From: "Nunnenmacher, Lothar" <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Fri, 14 Mar 2014 10:20:16 +0000

Dear colleagues

In the last summer, there was a discussion about the new APS tiering
system here in the list, which is based solely on usage. It was
discussed, whether this is fair and whether smaller institutions
suffer most from it.

Actually, we - the Library for the Research Institutes within the ETH
domain - did suffer. And we draw consequences of this. We cut down the
subscription from APS-ALL to two titles. Some of you might be
interested in seeing our news on this topic, where we also explain,
that tiering according to usage is a bad idea:

http://www.lib4ri.ch/news.html++/year/2014/item/82/

We did not have many reactions of our users, yet (which is a also good
indicator for a reasonable decision), but at least one senior
researcher will cease doing reviews for APS as long as he has no
access to the journals. And the decision was discussed in several
directorates within our research institutes.

I know from similar problems in France and Belgium:

http://www.mysciencework.com/news/11109/an-epidemic-of-journal-subscription-cancellations

However, with a cursory search on the web I did not find any such news
from UK, US or elsewhere. Was there no problem with these immense
price increases?

Lothar