Journal costs

From
Date
Hello,

	I understand that some of you out there in paleoland are involved
with the publication of academic journals.  I am a paleontology grad who
is involved in our student government here at Carleton, and the
acquisition of scientific journals (or the lack thereof) by our library is
a hot issue these days.
	Government cutbacks notwithstanding, the library informs us that
journal prices have been skyrocketing, especially in the sciences and
engineering disciplines.  As a result, our library, and others around the
world, have been cancelling subscriptions which concerns those researchers
and students who depend on current published research.
	It would seem, from a strictly business point of view, that
publishers would want to stem this tide of subscription cancellations.
There is a snowball effect happening: the more subscriptions that are
cancelled, the higher the price needs to be raised to recoup lost revenue.
As prices increase, more subscriptions are cancelled. And so on.  Are
there any ideas on how to reverse this trend?


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 Andrew Dalby
 Dept. of Earth Sciences
 Ottawa-Carleton Geoscience Centre	   Carleton University
 Ottawa, Ontario, Canada		  (613) 520-2600 X1851

		      adalby@ccs.carleton.ca
		  http://www.carleton.ca/~adalby/

"Everyone is entitled to an INFORMED opinion". -Harlan Ellison
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