Spending on subscriptions to journals rises by up to 50% | News | Times Higher Education

"The amount of money paid by UK universities to subscribe to some large publishers’ journals has risen by almost 50 per cent since 2010, new data suggest. The finding is based on freelance requests under the Freedom of Information Act to more than 100 universities by Ben Meghreblian, an independent researcher, and Stuart Lawson, a research analyst at Jisc Collections. The researchers asked each institution how much it had spent over the past five years on subscribing to journals from seven of the largest publishers. They found that the amount paid to Oxford University Press rose by 49.2 per cent between 2010 and 2014. The amount paid to Springer rose by 36.3 per cent and the amount to Wiley by 33.5 per cent. The smallest rise – 17.4 per cent – was in subscriptions to Elsevier journals. Overall expenditure increased by 23.9 per cent. Mr Lawson told Times Higher Education that he had made the FoI requests to instigate a better-informed conversation about the cost of publishing in an era of increasing open access. Many institutions and funders have recently begun publishing the amount that they spend in open-access article fees. However, information on the amount paid in subscription fees has typically been shrouded in confidentiality agreements between libraries and publishers ..."