The cost of article reprints from ybw... yikes!

[Carolwildbird]

They are now £6.95! That's extortionate. They were £3+ something last year - even then expensive for a pdf copy.

 

[maxi77]

They are now £6.95! That's extortionate. They were £3+ something last year - even then expensive for a pdf copy.

I concur, when they were real paper they were still a trifle pricy but not too unreasonable, now they are simply PDFs the old price was way too high and I stopped using them.

I accept there may have been costs in scanning older articles but I suspect that the process of converting a paper article to PDF is still not that high.

 

[jhr]

Reprints are a nice little sideline for magazine and journal publishers but they do carry overheads and there aren't many economies of scale in tracking down an article in a ten-year-old edition of PBO and selling one copy to a customer.

Try to think of it in the context that if they didn't make money from reprints, they'd either have to increase their cover prices or charge their advertisers more - neither of them a winning strategy in the current market.

 

[puddock]

Reprints are a nice little sideline for magazine and journal publishers but they do carry overheads and there aren't many economies of scale in tracking down an article in a ten-year-old edition of PBO and selling one copy to a customer.

Try to think of it in the context that if they didn't make money from reprints, they'd either have to increase their cover prices or charge their advertisers more - neither of them a winning strategy in the current market.

Maybe they should try putting some "reprints" into the current issues, then maybe there would be something worth reading. I have found that the quality (not talking quantity, as I realise there aren't so many advertisers at the moment) is getting pretty dismal of late.

Still, it is the way I get my "fix" when away from home and other than ST, there's not much choice.

 

[andymcp]

Not to do IPC's work for them, but I'd be more inclined to pay an annual rate for access to all the archives than £7 or whatever every time I wanted to refer back to an article. I don't doubt there's value in back copies, but not the amount they appear to think there is.

Just my $0.02.

 

[maxi77]

Reprints are a nice little sideline for magazine and journal publishers but they do carry overheads and there aren't many economies of scale in tracking down an article in a ten-year-old edition of PBO and selling one copy to a customer.

Try to think of it in the context that if they didn't make money from reprints, they'd either have to increase their cover prices or charge their advertisers more - neither of them a winning strategy in the current market.

That was fair when it was paper copies, and I was quite prepared to pay, but now you select the article you want on the web site, you download it and if needed print it, so most of the costs are now not with the publisher. Lets face it look at the number of companies who let you have their manuals for free whether you have bought the product or not, it is good pr and advertising. Exactly the same could be said of old articles.

As for winning strategy in the present climate just remeber that 5% of something is worth a hell of a lot more than 100% of nothing, and at least from me 100% of nothing is what they are getting

 

[snowleopard]

As for winning strategy in the present climate just remeber that 5% of something is worth a hell of a lot more than 100% of nothing, and at least from me 100% of nothing is what they are getting

Agreed. I wanted to see an old article recently but at that price I'll do without.

 

[Malish]

Most academic journals (ok, different & smaller market) have now scanned in their entire back catalogue, often going back to the 19th Century, and articles within it are free to download if you hold a current subscription, which in many cases is only £10 more than I pay YM. There is a cost associated with the scanning and indexing but after that it is just maintenance of the database; can't see it happening with YM though.

 

[H4B]

Just wait

Maybe they should try putting some "reprints" into the current issues, then maybe there would be something worth reading. I have found that the quality (not talking quantity, as I realise there aren't so many advertisers at the moment) is getting pretty dismal of late.

Still, it is the way I get my "fix" when away from home and other than ST, there's not much choice.

They do!! I have finally started to ditch years of old copies of PBO and YM . I have been going through and cutting out the intersting articles worth keeping. Its chilling how little I deem as worth keeping!!.

In addition the same topics have been re-visited many times, not suprising I suppose but the lesson must be just wait a while because that 'wanted' article will be back around before too long.

 

[Seven Spades]

I never buy them but I would pay an annual subscription to access archives.

There is really no cost going forward as all the articles can be simply exported from the typesetting application to pdf.

 

[jhr]

There is a cost associated with the scanning and indexing but after that it is just maintenance of the database; can't see it happening with YM though.

Indeed there is a cost, and there's the rub - presumably IPC are trying to recoup some of the (probably quite considerable) up-front costs of digitisation. I also think the business model is rather different to that of a journal publisher, where there is a regular need for students and researchers to order reprints, whereas with YBW it's probably just an occasional request from an individual.

I'm not particularly trying to defend IPC, as they have considerably more money than I do, but it's not as simple as some Hon. Members think!

 

[Malish]

Indeed there is a cost, and there's the rub - presumably IPC are trying to recoup some of the (probably quite considerable) up-front costs of digitisation. I also think the business model is rather different to that of a journal publisher, where there is a regular need for students and researchers to order reprints, whereas with YBW it's probably just an occasional request from an individual.

I'm not particularly trying to defend IPC, as they have considerably more money than I do, but it's not as simple as some Hon. Members think!

But now they offer a paper-less version the scanning issue is no more - all that is needed is for a sub to divvy up an edition into its useful components and archive them - 2 or 3 hours work at most per edition

 

[maxi77]

Indeed there is a cost, and there's the rub - presumably IPC are trying to recoup some of the (probably quite considerable) up-front costs of digitisation. I also think the business model is rather different to that of a journal publisher, where there is a regular need for students and researchers to order reprints, whereas with YBW it's probably just an occasional request from an individual.

I'm not particularly trying to defend IPC, as they have considerably more money than I do, but it's not as simple as some Hon. Members think!

No one disputes there is not a cost, rather the suggestion is that the model IPC are using to try and recover those costs may not be firstly effective and perhaps more importantly may impact on the perception of IPC amongst it's potential customer base.

As for the costs of digitisation, this is now a service indutry in it's own right and is certainly for us a pence per page excercise. It is also a one off charge, and all of the more modern stuff will be in electronic format any way. In fact the costs of digitisation would more properly lie within their archiving function and in may companies is considered more than self funding through the savings in both storage and archive maintainance. So perhaps they should have considered reducint the price rather than increasing it. Reducing may well also increase revenue as well. At 50 p I would probably still be in the market for old articles, at £7 I am not.

 

[Carolwildbird]

Even worse - I've just noticed that you can buy whole back issues (at least for the last couple of years) in digital form for £6.62! (not that would still pay that much for the whole mag if i just wanted one article- but it does highlight the nonsensical pricing of single articles)

No one disputes there is not a cost, rather the suggestion is that the model IPC are using to try and recover those costs may not be firstly effective and perhaps more importantly may impact on the perception of IPC amongst it's potential customer base.

As for the costs of digitisation, this is now a service indutry in it's own right and is certainly for us a pence per page excercise. It is also a one off charge, and all of the more modern stuff will be in electronic format any way. In fact the costs of digitisation would more properly lie within their archiving function and in may companies is considered more than self funding through the savings in both storage and archive maintainance. So perhaps they should have considered reducint the price rather than increasing it. Reducing may well also increase revenue as well. At 50 p I would probably still be in the market for old articles, at £7 I am not.