Why are journals so expensive? | Information Culture, Scientific American Blog Network

In the end, I told the student there were two main reasons why publishers charge so much for journal subscriptions: [1] The subscription isn’t just for one person, it is so that everyone at the university could (theoretically) read that content [2] Because they can.  Journals have content (articles, reviews) that scholars and students want. Due to the nature of academic publishing, that exact same content (the results from a particular study or experiment) can’t be found in another journal. These mini-monopolies put power in the hands of publishers as scientists and scholars need access to particular content.  It’s kind of like the way that HBO can control its subscription price. If you want to watch Game of Thrones, you have to subscribe to HBO. You may get it via Time Warner or Direct TV, but HBO can still set the price. The major difference here is that unlike TV shows for entertainment purposes, some scholarly content can be considered vital to the educational and research mission of a college, making it difficult to say NO to.  This may be changing. There have been several high profile cases of libraries sayingNO to high priced journal content (more on that next time), and researchers are more aware than ever of the repercussions of publishing in expensive journals. Hopefully this will lead to a greater balance of power between scholarly publishers and the institutions that purchase their content."