based on an analysis of EMBO's 
publication output 2001 -- 2009 from both journals, we find that -- as the 
net result of a decrease in the total number of published articles and an 
increase in the number of articles published and paid for under the EMBO 
Open program, a decrease in the amount of subscription content published 
annually of 17% in 2007 (relative to 2006), and 29% in 2008 (relative to 
2007, or even 42% relative to 2006). On the other hand, for 2009, as a 
result of editorial policy changes made by EMBO (they have increased the 
number of invited commentaries and commissioned review articles, also those 
assembled in focus issues), we predict an increase of 24% for 2009 relative 
to 2008, but still a 27% decrease relative to 2006. EMBO Open uptake for 
original articles itself started at 4% in 2007, and is now around 15% 
(value for 2008 was 16%, estimate for 2009 is 14%). Total estimated revenue 
from EMBO Open publication fees for 2007 -- 2009 has already surpassed GBP 
200,000. EMBO / NPG failed to make a price adjustment for 2009; we now 
expect that they stick to their promise from Dec 2006 and finally lower 
their site license price by about 1/3. Since the first adjustment was left 
out, an upward adjustment for 2011 should not be necessary and the price 
could remain the same as the adjusted price for 2010. Apart from this 
compensatory measure, we do not believe that year to year fluctuations 
should be "averaged out", as this would make pricing intransparent and set 
a wrong market signal. If publishers like NPG/EMBO do not keep their 
promise to adjust their pricing in response to increased OA uptake and 
published output, we in effect have an additional revenue model, not a 
mixed revenue model. In this case, universities who have installed an open 
access fund, should indeed ask themselves whether such journals should not 
be excluded from their gold OA funding on a matter of principle.

For the full paper, cf.
http://www.ub.uni-stuttgart.de/ejournals/Hybrid_journal_pricing_EMBO.doc

Bernd-Christoph Kaemper, Stuttgart University Library

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