From: larsen@potato.princeton.edu (Michael Larsen)
Subject: Re: Why are Some Journals so Expensive?
Organization: Princeton University
Date: Wed, 29 Jul 1992 16:58:58 GMT

In article <92209.164013U53644@uicvm.uic.edu> <U53644@uicvm.uic.edu> writes:

>I'm not sure if this entirely  explains the high cost of some journals (did I
>really see one going for over $1000/yr. on the AMS subscription list ?)

I don't think so.  Transactions seems to be the most expensive, at $674/yr.
Of course, that buys you about 5000 large pages.  Proceedings,
Journal, and Bulletin go for $406, $109, and $162 respectively,
with substantial discounts for individuals.  The Journal of Differential
Geometry, also published by the AMS, is a great bargain for non-institutional
buyers; at $68/yr., it comes out to 7 or 8 cents per page.
University press prices are often lower still; the American Journal of 
Math costs individual subscribers $52/yr., or about 5 cents a page.  

For comparison, Springer-Verlag's flagship journal, Inventiones, costs
$1834/yr., in the 60-80 cent range.  It could be argued that as an
indisputably first-class journal, Inventiones is worth the price, but
this doesn't expain why the equally good Annals of Math (Princeton Univ.
Press) costs less per volume than Inventiones costs per issue.
And Topology (Pergamon Press) is very good, but is it really worth more
than $1 per page?

To put these figures in context, it should be added that all the journals
listed above are important enough that they belong on the subscription
list of any research department.  I am not discussing absurdly
overpriced journals like the Gordon&Breach publications which led to the 
lawsuits against the AMS and APS.  (According to one measure, Phys. Rev.
Lett. offered 5 orders of magnitude more bang for the buck than
the worst offender.)

>but one does have to accept that prices are going to be rather high. 

What is "rather" high?

>Remember,
>these aren't being put out using desk top publishing - people seem to want
>higher production quality than is available that way. 

Of course people "want" high quality.  But the decision isn't really made 
by the consumers.  After all, the same libraries which buy the beautifully 
typeset high-cost journals also buy the photocopied typewritten Springer 
Lecture Notes.

>...costs have to be recovered. 

Everyone knows this.  The question is, are the costs really twenty times
higher for some journals than for others?  And if so, why?  And if not,
are the math society and university presses massively subsidizing
their journals (unlikely) or are the commercial publishers making
obscene (500%, 1000%) profits?

>...(and without stock purchases, companies will have more trouble
>locating the capital needed to expand - killing new publishers, and preventing
>old ones from increasing the number of publications (books included) that they
>put out. End result - less to read. Longer publication times.)

If commercial math publishers were indeed making greater than normal
profits, one would expect a proliferation of new journals.  And
this has, in fact, occurred.  I consider it an *undesirable* trend.
Since many of them occasionally have good articles, departmental libraries
feel they can't afford not to subscribe.  A reduction in the total number
of math papers published would not be such a bad thing.  It's also not clear
that fewer journals means longer publication times.  It could just mean
lower acceptance rates and higher quality publications.
>
>The proposed boycott, though, would be an exercise in futility. The community
>would find itself with less reading material at the end of it, and nothing else
>would change. To have economic leverage, a community has to have a lot of
>spending power, taken collectively, and the Math community simply hasn't that
>sort of leverage.

On the contrary, the math community constitutes the only demand for the
product in question.  Like many other departments we (U. Penn) have recently
taken a hard look at our roster of periodicals and decided that many
could go.  Price was an important factor.  In time we should end up
with fewer and better journals and lower prices.  
>
>e-mail responses not welcome : anything that you aren't willing to say in
>                               public here is best left unsaid.
OK.

						-Michael Larsen