A recent spate of articles in the press1,2 and of reports from various organizations3 has highlighted once again the difficult problem libraries have with rising journal costs, increasing journal size, and shrinking journal budgets. As the scientific research enterprise has continued to grow, the pressure from scientists to find places to publish their research has grown in parallel. As a result, research journals have continued to proliferate, and the large successful journals have continued to grow in size. Librarians--unable to meet the demands of their clients who want access to a multitude of journals--are crying "uncle" as the commercial publishers have continued to push prices ever higher. What has made matters worse is that it appears to many librarians and scientists, particularly in the United States, that commercial scientific publishing is largely in the hands of relatively few, highly profitable European companies. America, used to being the big dog in ...
Why Science Journals Are So Expensive
In 1974, the editorial board of Biochimica et Biophysica Acta, at the time and still the world's largest journal of biochemistry, gathered in Amsterdam to celebrate the journal's 25th anniversary at a lavish party hosted by ier-North Holland Biomedical Press. Attending the gathering were such legendary figures in biochemistry as Sir Hans Krebs, Nobel Prize-winning discoverer of the tricarboxylic acid cycle, Fyodor Lynen, Nobel Prize-winning discoverer of fatty acid synthetase, Alex Bangham, "inv
Written byAlexander Grimwade
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