Nature Publishing Group (NPG) and the European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO) have announced that the prices for site licence access to The EMBO Journal and EMBO reports will be reduced by 9% in 2010, reflecting the increased publication of Open Access content in 2008.
Only last month (October 2009) the Wellcome Trust called for greater transparency among publishers to counter the argument that access fees are being paid twice – once through subscriptions and again through publication fees.
This decision by EMBO/NPG to reduce subscription is clearly a step in the right direction, though in the interests of transparency it would be useful if publishers – as a first step – disclosed what proportion of their content was routed through the author-pays model.
