Sigh, electronic journals will probably be the death of me or just drive me crazy.

I received a quote for online access to the AACR journals (American Association for Cancer Research journals) and just about choked on my lunch. It turns out that this organization has adopted the oh so lovely secretive pricing methodology. They base their price on the number of FTEs in the institution, whether we have a cancer center, a medical school, and many other factors. They juggle the numbers and come up with a price. In this case they quoted us over $10,000 for online access. Now to put this in comparison with other journals, that price is more expensive than we pay for JAMA and all 9 Archive Journals published by the American Medical Association. Not to knock the AACR journals, they are quality journals, but do they really think that they can price themselves above the American Medical Association's standard journals?!

Obviously there is no way we can pay for such an increase despite quality of the journal. Believe it or not I was feeling courageous and emailed the sale coordinator regarding his quote. I politely but firmly explained that I was concerned about the cost of the journal and how I felt it was too expensive when they look at other journals and their prices. Of course what I really wanted to say was, "Are you out of your frelling mind! Do you if we don't get your product we are going to tell all our cancer researchers it is because of your unfair pricing. We will encourage them express their anger at such outrageous pricing methods." But alas I did not. Again I wanted a somewhat healthy dialog.

This is a snippet of his response...
"Because our site license pricing is based on the information you had sent us and cross referenced with other site licenses we have negotiated, it is difficult for us to move the price quoted and still remain consistent and fair to all of our institutions. We can look for unique opportunities to add value to your site license so that we can expand your access while remaining fair to your budget. "

My thought...
Hmm maybe your pricing structures are just plain not fair and shouldn't be applied to any institution let alone our or the ones currently subscribing.

Will there ever be something simple in electronic journals? Hmm maybe when librarians are paid what they are worth.