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<font size=3>[Forwarding from Bernd-Christoph Kaemper. --Peter
Suber.]<br><br>
<br>
Hybrid Journal pricing (II): when and by how much will we see EMBO prices
decrease?<br><br>
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.<br><br>
For the full paper, cf.<br>
<a href="http://www.ub.uni-stuttgart.de/ejournals/Hybrid_journal_pricing_EMBO.doc" eudora="autourl">
http://www.ub.uni-stuttgart.de/ejournals/Hybrid_journal_pricing_EMBO.doc<br>
<br>
</a>Bernd-Christoph Kaemper, Stuttgart University Library<br><br>
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