[PEN-L:6743] Re: journal profits

[DOUG ORR <DORR@xxxxxxx>]

Michael Perelman wrote:

> The financial times reported today that
> High-quality scientific journals which are
> "must-reads" for their subscribers are a highly
> profitable business with margins as high as 40 per
> cent.

Jerry Levy wrote:
That's very interesting, Michael (and fits-in rather well into a recent
thread we have been having on the Post-Keynesian Thought list). Certainly
it suggests that there may be monopolistic pricing at work.
_________________
North_Holland ans Elsevier have been buying up publishing rights to academic
journals for at least two decades.  They have developed a significant degree of
monopoly pricing ability as a result.  Professional orgs, including URPE, have
found the day-to-day tasks of putting together, printing and mailing a journal
to be too much a hassle.  So they farm it out to a journals firm.

While this benefits the professional org in the short run, journal prices have
been rising more than twice as fast as the rate of inflation.  This is THE major
cost squeeze affecting academic libraries around the country.  When libraries
have fixed budgets and rising journal costs, they cut the number of journals
they order.  Guess which ones they cut first!  RRPE,JPKE,IRAE, etc.


There was a fairly complete discussion of this issue about 2 years ago on PEN_L
but I don't know if the archives go back that far

Doug Orr
dorr@xxxxxxx