Libraries Stunned by
Journal Price Increases

U.S. subscribers have been hit hard by the decline of the
dollar; research libraries also believe they are being exploited

by journal publishers

ESEARCH libraries across the coun-
Re face large cancellations of sub-

scriptions to scientific journals next
year because of leaping prices. Although
there have been substantial increases in the
prices of American journals over the 1980s,
the real crisis has been precipitated by the
decline of the dollar overseas.

The prices of United States journals rose
close to 10% this year, according to Charles
Hamaker of Louisiana State University
(LSU), and overall prices have jumped by
14 to 18%. The result has been that research
libraries have experienced big cost overruns
this year. Harvard University, which has the
nation’s largest academic library with
106,000 periodicals, exceeded its budget
this year by $480,000. Librarians around
the country report chat next year’s subscrip-
tion lists will have to be cut back by 5 to
15%. The University of California, Berke-
ley, 92,000 serials, ran $300,000 over
its S nillion budget and is cutting back
its list by 8 to 12%. Book budgets are being
eaten into in some cases to make up short-
falls.

“The crisis of library funding for serials is
something that literally hit us in the fall of
last year” with the drop in the dollar, says
Hamaker, who has been devoting consider-
able time to analyzing the situation. This
occurred after subscriptions had been or-
dered for the current academic year, so
subscription-paring exercises will be going
on all summer.

With European journal publishers becom-
ing increasingly dominant in the interna-
uonal market, American consumers are be-
ing hard-hit. Hamaker says, for example,
that three major foreign publishers—Else-
vier of the Netherlands, Springer of West
Germany, and Pergamon of England—ac-
count for 25% of the serials budget at LSU.
Foreign journals account for 40% of the
udes and 60% of the costs.

The price for Brain Research, Elsevier's
“hottest” journal, says Hamaker, rose this

3826. A press release
from Stanford University reports that the
prices rench journals have increased by
42%, 1San by 28%, and Japanese by 25%.

ne of the biggest offenders is Germany’s

Verlag Chemie, which, according to Jay
Lucker of the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology (MIT), increased its U.S. prices
by 61.1% from 1985 to 1986. The publish-
er has explained that it has incurred higher
costs, including problems from a printers’
strike, but librarians generally do not find
the explanations convincing.

Libraries are also complaining that sub-
scription prices for American journals are
rising at a considerably faster rate than the
rate of inflation as measured by the Con-
sumer Price Index. Richard Dougherty of
the University of Michigan, which is cutting
back its materials acquisitions by 10%, says
there has been a 36% increase in the past
year in the price of publications from the
American Chemical Society (ACS). Chemi-
cal Abstracts went from $6400 to $8400 in 3
years. According to a December 1986 article
in Physics Today, the price of physics journals
increased 32% from 1985 to 1986. Sheila
Dowd of Berkeley Says a review of core
journals—most of-them domestic—in 15
disciplines showed a 2-year price increase
averaging 31.9%.

Library officials are responding to the
crunch by giving presentations to educate
faculty members about the situation, and by
instituting reviews to find out which jour-
nals can be dispensed with. Professional
associations are also getting involved. The
26-member Research Libraries Group, for
example, is conducting a detailed Survey to
ascertain which journals will be retained at
which institutions over the next few years.

Librarians are having a uniform reaction
to the situation: they do not see any way out
of the bind in the short term other than
substantial cancellations, and they are blam-
ing publishers, particularly foreign ones, for
profiteering by raising prices beyond what is
necessitated by economics. They also say
that some British and German publishers are
engaging in “discriminatory” pricing by
charging North Americans more than other
international customers.

Publishers are charging what the market
will bear, contends Gay Dannelly of Ohio
State University. “What they're going to be
secing this coming year is how much the
market can not bear.” Other librarians echo

SCIENCE, VOL. 236

 

 
 

 

 

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that sentiment, saying publishers are in dan-
ger of killing their markets by overexploita-
tion. “The general feeling is that libraries
will pay anything,” says Lucker of MIT,
which was hit last year with a 15% increase
in journal expenses. Shirley Echelman of the
Association of Research Libraries says pub-
lishers assume libraries are an “inelastic”
market, but the fact is, “there are going to be
massive cancellations.”

One problem, as Brown University pro-
vost Maurice Glicksman points out, is that
“market forces are not at work,” inasmuch as
journals are not comparable—‘“quality de-
termines the need to purchase.” And Ha-
maker observes that a company like Elsevier,
which publishes 590 journals, has a monop-
oly in many fields. “A very small group of
publishers is responsible for 75% of our
problem,” says Dougherty of Michigan.

Another problem is the rapid prolifera-
tion of journals, particularly in the more
active areas of science, such as computers
and molecular biology. This results in hy-
perspecialization, otherwise known as
“cwigging.” Michael Keller of Yale Universi-
ty can name seven computer journals off the
bat, five of which have made their appear-
ances within the past few years. There are
“far too many journals being chased by far
too few dollars,” says Michael Bowen, the
ACS director of books and journals.

