Gloriana St. Clair: Through portal | portal: Libraries and the Academy, Volume 1, Number 1, January 2001 | Project MUSE

"The traditional burden of the volume 1, number 1 editorial is to expound the reasons for the creation of a new journal. Sue Martin, Charles Lowry, the editorial board members, the mentors, The Johns Hopkins University Press, and I began this venture with deliberate and weighty goals. While we were reacting to Elsevier's takeover of several journals in librarianship and general social sciences, we were also acting to achieve these focused objectives: To offer an affordable alternative to serials that have gone up an average of 9 percent a year while the consumer price index increased only 3.3 percent; To provide a more inviting, constructive, and productive environment for authors; To model a scholarly communications system as outlined in recent pronouncements from the Association of American Universities (AAU) and the Create Change initiative. This editorial discusses how we intend to achieve these three major objectives through portal. Affordable alternative University presses offer a high-quality alternative to their commercial counterparts. While some commercial presses report gross profit margins of 40 percent..."