Sharply Rising Prices

Merchandise prices go up over time, as shown by the fact that the Consumer Price Index rose 73% from 1986 to 2004. What if the increase had been 188%? Would it be reasonable and acceptable?

According to a survey of research libraries, 188% was the price hike rate of academic journals from 1986 to 2004. It was more than 2.5 times the increase of the Consumer Price Index for the same period! The graph below illustrates certain research library expenditure patterns between 1986 and 2004:

The survey also said that:

• To support faculty research, research libraries subscribed to 42% more journals and witnessed a 273% surge in their journal expenditures.
• To reserve their stagnant budgets for exorbitant journal expenditures, the libraries purchased 9% fewer books even though their book budgets still climbed by 63%.

In short, sharply rising journal prices crippled research libraries' purchase power. They could not enhance their collections as much as they wished and had to reduce book acquisitions to secure funding for journal subscriptions. This inevitably hampered faculty and students' access to published scholarly materials.

The following resources illuminate the hefty journal prices that academic libraries have to bear:

• Sticker Shock
• Sticker Shock: The Price of Library Resources
• Key Facts and Figures: Crisis Scholarly Communications
• Journal Cost-Effectiveness (use this search engine to find internationally-published journals and rank them by price per article or citation).