Oxford Journals open access pricing adjustments

["STRINGER, Kate" <kate.stringer@oxfordjournals.org>]

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The 2008 pricing information for the Oxford Open journals (those 
with an optional open access model) has today been amended - some 
of the current prices were corporate rates posted in error, 
rather than the academic rates which would apply to the majority 
of our customers. This has been corrected in the new version, 
which can be found online at 
http://www.oxfordjournals.org/oxfordopen/2008%20online-only%20price%20adjustments.doc.

We would also like to take this opportunity to clarify how our 
online pricing model for journals participating in the Oxford 
Open initiative works, using a worked example, in order to ensure 
that there has been no misunderstanding. We strive to make our 
pricing policy fair and transparent, and to adjust online prices 
to reflect the amount of open access versus non-open access 
content. However it should be noted that the process of setting 
subscription prices is complex, involving many additional factors 
aside from open access.

Our standard policy for 2008 is to price the online-only (and 
print-only) subscriptions to our journals at 95% of the combined 
(print and online) price. In the case of Oxford Open journals, we 
have applied a further discount to the 2008 online-only price 
based on the amount of open access content published in 2006 
(Journal prices for a subsequent year are set at least six months 
ahead of each new calendar year, so for Oxford Open journals, we 
therefore look at the last full year of open access content).

To illustrate the above process, we've picked one of the Oxford 
Open journals, Carcinogenesis.  In 2006, the journal published 8% 
of its pages under an open access model.  Under our standard 
pricing model, the online-only price would have been Pounds 990 
(95% of the combined price of Pounds 1042).  However, with the 8% 
open access discount applied, the actual 2008 online price is 
Pounds 907. The same process applied in setting the 2007 
online-only price, taking 95% of the combined subscription price 
and applying an additional 9% discount because that represented 
the amount of open access content published in the journal in 
2005.

This does not in fact represent an actual price decrease from 
2007 to 2008.

Because the 2008 combined price for Carcinogenesis (which forms 
the basis for all other adjustments) increased by 5% from 2007 
and because similar open access adjustments were applied to both 
the 2007 and 2008 online prices, the online-only price still 
increased by 5.4%, from Pounds 860 to Pounds 907.

As this example shows, because pricing is dependent on many 
factors - including variations in page extent, issue frequency, 
and exchange rate adjustments, as well as open access uptake - in 
some cases, open access adjustments will not always result in an 
actual price decrease from one year to the next. They may in fact 
have the effect of simply limiting the price increase to a lesser 
amount, as the discount applies to what the standard 2008 
online-only price would have been, not to the 2007 online-only 
price.

Overall, the average online-only price increase from 2007 to 2008 
across all Oxford Journals titles is 6.9%, whereas the average 
price increase for Oxford Open titles is 1.7%, with eight out of 
the 28 Oxford Open titles seeing an absolute reduction in price 
from 2007 to 2008.

Kate Stringer| Assistant Communications Manager
Oxford Journals | Oxford University Press
Great Clarendon Street | Oxford | OX2 6DP
kate.stringer@oxfordjournals.org