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Value and Pricing at AIPAs a prestigious learned society publisher, AIP has always provided the physics community with world-class content—published week in and week out in titles such as Applied Physics Letters, Journal of Applied Physics, and The Journal of Chemical Physics. Today AIP Journals continue to push the boundaries of science by publishing ground-breaking content in a broad range of physics disciplines. AIP Journals are among the most highly cited in their fields. In the area of applied physics alone, which AIP dominates, AIP accounts for 28% of the published articles indexed by Thomson Reuters but 44% of the total citations! This is one of the hallmarks of the AIP Journal brand—outstanding value for the money—and one we take great pride in. For many years, we have worked with the library community to maintain low prices and low annual price increases. As a result, AIP’s price-to-content value is among the very best in STM publishing. At the same time, AIP journals continue to be increasingly popular with authors and readers worldwide as measured by the total number of articles submitted and published each year, and the millions of article downloads we report yearly. In the last 10 years alone, AIP journal content has grown by more than 60%, led in no small part by our leading applied physics journal, Applied Physics Letters. The publication is the second largest science journal in the world indexed by Thomson Reuters, producing 5,449 articles in 2008. By continuing to provide the very best publications to more and more of the world’s top authors and readers, AIP Journals fulfill our mission as a not-for-profit society publisher—“to advance and diffuse” the science of physics “and its applications to human welfare.” It is this mission that drives all we strive for even in turbulent economic times. Along with this growth, AIP has worked diligently to provide creative access solutions so that institutions of varying sizes and needs could find a model to meet their requirements. From discounted combination packages for research intensive customers to our newest “Spotlight” journals, which offer reduced pricing for access to sections of our most valuable journals, our goal has been to provide the greatest value, while encouraging greater dissemination of our content to all users. This unique blend of outstanding value, competitive pricing, outstanding science and great web traffic makes AIP Journals what they are today. AIP fully appreciates the additional strain placed on library budgets in the current economy. Society publishers are weathering the economic storm as well, continuing to publish the very best content and serve the community, while being sensitive to the needs of the library market. Although our pricing for 2010 reflects a 3% average price increase, it is coupled with a continued commitment to superior quality, and even some favorable price adjustments and additions of free content. AIP’s policies as a not-for-profit organization inform our approach to scholarly publishing. Some of the cornerstones of this approach include:
Our prices for 2010 do represent a small increase in most cases, but AIP journals still represent a tremendous value for the money spent. That’s the bottom line for 2009 subscriptions and it remains true for 2010. In every measure of price-per-page or price-per-article, AIP out-performs the commercial competition and stands favorably with other not-for-profit physics publishers. You need only look at our biggest journal, Applied Physics Letters with a price-per-article of less than $0.60, and a price-per-page of less than $0.20 to illustrate our value, as compared to our major commercial competitors’ price-per-article rates, which are significantly higher, even exceeding $20 in some cases. Of course, we make COUNTER-compliant usage statistics easily available to our customers (go to http://librarians.scitation.org/ if you have not yet registered for your own usage data), and it is increasingly common for librarians to calculate their own cost-per-download numbers and to compare these with other journals they acquire. We welcome such comparisons, especially with content provided by the Big Deals of commercial publishers, which control more and more of the library budget and which, at a time of budget cutting, threaten subscriptions from smaller independent/society publishers despite the excellent value and high impact of these publishers’ content. If you have any questions about AIP Journals, or about the value of AIP publications overall, please contact me. We value your feedback and suggestions. Best regards, Lori Carlin |
