Subscription Price Tiers
Starting with 2022, mindful of the hardships still faced by many institutions, MSP has implemented tiered pricing for its journal subscriptions. 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.
- United States
- Tier 1: group R1 (“very high research activity”) of the 2018 Carnegie Classification;
- Tier 2: all others.
- Rest of the world
- Tier 1: rank 1–500 of the 2020 Shanghai Academic Ranking of World Universities;
- Tier 2: all others.
Institutions who are not listed in either ranking or are in doubt should contact MSP for a price quote. Research institutes usually classify as Tier 1. Renewal invoices for current subscribers will list the appropriate tier.
Download the Price List for 2022 (PDF)
Download the Price List for 2022 (XLSX)
Explanation
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.