The High Cost of Scholarly Journals (and What to Do About It) (2003)

Abstract: Questions about the high prices of scholarly journals have grown in importance over the past several years, but they have assumed new urgency given the extremely tight budgets facing most universities today. In this article, the authors discuss the alarming increases in the cost of scholarly journals and the emergence of a concentration of for-profit suppliers. They contend that an unexamined reliance on the market has helped create a crisis in scholarly communications, though scholars have recognized that provision of public goods cannot be organized effectively in the private market. Some new approaches to providing greater access to data in a time of library cutbacks and proposals for returning the results of publicly funded research to their proper status are presented.