Elsevier 2009 Journal Pricing

["Menefee, Daviess (ELS-NYC)" <D.Menefee@elsevier.com>]

The following letter announcing Elsevier 2009 pricing is being 
sent to customers today.  An original version of this letter may 
also be found at: 
http://www.elsevier.com/framework_products/Wcat/2009pricingletter.pdf

Daviess Menefee
Library Relations
Elsevier


7 July 2008

Dear Valued Customer,

If there is one constant in the world, it is change. During the 
past year as my staff and I have talked extensively with 
customers like you, receiving your guidance and suggestions on a 
range of issues from information and value to service and 
support, we have all commented on the seemingly fast pace of 
change that is happening in our businesses. Researchers, 
clinicians, and institutional administrators alike have 
increasingly challenged the information flow-wanting it faster 
and more integrated-in order to remain competitive and bring 
about much needed outcomes. Central to enabling such changes are 
libraries and publishers.

At Elsevier, we are committed to continually improving our 
customer service and product functionality to support this 
change, in addition to developing research workflow solutions in 
order to increase scientific productivity and support discovery.

During 2007, usage of ScienceDirect grew by an impressive 24% to 
over 386 million articles downloaded while both new content and 
content quality increased. In fact, the average impact factor for 
Elsevier journals increased by 2.1% from the previous year. We 
are on track to over 460 million downloaded articles in 2008. We 
have made further updates to the functionality of our products 
based on customer and user suggestions. These include the much 
lauded launch of eBooks on ScienceDirect as well as welcomed 
navigational improvements like preview tabs, article toolbox, and 
results filtering that simplify the research process on 
ScienceDirect. Scopus made important additions such as Citation 
Tracker, Affiliation Identifier, and TopCited, strengthening its 
research functionality while at the same time increasing its 
capabilities and acceptance for research performance measurement. 
Scirus has added Topic Pages. And Elsevier successfully launched 
2collab, a social networking resource for researchers and 
clinicians.

Alongside changes in information needs, we recognize changes in 
purchasing needs. We are committed to continuing the evolution of 
our business models to better reflect the changes in how 
institutions value, subscribe to, and use information. The vast 
majority of customers hold ScienceDirect subscription agreements 
which consolidate, manage, and cap their expenditures, and, 
therefore, are no longer subject to the fluctuations of 
individual title prices. That being said, we anticipate Elsevier 
to remain in the lowest quartile of list print price increases in 
the industry, as we have for the past seven years. As a point of 
reference, the 2008 average list price increase across all STM 
publishers was 8.70% in Europe and 10.10% in the U.S. For 2009 
Elsevier again targets a global average list price increase of 
not more than six percent. The 2009 title-by-title price lists 
will be posted on Elsevier.com 
<http://mail.elsevier-alerts.com/go.asp?/bECU001/mAAQFO8/q1AQXO8/uM4RK5/x2JZOO8/cutf%2D8> in August.

As needs and models evolve, our subscription agreements will 
increasingly recognize the de-coupling of print from electronic 
subscriptions. For individual journals, we are realigning prices 
to reflect a number of factors, including differences in the 
number of articles made available, quality, and usage, as well as 
new factors such as Sponsored Articles. For a few key titles like 
The Lancet, we are looking to recognize usage and value in the 
form of tiered electronic pricing for institutions, similar to 
Cell. The overall intent is a rebalancing of titles across our 
portfolio. As a result, some titles will go up in price, while 
others will go down. It is our belief that these changes, which 
are planned over a period of years, will help preserve and better 
reflect the value the information has to the research and 
healthcare communities that we serve. In turn, this will further 
enable even more flexibility and choice for customers.

We are dedicated to continually improving the value we provide to 
customers while making genuine contributions to science and 
healthcare around the world. On behalf of Elsevier, thank you for 
helping us to continue making informed changes to our business 
and for continuing to value our content, products, service, and 
staff. I believe that through steady dialogue, we will achieve 
even more by working together in the year ahead of us.

Sincerely,

Roy Jakobs
Global Sales Director, Elsevier