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nnature ature ppublishing ublishing ggrouproupFrom a single magazine to an From a single magazine to an
essential scientific resourceessential scientific resource
ICOLC Meeting – Philadelphia
27 March, 2006
Della Sar & Geoff Worton
Today’s presentation
A Brief overview of Nature Publishing Group A review of our business model How we have had to change Recent policies On the table for discussion
A brief overview of Nature Publishing Group
Nature Publishing Group (NPG) is a division of Macmillan Publishers Ltd, dedicated to serving the academic, professional scientific and medical communities
NPG's flagship title, Nature, is the world's most highly-cited weekly multidisciplinary journal and was first published in 1869
Other publications and services include Nature research journals, Nature Reviews, Nature Clinical Practice, a range of prestigious academic journals
NPG Global Offices
New York City
San Francisco, CA Tokyo, Japan
Washington, D.C.
Munich, Germany
Boston, MA
London & BasingstokeUK
Delhi, India
Founded in 1869 Publishes 51 issues a year Nature is the outstanding scientific journal Over 100 people including 62 journalist & editors are employed
to work on Nature alone Has the highest impact factor of all multi-disciplinary journals Nature was sold to individuals by subscription or from
newspaper stands for over 100 years Online edition of Nature first mounted 1997
Review of the business model
48%
0%
36%
14% 2%
Copy Sales Site Licensing Advertising Other Income NPG Reference
Slicing the pie in 1999
Review of the business model
25%
12%
29%
11%
23%
Institutional Print Copy Sales Personal Print Copy Sales
Site Licensing Income (including Archive) Advertising
Other
Slicing the pie the 2006
Advertising Revenue
1999 36%
Revenue dependant on print circulation Most profitable contribution to NPG
2006 23%
Still dependent on print circulation Still most profitable contribution to NPG
Reference Revenue
1999 2% Reference
Encyclopedia style books Directories - high cost of production and sales
2006 NPG no longer publishes reference works
Copy and Institutional Revenue
1999 48%
Libraries at academic/government institutions and corporations
Individuals No site license revenue
2006 66%
37% print copy sales 29% Site License and Archive Income
Other Income
1999 14% Other Revenue
Document delivery News syndication Author reprints Conferences
2006 11%
Briefly
Print worked –Institutional print prices for Nature offered outstanding value at little cost. There was lots of usage and many multiples of subscriptions with some large institutes taking up to 100 copies.
Online made it complicated and very threatening
NPG was a very late entrant into the game!
Introducing Site Licenses
With institutional access, the personal circulation could disappear overnight, advertising revenue would be lost, and the business would collapse.
In 1998, 500 selected organizations were offered institutional access with a user name and password, with a cap of five simultaneous users. Print copies were included.
This worked reasonably well until 2000, within the more limited expectations of users at the time.
The site license policy was revised. Pricing bands were introduced.
2001- How we calculate your prices
Organisation type Size – Full Time Equivalents Numbers and combination of titles
Recent developments and challenges
The rise of open access publication fees Digitization of archives – archive pricing Access-in-perpetuity to e-content - providing
post-cancellation rights
Digitization of archives – archive pricing
NPG invested heavily in digitizing back files in 2002, and began selling the 10-year Nature archive (1987-1996) in summer 2003. Other archives have followed since.
Pricing model – one-off fee (based on FTE) with small annual access fee.
NPG is currently digitizing Nature back to 1869
Access-in-perpetuity to e-content: providing post-cancellation rights
Much talked about in theory, but not always clear in practice, and certainly not simple!
From 2006, NPG offers post-cancellation access rights to licensed content, subject to payment of an access fee.
Some other publishers provide local hosting options We have an agreement to archive our academic journals
collection with OCLC and are exploring options with Portico and The British Library
NPG doesn’t offer local hosting for several reasons: Development of the nature.com brand Direct relationship with users Opportunity to add value (eg linking
functionality, supplementary information) Classified and banner advertising
Local Hosting and NPG
On the table for discussion
What are consortia: How are they defined? “We’re not organized to
have a definition” …Tom Sanville in an e-mail to Geoff Worton
How, when and why should we do business with them?
One negotiating, invoicing & licensing point? Minimum number of members?
On the table for discussion
Should we: Price per download? Offer multi-year subscription deals? Offer platform only deals?
