AAAS 2010 pricing ... and still extra for ScienceXpress

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

Dear colleagues,

AAAS informed us some time ago, that prices for site licenses for 
Science online would increase 3.8% for both their global FTE and 
usage-based rates.

There will be no price increase for the remote site fee ($400), 
no price increase on Science Signaling (last years 15% discount 
for new customers is extended another year for *all* customers), 
no price increase for the archive, Science Classic, no price 
increase for ScienceXpress.

What I cannot understand is why AAAS still charges separately for 
electronic prepublications (ScienceXpress), while as far as I 
know all other publishers consider "online first" as part of 
their normal service.

To maximize the annoying factor of this policy, AAAS has chosen 
to charge a flat rate for this service instead of a certain 
percentage of the base rate for Science online.

In contrast to societies like AIP who have used tiered pricing to 
make journals more affordable (or keep them affordable) for 
smaller institutions, the AAAS policy has the effect that many 
libraries of smaller institutions cannot afford or justify the 
extra investment to provide these prepublications (which can 
appear 8-12 weeks online before regular publication in the 
journal).

E.g., in 2009, the list price for FTE based institutions was
$2310 (< 1000 FTE)
$3870 (1000...2999)
$5440 (3000...11999)
$6990 (12000...24999)
$8540 (25000...39999)
$9930 (40000...49999)
$12430 (50000...75000)

while Usage-based pricing ranged from
$9265 (10000...24999 FT downloads)
$11435 (25000...49999)
$13325 (50000...89999)
$15715 (90000...200000) to
$23935 above

ScienceXpress comes at a flat rate of $825 (or alternatively as a 
membership benefit for AAAS members), this is 12% of the site 
license price for a medium to large site of 12000...25000 FTE, or 
9% or lower for usage based sites. For the smallest institutions 
(< 1000 FTE), however, the price for this add-on amounts to 
already 36% surcharge.

Best regards,
Bernd-Christoph Kaemper, Stuttgart University Library