Re: Chicago Journals 2007 subscription rates now available

[bernd-christoph.kaemper@ub.uni-stuttgart.de]

Are we alone in seeing a problem with this announcement? This is 
the only case I know of a scholarly publisher that introduces 
tiered pricing and e-only access without offering libraries 
perpetual access to licensed and paid-for content.

The sales division was not very helpful in providing 
explanations.

When I pointed out that the press release at 
<http://www.portico.org/news/050506.html> only says that UCP has 
an agreement with Portico for only 4 titles so far and that it 
does not even mention that this agreement covers also the 
provision of perpetual access to previously paid for content of 
lapsed subscriptions, I received the following terse unsigned 
response:

"As I mentioned, access to our backfile requires a current 
subscription.  We do not offer perpetual access as you are 
defining it.

The information I shared about Portico and what has been posted 
on our website is all we can share right now.  I'm sorry that you 
feel it does not answer your question.  We update our web pages 
regularly, so I would encourage you to check back in the coming 
weeks."

At Stuttgart University we will stay for now with the still 
available offer to continue Subscriptions at a non-tiered price 
in the print-plus-electronic format (according to UCP, Electronic 
access is included without a geographic restriction, but with a 
usage concurrency of one, which will be enough for all our UCP 
titles).

Best regards,
Bernd-Christoph Kaemper, Stuttgart University Library