According to a post on liblicense from Elizabeth Solaro, Manager of Marketing and Promotions for JAMA and Archives Journals, the American Medical Association has announced that 2010 subscription prices for JAMA, Archives Journals and American Medical News will remain at 2009 prices.
This price freeze applies to those who have an AMA Site License, Institutional Limited Access, individual print and online only supscriptions, and the JAMA & Archives Backfiles collection. If you need more information about this or have any questions you should contact JAMA & Archives.
I find it interesting to look at the various publishers, vendors, and producers to see who is responding to the ecomonic situation and how. Not every company is able to freeze prices, some of your smaller companies or society publications still have to raise prices since they too are suffering in the same economy. However, it appears that even many of those smaller companies and societies are responding to economic worries with smaller prices increases than in years past. I am not completely naive, I know a lot of the reason for this is to preserve their overall subscription base. There is more competition than ever for subscription dollars. The bigger institutions and libraries are becoming extremely cost conscious. Three years ago a larger library may have been able to access journal or resource from two different companies. There usually was some reason for paying two companies for the same product. Perhaps patrons liked one interface better and the librarians liked the other. Perhaps there was some duplication and overlapping of packages across vendors. Who knows what the reasons were, but now institutions are going over their subscriptions with a fine tooth comb and cutting loose the under performers and consolidating access and eliminating overlapping and duplicated resources.
What I find even more interesting are the companies that continue on as normal, as if we weren’t in a global recession. You usually find out about these companies either directly from your 2010 price quote or indirectly from the librarian grapevine. Once I am able to separate myself from the emotions of the process, I find it quite intriguing to see who these companies are and their rational(s) for the price increase. I wonder whether their strategy will ultimately be effective or whether their product will be on the chopping block for many libraries.
Time will tell.