And a number of academics don't hesitate when asked why commercially published journals are so costly. We didn't come right out and say it's greed, but I don't see any other really good explanation. Many journals will go from a quarterly to maybe a monthly. That's one driving force. There are other years where they've gone up 20 percent on exchange rate alone.
Academics see things differently.
Rosenzweig maintains that commercial publishers simply don't have any interest in disseminating their journals as widely as possible. It costs money to fulfill subscriptions and deal with a large public. If you're dealing with three, four hundred libraries on a regular basis, you can cut your administrative costs to the minimum, take the money you save, and invest in another journal that's going to do something similar. He argues that ier is working hard to develop electronic publishing with a service called ScienceDirect, which will expand the readership of its journals. These are small-circulation, highly specialized journals whose costs must be spread over a relatively small base.