RE: Study Identifies Factors That Could Lead to Cancelled

[David Goodman <dgoodman@Princeton.EDU>]

I note that since the free online content of NAR is in fact paid 
for by the authors, any subscription revenue the publisher may 
get is bonus, and essentially constitutes double payment.

I also notice OUP speaks about print subscriptions. But OUP 
charges a combination price for print plus online that is only 
about 10% higher than an online subscription alone. Of course 
most libraries have continued the print as well.

For NAR, the print cost ($2855) needs to be compared with the 
free to the user but author-paid online accessibility, and I find 
it very surprising that as many as 75% of the subscribers were 
willing to continue.

At present, an institutional membership in NAR costs $2700; print 
plus membership would thus cost $5655, about double what print 
plus online would have otherwise cost.

I am not the least concerned about the profitability of this 
journal. The publisher seems to have covered all the 
possibilities with great resourcefulness.

David Goodman, Ph.D., M.L.S.
previously:
Bibliographer and Research Librarian
Princeton University Library

dgoodman@princeton.edu

----- Original Message -----
From: "MUKHERJEE, Mithu" <mithu.mukherjee@oxfordjournals.org>
Date: Friday, December 1, 2006 10:24 pm
Subject: RE: Study Identifies Factors That Could Lead to Cancelled
To: liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu

> Dear Sally,
>
> In response to your query:
>
> For Oxford Journals, there is some indication that free online 
> availability of content may have a negative effect on 
> subscriptions. Print subscriptions for Nucleic Acids Research 
> (NAR), which has been fully Open Access since January 2005, 
> declined by 25% in 2005. In 2004,prior to the journal's move to 
> full Open Access, the journal was free online six months after 
> publication. In that year, NAR experienced institutional 
> subscription attrition of approximately 12%, which was much 
> greater than for related Oxford journals where the content was 
> freeafter twelve months.
>
> There may be multiple factors contributing to this attrition; 
> print subscriptions have been steadily declining across the 
> industry in recentyears as online access has become more 
> widespread. However, NAR is a highly-ranked journal in terms of 
> impact factor, with growing submissions and a wide readership, 
> and so it is not clear why else the journal would be 
> experiencing greater than average attrition of print 
> subscriptions if this is not due to its free online 
> availability.
>
> It would be interesting to compare these results with print 
> attrition rates for other journals with free online access. 
> Because of our experience with NAR, we have not undertaken 
> further experimentation withfree online access periods of less 
> than one year, though we do plan to analyse attrition rates of 
> optional Open Access journals, once there is sufficient data to 
> undertake this analysis.
>
> Mithu Mukherjee Communications Manager Oxford Journals 
> mithu.mukherjee@oxfordjournals.org
>
> -----Original Message-----
> [mailto:owner-liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu] On Behalf Of Sally Morris
> (Chief Executive)
> Sent: 29 November 2006 22:46
> To: liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
> Subject: Re: Study Identifies Factors That Could Lead to Cancelled
> Subscriptions
>
> I'd say that publishers, given the chance, will work out what 
> delay is likely to be sufficient to protect their 
> subscriptions/licences from large-scale erosion.  A number of 
> different factors will be at work:  the subject field (e.g. how 
> fast-moving is it?) and the frequency of the journal are both 
> likely to have a significant bearing on this.
>
> Do journals see cancellations?  Well, when the British Medical 
> Journal made all its content (not just primary research 
> articles) freely available immediately, it lost subscriptions. 
> When it changed policy, and restricted access to everything 
> except primary research articles, it managed to stop and even 
> (I think) reverse the trend.  But the BMJ is not typical - its 
> USP is its non-research content...
>
> I'd be very interested to hear any (albeit anecdotal) evidence 
> from publishers who have, or have not, seen a loss of 
> subscriptions when access was opened up at x months - 
> particularly those who might have changed the embargo period 
> and seen a difference.  I wonder whether OUP has any data?
>
> Sally Morris, Chief Executive
> Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers
> South House, The Street, Clapham
> Email: sally.morris@alpsp.org