Elsevier Electronic Subscriptions

The single largest Elsevier program of commercial electronic delivery is the Elsevier Electronic Subscriptions (EES) program. This is the commercial extension of the TULIP program to all 1,100 Elsevier primary and review journals. The licensing negotiations are exclusively with institutions, which receive the journal files and mount them on their local network. The license gives the library unlimited use of the files within their authorized user community. As far as we are aware, academic libraries are not charging their patrons for their use of the files, so there is no data relating user acceptance to price. At least one corporate library charges use back to departments, but this practice is consistent for all of its services and has not affected use as far as is known.

If you broaden the term user to include the paying institution, as discussed above, then there is clearly a relation between pricing and user acceptance. If we can't reach an agreement on price in license negotiations, there is no deal. And it is a negotiation. The desire from the libraries is often for price predictability over a multiyear period. Because prices are subject to both annual price increases and the fluctuation of the dollar, there can be dramatic changes from year to year. For many institutions, the deal is much more "acceptable" if these increases are fixed in advance.

The absolute price is also, of course, an issue. There is little money available, and high pricing of electronic products will result in a reluctant end to discussions. Discussions are both easier and more complicated with consortia. It is easier to make the deal a winning situation for the members of the consortium (with virtually all members getting access to some titles that they previously did not have), but it is more complicated because of the number of parties who have to sign off on the transaction.

Finally, for a product such as EES, the total cost to the subscribing institution

goes beyond what is paid to Elsevier as publisher. There is the cost of the hardware and software to store and run the system locally, the staff needed to update and maintain the system, local marketing and training time, and so on. It is part of Elsevier's sales process to explain these costs to the subscribing institution, because it is not in our interest or theirs to underestimate the necessary effort only to have it become clear during implementation. To date, our library customers have appreciated that approach.