This has resulted in a vicious cycle that
began some years ago but which has been
exacerbated by the currency situation: as the
numbers of subscribers to journals diminish,
prices are raised to keep income stable; this
in turn drives away more subscribers. This
phenomenon promises to lead to further
damaging price increases next year. Indeed,
Joseph Boisse of the University of Califor-
nia, Santa Barbara (which this year exceeded
its journal budget by 25%), says he has
received notices from two foreign publishers
that further price rises will be necessary
because of anticipated subscription cuts.

Among the trends that have conspired to
create the present situation, according to
Hamaker, is that over the past 10 years
increasing numbers of scientific organiza-
dons have turned printing and distribution
of their publications over to commercial
publishers. Publications by nonprofit orga-
nizations tend to be cheaper, in part because
they have larger distributions and more indi-
vidual memberships. Page charges in some
cases also keep prices down.

Also adding to general information costs
has been the Reagan Administration’s “Dri-
vatization” policy, which has resulted in
commercial publishers taking over the pro-

@.:. of government documents that had

Previously been sold at cost. Another trend

has been the purchase by foreigners of

. 22 MAY 1987

American journals and information services,
which has been accelerated by the favorable
position of European currencies vis-a-vis the
dollar.

Although research libraries have made
some attempts to negotiate with publishers
about the worsening dilemma, no solutions
have yet appeared on the horizon. Bowen of
the ACS says the shrinkage of the subscrip-
tion base, which has been going down be-
tween 0.5 and 1% a year, is a factor in price
increases. But the main factor, he says, is
that “our journals are growing in size.” The
Journal of Physical Chemistry, for example,
has gone from about 5000 pages in 1982 to
7000 in 1986. Organic Metallic Chemistry
has grown from 1800 to 2600 pages. He
says that if libraries want to keep costs
down, they “should not continue buying
journals that are outrageously priced.”

Nonetheless, he says “I have a lot of
sympathy with the library community. If I
were in their shoes I’d be saying the same
things.”

Not so sympathetic is A. F. Spilhaus, Jr., of
the American Geophysical Union. Spilhaus
Says price increases of AGU journals have
been necessitated by increased paper and post-
age costs (paper went up sharply a half dozen
years ago), as well as increased pages. For
example, the Journal of Geophysical Research
“has more than doubled in price but it has
doubled in size.” Spilhaus thinks some foreign
journal publishers are indeed price-gouging.
He also says domestic commercial publishers
are charging at rates up to ten times that
charged by nonprofit societies.

Says Spilhaus: “Libraries have caused the
problem by buying stuff that is unreasonably
expensive ... libraries have to learn better
how to evaluate the value of journals. As
long as they are relying on dollars per title
they are not being economically realistic. I
have told them hundreds of times that
they're the problem.”

Commercial publishers are also unapolo-

getic. David Swanson of Academic Press, a |

major U.S. journal publisher, says that com-
paring journal prices to inflation as mea-
sured by the Consumer Price Index is irrele-
vant, because the price index does not take
into account rising costs of such factors as
paper, typesetting, and postage. He ac-
knowledges that “falling unit sales clearly
has had an effect” on prices.

Robert Miranda of Pergamon Journals
Inc., the U.S. arm of the British company,
says that labor costs have been the largest
factor (aside from the decline of the dollar)
in pushing up prices. He also says editors are
getting more submissions, which raises the
costs of processing manuscripts. Librarians
have accused Pergamon of making fantastic
profits—Keller says their profit margin went

from 25% to 40% between 1980 anc
1986—but Miranda says that is for the
whole enterprise, not the journals. He alsc
says that, contrary to accusations, Perga-
mon’s American price is 20% lower than its
overseas price.

There is no consensus on how the prob-
lem of escalating journal prices will be re-
solved. In the long run, electronic publish-
ing looms. The next few years will probably
see a number of partial solutions: Resource
sharing and arrangements for the develop-
ment of complementary collections among
libraries will undoubtedly increase, although
this means some can no longer aspire to
having “comprehensive” collections. Some
librarians suggest that instead of subscribing
to certain journals they may subscribe to
services that provide copies of single articles.
Dougherty believes that technology has ad-
vanced to the point where it will be feasible
for some private societies to reassume the
publication of journals that have been
turned over to commercial publishers. More
pressure will be put on publishers to stabi-
lize prices. Publishers, for their part, may
decide that owigging has gotten out of hand
and move toward consolidating some jour-
nals. There is a widespread belief that many
small-circulation journals will go out of
business.

The situation is now in flux. Says Boisse:
“nobody has been able to see where this is

"going to end.” » ConsTANCE HoLpEN