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On January 11, 2007, representatives of Elsevier, the Bernoulli Society, and the Editorial Board of Stochastic Processes and Their Applications met in Leiden. Present from Elsevier were David Clark (Publishing Director), Keith Jones (Publisher), and Catriona Fennell (Publishing Editor). The Bernoulli Society was represented by Peter Jagers (President), Jean Jacod (President-Elect), Frank den Hollander (Council and Editorial Board), and Daniel Berze (ISI-Executive Secretary). The Editorial Board was represented by Thomas Mikosch, Michael Sørensen, and Maria Eulália Vares.
The reason for getting together was the expressed concern by members of the stochastics community, about the price policy practiced by Elsevier for SPA, which generates dissatisfaction among potential authors and referees. The journal risks losing them.
For 2007, Elsevier offers a “standard institutional subscription” (print + electronic access to the past ten years) at 2,530 USD, and the option of an “alternative institutional subscription” at half the price. The alternative subscription comes with the printed version delivered quarterly (instead of monthly) and electronic access to the last twelve months (on a rolling basis).
On the one hand, Elsevier motivated its policy as part of its large publishing operation, including consortia and licensing. On the other hand, BS and SPA emphasized the need for a transparent price policy, making the alternative subscription widely known to the stochastics community and putting it to work effectively. Moreover, the alternative subscription should include full electronic access to a period of at least ten years at a modest additional payment. In this way, the price of SPA would become comparable to that of Probability Theory and Related Fields, published by Springer–Verlag. Elsevier agreed to make a proposal to settle the discrepancies, and to come forward to the needs of the stochastics community.
At the end of the meeting, Elsevier invited members of the stochastics community concerned with the development of the journal to contact Catriona Fennell at <c.fennell@elsevier.com>, to express their comments or criticisms, and to inform about possible difficulties with the implementation of the alternative subscription.
M. Eulalia Vares
Editor of Stoch. Proc. Appl.