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Funding agencies, faculty, university administrators, scholarly societies, the U.S. Department of Justice, the European Union, publishers, editors and librarians are among the many groups involved with and concerned about the transformation of scholarly communications, especially when confronted by the spiraling costs of journal literature, and the opportunities offered by new technologies. There are numerous problems challenging all stakeholders. The issues are complex; analyzing them reveals a high level of interrelationships.
Several avenues are being explored to address problem issues, including the emergence of alternative publication methods and various types of cost studies. One area of investigation, part of a concerted national effort to foster change** and to constrain costs, is to examine and publicize the difference in costs of journal literature to libraries. The data charts linked below provide information on per page costs for a selected group of journal titles of particular interest to faculty and students in the Atmospheric Sciences Department at the University of Washington.
The question of cost to the library for a particular journal title might be one of many factors looked at in the decision-making process when a researcher considers where to submit an article for publication, or whether to accept an editorship of a journal, or even whether to accept an invitation to peer review an article for a journal. Per page cost information may be of use also in one's role as a member of a professional organization, and as a journal editor. There are numerous instances of commercial publishers approaching societies and associations with high-priced offers to buy their journal titles. If sold, the usual pattern is for the cost of that journal to increase substantially. In view of this fact, in looking at the data attached for the 36 journal titles, it may be useful for researchers to keep in mind what other options may be available.
Of the journals on this list, 22 are published by commercial publishers; the remaining 14 by societies, governments or associations. The price paid for 35 titles for the 1999 subscription year is given in dollars, and includes a service charge from the subscription agency along with the publisher's cost. These are University of Washington Libraries costs and may vary (usually not significantly) from costs paid by other institutions for the same titles. Costs per page on this list assume similar overall average page and font size among all journals. Frequency of publication and possible mandatory postage charges are not considered.
Five publishers require, and three additional publishers may accept page charges in some circumstances. The usual effect of a page charge is to reduce the cost of production (and subscription price) that, in some instances, is reflected is the cost per page of each title for the 1999 year.
Page charges are more the rule than the exception with non-profit publishers; the opposite is true with commercial publishers. Some of this clearly accounts for the lower cost per page within the former group. Within the for-profit group, the price per page for individual titles ranges from a low of $0.17 (Munksgaard) to a high of $2.87 (Springer). Note that Munksgaard charges no page charges unless an article is beyond 5 pages. The Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society assesses substantial fees for articles of 21+ pages as a brevity incentive. Following Munksgaard, Kluwer, with a $0.59 cost per page for Climatic Change, has the lowest commercial publisher's cost per page for one title.
The average cost per page for the three commercial publishers appearing most frequently on the list, in descending order, are:
Springer (5 titles): $1.86
Elsevier (7 titles): $1.24:
Kluwer (5 titles): $0.80
The average cost per page for all non-profit publishers is: $0.16
Though falling near or at the median per page cost (ranking 14th and 17th respectively of the 35), two titles, Water Air and Soil Pollution, and Atmospheric Environment, carry the largest subscription prices. Atmospheric Environment (see below for recent price history) is listed as one of the highest priced journals in a recently released database maintained by the Association of Research Libraries.***
| Journal Title: | Atmospheric Environment |
| Publisher: | Elsevier |
| ISSN: | 1352-2310 |
| Journal Price 2000: | $3828.00 |
| Journal Price 1999: | $3561.00 |
| Journal Price 1998: | $3256.00 |
| Journal Price 1997: | $2823.00 |