RE: National Online: Nature and Others... (like SCIENCE)

["Michael Spinella" <mspinell@aaas.org>]

David et al,

Rick is certainly correct here, and doesn't need my help to strengthen his
rebuttal. But, lest anyone think that the evidence he offers is merely
anecdotal (i.e. peculiar to his one data point at UNR), I will offer a
couple of metrics that apply broadly across our whole file of Science
Online subscribers and institutions:

1) The average cost that institutions paid in 2000 for site-wide Science 
Online is around 34 cents per fte. Large universities and consortia, on 
average, do a little better than that, while very small institutions and 
corporations do somewhat worse. No institution of any kind pays anywhere 
near what our members pay in dues, or even what they pay incrementally for 
Science Online access.

2) Maybe you will say, "But wait...not all FTEs are really ever going to
use Science Online in a given year." True enough. But Science does appeal
to a rather wide swath of users across most academic campuses, and so we
(and you) enjoy very substantial usage figures. It's hard to know exactly
how many unique users there are in a year, but when we estimate
conservatively how many different individuals seem to have been served
through institutions in 2000, the cost per effective user during that year
would still have been well under $4, which is still a very modest fraction
of what our members pay, even excluding their dues payments and only
looking at the increment they pay extra for Science Online access. And the
average among universities would certainly be much lower even than this
<$4 figure, because corporations are included in this overall calculation.
On average, corporations have many fewer USERS per the number of FTEs, and
therefore are paying a relatively higher per user rate than universities
even in the same pricing tier.

Mike Spinella
Science

>>> rickand@unr.edu 05/17/01 07:19PM >>>
> Rick, you have it backwards. The library, who pays the most (on the order
> of several thousand dollars, gets the version without the in-press
> articles. The individual subscriber, who pays much less, gets the version
> with the in-press articles.

No.  The library pays a larger invoice than an individual does, but the
library is not an individual subscriber -- at UNR, it represents about
13,000 users, none of whom has paid anything approaching the cost of an
individual subscription.  In the case of Science: if a student at UNR opts
to spend $77 and subscribe on her own, she gets her own weekly print copy
and online access to pre-publication content (she pays more, and she gets
more).  If she opts to spend nothing, and settle for access through the
library, she has to share a print copy with her compadres and settle for
less-current online access (she pays less, and she gets less).  There is
nothing scandalous about this; in fact, I think I'll go out on a limb and
say that the library and its community get a pretty good deal here --
given that each community member's access costs us about 27 cents.  The
fact that an individual can opt to pay a premium and get a premium service
doesn't make our deal any less acceptable.

-------------
Rick Anderson
Electronic Resources/Serials Coordinator
The University Libraries
University of Nevada, Reno
1664 No. Virginia St.
Reno, NV  89557
PH  (775) 784-6500 x273
FX  (775) 784-1328
rickand@unr.edu