My own organization has tiered pricing, so, while we don't charge based on the number of users, we do charge based on the degree of use. (I'm grossly simplifying our tiering methodology.) For us, it's a question of fairness for the smaller, or less research-intensive, institutions. Why should a small liberal arts college with 100 downloads in a year pay the same price as Tokyo University, which might have 10,000 downloads in a year. With that demonstrably greater value at the latter institution, isn't it fair that they should pay more? Unfortunately, the "production cost" that you refer to has to be borne by a finite number of academic institutions, R&D firms, and government research institutes. These are not growing in number -- in fact, universities are closing or merging in Japan, one of our biggest markets, because of demographic shifts. That's why cancellations lead to price increases -- if fewer institutions subscribe, the remaining ones must still pay the fixed production costs among them. (Add "profits" or "surpluses" to "production costs" if you like, it doesn't change the basic dynamic.) So it's terribly important that pricing does not punish smaller institutions, who will then cancel, which will then add to the price for the bigger institutions. It is a myth, by the way, that all institutions paid the same for print subscriptions. Princeton at one time had eight subscriptions to just one of our titles (Applied Physics Letters), which were distributed among the main library, the physics library, the engineering library, and so on. So Princeton was paying many multiples of the same price that a smaller institution paid for one copy, a de facto tiered-pricing arrangement. This was extremely common, and tiered pricing for electronic access rightly mirrors that phenomenon: bigger institutions should pay more to meet the needs of larger populations. It's not about the price, it's about the value -- in a really correct tiered pricing scheme, each institution would pay about the same in terms of price per use to meet the needs of its own user population. Regards, Douglas LaFrenier Director, Publication Sales & Market Development American Institute of Physics 2 Huntington Quadrangle Melville, New York 11747 Phone: +1-516-576-2411 Fax: +1-516-576-2374 >>> From: "Sarah D. Tusa" <Sarah.Tusa@LAMAR.EDU> To: <SERIALST@LIST.UVM.EDU> Date: 10/7/2009 4:36 PM Subject: Re: [SERIALST] Just a thought . . . I respectfully disagree. I don't see how it costs any more to give access to a campus of 25,000 than it does to a campus of 1,000 students. What does the number of students have to do with production cost? And when the same journals were strictly available in print, and anyone could walk into the library (we don't restrict entry until midnight), the number of students and/or faculty who used the same journal and even the same article did not seem to make a difference in the price. We all paid the same price then. The potential usage doesn't escalate that exponentially just because the same journal is online. The usage just shifts from walk-in usage of the print to authorized log-in access to THE SAME TYPE OF CONTENT FROM THE SAME SOURCES. The same small segment of the campus population is going to use the same subject-specific titles that they always did. Yes, they may use it a tad more because it is more convenient, but the usage doesn't grow enough to justify setting the price based on campus population or on "potential users". Furthermore, The value of the information doesn't change with the number of users. It's the same kind of content that used to have a fixed price when it was in print. The nature (and thus the value) of the content hasn't changed. The contributors get no direct remuneration from the publishers. (The integrity of the content would be compromised if the authors were paid, and it would definitely sully the field if peer reviewers were paid, so that leaves whatever production cost is actually incurred to host the content and make it available. If the cost of production has increased, then I can understand a moderate, overall price increase. However, I will never agree that the value of the content has any logical connection with the "potential" or actual number of downloads on any given campus. Sarah Tusa, Associate Professor Coordinator of Collection Development & Acquisitions Mary & John Gray Library, Lamar University PO Box 10021 Beaumont, TX 77710-0021 Ph: 409/880-8125 Fax: 409/880-8225 From: SERIALST: Serials in Libraries Discussion Forum [mailto:SERIALST@list.uvm.edu] On Behalf Of Rick Anderson Sent: Wednesday, October 07, 2009 1:55 PM To: SERIALST@LIST.UVM.EDU Subject: Re: [SERIALST] Just a thought . . . > Shoot. There's nothing "potentially infinite" about our campus > population or even the number of "potential users." "Unlimited" would be a better word than "infinite," I guess. What's functionally unlimited is not the number of users, but the amount of use that a given population of users can make of a content service when no download limit is imposed. When you sell a loaf of bread, what you're providing in exchange for the purchase price is a single loaf of bread. When it's gone, it's gone, and if the customer wants more he has to buy another loaf. When you sell site-based access to an online service, you're providing a functionally unlimited number of downloads. In that circumstance there's nothing irrational about pegging the access price, in some degree, to the number of people being served. (How high or low the price itself should be is a separate question, of course.) Now granted, it doesn't cost a publisher twice as much to provide two downloads as it does to provide one download. But it does cost significantly more to give access to a campus of 25,000 students than it does to give access to a campus of 1,000 students. Just to be extra clear: I'm not defending any particular publisher's pricing practice. Just pointing out that it makes no sense to compare selling a loaf of bread to providing an ongoing service like an e-journal. -- Rick Anderson Assoc. Dir. for Scholarly Resources & Collections Marriott Library Univ. of Utah rick.anderson@utah.edu (801) 721-1687
