Views of the Current Marketplace for Scholarly Journals Views of the Current Marketplace for Scholarly Journals By Mary Case, Director of the ARL Office of Scholarly Communication Scholarly research is the life-blood of the advancement of knowledge. Faculty, universities, societies, federal agencies, research institutions, publishers, and libraries all play a role in supporting the creation and dissemination of that research. The formal and informal systems of scholarly communication that have grown up to support the advancement of knowledge are in jeopardy, however, as a result of market forces most visible in scientific journals publishing that are reducing access to the published literature in all disciplines.
Librarians are acutely aware of the dynamics in the market for academic journals.
Despite infusions of funds into serials budgets, libraries have been unable to keep pace with the steep price increases. As a result, libraries have had no choice but to cancel significant numbers of journal subscriptions and to reduce monographic purchasing, decimating their collections. Many believe the exploitative practices of a few large commercial companies operating in a near monopolistic market are the fundamental cause of high prices. In 1988, ARL contracted with the Economic Consulting Services to conduct a serials prices study. Using best estimates available, ECS concluded that the increasing costs of production and the growing size of the journal titles could not fully account for a large portion of the prices charged by four commercial publishers.