Hi Rick

I just want to let you know that we received the same price increases
for our Nature online titles and they actually went up more than 50% and
they did reassure me that prices for next year will only go up 5% in
British pounds but for us it will be a nice 20% in American dollars.
The explanation for the increase was moving to a new better tiered
pricing model that librarians have been requesting for a long time.

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

>>> rickand@UNR.EDU 12/7/2004 4:34:16 PM >>>

I'm sure I'm not the only one to have recently received an email
solicitation from Nature offering to help me "save my library's budget"
by selling me backfiles.  But am I the only one to have received it in
the wake of a renewal invoice filled with patently bizarre price increases?

To wit: my institution's price for the EMBO Journal was $1,489 last
year.  This year the price has more than doubled, to $3,150.  Last year,
my institution subscribed to five of Nature's monthly/review titles, for
a total cost of $7,200; during the course of that year, we added one
more, and our total renewal price is now $9,500.  (That's actually down
from the original quote, which was $10,575 -- a 50% price increase for
20% more content.  When I squawked and asked for an explanation and
per-title price breakdown, I got a new quote instead.  I asked again
for a price-per-title breakdown, and am still waiting for it.)

It's one thing for a publisher to impose such bizarre price increases;
it's quite another for it to follow up the increases with a sales
solicitation that invokes the promise of budget savings!  At this point,
buying more content from Nature seems less like a way to save my
library's budget than a way to gamble with it irresponsibly.

----
Rick Anderson
Dir. of Resource Acquisition
University of Nevada, Reno Libraries
(775) 784-6500 x273
rickand@unr.edu