Re: IOP Publishing Announces 2010 Prices

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

Apologies for cross posting.

Collins@ioppubusa.com wrote

>The new e-only option will allow customers to renew 2009 
>subscriptions to all IOP Publishing-owned titles in 2010 with no 
>price increase. E-only versions of IOP journal packages will 
>also be available for the first time.

This is clearly false labeling. If e-only was not available 
before, you can only compare etween print + online. There the 
price increase is +5%, on average.

It means essentially that US customers will get IOP journals 
e-only for the same price that got them print plus online last 
year. What a deal!

One exception is Physical Biology, where e-only and e-only with 
year-end print volume are priced the same as in 2009. (For the 
three e-only journals published on behalf of SISSA,

- Journal of Statistical Mechanics: Theory and Experiment
- Journal of Cosmology & Astroparticle Physics
- Journal of Instrumentation
(the price increase is 5%.)

The other notabel exception is Journal of Physics D, where e-only 
= last years combined price, while print incl. online goes up by 
15% (frequency increases from 24 to 50 issues/year). Also, Plasma 
Sources Science and Technology, where again e-only = last years 
combined price, print incl. online goes up by 30% (frequency 
increases from 4 to 6 issues a year), leading to greater savings 
for going e-only.

And of course, US libraries will not profit from the weak pound, 
because GBP/USD exchange rates have been frozen in at 2009 rates 
(current rates are 20% lower). For US libraries it will also be 
very disappointing to learn that even under these strained 
budgets IOP still does not offer US customers the option to take 
the smaller package A instead of package B (US librarians have 
complained for years about this).

It is also disappointing that IOP gives only 5% discount for 
going e-only (with the two exceptions noted above, where greater 
savings will occur). This price differential is too small for 
most countries where VAT is charged on electronic subscriptions 
and is a quarter of what AIP or APS are being able to offer. 
E.g., in Germany, a combined subscription (according to IOP print 
with free online access) is charged with the reduced VAT rate of 
7%, while e-only is charged with the full VAT rate of 19%. 
Consequently, switching to e-only would increase our costs by 
10%, contrary to what IOP asserts.

For most european countries this means that a combined print + 
online subscription is still cheaper than e-only for most titles, 
with the consequence that there will be little incentive to 
switch to e-only, with the notable exception of JPB (At our 
library we will continue to subscribe to the combined version of 
most titles, but will throw away print after one year. This 
doesn't exactly help reducing paper consumption...)

For comparison, APS is able to offer e-only for at most ca. 81% 
of a combined subscription (with the smallest tiers, it is ca. 
68%), AIP at 82%. I do not understand why savings should be so 
much smaller for IOP.

Bernd-Christoph Kaemper, Stuttgart University Library