Even the most generously funded U.S. universities have undertaken massive serials cuts for budgetary reasons. Meanwhile, fewer books are being purchased because more of the budget is being spent on journals. In Canada, an additional factor in this crisis has been the impact of exchange rates and the declining value of the Canadian dollar. Library budgets have been seriously affected by the resultant decreased purchasing power, since many journals and books are published in the United States and Europe. All indications are that this trend will continue.
Opinions vary, but can be summarized as follows.
They can then price their publications outrageously, confident that this market will bear any price to continue meeting the needs of its scholarly clientele. Publishers such as Reed Elsevier, MCB, and Gordon and Breach are most often mentioned in this context. There is general agreement that the demands of the academic evaluation process create the overwhelming need for faculty to publish in reputable journals. Along with the splintering of disciplines into narrower and narrower fields, all with their own journals, this fuels the creation of more and more publishing venues, which scholars then expect libraries to buy. A third factor is related to copyright issues.