Sandy,

I'm sorry to come to this discussion late, but I wanted to add
something else to the discussion of price increases.

We use several different vendors for most of our subscriptions.
Some time ago we asked our vendors whether we could be notified and
be given the option of cancelling our subscriptions if the price
increased more than 20%. One of our vendors agreed to this; another
said they would be unable to do this. In the case of
"non-cancellable" titles this means we sometimes have to accept
surprise price increases, at least for a year. It also means,
though, that we're going to be less likely to place new orders for
non-cancellable titles with the vendor that can't notify us of
price increases before we have a chance to cancel.

What I'm getting at is that vendors have a lot more clout with
publishers than individual libraries. Although neither the vendor
nor the publisher wants to keep prices low, the reason we pay
service charges is so vendors will act as representatives on our
behalf to the publishers, not the other way around. It would make a
big difference if vendors would either pressure publishers to
release subscription rates earlier in the year or give libraries an
"escape clause" to get out of subscriptions that go up too much.

As an added note, there are a lot of different reasons why
subscriptions increase in price, but the biggest increases I've
seen are the result of journals moving from one publisher to
another. When a journal goes from a university press to, say,
Blackwell Publishing, it's almost certain the price will at least
double.

--On Tuesday, November 16, 2004 4:39 PM -0500 Bob Persing
<persing@POBOX.UPENN.EDU> wrote:

> Hi Serialsters:
>
> I just need to ask -- has anybody else noticed that some
> subscription prices have skyrocketed to over 100% or higher on their
> invoices? I just wanted to confirm that everyone else has seen these as well
> i.e.  Harvard Law Review, Marriage and Family Review, Personnel
> Psychology and I have a growing list I could put up here.
>
> I am used to price increases of 7-10 % but this is just crazy --?
> Is anybody else experiencing higher than usual increases on
> subscriptions?
> Are the publishers having a free for all now?
>
> Sandy Srivastava
>
> Sandhya D. Srivastava
> Assistant Professor
> Serials Librarian
> Hofstra University
> Axinn Library
> 123 Hofstra University
> Hempstead, New York 11550
> Telephone: (516) 463 - 5959
> Fax: (516) 463 - 6438
> Email: librsds@hofstra.edu <mailto:librsds@hofstra.edu>

Christopher Allen Waldrop
Serials Coordinator
Order Services Department
Vanderbilt University Library
Ph: 615-343-3831
Fax: 615-343-8834