Elsevier Journal Pricing for 2007 and 2008

[Eric Hellman <eric@openly.com>]

> One of our annual interactions now approaching is the 2006 subscription
> renewal. The average price increase for Elsevier journals in the coming
> year will be 5.5% (including volume increases), averaged across our 1,800
> journals. The vast majority of our titles will have an increase of 5.25%.
> Some titles may increase more, particularly where they have grown
> significantly in size, and for others the increase will be less. In the
> last year, the number of articles published in our current journals grew
> by over 4%.
So on a per article basis, it could be said that the price increase is
1.25%. From Elsevier announcements, the comparable number was 1.5% last
year and 2.5% the previous year.

I have been predicting that at some point not so far is the future, the
per article price will start to go down at both Elsevier and other major
publishers, reflecting their need to maximize the quantity
    Revenue = ( Price x Number of subscribers) 
For any demand curve, there must exist a price above which revenue drops
due to reduced sales. Eventually (which could be a while), the inexorable
price reductions, driven by economies of scale, will change most aspects
of the journal publishing business.

I'm going out on a limb here to predict that 2007 will be the year for
which Daviess Menefee will send us an email announcing a price increase
equal to the article growth, (0% increase per article)  and that 2008 will
be the year that the price per article published at Elsevier will start to
drop at Elsevier.

The last time I said this publicly (at Charleston in November), David
Goodman said the opposite would happen. Remember, you heard it here first.

Eric Hellman, President                            Openly Informatics, Inc.
eric@openly.com                                    2 Broad St., 2nd Floor
tel 1-973-509-7800 fax 1-734-468-6216              Bloomfield, NJ 07003
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