Dear all, here is a first reaction from Guy Leduc (TC6 delegate from Belgium) concerning the "explanation" obtained from Jennifer Evans who tried to explain the price differences between Springer LNCS and Springer IFIP LNCS. A small comment: My explanation of the reason for price difference is quite easy (and, unfortunately, maybe true): If Springer employees need two month in order to produce such an "elaborated" document, i.e. if two month working time is wasted for such a poor few lines, then it is no wonder that the company will be in financial trouble and must ask for substantially higher prices. Best regards Otto Spaniol --------------------------------------------------------------------

Dear All:

To follow up on the IFIP Publications Committee Meeting, I have delineated several points in the rationale for IFIP LNCS series pricing below:

1. SpringerHD/LNCS is selling its product at high discounts - up to 64% off list prices. For large bulk sales of proceedings with a page count exceeding 800 pages or occupying two volumes, the discounts increase considerably.

Still unclear. I'd like to see a reference document where the discount is clearly stated, possibly as a function of the page count or other criteria. 'Up to 64%' does not say anything about 'At least ...%'.

2. IFIP LNCS projects cause a substantial amount of additional effort during the entire cycle of project administration at the LNCS editorial office, as well as in the overall society cooperation, than regular LNCS projects.

Are we going to believe this? Adding the IFIP logo on a book, and adding a copyright sentence on the front page of every paper can be part of the automated formating procedure.

3. Due to IFIP copyright policy, etc., IFIP LNCS proceedings also require significantly more effort at the pre-production and production work level.

I don't believe this. I don't see which additional effort is required. The only tricky business is to estimate the amount of royalties due to IFIP (and it's covered in item 4 below).

4. The publication fee paid for IFIP LNCS proceedings to IFIP is paid as an up-front payment which has to be pre-financed by Springer.

I understand Springer has to pre-finance the royalties (which are 10% on the estimated non bulk sales). But this is not a reason to sell the (bulk and non bulk) IFIP LNCS at 30% higher price than standard LNCS! We could easily simplify this by changing the agreement and replace the up-front payment of royalties based on ESTIMATED sales by a post payment based on ACTUAL non bulk sales. I'd advise to do so.

I hope that the above helps explain the necessity of a price discrepancy between the IFIP LNCS series and the regular LNCS series. Please let me know if you have any questions

Now, I'm convinced Springer is really cheating. It is clear that few conference organizers will accept to publish in IFIP LNCS under these conditions. They will just go for standard LNCS and we'll have no rational argument against it. And the IFIP primary series is of course not at all a substitute for IFIP LNCS as it's not attractive at all. It's urgent to start the IFIP TC6 DL and say bye bye to Springer... Best regards, Guy

Best regards,

Jennifer

Jennifer Evans Publishing Director Springer Science + Business Media, Inc. 101 Philip Drive Norwell MA 02061 Tel: +1-(781) 681-0625 Fax: +1-(781)-871-7507 Email: Jennifer.evans@springer.com

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-- ________________________________________________________________________ Prof. Guy Leduc Phone : +32 4 366 26 98 Université de Liège Secr : +32 4 366 26 91 Réseaux Informatiques Fax : +32 4 366 29 89 Research Unit in Networking (RUN) Email: Guy.Leduc@ulg.ac.be EECS Department, Institut Montefiore, B 28, B-4000 LIEGE 1, BELGIUM http://www.run.montefiore.ulg.ac.be/People/GuyLeduc/