Challenges to Licensing from Some Publishers

Last revised: January 2008

TO: The UC Community
FROM: Ivy Anderson
Director, Collection Development and Management
California Digital Library

RE: Challenges to Licensing From Some Publishers

All of the University of California libraries and the California Digital Library understandably receive recommendations and questions about providing the UC community with access to digital resources from the publishers mentioned below.  Products from these publishers have been identified as priorities for systemwide licensing, but they fall well outside norms on pricing and/or other standard or desirable features for electronic content.

In addition to facilitating the provision of digital content to all campuses through systemwide negotiation and licensing, the CDL seeks to influence the marketplace through its purchasing decisions.  We think that we can best serve the long-term interests of UC faculty and students by insisting on products that meet our quality standards and that can be sustained over time.  We often find that publishers change their initial models after feedback is received from the community.

We are continuing to monitor these publishers' institutional models in hopes of negotiating reasonable and acceptable licenses for UC community access.  Everyone is learning in this new environment and we provide the following information not to criticize any particular publisher, but to explain to the UC community what otherwise might seem like baffling priorities.

American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)

A 2004 letter from the AAAS addressed to each UC campus indicated that AAAS intended to charge its top 150 users a higher rate for Science Online in order to recover lost revenue from advertisements and to be more fair to average use institutions.  UC's cost with the new pricing model was ten times what UC libraries spent on AAAS print journals in 1999.

To put this in perspective, a similar letter from AAAS in 2002 cited membership losses as the incentive for a new pricing model and resulted in an 80 percent price increase to UC. The cumulative effect in 2004 of those two AAAS price increases was a tripling of UC costs over 2002.  In 2006, the subscription price of Science Online increased again by 11%, more than twice the rate of most other publishers.  Due to the price increases, UC librarians are reluctant to license additional AAAS titles or products.