Fewer scholarly publications are available to scholars worldwide. Year after year, libraries are reducing their journal and monograph collections, even though the production of scholarly information grows exponentially. As a consequence, you, your colleagues, and your graduate students have access to less and less of the world's scholarly output each year. But what's happening behind the scenes is more disturbing. Giant corporations put profits and the stockholders who demand them first.
Mergers cause prices to rise even higher as competition decreases.
In Point More importantly, you are losing control of the system that should exist solely to serve you and other researchers and students throughout the world. Your research, supported by your institutions and by grants, is given to publishers who then sell it back to your library, sometimes at unjustifiable prices. Over the last 30 to 40 years, the production of scholarly information has boomed. Many enterprising commercial publishers have seen the profit potential in the system. They have increasingly taken over control from scholarly societies and university presses.