Libraries cut scores of monographs and journals in the humanities and social sciences to maintain subscriptions to the expensive journals their science faculty demanded. A black cloud settled over scholarly communications. On the sixth day, scientists, professional societies, librarians, and academic administrators began to discuss solutions. On the seventh day, they approached their university colleagues and asked for support. The expulsion of scientific journals from the Edenic world of scholarly-society publishing comes as no surprise to those who have tracked the commercialization of research during the past few decades.
Science is big business.
In this brave new world where market forces, not fellowships, drive research, the emergence of the scientific journal as profit maker is one of publishing's best-kept secrets. And that development is holding back the march of science. When libraries cut back on subscriptions because of high journal prices, the journals that remain in circulation make up for the falling subscriptions by raising their rates. Faculty suffer from reduced availability of research materials. And when libraries cut subscriptions to journals published by scholarly societies, the subscription fees these societies usually reinvest in science also disappear.