2012 Study of Subscription Prices for Scholarly Society Journals

"Since 1989, prices for US society journals have increased 7.3% on average annually. During 2010–2011, average price increases hovered slightly above the historical average. However, the average increase in 2012 dropped, more than a full percentage point below the average, to less than 6% (Fig 1). This was the first time since 1995 that average increases for US journals fell below 6%....For all titles in the study, price increases in 2012 averaged 5.8%, down from 7.5% in 2011. The average price increase of non-US-based journals surpassed US-based titles in 2012 (Table 1). Since 2010, the average annual increase of non-US based journals has been nearly two percentage points higher than that of US-based journals. The majority of the titles in the study are peer-reviewed journals. In 2011, the average annual price increase of peer-reviewed journals from 2010 was 7.6% compared to 6.3% for non-peer-reviewed journals. The average price increase for peer-reviewed journals dropped by more than two percentage points in 2012 compared to 2011; however, the average price increase for non-peer-reviewed titles was down by more than 4%, further widening the already significant price gap between peer-reviewed and non-peer-reviewed journals (Table 2)....In our survey of society publishers, we asked which alternative subscription models were being considered for the future. The sale of content collections (topic-specific collections of articles from multiple volumes and issues) garnered the most responses at 64%. Offering PPV for institutions was selected by 41% of respondents. Fifty-five percent of the publishers indicated they were already offering PPV and price-per-article ranges from $10.00 to $50.00, with an average cost of $21.00. Approximately one-third of the publishers indicated they are considering offering author-choice Open Access or making their backfile/archive available for purchase. Thirty-two percent already charge a separate subscription fee for their backfile/ archive. Article rental and shorter-length subscriptions (1 day, 1 week, 1 month, etc.) were the least popular alternatives, with less than 23% of the publishers considering these models (Fig 8)....Some libraries are looking at OA as one option to help relieve rising prices. According to The Survey of Academic Libraries, 2010–2011 Edition, “30% of librarians surveyed thought that Open Access would not impact journal prices while 54% said that it had not done so yet but that it should eventually slow the growth of price increases or improve contract conditions. 

Nine percent felt that it had already slowed the growth of price increases for journals or produced 

modest improvements in contract conditions while 7% felt that significant progress had already been made and that OA would eventually lead to significantly lower prices for journals....”