Elsevier's prices - 2008

Frank Vrancken Peeters, Global Sales Director for Elsevier, recently sent out a message to customers. It contains the usual soft soap about how "Elsevier is committed to delivering value for customers by continually improving our customer service and product functionality in addition to supporting ongoing growth in the number of articles published and rapidly expanding online usage", and the fact that "in our most recent survey, customers ranked Elsevier higher than other publishers in 8 out of 10 categories, an improvement over last year".

We then learn that

"For decades, the number of research articles published each year has grown by around 3-4% annually. Last year was no exception and in fact, growth of
Elsevier-published articles increased above this long-term rate. Online
usage of Elsevier-published articles on ScienceDirect continues to increase
by more than 20%: ScienceDirect recently passed the milestone of 1 billion
articles downloaded".

and that

"Downloads onto the desktops of over 16 million researchers, clinicians, and students around the globe now continue at a rate exceeding on average over 700 articles per minute, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week."

Finally we get to the news we were looking for:

"Elsevier is targeting a price increase of just below six percent on average across our journals in 2008. ... Elsevier's price increase has placed us in the lowest quartile of the industry for the past six years, and we hope that this year's increase will enable us to remain in this range. As a point of reference, the 2007 average increase across all STM publishers was 7.89% in Europe and 8.73% in the U.S."

More customer-speak follows, to make us feel loved and valued.