Over the past years both the library community and the scholarly societies have wrestled with the painful problem of escalating costs of the scientific literature. This letter is to initiate a dialogue and to provide you with advance notice of the APS pricing for the year 2003.
We will begin with financial data from the APS and follow with the philosophy, which directs the APS pricing model, specifically its multi-tier pricing. Then, we will provide APS pricing for the coming year 2003. With that we will close with a request for continued feedback from the community to guide us in future years.
Presented here are some historical numbers to set the context and to demonstrate what is meant by running a publishing operation to just cover costs.
Fiscal year ending June 30, 2001:
Looking at Publications, from 1997 to 2001 the price per page of Physical Review rose from $0.135 per page to $0.155 per page, this averages to 3.7% per year. During that period APS had average salary increases of around 4% and the number of subscribers continued their long historical drop of around 3.5% per year. APS continues to invest in technological advancement, by digitizing all of our journals online and creating PROLA. We kept our average price increase in the single digit range while article submissions increased between 3.5% and 5.5% per year, salary inflation was 4%, and the annual attrition of the subscriber base was 3.5%, by allowing the margin on our operations to erode.
The following table provides additional background information.
|
Year |
Manuscript Received |
Manuscript Published |
Pages Published |
Price/ Page (US$) |
Price/Submission (US$) |
Price/Article Published (US$) |
|
1997 |
22,119 |
12,789 |
89,195 |
0.135 |
0.546 |
0.945 |
|
1998 |
23,276 |
13,349 |
92,430 |
0.140 |
0.555 |
0.969 |
|
1999 |
23,734 |
13,438 |
93,263 |
0.149 |
0.586 |
1.035 |
|
2000 |
24,228 |
14,245 |
99,164 |
0.151 |
0.620 |
1.055 |
|
2001 |
25,225 |
14,631 |
104,379 |
0.155 |
0.643 |
1.109 |
The price increases in 2003 continues a process of just keeping even but also a process of redistributing the cost.
The pricing of journals is ultimately set by the elected Council of the APS, after advice by the Publications Oversight Committee (POC). A representative of the library community, appointed in consultation with the PAM division of SLA, attends the POC committee meetings as an advisor. In addition, we have held discussions with groups of librarians around the country and abroad in focus groups and with agents familiar with library concerns. We have also held discussions with Provosts and Library Directors. We feel that this process has helped us create a viable and fair model for distributing the costs of the publications process.
During 2003, the APS will continue efforts to achieve a fair distribution of costs between major research active subscribers, small undergraduate institutions, and those in between. The APS was established in 1899 to “Promote and Diffuse the Knowledge of Physics”. The APS Council supports the philosophy that the cost of research activity should be distributed to reflect the way different institutions utilize the literature. In particular it should reflect both the value of the product to the reader (students, researchers, etc.) and the value of the journal as a distributor of research information (authors, institutions).
There are two points of view which both lead to increasing the fraction of journal revenue, which comes from the more research active institutions. One is from a business perspective. As cost pressures weigh on college budgets, small institutions may feel forced to drop their institutional subscriptions. This would be a significant loss, both for their students and for the larger community. In particular, the loss in revenue will have to be made up by the remaining institutions, since APS operates with no profit margin to absorb it. By putting a constraint on the prices of the small colleges we hope to keep them as subscribers. This is economically a win-win situation. The second perspective is more fundamental. The future health of physics is heavily dependent on the educational activities of our small colleges because they foster both the graduate schools and the technical workforce. APS is committed to keeping the literature of physics accessible to all portions of our community. In keeping with these observations, we are adding two new tiers of research active institutions for 2003, tier 4 & tier 5.
Tier 5 |
Very Large Research Institutions (Represents less than 1% of all subscribers) - The methodology used to determine this tier is based on the size, nature, and scale of an institution's research activities, the degree to which an institution regards research as a fundamental aim, the size of the research budget in physical sciences, significant usage activity and significant publishing activities of the institution's researchers in APS's journals. |
Tier 4 |
Large Research Institutions (Represents approximately 5% of all subscribers) - The methodology used to determine this tier is based on the size, nature, and scale of an institution's research activities, the degree to which an institution regards research as a fundamental aim, the size of the research budget in physical sciences, substantial usage activity and substantial publishing activities of the institution's researchers in APS's journals. |
Tier 3 |
Carnegie Research Extensive institutions and their overseas equivalents, as well as government laboratories and corporations. |
Tier 2 |
Carnegie Research Intensive institutions and their overseas equivalents. |
Tier 1 |
The remainder of the academic institutions and their overseas equivalents. |
The fractional price increases for 2003 over 2002 in each tier:
|
ONLINE ONLY |
PRINT & ONLINE |
|
TIER 5: |
25% |
25% |
Over Tier 3, 2002 prices |
TIER 4: |
20% |
20% |
Over Tier 3, 2002 prices |
TIER 3: |
10% |
10% |
Over Tier 3, 2002 prices |
TIER 2: |
5% |
10% |
Over Tier 2, 2002 prices |
TIER 1: |
0% |
6% |
Over Tier 1, 2002 prices |
Overall, these increases will produce a 5.5% increase in revenue to cover inflation and absorb the increasing number of manuscripts processed and published.
It is recognized that the large increases for the research institutions provides a real burden on tight library budgets. In order to provide additional options to subscribers, online only access to the journals (no print) continues to be offered at a reduced price. This option provides a price reduction in 2003 of approximately 15% below the print-plus-online. Overseas subscribers avoiding airfreight costs would see an even greater savings.
The 2003 Price Chart is available at: http://librarians.aps.org/Price03.pdf
APS recognizes the importance to the Community of maintainingstability and predictability for your costs. We feel that change is necessary, but do not wish it to be without involving the community. We intend to maintain this structure and the institutional categorizations for at least two years, during which time we will continue extensive interactions with the library community.
To help reduce the escalating publication costs, APS is investing in technologies and looking at efficiencies to help reduce our publication costs. We are also exploring other revenue sources to help support the publications operation.
Having reviewed the background, philosophy and details of the 2003 APS pricing model, we welcome discussion and comments. If you have any questions or concerns, please write to as at assocpub@aps.org.
An email message or letter has been sent to each APS subscriber providing tier information. Any questions regarding tiers can be addressed to: assocpub@aps.org.
Thomas J. McIlrath Treasurer/Publisher American Physical Society