journalprices.com

November 2, 2005

A colleague pointed out journalprices.com to me today, and I see now that Resource Shelf is also pointing to the site.

The Journal Cost-Effectiveness page goes alongside An Open Letter to All University Presidents and Provosts Concerning Increasingly
Expensive Journals (as drafted by Theodore Bergstrom and R. Preston McAfee). Their call to action is twofold:

We recommend the following policies.

(i) Universities should assess overhead charges for the support services of
editors working for journals that have basic library subscription rates of more
than a threshold level of cost per measured unit of product.

(ii) University libraries should refrain from buying bundled packages from
large commercial publishers and should set clear minimal standards of cost-
effectiveness for individual journals to which they subscribe.

Ted Bergstrom’s site is well worth trawling. There is plenty of useful information on: the substantial inflation of academic journal pricing, what might be done about it and who is already putting thought into action.

Posted in Scholarly Communication