Hello everyone,

I need some advice.

One of the major clinical journals that we subscribe to put us in a wrong tier, and we are having difficult time correcting this mistake.

Rockefeller University is a doctorate granting university, one location, no undergraduate programs or medical schools. We have a “hospital” which exists for clinical research. The hospital doesn’t provide medical care but conduct clinical studies, and it is a part of our research programs.

We used to be categorized to Tier 3 (Tier 3 Single Site - Doctorate Granting Research Universities/medical Schools/ Teaching or Research Hospital/ Nonprofit Research Institutes/ Government Research Insts/ For-profit Companies or Organizations), but the publisher moved us to Tier 4  (University Systems Incl Inst With 1 Hospital or Multi-campus Centrally Administered Academic Inst/state-wide Academic Inst/hospital System or Network/healthcare Networks With Multiple Locations/medium Non-profit or Govt Research Inst or Agencies Over 1000 Ftes/for-profit Comp or Org With More Than 2 Geographic Locations)

The publisher thinks we have a hospital, and therefore we belong to the tier 4, when the fact is that the hospital doesn’t function as a hospital, it is a part of the university’s clinical and translational science program. We explained this in so many different ways but the publisher keeps insisting that we belong to the tier 4.

The difference in subscription cost is more than $4,000.

Is there a good strategy to work with an argument like this? If anyone any experiences handling a discussion like this, please let me know.

It has been going on for months.

Is this something I should just drop and move on?? We do not have any issues like this with any other publishers or vendors.

Thank you,

Rie