Their strength, they say, comes from their journals' prestige, not the number of journals that they own. Antitrust regulators have tended to agree. But some analysts are not so sure. Although the legal issues remain to be settled, virtually everyone in the industry agrees that journal prices have risen precipitously over the last 15 years as the number of publishers dwindled. The 11 percent average annual increase in journal prices in the last 10 years has even exceeded the 6 percent annual price increases in brand-name cigarettes, Mr. Nathanson said.
Some publishers acknowledge that their price increases have gone out of hand.
There were price increases done in the late 80's and early 90's that caused this problem, but there is new management now. We are trying to change that. No more double-digit price increases. Still, librarians said that price increases of up to 10 percent a year were still far steeper than the rate of inflation in other parts of publishing. The consolidation first took off in the 1960's, when the British investor Robert Maxwell turned the tiny Pergamon Press into the profitable cornerstone of a media empire that eventually included The Daily News of New York.