Press Release, October 18, 2007

Following difficult negotiations, the Max Planck Society has cancelled the licensing agreement it has had for many years with Springer Verlag.

The cancellation will take effect as of December 31, 2007. Negotiations failed because no agreement could be reached regarding an adequate ratio between price and long-term services. “Springer held to excessive demands right up until the end of the negotiations; that’s why the MPS has cancelled the agreement,” according to MPS Vice President Kurt Mehlhorn. An evaluation of usage statistics and comparisons with other important publishers made it clear Springer was demanding approximately double the price for the offered journals than the Max Planck Society regards as reasonable.

The current agreement allowed all Max Planck Institutes access to around 1,200 electronic scholarly journals published by Springer Verlag. The failure of the negotiations means Springer’s SpringerLink research interface can no longer be provided centrally for the Society’s Institutes. The Max Planck Society and the Max Planck Digital Library will develop strategies together with the Institute libraries most affected to secure the supply of essential contents on a cost-effective basis.

The failure of negotiations with Springer represents a watershed in the Society’s relationship with various globally-active scientific publishing houses. Extreme price developments in the supply of information, as well as usage restrictions, are prompting scientific organizations around the world to rethink their policies. From as early as 2003, the Max Planck Society initiated the “Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities”, which is intended to promote greater open publication opportunities for publicly financed research.

Springer Verlag’s insistence on maintaining its negotiating position confirmed to the more than 240 scientific organizations around the world that have so far signed the “Berlin Declaration” how important their project is. What is certain is that very few publishing houses can afford to undermine the public’s interest in the broadest possible access to knowledge through excessive price structures. If publishers have the market power to effectively implement such prices and if legislators are unwilling to subject such inappropriate behavior to legal controls, the only way left open to science will be to take matters into their own hands.

Contact:

Dr. Ralf Schimmer
Max Planck Digital Library, Munich
Tel.: +49 89 38 602-255
Fax: +49 89 38 602-290
E-mail: schimmer@mpdl.mpg.de

[The Max Planck Society for the Advancement of Science, operates 80 research institutes with more than 12,000 staff members and 9,000 Ph.D. students, post-docs, guest scientists and researchers, and student assistants. Read more about the organization at: http://www.mpg.de/english/aboutTheSociety/aboutUs/index.html]

Two recent studies on periodical pricing trends have been released. They include information on trends in journal publishing, including pricing, mergers, and measurements of
Serial Wars (Library Journal’s Annual Periodical Pricing Survey)
by Lee C. Van Orsdel & Kathleen Born
http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA6431958.html
April 15, 2007

Excerpt:
In a year filled with drama and hyperbole, the serials marketplace churned toward a future whose shape is the subject of fierce debate. Forecasts from commercial publishers touting collapse and disaster seemed oddly out of sync with the profits they enjoyed—around 25 percent on average. Nevertheless, in a market where prices continued to rise and bundled content continued to sell, some of the very publishers whose fortunes are made in scientific, technical, and medical (STM) journals all but declared that the open access (OA) movement is apocalyptic in scope and will lead to the end of journals as we know them.

Open access is no longer a subtext in the annals of the journals industry. It stands alone as an alternative to the existing system of journal publication, which most say is unsustainable in its current form. It can mean different things to different proponents—a shared path to many ends. Libraries want relief from journal prices that are patently outrageous and defy cost-benefit justification. Authors want impact, and OA articles get cited much more often. Scientists want faster and easier access to others’ research, but a recent paper, “UK Scholarly Journals: 2006 Baseline Report,” found that half of all researchers in Britain have problems securing access to needed articles. Universities want a better return on their investment in intellectual capital, authors, peer reviewers, and editors. Taxpayers want to be able to read the research they sponsor.

Highlights on Cost History:
Biology
Avg. cost per title: $1676
% of change ’03-’07: 39

Business & Economics
Avg. cost per title: $820
% of change ’03-’07: 33

Chemistry
Avg. cost per title: $3429
% of change ’03-’07: 30

Education
Avg. cost per title: $451
% of change ’03-’07: 46

Language and Literature
Avg. cost per title: $179
% of change ’03-’07: 39

Political Science
Avg. cost per title: $446
% of change ’03-’07: 53

Trends in Scholarly Journal Prices 2000-2006
Sonya White and Claire Creaser, Loughbourgh: LISU, 2007 http://www.lboro.ac.uk/departments/dis/lisu/pages/publications/oup2.html
[1.00 GPB = 2.00775 USD] (4/17/07)

From the Press Release:

The research updates the previous findings on pricing for biomedical journals, and has also been extended to analyze pricing for social science titles. Findings within the report show little variation to the original data published in 2004: there are continued trends in price variance across publishers, including median price increases ranging from 42% to 104% for biomedical titles, and 47% to 120% for social science titles. Median journal prices also continue to vary widely between publishers for both these disciplines, ranging from £198 to £859 in biomedical titles, and £119 to £513 in the Social Sciences.

Claire Creaser, Director of LISU and one of the report’s authors, commented “Serials pricing remains a key concern of librarians in all sectors. It is an area which is becoming more complex, with publishers seeking to adapt to the growing demands of authors and readers in relation to access and quality of research outputs. This report gives a valuable insight into a small part of the current debate, focusing on just two broad subjects and eleven major scholarly journal publishers. There remain many areas still to be investigated, and many factors which may affect journal pricing which are not covered here. LISU was pleased to be invited to carry out this work, and hopes to be able to take it further in the future.”
Highlights on Median Journal Prices by Publisher for Social Science Titles:

University of Chicago
median price: $238.92
% change ’00-’06: 119.7

Blackwell
median price: $528.04
% change ’00-’06: 107.1

Sage
median price: $720.78
% change ’00-’06: 100.8

Taylor & Francis
median price: $602.33
% change ’00-’06: 93.5

Springer
median price: $487.88
% change ’00-’06: 65.5

Oxford
median price: $347.34
% change ’00-’06: 65.1

Wiley
median price: $1029.98
% change ’00-’06: 62.2

Highlights on Median Journal Prices by Publisher for Biomedical Titles:

Sage
median price: $746.79
% change ’00-’06: 104.4

Blackwell
median price: $921.55
% change ’00-’06: 90.9

Taylor & Francis
median price: $831.21
% change ’00-’06: 90.0

Springer
median price: $929.59
% change ’00-’06: 83.2

Nature
median price: $1391.37
% change ’00-’06: 75.4

Cambridge Univ Press
median price: $397.53
% change ’00-’06: 72.2

Elsevier
median price: $1724.66
% change ’00-’06: 51.0

Wiley
median price: $1515.85
% change ’00-’06: 51.0