Dr. David Bousfield
Elsevier Trends Journals
68 Hills Road
Cambridge CB2 1IA England

Dear Dr. Bousfield:

I am concerned about the changes you have made in your pricing policy for Trends journals and concerned about the 16.3 percent increase in the 1991 institutional price over 1990 for most of the titles. For those of us who have subscribed to the personal edition until now, the change in price from $79 to $403 is a shock.

I would like to suggest that in future you offer libraries and institutions an alternative. Lane Medical Library, and probably many other libraries, would like a reduced institutional price and to receive only the monthly issues. We have no use for the compendium volume and prefer not to pay for it.

While I am aware of the reasons why publishers have different rates for personal and institutional subscriptions, I find it wasteful to send incomplete bound volumes to libraries, when those libraries want the issues as originally published and prefer to bind the issues themselves.

As long as these journals include advertising, the prices for all subscriptions should be subsidized. Do advertisers or Elsevier believe that readers of library copies do not see the advertising? Advertisers probably get more exposure from library copies than from personal copies.

I look forward to seeing changes in the pricing structure for these journals in 1991.

Sincerely,

Susan M. Anderes
Head of Periodicals