2008 PRICING MODEL

INTRODUCTION

The journals of the APS embody the mission of the Society "to advance and diffuse the knowledge of physics." We strive to produce journals of the highest quality, and at the same time, to keep our journals accessible to researchers and students at institutions of all types and sizes, everywhere in the world, through ongoing efforts to reduce production costs and through policies such as tiered pricing and reduced-price or free subscriptions for developing countries.

ONLINE ONLY IN 2008

The online journals are the definitive versions of the APS publications described here. Our goal is to set the prices for the online journals to cover the costs of producing the electronic journal content and the costs of electronic distribution and associated subscriber services (search engines, reference linking, RSS feeds, etc.), plus a small net return. The base price changes for online-only access in 2008 are

• Tier 1 - no change
• Tier 2 - 1.0% increase
• Tier 3 - 2.0% increase
• Tier 4 - 3.0% increase
• Tier 5 - 4.0% increase

For most subscribers the resulting prices will probably decrease in constant dollars, even though we expect that the journals will continue to grow by approximately 5% per year, and while we continue to enhance the online services available to our subscribers.

We have made further adjustments in the prices of Physical Review C and Physical Review D, to correct for differing rates of growth of individual journals, and in the price of the APS-ALL package, to correct for removing APS News and the Bulletin of the American Physical Society (BAPS), which are now available as open-access online publications. As a result, many online-only subscribers will actually see price increases below the base figures given above.

We strive to preserve the archival integrity of our online journals. In addition to the primary source at our editorial offices on Long Island, we maintain three complete and continuously updated mirror sites for all of our content. With the recent opening of our west-coast mirror in California, these sites are now widely distributed across the country. During the past year APS signed an agreement to allow Portico to preserve the content of our publications in its archive, where we expect it to be fully integrated by year's end.

ONLINE-PLUS-PRINT IN 2008

In 2008 we will continue to offer the option of augmenting the basic online-only subscriptions by traditional printed copies of our journals. Our ultimate goal is to set the additional subscription prices for the printed journals to cover the expenses for printing and distribution. Because printing involves large set-up costs, independent of the number of copies printed, the incremental prices of the printed journals may rise faster than the online-only prices as the number of print subscribers decreases. For 2008, on the advice of our Publications Oversight Committee, we have adopted a flat (across tiers) additional fee for the printed journals, and have set this fee at 5% above the difference between print-plus-online and online-only prices for Tier 1 in 2007. On account of historically accumulated variations in print pricing, some subscribers will actually see significantly smaller increases in their incremental print prices.

Conclusion

The elected Council of the APS sets the prices of the journals after advice from its Publications Oversight Committee. Two representatives of the library community, appointed in consultation with the Physics, Astronomy, and Mathematics Division (PAM) of the Special Libraries Association (SLA) attend the Committee meetings as advisers. On behalf of the Committee and the APS, I thank the past year's advisers, Molly White of the University of Texas at Austin, and Emily Poworoznek of the University of New Hampshire. We have benefited greatly from their contributions and we value their wisdom and their friendship.

We welcome questions, comments, or concerns, and can be reached at assocpub@aps.org. A full listing of 2008 prices can be found online at http://librarians.aps.org/Price08.pdf.

Treasurer/Publisher
American Physical Society