Secrets of journal subscription prices: For-profit publishers charge libraries two to three times more than non-profits.

"Some of the results: [1] Even with the discounted Big Deal bundles, Elsevier charges typical research universities in the US  about 3 times as much per citation as non-profit publishers.  But other big commercial publisher bundles are even worse bargains. Wiley’s bundled costs more than twice as much per citation as  Elsevier’s. Taylor & Francis, Emerald, and Sage prices per citation are more than 10 times those of the nonprofits. [2] Bundle prices vary widely between universities. Much of this variation cannot be explained by such differences as enrolment, number of PhD’s granted, or presence of a medical school. [3] Colleges and universities that do not focus on research and do not offer PhD’s get much better bargains from the major commercial publishers. The average prices charged to these by Elsevier, Springer, and Wiley are   about 1/10 of  the prices they charge to research universities.  In contrast, non-profits charge the non-research institutions about ¾ as much as research universities.  For non-research institutions, Elsevier’s prices per citation are similar to those of the nonprofits.  The other for-profit publishers charge non-research institutions “only” 2 to 4 times as much as do the non-profit publishers. Why are the commercial publishers so eager to conceal their prices from the public view? We suspect that part of the reason is that they do not want scholars, librarians, and university administrators to know just how high their prices are compared to  costs as measured by the prices of non-profits. We also suspect that they do not want some universities to  find out that they are paying much more than similar universities for the same package."