From: "Pikas, Christina K." <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Mon, 5 Aug 2013 09:06:46 -0400

I have to say that I have been an advocate of societies outsourcing a
lot of their publishing. I've seen societies do a very poor job of
publishing journals and hiring vendors who aren't even familiar with
standard/routine features of scholarly publishing (e.g., one vendor a
society hired didn't know anything about IP authentication). If the
society is incompetent at publishing then they should look for expert
help and that will cost something. Just throwing up a content
management system with articles in it isn't enough!

With that said, these price increases seem egregious. I'm particularly
disappointed that this is coming from APS, a society that used to talk
about only charging enough to cover publication with a little buffer
in case of emergency. I'm afraid the societies are hiring consultants
and new employees from the major for-profit publishers and are
adopting many of their attitudes.

Christina Pikas
(speaking only for myself and not my institution)