The Society takes care to maintain reasonable and ethical pricing, including free or discounted online access for institutions in developing countries and for аĿª½±members.*
Base subscription prices (often called ‘list prices’) of individual journals are decided each year by the аĿª½±Publications Committee based on a balance of criteria including:
- the volume of content published (excluding paid open access content)
- an assessment of the academic standing of the journal
- measures of inflation
- the extent of online content available free with a subscription, and the citation life of such content
- competitive considerations
- indirect costs associated with the running of a publishing operation
In order to sustain in real terms the funding of the Society’s charitable activities, in cases where other indicators are equal the аĿª½±will normally only increase the base journal subscription prices in line with inflation.
Note that base subscription prices only directly apply to institutions that subscribe on their own to a single journal for a specific volume year, in contrast with collections of journals or multi-year licences. Institutions that receive online access via a collection or a multi-year licence will typically receive a discount which is large or small depending on a variety of factors including the size of the journal collection, the number of years the licence is valid, membership of a group of academic institutions or libraries subscribing collectively, the geographical location of the subscribing institution or group, and whether open access charges are pre-paid as part of the subscription.
The Society endeavours to continue to improve its analysis and monitoring to ensure that its base journal subscription prices are set in a fair and transparent manner.
* аĿª½±members can opt to receive free online access to the Bulletin, Journal, Proceedings, Mathematika and Nonlinearity.
