Re: Heads up: Nature license and confidentiality

["Sally Morris \(Chief Executive\)" <sally.morris@alpsp.org>]

I'm slightly suprised that librarians find anything odd in this. 
In the print world, the price was the price.  In the digital 
world, as Peggy says herself, 'we don't all pay the price'; 
actual prices paid by individual consortia and even individual 
libraries tend to be the result of often protracted negotiation. 
Different factors may have a bearing in each case. So making 
public the price actually negotiated would be most unfair on the 
vendor, wouldn't it?

Sally Morris, Chief Executive
Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers
Email: sally.morris@alpsp.org
Website:  www.alpsp.org

----- Original Message -----
From: "Peggy Cooper" <pcooper@boisestate.edu>
To: <liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu>
Sent: Friday, August 25, 2006 6:16 AM
Subject: Re: Heads up: Nature license and confidentiality

> I normally just lurk around on the list but this issue is 
> important enough in my opinion that I wanted to share my 2 
> cents. "It seems to me that we'd better all decide that we're 
> not going to agree." - I hope so! As a representative for a 
> public institution, I can not be a part of any "secret" deals 
> and I don't & won't. I'm curious about the reasons that the 
> vendors want their pricing kept secret. We already know that we 
> don't all pay the price, so what are they protecting?
>
> Peggy S. Cooper
> Coordinator of Collection Development
> Associate Professor
> Albertsons Library
> Boise State University
> Boise, ID  83725-1430
> pcooper@boisestate.edu
>
> > > > "Rick Anderson" <rickand@unr.edu> 8/23/2006 5:24 PM >>>
> Nature recently announced 
> (http://www.nature.com/press_releases/NPG_opens_archives.pdf) a 
> sort of modified open access to its archival content. 
> However, there's a catch: they're now asking us to sign a new 
> version of the license agreement for our 2007 renewals, in 
> order (as my new sales rep put it) "to guarantee that you have 
> access if you need to cancel."
>
> Most of the new license language is okay, but they now 
> apparently want confidentiality for pricing and license terms. 
> If we agree, that could spell the end of public discussion of 
> Nature's pricing practices.  It seems to me that we'd better 
> all decide that we're not going to agree.
>
> ----
> Rick Anderson
> Dir. of Resource Acquisition
> University of Nevada, Reno Libraries
> rickand@unr.edu