Shulenberger, the Provost at the University of Kansas, is an economist by academic training and is thoughtful and soft-spoken in person. The crusade he has tried to lead for the past year now has only one official adherent - the University of Kansas. The problem Shulenberger is grappling with is the threat posed to scholarly communication by relentlessly inflated journal prices. This, a dominant and daunting problem in scholarly communication, is routinely greeted by complaints and hand-wringing by handfuls of scholars and librarians and just as routinely greeted by a complete lack of public attention by anyone else. Before examining NEAR, it s best to define the problem more precisely.
Most academicians are increasingly aware of eye-opening examples of astonishing prices for journals.
But the overall picture is more persuasive than anecdotal evidence provided by a handful of grave offenders. For a complete picture, we should then factor in the growth in journal titles from about 103,700 in 1985 to about 210,000 journals in 1999. But, like the fool in King Lear who can t gain a monopoly on foolishness, commercial publishers cannot keep high prices to themselves. This data illustrates that journal prices are not based on the sum of a modest profit in addition to the cost of producing the journal. Any realistic proposal directed toward making scholarly communication affordable must not merely reduce the rate of price increases, but bring journal prices to competitive levels.