MSP

For 2021, un­der­stand­ing the dif­fi­culties faced by every­one, we had kept our prices con­stant from 2020. However, as a small non­profit pub­lish­er whose prices are already among the low­est, our fin­an­cial flex­ib­il­ity is lim­ited, and for 2022 we can­not af­ford to keep prices un­changed again. Non­ethe­less, we wish our prices to be equit­able and fair, and we are quite mind­ful of the hard­ships still faced by many in­sti­tu­tions, so we're de­vel­op­ing a pri­cing scheme aim­ing to be ap­pro­pri­ate to an in­sti­tu­tion's size, need and likely us­age.

We also con­tin­ue to of­fer free sub­scrip­tions to in­sti­tu­tions in cer­tain de­vel­op­ing coun­tries (via EIFL) and to His­tor­ic­ally Black Col­leges and Uni­versit­ies in the United States; we also of­fer half-price sub­scrip­tions to our pack­age to in­sti­tu­tions in coun­tries of lower-middle and low in­come. Now, start­ing in 2022, we will ex­pand our equit­able-pri­cing ap­proach to the rest of our sub­scrip­tions, by in­tro­du­cing two price tiers.

To dis­tin­guish our two new tiers, we will use the 2018 Carne­gie Clas­si­fic­a­tion for US in­sti­tu­tions, and the 2020 Shang­hai Aca­dem­ic Rank­ing for the rest of the world. In­sti­tu­tions who are not in Carne­gie group R1 (doc­tor­al in­sti­tu­tions of very high re­search activ­ity) or who have a Shang­hai rank be­low 500 will be offered a lower price. (In­sti­tu­tions who are not lis­ted in either rank­ing or are in doubt should con­tact MSP for a price quote.)

For fu­ture years, we are also ex­plor­ing the new sub­scribe-to-open mod­el, and in­deed our new tiered pri­cing is in part a pre­par­a­tion for that pos­sib­il­ity.