Periodical Price Inflation Albert Henderson 10 Apr 1997 16:58 UTC
In the article captioned below, Peter Jansen asks about periodical price inflation. A serious analysis is provided by Ronald E Akie in "Predicting Journal Subscription Prices" (PUBLISHING RESEARCH QUARTERLY 12,2 Summer 1996 p. 9-17), showing the contributions to pricing made by inflation, increased numbers of pages, cancellations, and currency exchange rates. If you are interested in doing something about the problems of periodicals' prices, please read my editorial in the same issue, p. 6-8, on "Publishing and the Productivity of R&D." The great difference in financial support for research, which generates ever increasing numbers of research articles, and for libraries, which are ever less able to collect and disseminate this information, is outrageous. It is even more baffling when it has been shown repeatedly that information supplied by libraries is the major cost-effective ingredient in research. Particularly repugnant, by the way, is the suggestion that publishers are on a gravy train. Learned publishing is the only segment of the industry where authors are routinely asked to subsidize the dissemination of research which already carries an investment of hundreds of thousands of dollars or more. More often than not publishers have used reserves, cut valuable coverage, and pushed vendor credit to the limit in order to minimize price increases. Publishers are also over a barrel because their prices must be fixed far in advance of incurring their costs. My analysis of the Periodicals Price Index ("Forecasting Changes in Periodicals Prices" in SERIALS LIBRARIAN 21,4 1992:33-43) between 1977 and 1990, for instance, indicated that it took two years for most publishers' prices to react to the inflationary spike of 1980! Albert Henderson, Editor, PUBLISHING RESEARCH QUARTERLY 70244.1532@compuserve.com ---------- Forwarded Message ---------- From: Peter Jansen, INTERNET:p.jansen@AUCKLAND.AC.NZ TO: SERIALST, INTERNET:SERIALST@UVMVM.UVM.EDU DATE: 4/8/97 10:16 PM RE: Periodical Price Inflation Dear Serialist Re: Virginia Roy's email entitled "1997 Price Index for Canadian Libraries" in which indicates that "Periodical price inflation reaches lowest level in eight years", it being only projected to rise by 10.28%. The publishers gravy train certainly seems to be going to full steam ahead. At a time of between 1 - 4% inflation in most industrialised economies these price increases seem extravagant, as do the 10%+ increases in each of the last eight years. I realise that the supply of many academic journals is relatively low, hence the high price. However, one would think this would be built into the original publication price of the journal, and would not impact on any subsequent price inflation. How do publishers justify (if at all) such increases ? And more importantly, is there anything that can be done about it ? Regards Peter Jansen Acquisitions Librarian Philson Library University of Auckland Private Bag 92019, Auckland, New Zealand Phone (+64 9) 373 7599 ext 6131 Fax (+64 9) 373 7491 <p.jansen@AUCKLAND.AC.NZ>