Gene D. Sprouse, Editor in Chief, American Physical Society: A resonable pricing policy for APS journals to universities

In their library renewal pricing policy, the American Physical Society unilaterally imposes for 2014 a 42% price increase for the Belgian French-speaking universities (even 70% for some journals!) whereas the observed global price increase at other publishers is 3-5%. Such a brutal increase is outrageous and unjustified. The quality of research in Belgium, in Europe and worldwide is partially based on accessible high quality journals in our Universities. Such unreasonable price increases are a threat to access to scientific information and to Science itself. Let us tell the APS editors that we do not want a drift of Science to a commercial pattern and we insist that journal subscriptions prices cannot skyrocket.