The price decreases are in the
presence of continued growth in journal size and in manuscript submissions. They reflect a long and intense development of new technology both by the Society and its vendors as well as persistent attention to cost control by all of the staff. They also represent the Society's commitment to returning the advantages of technology to the community. The same percentage price decrease will apply to print-plus-online and online only. APS sees the new technology as an exciting challenge to end the period of unsustainable price increases.

Setting Prices for 2005

The elected Council of the APS sets the prices of the journals after advice by the Publications Oversight Committee (POC). A representative of the library community, appointed in consultation with the Physics, Astronomy, and Mathematics (PAM) division of the Special Library Association (SLA), attends the POC committee meetings as an observer and advisor. The guidelines set down by Council are that the journal prices should cover costs with sufficient margin to allow for the uncertainty in predicting costs and revenue two years in advance.

For 2005 it is assumed the size of the journal will grow by 4% from 2004. This is based on a comparable growth in submitted articles over most of 2003 and the fact that we see no trend that will cause that growth to change. We are moving rapidly to fully electronic manuscript handling in the office. This is a major factor in controlling costs. In addition, we are anticipating a reduction in composition and production costs of 20% compared with 2003. This will be accomplished by working with vendors who are taking advantage of the new technology and working hard to integrate it into their processes.

When all of predictable factors for expenses were folded in with the revenue expectation, the APS Council decided to move forward and decrease prices. The price changes for the various tiers are shown in the chart below. The numbers in the chart below represent the changes for APS-ALL and PR-ALL. A full listing of prices is available at http://librarians.aps.org/Price05.pdf. While individual journals will in general have the same price decreases, revenue neutral adjustments have been made to the price of Physical Review C and Physical Review E single title subscription to account for uneven variations in growth in recent years.

Having reviewed the background, philosophy and details of the 2005 APS pricing model, we welcome discussion and comments. If you have any questions or concerns, please write to us at assocpub@aps.org.

Thomas J. McIlrath
Treasurer/Publisher
American Physical Society