Cornell's Journal Pricing Study Tells Faculty: Get Involved
Staff -- Library Journal, 1/25/1999
A study of agricultural journals by Cornell University adds to the growing stockpile of evidence that price increases by commercial publishers are growing at a rate far higher than those by association and society publishers. According to the report disseminated by a faculty task force in consultation with Cornell's Mann Library, the prices of commercially-published agricultural journals increased 77.8 percent between 1988 and 1994 on a price-per-page basis, while journals published by associations and societies increased by 33.3 percent. "If you're an acquisitions librarian, not much of this comes as a surprise," said Wallace Olsen, Senior Research Associate at Mann Library, who contributed to the report. "Perhaps the fact that society and association journals moved up as little as they did might be surprising to librarians. But if you were talking to faculty members, they might be quite astounded." The task force report recommends that faculty groups be apprised of the situation, that they be made aware of the implications of publishing or editing high-priced journals, and that they reassess their relationships to their servicing libraries. Olsen said he thinks it's a good time to get the issue on the agenda of many organizations, including SPARC, the ARL-led initiative developing competition in scholarly publishing."I've never seen quite as much interest in solving this problem on the side of the faculty."
