Re: Wiley-Blackwell 2009 Subscription and Licensing Options

["\"FrederickFriend\"" <ucylfjf@ucl.ac.uk>]

Emily,

I am grateful to you for providing this information. I could not 
find the FAQs to which you referred; the page 
http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/librarians/faq.asp came up 
with "Error: the page you have requested cannot be found", and 
the closest I could find to a "Transition" site, viz. 
http://eu.wiley.com/WileyCDA/Brand/id-35.html does not have any 
FAQs.

Of course I accept that the cost of producing the content will be 
the same whether the delivery is print or electronic, because you 
will be producing print copies from an electronic base. You 
appear then to be saying that the cost of delivering the content 
is the same whether it is electronic or print. This contradicts a 
view I have heard from a number of distinguished publishers over 
the years, that maintaining a print production line adds between 
20% and 30% to the cost of a journal. The argument put to me has 
always been that for customers to see the cost benefit from 
cancelling print, the print production line would have to be 
closed down completely, which is an argument I can understand. 
What Wiley-Blackwell appear to be doing now is including part of 
the cost for delivering print (i.e. the cost above the cost of 
producing the content) into the price paid by online only 
customers. This may make some customers think twice about moving 
to e-only.

The justification you put forward for the pricing of the online 
version is that the online version provides added value. I accept 
that the online version does provide features not available in 
the print version, but I am surprised that the cost of providing 
these features is equivalent to the cost of providing a print 
copy. And one of the added benefits included in the online 
version, i.e. perpetual access rights, appears to customers not 
to be an added benefit at all, because it is included 
automatically in the print copy.

Thomas Krichel wrote in response to my earlier post to Liblicense 
that "the issue for a publisher is to maximise profits, not align 
prices to costs". He may well be right. However, when publishers 
justify the prices they charge, they do so on the basis of costs. 
So what I am calling for from publishers is honesty: either be 
open about your costs, or else stop talking about costs and admit 
that all that matters to you is the "bottom-line".

Fred Friend
JISC Scholarly Communication Consultant
Honorary Director Scholarly Communication UCL

----- Original Message -----
From: "Gillingham, Emily - Oxford" <emily.gillingham@wiley.com>
To: <liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu>
Sent: Wednesday, October 01, 2008 12:48 AM
Subject: RE: Wiley-Blackwell 2009 Subscription and Licensing Options

> Fred - There is an FAQ about this topic in the Customer 
> Briefing document linked to from our Transition site.  It is 
> our position that we are selling content, not packaging, and 
> therefore the journal price is the same for the print or online 
> format in 2009. The online journal isn't actually cheaper to 
> produce than the print journal.  Typesetting, editing costs etc 
> are the same whether for online or print.  The online delivery 
> of journals offers a great deal of additional value (searching, 
> linking, alerting, etc) not available in print and that 
> requires a publisher to commit to substantial ongoing 
> investment to support and improve. In addition, an online 
> subscription includes access to 12 years of content in many 
> cases, i.e. back to 1997, and includes perpetual access rights.
>
> Emily Gillingham
> Wiley-Blackwell
> emily.gillingham@wiley.com
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
> [mailto:owner-liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu] On Behalf Of FrederickFriend
> Sent: 29 September 2008 22:55
> To: liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
> Subject: Re: Wiley-Blackwell 2009 Subscription and Licensing Options
>
> Can Emily Gillingham please answer one simple question: why is
> the cost of online only in the per-title option the same as print
> only? The estimates have never been exact but we have always been
> told that producing the print copy adds an extra cost for the
> publisher - hence presumably the justification for charging 110%
> for online plus print - so logically the cost of online only
> should be less than the cost of print only.
>
> Fred Friend
> JISC Scholarly Communication Consultant
> Honorary Director Scholarly Communication UCL