19 Oct 2003

Dear colleagues and friends,

We are writing to ask your help with an issue that concerns scientists at
all University of California campuses. In this century, we all rely on
electronic access to the literature, not only for speed and convenience,
but increasingly for supplementary methods and data, videos and the like.
Moreover, at some sites, such as our new UCSF campus at Mission Bay, we
rely exclusively on electronic access. UC has successfully negotiated
contracts for almost every on-line journal. The glaring exceptions are the
Cell Press titles: Cell, Molecular Cell, Developmental Cell, Cancer Cell,
Immunity, Neuron.

Since 1998, UC has tried without success to reach a deal with Cell Press
for electronic access (1). Cell Press is owned by Elsevier, the largest
science, technology and medicine journal publisher in the world, reporting
34% and 26% profits in 2001 and 2002, respectively, for its science and
medicine enterprise (2).  In 2002, the University of California paid
Elsevier $8 million for online access to its journals, 50% of the total
budget for all online journals in the UC libraries. Elsevier now seeks a
new contract with annual increases several times above the consumer price
index, plus an additional levy for the Cell Press titles that rapidly
reaches $90,000 per year, with hefty annual increases thereafter. After
exhaustive negotiation, the UC libraries, with the recent support of the UC
Council of Chancellors, has declined to accept these rates.

By denying institutional electronic access for the last five years, Cell
Press has enjoyed a bonanza of personal subscriptions. They now cite the
potential loss of personal subscriptions as the basis for setting a high
institutional price.

It is untenable that a publisher would de facto block access of our
published work even to our immediate colleagues. Cell Press is breaking an
unwritten contract with the scientific community: being a publisher of our
research carries the responsibility to make our contributions publicly
available at reasonable rates. As an academic community, it is time that we
reassert our values. We can all think of better ways to spend our time than
providing free services to support a publisher that values profit above its
academic mission. We urge four unified actions until the University of
California and other institutions are granted electronic access to Cell
Press journals:

i) decline to review manuscripts for Cell Press journals,
ii) resign from Cell Press editorial boards,
iii) cease to submit papers to Cell Press journals, and
iv) talk widely about Elsevier and Cell Press pricing tactics and business
strategies.

If you agree, please let Cell Press know why you take these actions. Our
goal is to effect change, but to be effective we must stand together.

Peter Walter and Keith Yamamoto
On behalf of the UCSF Mission Bay Governance Committee, Genentech Hall

1. http://www.cdlib.org/news/barriers.html

2. http://www.reed-elsevier.com/r-e/media/newsreleases/

Recently there was posted to this list and others a press release
regarding the negotiations for Cell Press titles and the California
Digital Library. The publisher of Cell Press has today sent the following
letter to scientists at the University of California. 

Daviess Menefee
Library Relations, Elsevier

Cell Press and the California Digital Library

As has been reported in the media and on several listservs, we are
negotiating with the California Digital Library for access to several Cell
Press titles. Although we do not discuss the details of ongoing
negotiations with our customers in public, the discussions contain several
misconceptions and we would like to clarify our position with the larger
scientific and academic community.

The offer that is currently under discussion provides access to Cell,
Neuron, Immunity, Molecular Cell, Developmental Cell, and Cancer Cell for
$90,000 annually. This offer guarantees access for three years to all
scientists and students at all campuses and major hospitals, including the
approximately 10,000 biomedical researchers, graduate students and
post-docs, who are active users of our content.  The quote breaks down to
roughly $1.50 per top quality journal per year for each active user within
the UC system. This is an excellent value.

Cell Press site license pricing has been historically fair and reasonable.
Except for the UC system, nearly every other major academic institution in
the US has licensed electronic access to Cell Press content.  We
appreciate the current budgetary constraints facing the UC library system,
however in fairness to our current customers we need to maintain our
equitable pricing structure as it applies to all institutions.

This offer is for online access. There is no requirement to maintain
current print subscriptions. Once a site license is in place scientists
often cancel their individual print subscriptions. The first two years of
the offer are significantly discounted below $90,000 to reflect the
gradual nature of this transition. Our offer presents the opportunity for
significant savings to the UC community for access to Cell Press content.

Cell Press, while owned by Elsevier, has a different pricing model from
ScienceDirect, the Elsevier electronic access platform. We have
intentionally not bundled Cell Press journals with ScienceDirect to give
institutions maximal flexibility in their choice of content.

The price of online access to Cell Press content is similar to the pricing
of many other journals including Journal of Cell Biology, Journal of
Physiology and Development.

We appreciate the positive response from many UC scientists to our free
trial and their affirmation of the importance and fair value of the Cell
Press journals. We hope that an agreement with the CDL can be reached as
soon as possible.

Lynne Herndon
President and CEO
Cell Press